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A lithe dancer with steely resolve (21 March 07:57) |
| The book Rukmini Devi — A Life is a tribute by a “bhakta” to her guru. While essaying Rukmini Devi’s determination, courage, vision and the ability to learn and absor... |
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A terror potboiler (07 March 09:01) |
| With Dead Spy Running, the first part of a trilogy — featuring a freshly-trained spy who goes on a globe-trotting adventure to exonerate his father, redeem himself and restore his fami... |
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A Millennium Conundrum (24 February 01:08) |
| One of the world’s best- kept secrets — the script of the Indus Valley (3,000-1,850 BC) — has been broken into and seems to be laying bare its mysteries. In what appears to be a new gr... |
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A bizarre romp through history (21 February 07:46) |
| Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 short stories and four novels about Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective of the late 19th and early 20th century. Literary historians refer to this comparati... |
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Of terror in our time (21 February 07:45) |
| When I finished reading Mukul Deva’s Blowback, the blasts in Pune hadn’t happened. At the time I was torn between a sense of disappointment with the writing, and respect for the author... |
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A story between the dreams (17 February 12:47) |
| Give me a dream and make it come true...Shreekumar Varm-a’s latest work circles around dreams in different stages: Nurtured, pursued, shattered. The story hinges on the impact of dreams on... |
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Of Crime Punishment and the Internet (17 February 12:46) |
| In early 2004, the Swedish publisher Norstedts accepted a manuscript with the title The Man who Hated Women and offered the crusading journalist and first-time author Stieg Larsson a contrac... |
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Of moon moth hope and unseeing eyes (14 February 01:09) |
| Two relationships lie at the core of Ru Freeman’s debut novel. One is fairly simple and quite universal — the passionate, selfless love of a mother for her children and the strength that... |
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In search of the perfect romance (14 February 01:08) |
| If the object of your affection doesn’t sweep you off your feet today with a wildly romantic Valentine’s Day gesture like, for example, deviously inserting a diamond ring in your chocola... |
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Film society movements genesis evolution decline (10 February 12:53) |
| AT A time when so much of world cinema — classics, new and obscure films — is available on DVDs, television and the mobile, the work done by the Film Society Movement in India sadly remi... |
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Indian artists get Iraqi patron take on Britain (08 February 02:41) |
| British art collector Charles Saatchi, better known as the patron of young artists, has turned his gaze on contemporary Indian art scene.Iraqi-born Saatchi, (66) is famous in UK for having a... |
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I write about hope and fear (24 January 10:44) |
| Nawaid Anjum Jaipur There is hardly any sex, blood, murder, mystery or red herrings in Alexander McCall Smith’s “detective novels” and yet he manages to keep his readers — who wait f... |
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The sin of judgment (20 January 02:22) |
| By Omair Ahmad
It is very difficult to review Ronojoy Sen’s Articles of Faith; Religion, Secularism and the Supreme Court for the simple reason that the book is fabulous. There has probab... |
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Its a manual for change (20 January 02:19) |
| By Patralekha Chatterjee
Making India Work, William Nanda Bissell’s practical roadmap for a more inclusive India, littered with anecdotal evidence and scathing observations about our corp... |
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Last Mughal and the first war reporter (17 January 02:19) |
| Narendra Nag When asked what he thought were the root causes of conflict between groups, in an interview more than 10 years ago, Rajmohan Gandhi raised four points: selective history, the am... |
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Jaipur on the word map (17 January 02:19) |
| NAWAID ANJUM Jaipur in January spells joy for authors, publishers and bibliophiles as the city plays host to a literary jamboree that has seen the likes of Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Vikram... |
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On a radical route (13 January 12:37) |
| Indranil Banerjie
Journalist Sadana-nd Dhume has hit fame with his very first book: a non-fiction work on the Islamist phenomenon in Indonesia. His success has both to do with the subject o... |
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This book will make you hungry (13 January 12:35) |
| Joyati Sen
If you were to look up baingan bharta in cookery books on Indian cuisine, chances are that you will probably find that it is not mentioned. Interestingly, Tushita Patel’s Flash... |
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Munshi Maharani (10 January 10:21) |
| Supriya Sharma & Nawaid Anjum That India-born Hafiz Abdul Karim progressed from serving Queen Victoria dinner to teaching her Urdu and gradually had a special place in her heart was reason e... |
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The maximum city (06 January 02:08) |
| Karan Pradhan
At the very middle of this tome — 120 pages either way — is a neat little diptych spread across two pages. On one page is an interior shot the Bhaudaji Lad Museum at the V... |
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Putt off course (23 December 01:10) |
| Nawaid Anjum
At 73, Delhi-based former corporate executive, politician, amateur golfer and author P. Surendra Prasad may have played his "innings", but he takes a new swing with O... |
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Our mental engagement with time intrigues me (23 December 01:02) |
| Pooja Sharma
Few writers can dictate terms to the reader the way Mridula Koshy does in If It is Sweet, a collection of short stories. She received the Shakti Bhatt Award 2009 last week for ... |
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Its Knot So Hunky-Dory (10 December 02:13) |
| Nawaid Anjum
Marriages may be made in heaven, but they have to survive on earth. When it comes to modern-day marriages in India, all is not so hunky-dory on the conjugal front. Much that ma... |
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An inquiry into the making of Khan the phenomenon (05 December 12:58) |
| Rohit Bhardwaj
No other cricketer in the world has courted controversies and triggered heated debates on the game and politics alike as Imran Khan. From ushering in a new era in the inferio... |
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Promiscuities of a young model (05 December 12:55) |
| Shobha Sengupta
A Pack of Lies is an intelligent person’s book, and Urmilla Deshpande is stylistically competent. It is an absorbing coming-of-age novel, strangely so as it is the author... |
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The Sherlock Holmes of (28 November 11:32) |
| Aloke Roy Chowdhury
Jim Corbett is best remembered for the books he wrote on hunting man-eating tigers and leopards in the Himalayan forests and in later life as a conservationist. Jim Corb... |
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Exploits of a Bandit King (25 November 12:49) |
| Sushmita Sen Gupta
Writers down the ages have been seduced by the literary possibilities of what can be termed the "outlaw" genre. Muscled bandits, eyes glowing through a lot of f... |
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IITian from Frisco brings a daku to life (21 November 08:07) |
| By Nawaid Anjum
Sujit Saraf’s second novel, The Confession of Sultana Daku, is technically not quite his second novel. For the Bihar-born and California-based author wrote three other boo... |
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Towards a new Asia (21 November 08:06) |
| By S. Nihal Singh
As a foreign correspondent based in Singapore in the 1960s for five years, I had a ringside seat to observe the tumultuous beginning of Malaysia, Singapore’s fiery entry... |
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Origins of the Kashmir imbroglio (14 November 01:07) |
| Indranil Banerjie
While Howard B. Schaffer’s book admirably details American policy towards Kashmir and takes us through the many US-led attempts to sort out the crisis, it presents a one... |
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Up close personal (11 November 09:06) |
| By Pramita Bose
Om Puri may not be an unsung hero in showbiz, but an unlikely one definitely. The uncharted chapters of his journey and the closely-guarded alcoves of his private life find ... |
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Romanticising mortality (07 November 01:31) |
| Nawaid Anjum
My spirit is too weak;
mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined
pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle... |
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Immortal yet intensely human Time for change in Sitas image (04 November 08:32) |
| Namita Gokhale
This search for Sita began near the botanical gardens in Peradiniya, Sri Lanka, on a day redolent with the breeze of spring. As I absorbed the lush landscape, the swaying pal... |
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Knotty affair Bridging the North-South divide (31 October 08:50) |
| By Shobha Sengupta
Chetan Bhagat, IITian and IIM alumnus, has come up with yet another blockbuster in his 2 States: The Story of My Marriage. His two in-between books after the 2004 debut n... |
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Zeroing in on Paks utterly precarious current state (28 October 10:18) |
| Anil Bhat
Talibanisation of Pakistan: From 9/11 to 26/11 is, in a way, the third in a trilogy of books by one of Pakistan’s most prolific journalists, Amir Mir, the earlier two being Gate... |
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I do not believe India is a particularly spiritual place (21 October 08:58) |
| Suparna Sharma
The drive to meet William Dalrymple at his Mehrauli farmhouse is like going to meet a reclusive maharaja. It’s long, dusty and on a rickety road that seems headed nowhere. ... |
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Indo-swiss tales in graphic detail (14 October 12:37) |
| Jairaj Singh
The term graphic novel to describe a comic book is not only the most popularly abused today, but it’s also contradictory in the highest order. A graphic novel, for instance, ... |
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A feast of the flesh (03 October 12:49) |
| By Shobha Sengupta
Electric Feather is a collection of 13 short stories with sex or erotica as pivot, put together by Ruchir Joshi, documentary filmmaker and novelist. The mark of any good ... |
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WATCHING TURKEY (30 September 06:41) |
| Latika Padgaonkar
The very title of Gonul Donmez-Colin’s book Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging is a pointer to the orientation principle of her study. Films in Turkey have... |
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Partition A painful inheritance of loss (25 September 11:45) |
| By Indranil Banerjie
For some people in India and Pakistan, Partition is destined to remain an obsession. This is particularly true of Punjabis, who witnessed some of the worst horrors of t... |
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Gunpowder plot on slow fuse (25 September 11:44) |
| By Chitra Rao
There is a basic problem all remarkable creators face: holding on to the benchmark that makes them remarkable.
Dan Brown is at a similar stage. His third book in the series s... |
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Its time for carefully designed dictionaries (19 September 02:03) |
| Nawaid Anjum
Words are building blocks of language. And dictionaries teach us the use of those building blocks. If you thought that in today’s day and age, dictionaries are becoming obsol... |
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The colours of desire (16 September 02:14) |
| Nawaid Anjum
When was the last time you read a collection of short stories which had lips and limbs spread across its pages? If it has been long, it’s time to indulge in a bit of erotica ... |
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Spiritual vibrations of the mind (16 September 02:13) |
| Anil Bhat
Beyond The Secret is a sequel to The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne (New York, Atria Books, 2006, 198 pages), based on which a video by the same title was also released in the same year.... |
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The master of marquee (09 September 03:17) |
| Shobha Sengupta
Having been deputy director in the Directorate of Film Festivals and managing director of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), besides knowing Mrinal Sen and hi... |
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General in his labyrinth (04 September 10:27) |
| Indranil Banerjie
It has been a little more than a year since Pervez Musharraf stepped down from power in Pakistan. Yet he remains a larger-than-life figure in that country. Many revile him... |
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Fire within A journey in search of the self (02 September 04:00) |
| Nawaid Anjum
We all have the power to reimagine the ways we want to live our lives, the overpowering will to overcome all odds, the fierce determination to face the challenges strewn in our... |
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Lens and sensibility (29 August 02:50) |
| Latika Padgaonkar
It is in the nature of a book conceived as a tribute that the best be said of the person you pay tribute to, that praises flow and paeans be sung. But who can deny that in... |
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Birth of the capital city (26 August 02:36) |
| Karan Pradhan
"Calcutta was a natural choice for the British as site for a capital city in India," begins one of the very first chapters in the luxuriously laid out volume that is... |
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Myriad musings (18 August 11:12) |
| By Anil Bhat
Those who have read three earlier books by Roswitha Joshi — Life is Peculiar, On the Rocks and Other Stories and Once More (a novel) and her newspaper middles — should not ... |
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