Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Book review: River of My Blood by Selina Hossain and Dangle by Sutapa Basu

Here are a couple of books that deal with the human condition, in times of the war without and the war within themselves. The jury may still be out regarding the real winners of the conflict but there can be no doubting the intensity of and the passion involved in the struggle, in both cases….

Book review: My Grandmother Sends Her Regards & Apologises by Fredrik Backman

A funny-wise tale ‘Every seven-year-old deserves a superhero.’ If that line isn’t enough to reel you in, ‘My Grandmother Sends Her Regards & Apologises’ has plenty of quirky characters and whimsical fairy tales which work just as well, in this book by Fredrik Backman. The story is of Elsa, a ‘different’ seven-year-old, a Gryffindor…

Humour: Joust the two of us!

I’ll begin with a confession: I don’t have a hearth. In fact, I’m not too sure what exactly a hearth is. In my mind, it`s something that carries warmth and fuzziness at times, and a touch of Roop tera mastana at other times… or am I confusing it with a blazing…

Photo Feature: Scotland

The Highlands All photos by Sheila Kumar. All images are subject to copyright. Scotland`s national flower, the thistle. `Braveheart` William Wallace, and no, he looks like nothing like a certain Mel Gibson….

Photo Feature: The Lake District

The Lake District All photos by Sheila Kumar. All images are subject to copyright. The view from the train window. A Turner…

Book review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J K Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne

As the breathless blurbs go: he’s back! After 19 years! And so are Ron and Hermione! And Hagrid, Snape, Cedric Diggory and Dumbledore, (don’t ask), Moaning Myrtle and oh, quite a few of the Hogwarts lot we have come to know and like. It’s a new adventure, it contains all the requisite dangers, and…

Feature: Unlikely Friendships

You two are friends? Really? Go on, admit it. Somewhere in your list of ‘closer than this’ friends, in the ‘inner circle’ or on its fringe, is this person who is really, really, really not like you, not one bit. You don’t share the same tastes; you are on different pages when it comes to…

Book review: One Last Drink at Guapa by Saleem Haddad

If being gay is complicated, being gay in West Asia is even more so. This book is an ode to disillusionment — personal, political, national — yet written in prose that soars and tugs at the emotions. Haddad’s hero Rasa is back in his unnamed country after doing his undergraduate studies in the U.S., full…

Book review: The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

This is more a brief take than review. Twenty years after he wrote the definitive book on Great Britain, Notes From A Small Island, purportedly the most successful travel book ever( 2.5 million copies sold to date), Bill Bryson is back, funny bone a-tingling, pen and notebook in hand, keen powers of observation intact. But…

Book review: Love, Loss and What We Ate by Padma Lakshmi

A tasteful tell-all If Padma Lakshmi’s memoir is more memory and less food, it does not matter. Warmth and honesty infuses this candid account of her life and times; it is, quite literally, an answer to everything you wanted to know about her but didn’t know who to ask. As the whole reading world…