Comfortably Numb

Sheila Kumar's Storehouse

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Books: Tribute to PG Wodehouse

THREE CHARACTERS AT BLANDINGS CASTLE I ABSOLUTELY LOVE: • Lord Emsworth. The barmy old ninth Earl is a veritable delight. • Angus McAllister. The castle`s Head Gardner, with his radical views on hollyhocks and yews, has some side-splitting face-offs with Lord Emsworth. • Rupert Baxter. Can one love Baxter? Well, you definitely love that he…

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Book review: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

My Wednesday Review this week is of an old favourite which has attained cult status amongst certain sections of the reading populace. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.  First the backstory. John Kennedy Toole wrote this uproariously funny story   in the early Sixties, met with rejection after rejection from publishers everywhere, and eventually committed suicide…

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Guest column: You Are The Sky

When an attempt to imbibe serenity brings about more confusion. This is a Covid-19 quarantine story. It dates back to early April, a fortnight or so after we were first initiated into the art of hunkering down at home. This was a time when everyone was sending out helpful and useless tips to each other,…

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Humour: The Song That Reduces Anxiety

                                  Weightless worries during Covid times In which soothing music increased, not decreased, worry My sleepless nights are getting to be a matter of concern for my kith and kin. I`m a certified worrywart and the Virus-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named has worsened my…

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Feature: The SRK Revelations, a Fangirl Story

This ran in FEMINA, where I was working at the time I met the Bollywood superstar.  I cannot, in all honesty, say that meeting Shah Rukh Khan changed my life. But yes, it shattered some long-held myths and reinforced  some others. The meeting occurred when SRK was shooting in my office for his home production …

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Travel: Travel Travails

Who wants my passport? Or why anyone who wants to break the travel jinx must travel more. Put simply, something not-so-good happens on every trip I take abroad, which quickly turns the vacation into a not-so-good trip. It took a while for me to see the pattern; now I brace myself for the jinx. Circa…

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Humour: The South Indian Sari Blouse

The South Indian Sari Blouse Blouse. The very word is, oh I don’t know, blowsy. It carries within it the faintest suggestion of something racy, something naughty, and something bawdy. But the blouse is what we who live south of the Vindhyas call the sari accoutrement. These blouses, a strange mix of kitsch and colour,…

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Humour: Me, my Husband and Mari Kondo

Me, My Husband And Marie Kondo Now that Marie Kondo’s been and gone, I will tell you a story. At the time when she was a veritable whirlwind swooshing her way through the entire world, leaving neat piles of TK (to keep) and TC (to chuck) items in her wake, there were some people who…

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Humour: Fashion sure is an enigma!

  From the ramps to the roads I remember my first fashion faux pas like it was yesterday. I was working at the country’s leading women’s magazine. I went up to the editor and asked if I could do a ‘slightly different’ fashion piece. What about, she asked. Why, I said breezily, how fashion is…

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Humour: Where has the word `taken` gone?

Where has the word `taken gone? How the writer has stumbled upon a conspiracy to remove a key word from the English dictionary. Now I don’t for a minute want to ring any alarm bells. I don’t even want to imply that I have stumbled on a Yossarian-like campaign to slowly, inexorably remove words from…

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