Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Opinion: It`s OK to goof off once in a while

Back in the day, goofing off was when you had your make or break Math exam the next morning. You stared at your `rough` book, you stared at the pile of question papers from previous years, and then you went off to make yourself a snack to have with a can of Coke. Tidy up…

Loal, Kashmir by Mehak Jamal; The World with its Mouth Open by Zahid Rafiq

Just finished reading two books from Kashmir. Mehak Jamal`s beautiful ode to Kashmir, LOAL KASHMIR, 4th /HarperCollins Books. Loal in Kashmiri means love, longing, and Jamal has transcribed 16 accounts of love in a torn land. It makes for heart-breaking reading. We know the path of true love has never been smooth but here …

Book review: Ram c\o Anandhi by Akhil P. Dharmajan

If life was a film…. The first thing that strikes one after reading this book is that it could easily be made into a film. Not so coincidentally, the author, Akhil P. Dharmajan, co-wrote the script of the hit Malayalam movie ‘2018.’ In his author’s note, he calls this book ‘a cinematic novel,’ stating that…

Not quite haiku, not quite senryu…

I was requested to write a piece by the editors of PRERNA, the annual magazine brought out by the Shri Ram College of Commerce`s National Service Scheme.The topic was Life in Progress: From an Anxious Generation. I started off writing an essay on this wired and already weary lot of Gen Z youngsters made famous…

Down Nostalgia Road……

The pile of books to read for review grows bigger, and keeping pace with that is the slightly smaller pile of books to read for pleasure. Last week, I decided I need to clean my palate, books-wise. And so I went back to three all-time favourite authors: Alistair Maclean, Georgette Heyer and Frank Richards. Between…

Book review: The Oracle of Hate by Hamza Jalil Albasit

The anatomy of hate This story is an elegy for a city, Karachi, told through the prism of perspective of one family. An impressive debut work, it superbly melds the political and the personal, having its author, Hamza Jalil Albasit join the ranks of talented Pakistani writers who have made a name for themselves internationally….

Book review: Learning to Make Tea for One by Andaleeb Wajid

Growing with grief In the summer of 2021, as the second wave of Covid lashed the country, taking down so many people, tearing families asunder, Andaleeb Wajid, her husband Mansoor and her mother-in-law all contracted the virus. Andaleeb and her mother-in-law went into one hospital, her husband into another. Hospitalisation did not equal recovery in…

Book review: The Tiger`s Share by Keshava Guha

THE TIGER`S SHARE by Keshava Guha, India publishers Hachette. Sons and daughters, heirs and non-heirs, the seriously wealthy and the merely rich, the collecting of property in and around the capital city, class barriers, a glimpse into the lives of the now shrinking Anglophone liberal elite, societal snobbery, the overweening sense of entitlement, suffocating patriarchy,…

Book review: Becoming Bangalore by Roopa Pai

BECOMING BANGALORE, Hachette Books is the most delightful chronicling of a city ever. It`s a compendium of essays from Roopa Pai`s ongoing newspaper column on Bangalore; compact, engaging, insightful 600-word passages that pack in much information to both educate and entertain the reader. Things I learned after reading the book: *Why Bangalore`s trees bloom in…

Book review: Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq

HEART LAMP, Penguin Books, a set of short stories written by Banu Mushtaq, translated by Deepa Bhasthi. Simply put, these are some of the most moving stories I have read recently, an intimate look at the lives of Muslim women in Karnataka`s villages. These braveheart women navigate difficult-by-default lives, with the multiple chains of poverty,…