Sheila Kumar - Comfortably Numb

Book Review: Holistic Healing by Dr Issac Mathai

Body-mind-spirit connect The how-to book on living better. Dr. Issac Mathai has always passionately espoused a way of living that integrates various disciplines like naturopathy, yoga, acupuncture, hydropathy, Siddha and meditation. In this book, he deconstructs traditional therapies and intertwines several threads: those chronicling his personal journey as well as that of his holistic healing…

Book review: India in Love by Ira Trivedi

Wedding and bedding A close look at how young India is doing in suchlike matters. Don’t be thrown by the self-important title of the book. Ira Trivedi has chronicled the wooing/ wedding/ bedding patterns of India in systematic fashion and the result is a highly readable book. Even as I have to state that I’m…

Book review: The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer

Aatish Taseer is at it again. Rooting in the past, referencing our shared history, seeking answers to painful questions of love, loss, alienation. In The Way Things Were, (Pan Macmillan) we meet Skanda, Sanskrit student, son of a Sanskrit scholar, collector of cognates, conveyor of his father`s dead body to its final resting place by the…

The New Indian Express/Bangalore Edition: Excerpt of Guru Cool from K & K

Feature: Culture Chameleons

Those Culture Chameleons! It’s official. India just won the culture war. Which culture war, you ask. Why, the one that our netas tout like some tired old mantra every chance they get: the war against westernization, against the evil influence of burgers and quesadillas, Louboutin heels and Cavalli outfits, against arguably execrable singers like Snoop Dogg and Keisha, EDM and…

Feature: The Issac Mathai/ Soukya Interview

Wholesome Healing: Back to tradition Living better should come to you as easily as breathing, says Dr. Issac Mathai who talks about his attitude to healthcare and his new book on holistic healing. The Soukya International Holistic Health Centre has, for over a dozen years now, been a classic example of how integrated holistic…

Feature: On Books and Bangalore

So. What is Bangalore reading? Sheila Kumar sifts through rumours of a tectonic shift in Bengaluru’s reading pattern. In a tweak of the immortal CSNY song, this was a long time coming. My personal wake-up moment came via a twin-pronged route. I was scanning the sell list of a popular buy-and-sell online forum when I…

Book review: The Book of Gold Leaves by Mirza Waheed

The Painted Word The Book of Golden Leaves by Mirza Waheed. Penguin/Viking Books. In his first book, The Collaborator, Mirza Waheed spun a stunning story, thinly veiled as fiction, of the hapless Valley and its hapless residents. Here, he tells us a tender love story. The serious young man with fine features and a…

Humour: Let`s Face It!

Let’s face it… I really don’t know what the fuss is all about. The pundits, that great faceless anonymous collective, tell us it is akin to opening Pandora’s box. That once you are hooked or wired as the case may be, the disease spreads in great galloping strides. That your ordinary life goes to…

Book review: The Last Wave by Pankaj Sekhsaria

The Last Wave: An Island Novel by Pankaj Sekhsaria (HarperCollins Books). This book meticulously lists the many woes that assail the Andaman Islands, and sadly enough, the list is a long one. Harish Kumar comes to the Andaman Islands to … well, it’s not clear what his purpose is. What he sees, who he meets…