Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Opinion: A little superstition to make the medicine go down?

Just a little superstition? I have to start with a disclaimer: I am not superstitious. When a black cat crosses my path, I just call out, here kitty, kitty. When the salt shaker slips from my grasp spilling the white stuff everywhere, I just grin sheepishly. When I burned the sleeve of a blouse I…

Book review: The Little Book of Goodbyes by Ravi Shankar Etteth

A wistful look back at life This slim volume of short stories delivers on the promise of its title: it really is a little book of nostalgic look-backs. The author digs deep into his personal cache of memories, mines it for sentiment and poignancy, takes us to a little town in south Malabar, then moves…

Book review: U-turn and Other Stories by Gauri Shankar Raina, trs by Pankaj Bhan

Gentle tales from the vale U-turn and Other Stories is a curation of Kashmiri tales written by Hindi/English/Kashmiri writer and filmmaker Gauri Shankar Raina and translated by Pankaj Bhan. Quite a few of the stories are situated in Jammu, which one doesn’t find too often in books on and from Kashmir, the focus usually being on…

Travel: The gorgeous Livraria Lello in Porto, Portugal

Books, enveloped in beauty The very first thing that strikes me as we arrive at the doorstep of the Livraria Lello in Portugal`s Porto, is the bouncer. He has a genial half-smile pasted on his lips, and is courteously listening to people whose tickets he is checking. But nothing can disguise the fact that he…

Book review: Bimbisar`s Curse by Tanushree Podder

Burden of a king When we first meet the great king of the Magadh Empire, Bimbisar, he is weak and infirm, imprisoned by his son in a cold dark dungeon. As he reflects on the circumstances that brought him to this sorry pass, history unfolds before us. Early on in the narrative, Bimbisar vows to…

Book review: Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai

Taking off the halo This autobiography reads like the coming -of- age memoir of just another girl filled with self-doubt, unsure of many things, trying to find her niche in a world far from her comfort zone. It just so happens that the subject and writer is Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by a gunman…

Book review: Once Upon a Summer by Manjul Bajaj

Once Upon a Raj time In her fourth book of fiction for adults, Manjul Bajaj has once again created a delicate spindrift of forbidden love, this time in the times of the British Raj. The wonderfully descriptive story moves between New York, Rannpur, Jaunpur, Saharanpur, Nainital, flows gently over every pebble, every path, every emotion…

Book review: Kidnapped by Hezbollah

A brush with danger The tagline of the book reads: A True Story of Travel, Turmoil and Triumph, and pretty much sums up what lies at the heart of the story. This is the true-life account of an Australia-based man of Indian origin. When Kaushik Sridhar decides he needs to visit the war-torn areas of…

Book review: Railsong by Rahul Bhattacharya

Charu’s song This sweeping saga combines personal narrative, social history and a fascinating deep dive into how the Indian Railways works. The beating heart of the story, however, is its indomitable main character, Charulata Chitol. The story begins with Charu’s family moving to a railway township, Bhombalpur. Charu’s father works in the Light Machine Shop…

Book review: The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

The Booker-25 shortlisted THE LONELINESS OF SONIA AND SUNNY by Kiran Desai, Penguin/Hamish Hamilton Books, is a veritable tome (almost 700 pages) dedicated almost single- mindedly to loneliness and its eviscerating effects, how to survive it, stay afloat, not go under… or get across if one does go under. Written in a melancholy manner, the…