Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Feature: The Tea-times of Childhood

Remembrance of teatimes past Looking back at 4 pm food memories It is a truth universally acknowledged, that young persons forced to spend a whole hot and humid month in their `native place,` will be forever restless, forever hungry. Back in the Eighties, our large brood of siblings and cousins were no different when…

Book review: The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin by Manu S Pillai

History in sixty takes An absorbing collation of historical tales from across India Manu S Pillai, our desi Dalrymple, gives us another round of Indian history, this time in a collection of essays touching upon one interesting character after another, some well-known, some not, one or two quite obscure. The book is a compilation of…

Travel: All Saints Garrison Church, Lucknow

Peacocks at prayer Lucknow cantonment`s All Saints Garrison Church is one sumptuous Raj relic Lucknow cantonment`s All Saints Garrison Church is one sumptuous Raj relic. As we turned left into the compound of our army guest house, I almost dislocated my neck, the aforementioned neck being sharply turned to the right. Because what met…

Book review: House of Stars by Keya Ghosh

I read House of Stars by Keya Ghosh (Penguin Metro Reads) on the exuberant recommendation of my teenaged niece and guess what, it was an absorbing read. This is love in the times of religious fundamentalism and communal intolerance, the nascent passions of two eighteen- year- olds, Diya from Mumbai and Kabir from Kashmir, forming…

Book review: The Strawberry Thief by Joanne Harris

In her latest book, Joanne Harris brings back Lansquenet-sous-Tannes` friendly neighbourhood witch, Vianne Rocher. Vianne`s making and scrying with chocolate again; her elder daughter Anouk has stayed behind in Paris and the younger girl Rosette is now a silent sixteen. She believes that her Maman has made a sinister pact with the wind and let…

Feature: Sourdough, Him and Me

He did, she did In which the writer attends a sourdough workshop and gets into covert competition with a man. Sheila Kumar 8 min read “This is the mother starter,” says Bengaluru-based Sour House’s Selvan Thandapani, who is guiding us through this Introduction to Sourdough workshop. We are five women aspiring sourdough bakers – and one…

Book review: Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin

The Bennett bibis of Toronto All the familiar drama with some desi spice. Here comes the latest P & P tweak, in the wake of a multitude of literary and cinematic adaptations of that Jane Austen classic. In Uzma Jalaluddin’s ‘Ayesha at Last,’ the Bennet family`s trials and tribulations are given a culture tweak, and…

Book review: A Secret History of Compassion by Paul Zacharia

Sending up everything and everyone A scathing look at life. The reader`s first reaction on reading A Secret History of Compassion is to muse over the probability that Paul Zacharia wrote up the story, then dipped it into a vat of caustic soda. Everything is grist for his mill, or rather pen, here: writers,…

Book review: Beyond the Boulevards by Aditi Sriram

Beyond the Boulevards, Aleph Books. A monograph on Pondicherry by Aditi Sriram, this was a nice enough read but all through, it had the reader…well, this reader at least …forever searching between the words for something more, je ne sais quoi. For the ardent Pondyphile, and there are so many of us, it`s all there:…

Book review: Daughters of the Sun by Ira Mukhoty

Behind the zardosi drapes This wonderful book is a detailed riposte to the traditional image of harems as a place of hothouse sex, with special focus on the Mughal harems. In her foreword, the author states that accounts of the Oriental harem are usually a lurid and sometimes fantastical mix of bazaar gossip, stray gleanings…