Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: Ms Draupadi Kuru After the Pandavas by Trisha Das

Back to the future It is many centuries, indeed many epochs, after the Kurukshetra war. The Pandavas are in heaven, along with their mother Kunti, their wife Draupadi and their aunt Gandhari, as well as the warrior princess Amba. Life is expectedly a halcyon bubble, filled with milk and honey, apsaras , music and dancing. For…

Book review: In the Jungles of the Night, A Novel about Jim Corbett by Stephen Alter

First a sort of disclaimer: I grew up on a steady diet of Corbett’s tales of the man-eaters he had encountered and bested; and later on, I grew to really like Stephen Alter’s accounts of life of men and mountains. So this was a double delight for me: Stephen Alter in the voice of Jim…

Book review: The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

This is more a brief take than review. The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. Penguin Books Anything but a crash course in love, romance, marriage, all the wear and tear of life on relationships from the guru. It`s a slim volume (just 222 pages) which traces the meeting of Rabih Khan and Kirsten McLelland…

Book review: The Amazing Racist by Chhimi Tenduf-La

This is more a brief take than review. The Amazing Racist by Chhimi Tenduf-La Eddie Trusted, your average English teacher (ha! that gives you pause, right?) wants to marry the girl of his dreams, the voluptuous, flirtatious, manipulative Menaka. Eddie happens to be in Colombo and Menaka just happens to be the daughter of tough,…

Book review: Chain of Custody by Anita Nair

Inspector Gowda goes down sinister paths Four years after he was first introduced to us, Inspector Borei Gowda returns to the printed page and to the reader’s imagination in Anita Nair’s Chain of Custody. This is a fitter Gowda, who is drinking less and therefore more alert. However, he is still carrying the scars of…

Travel: Edinburgh Diary

LAST PAGE Edinburgh Diary Brexit does not seem to have affected the tourist inflow and Edinburgh is close to being uncomfortably full. SHEILA KUMAR PHOTOGRAPH BY KASHIF MASOOD Fringing the fest The atmosphere on the Royal Mile is electric. It’s the eve of the 69th edition of the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of the…

Book review: A Book of Light Edited by Jerry Pinto

Looking into the different mind: The Book of Light on stories of loved ones with mental illnesses Sheila Kumar| Jerry Pinto’s cope book for dealing with the divergent. There are two ways to read this slim book. One is to dig in and read the baker`s dozen at one go, then shut the book and…

Book review: A Handbook for My Lover by Rosalyn D`Mello

This is more a brief take than review. A Handbook For My Lover by Rosalyn D`Mello Excerpt: You are my joy and my suffering; my jury, executioner and judge. you insist on pushing me to the edge of the cliff, even nudging me on occasion. You make me falter with my speech. I feel the…

Travel: Scotland`s Lochs

SCOTLAND Water world Scotland’s lochs offer some of the most beautiful bounties of nature I am standing at the edge of Loch Ness. It is a dark and stormy afternoon; the huge mass of glowering thundercloud gathered above echoes the slate colour of the roiling waters. It is fascinating weather in which to gaze upon…

Book review: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

This is more a brief take than review. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. HarperCollins. Anthony Doerr is a celebrated writer who has written other very moving stories but All The Light We Cannot See (2014) stands one level above all of them. This story, of a few lives tightly intertwined in the days of…