Comfortably Numb - Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

Opinion: A brief meditation on grief

Grief is a many-splendoured thing With all that`s happening around us – war, genocide, displacement, disease – this is as good a time as any to talk about the nature of grief and grieving. Grief, say clinical psychologists, is a universal emotion, a natural response to loss. It hits us in small and big waves,…

Book review: Of Mothers and Other Perishables

The nature of loss and grief Much like the young girl in Alice Sebold’s book ‘The Lovely Bones’ who observes her family after she passes, the mother in this book does the same. On her untimely death, she leaves behind her husband and two daughters, yet she is very much around, an unseen, unfelt presence….

Book review: Mad about Cuba by Ullekh NP

Notes from contemporary Cuba The only thing quirky about this book is the title. In actual fact, Mad about Cuba is a compact report from the field. The tagline informs you that the author is a Malayali revisiting the revolution. And the first pic on the front jacket is one familiar to most Malayalis: that…

Books that Got on my Non-fiction 2024 List

From Phansi Yard, My Year with the Women of Yerawada by Sudha Bharadwaj. Juggernaut Books. An incredibly moving collection of 76 vignettes of women inmates the activist and lawyer met during her stay at Yerawada Jail. These are tales of extreme privation — of 77 women, because we must include the author – written with…

Opinion: Navigating life sans a smartphone

Surving sans a smartphone First, they said keeping your smartphone under your pillow at night carries radiation risks. So, I moved it to a nightstand a little distance away from my bed. Then they said don’t take recourse to the blue light of your smartphone on sleepless nights, so I`d switch on the bedside lamp,…

Book review: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver, Faber Books. I came late to the winner of last year`s Women`s Prize for Fiction and co-recipient of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. But migawd, I just devoured the book, all 548 pages of the contemporised retelling of Dickens` tale of institutionalised poverty and its impact on children, David…

Book review: Brotherless Night by V V Ganeshananthan

BROTHERLESS NIGHT by V V Ganeshananthan, Penguin Books. So, here is another `bearing witness` story from Sri Lanka, a wrenching tale that will stay with the reader a long, long time after they have turned the last page. The tale, narrated by young Sashikala Kulenthiran takes us year on year through the terrible conflict that…

Book review: The Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota

Working class hero We are back in Sahotaland, in this his fourth book, The Spoiled Heart. His Booker shortlisted second book, The Year of the Runaways was about three migrants, the horrors that force them to leave their homeland and their struggles in the UK. In his next book, China Room, longlisted for the Booker,…

Book review: The Golden Road by William Dalrymple

THE GOLDEN ROAD by William Dalrymple, Bloomsbury Publishers. If I call this a real feelgood book and you ask why, I shall offer you the subtitle: How ancient India transformed the world, it says. And before you raise that skeptical eyebrow, let me remind you that this author could write the manual for the innards…

Book review: The Extraordinary Life of Max Bulandi By Sidharth Singh

Rock and rollercoaster This book will hold instant appeal for those who grew up listening to Elvis, The Beatles, Santana, then graduated to The Doors, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin. Who did drugs like tomorrow would never come. Who read JS…except, in this book it`s not the iconic Junior Statesman but a popular magazine called the…