Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Lifequake by Tarini Mohan

The long way back She was young, all of twenty-three, standing on the threshold of a new life in Uganda, in a new job, having made new friends. Then, one evening, she gets onto a boda, a motorcycle taxi, along with a friend. The boda is violently rear-ended by a vehicle and the driver, the…

Book review: For No Reason At All by Ramjee Chandran

Cloak and dagger with a dash of silicon Ramjee Chandran`s debut fiction contains a cracker of a story. Written in the most elegant manner, infused with generous doses of wit, guile, dash and daring, the story is set in New Delhi when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister of India, when scams came under the…

Book review: Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt

JUST FINISHED READING: Shelby Van Pelt`s bestseller of last year, REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES, Bloomsbury Books. We go to an aquarium in Sowell Bay near Seattle, and meet Tova Sullivan the septuagenarian night-time cleaner there; Tova carries her age lightly but the mysterious loss of her son in a boating accident more heavily. She is surrounded…

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…