satire Archives - Comfortably Numb

Book review: A Secret History of Compassion by Paul Zacharia

Sending up everything and everyone A scathing look at life. The reader`s first reaction on reading A Secret History of Compassion is to muse over the probability that Paul Zacharia wrote up the story, then dipped it into a vat of caustic soda. Everything is grist for his mill, or rather pen, here: writers,…

Book review: Killing Time in Delhi by Ravi Shankar Etteth

A capital send-up Tongue firmly lodged in side of cheek, the author spins a tale about the denizens of Delhi. In this, Ravi Shankar Etteth`s seventh book, he has turned the spotlight mercilessly on the haut monde, the seriously wealthy and even more seriously powerful, the wheelers and dealers, the circles that trade in…

Book review: Scene 75 by Rahi Masoom Raza

On the people who lurked at the edges of the Hindi film industry. Ali Amjad. Harish Rai. Alimullah Khan. Peter the cook who is actually Ramnath. Writers, directors, cooks-turned-scriptwriters — the cast of this novel is made up of eternal hopefuls who land up in the Bombay of the 1970s to live out…

Humour: Indians lazy? How dare you!

The flip side of laziness A new study recently dubbed Indians the laziest people in the world. Sheila Kumar attempts a languid rebuttal What is this, I say. Why has this magazine study said that we are the laziest lot in the world? Do not believe this for a moment. The matter is deeper…

Book excerpt: Idle Thoughts of An Idle Fellow by Jerome K Jerome

An excerpt: Women are terribly vain. So are children, particularly children. One of them, at this very moment, is hammering upon my legs. She wants to know what I think of her new shoes. Candidly, I don`t think much of them. They lack symmetry and curve, and possess an indescribable appearance of lumpiness (I believe…

Book review: Return of the Butterfly by Moni Mohsin

Return of the Butterfly by Moni Mohsin I just made the acquaintance of the Butterfly. She knows all of Lahore, half of Isloo (er, Islamabad to us ?), half of Dubai and a good spattering of Delhi also; her understanding of world affairs is not too nuanced, she mixes her metaphors all the time but…

Book review: Is Shakespeare Dead by Mark Twain

Is Shakespeare Dead by Mark Twain. Think about it. The work is by that satirist extraordinaire Mark Twain, the man who could and did string sentences so sharp, they could be wielded like a sabre. The subject is the Bard of Avon. And the title? It`s Is Shakespeare Dead? Now tell me which Lit major,…

Humour: Book? Launched!

Book? Launched! In which an unsuspecting writer goes to launch a book and comes away the wiser for it My mother’s neighbour’s son wrote a book. He found a publisher and now it was time for the launch. I was asked if I would please ‘do the needful’. My mother being very fond of his…