book review - Comfortably Numb

Book review: How to Forget by Meera Ganapathi

Just finished reading the most delightful book of ruminations made while taking short as well as long walks, HOW TO FORGET by Meera Ganapathi, HarperCollins Books. This book resonates, how it resonates! The reader matches step with the poet-author, accompanies her down her route, takes in the sights that float into her ken: a still-silver…

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…

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 Outsiders by Devi Yesodharan

Looking out, looking in The migrant experience is explored through the perspective of two outsiders, in this book. One is a teacher from Kerala who comes to Dubai in the 1990s scouting better prospects. The other is a sailor who reaches the fabled lost port of Muziris in 213 CE. Both these stories deal with…

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: The Many Lives of Syeda X by Neha Dixit

Living under the radar Veteran journalist, prize-winning `shoe-leather` writer of many articles which have caught the startled attention of the authorities and the public alike, Neha Dixit`s first book is everything one would expect from her: an excellent piece of reportage. There is no soft immersion involved here. We are almost immediately introduced to the…

Book review: The Cobra`s Gaze by Stephen Alter

Where the wild things are This is such an important work, a masterclass in ecological awareness for those of us who would read, absorb, learn. In an intense effort to show us the missing link between animals, birds and humans, how we perceive other species through our umwelt or sensory bubble, project human expectations on…

Book review: Knife by Salman Rushdie

A deconstruction of events The book`s tagline reads: meditations after an attempted murder. Which is as startling as it is dramatic. The text, though, is largely a matter-of-fact chronological record of events. While not entirely leached of emotions – this is Salman Rushdie, after all – there isn’t any maudlin self-pity in the narrative. When…

Book review: Chandni Chowk The Mughal City of Old Delhi by Swapna Liddle

CHANDNI CHOWK, The Mughal City of Old Delhi by Swapna Liddle. Speaking Tiger Books, out in 2017. In all the years I lived and worked in Delhi, the old parts of the city always had me in thrall, even as much of the new city repelled me. Now I live far away from Delhi but…