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Rama rasa (11 October 12:53) |
| By Nawaid Anjum
Ramayana, arguab-ly India’s greatest narrative, has been an inspiration for many. It has spawned scores of literary works — from its adaptations, abridged interpretation... |
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Culinary Culling (05 October 09:51) |
| Face-To-Face | Nawaid Anjum
"A powerful thing, destiny. You can't run away from it. Not in the end," writes Richard C. Morais, Forbes' senior editor, in his debut novel The Hundre... |
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An ode to the life-giver (26 September 10:43) |
| Pramita Bose
To every mother.
To every daughter.
And, to every sister.
An ode to you.
The aforesaid lines are dedicated to womanhood. The emblem of Shakti (force), empowerment, grace, e... |
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Fun, Fast, Gripping (19 September 10:30) |
| Chitra Mahesh
Bubbling under the surface, there is a large population in Tamil Nadu that reads a special kind of fiction that has been around for long. Only, it has been restricted to those... |
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Hyderabad captured in another time (17 September 01:21) |
| Syed Akbar
Hyderabad has always fascinated people far and wide. Travellers, historians, archaeologists and social scientists have, down the ages, made attempts to rediscover Hyderabad. The ... |
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To choose a favourite is almost impossible (17 September 01:20) |
| Devashish Makhija
Choosing one particular book is like the ever-unfeasible task for a father of nine sons to zoom in on his favourite child. It is unfair and nearly impossible. So I'm going... |
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A savage critique of family (12 September 11:54) |
| Rana Dasgupta
The day after J.M. Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, was announced as the winner of the 1999 Booker Prize, the consensual smiles of the judges broke, and it became clear that the adj... |
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Making sense behind wheels (09 September 10:07) |
| Ananya Datta
Tom Vanderbilt must have spent a lot (and I mean a serious lot) of time behind the wheels, stuck in jams, to find time enough to ponder — and then find the answers to — uni... |
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‘The Alchemist is a favourite’ (09 September 10:06) |
| Manasi Joshi Roy
I Read quite often, so the list of my favourite books is elaborate. However, if I have to narrow down the choice then without a doubt, The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho will to... |
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‘All that glitters isn’t really gold’ (05 September 10:56) |
| Abhijit Bhaduri
I believe in the adage - don't judge a book by its cover. When a book lies among a hundred others on the shelf, it is the cover that first catches the eye of a reader and th... |
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COSMIC conundrum (03 September 12:04) |
| Nawaid Anjum
Who are we? Where are we and what is going on? What is life? How did it start? How did man appear? Is there any power out there which created the universe? Questions such as th... |
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Kite Runner is a saga of mankind (03 September 12:04) |
| Kaushik Sircar
To me, the book that presumably changed the concept of fiction is the classic The Kite Runner by Dr Khaled Hosseini. I finished it in a single sitting.
The plot has all the ... |
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‘The Secret taught me not to give up’ (29 August 11:11) |
| Agnimitra Paul
I recently browsed through The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and I must say it became my all-time favourite book. It happened that I was searching for books on self-improvement at ... |
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The NRI phenomenon examined (29 August 11:10) |
| Ananya Datta
Q: All your books have relations-hip/family-based the-mes. They also broach taboo topics like lesbianism and child abuse. In The Immigrants you tackle sexual dysfunction. How d... |
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The human story behind the epidemic (26 August 11:00) |
| Syed Akbar
Even three decades after HIV/AIDS was universally recognised as a major health hazard, it continues to be an enigma. People still hesitate to discuss HIV/AIDS in the public while... |
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Exactly where she wants to be (23 August 12:05) |
| Ananya Datta
Dude, two words: hilarious and audacious. That is precisely what You Are Here is. Not a surprise considering it comes from the writer of the extremely popular blog The Compulsi... |
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‘I identified with Scarlett O’Hara’ (23 August 12:04) |
| Sanchita Bhattacharya
I usually prefer to read books related to Indian philosophy, mythology, history, art and culture. Perhaps the choice is more attuned to my professional needs. But when... |
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Lives beyond ordinary (19 August 11:07) |
| Syed Akbar
Booker prize winning author Kiran Desai was shocked and awed by what she saw in the red light areas in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh which she toured for her essay, Ni... |
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‘It offers the promise of hope’ (12 August 10:37) |
| Royona Mitra
The Brothers Lionheart is close to my heart since it was influential in shaping my understanding of my adult life. This book by the Swedish novelist Astrid Lindgren belongs to ... |
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Tao: Just be happy (08 August 10:52) |
| Rajendra Shaw
The first thing that has to be said about this book is that it is not written by the author sitting at a desk but was an extempore talk given by him to a group of people. Perh... |
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White tiger earns its stripes (01 August 11:17) |
| Nawaid Anjum
THE WHITE TIGER is in the form of a series of letters written over 7 nights to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, from Balram Halwai, the Bengaluru-based businessman (the white t... |
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‘Pather Panchali gave deep insight’ (29 July 10:49) |
| Pallabi Chakraborty
There is more than one book that influenced me. But if I have to bring down the choice to one, it certainly will be Pather Panchali by Bibhuti Bhusan Bandopadhyay, a pop... |
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Draupadi gets a Makeover (25 July 11:23) |
| Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni redefines the portrayal of femininity in a captivating way. In her latest book, Palace of Illusions, the US-based writer interpr... |
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Write Right (18 July 11:27) |
| Nawaid Anjum
Are you raring to make your debut as a writer and have the manuscript ready too? Have you been wondering about getting professional help to polish it?
A newly-launched orga-ni... |
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Tribute to music guru (18 July 11:26) |
| Pramita Bose
Young writer Namita Devidayal offers a tribute to her guru Dhondutai and the great Jaipur gharana singers, Ustad Alladiya Khan and Kesarbai, in Music Room. The book is a memoir... |
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Identity, By Mandarins (15 July 09:59) |
| Raksha Bharadia
I had just finished reading The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir when I picked up her The Mandarins. I appreciated The Second Sex but little did I know that The Mandarins w... |
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Rimi gets on to shortlist (11 July 11:35) |
| Shagufta Kalim
Rimi B. Chatterjee has reason to smile. The author’s critically acclaimed book The City of Love has been shortlisted in the English fiction category for the Vodafone Crossw... |
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Unknown Hyderabad (01 July 11:14) |
| Varsha Gopinathan
Kuch to bhi kare to kya hai ki hota.
Anyone who hears this convoluted Hindi diction knows that it is a Hyderabadi who has uttered it. And this very essence of Hyderabad i... |
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Thread of love that changed lives (01 July 11:13) |
| Mohammad Ali Baig
One morning, when I was living in Bangalore, I got a call from a theatre director who wanted to stage a Hindustani play written by my father, the late Qadir Ali Baig in hi... |
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A global longing (24 June 11:55) |
| Sarju Kaul
First-time novelist Anuradha Roy, who is a well-known publisher in India, is full of suppressed excitement. Her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, has just been publish... |
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Not so tranquil recollections (24 June 11:54) |
| Aloke Roy Chowdhury
One of the early pieces in the book, "Requiem for a Boxwallah", published on June 11, 1965 in the Indian Express, is probably an appropriate starting point for... |
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A pilgrim’s progress (20 June 10:16) |
| Nawaid Anjum
QYour latest novel, Brida, treads a familiar territory: A female protagonist setting out on a quest for knowledge, following her desires to be a witch. Is this based on a true ... |
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Camacho blends realism and theatre (20 June 10:15) |
| Smita Jain
At some point every author gets asked about her muse, the one author who inspires her to write. Usually this is a difficult question to answer as there are so many great writers.... |
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Golden girl (17 June 11:02) |
| Sarju Kaul
It's a story of a small family and that of a birth of a nation: The struggle for the independence of Bangladesh narrated through the struggle of a housewife, Rehana Haque, to kee... |
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Capote gives contemporary history (13 June 11:20) |
| Sonia Faleiro
I never enjoyed nonfiction until I read Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (Vintage, 1965). I have read little fiction since. Capote’s reportage on the 1959 murders of four mem... |
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A novel plot (10 June 11:10) |
| Nawaid Anjum
Dateline: August 17, 1988. A C-130 Hercules carrying Pakistan’s military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, crashes. Twenty years after that mysterious crash, Pakistan-born and Lo... |
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Into the booklovers’ den (10 June 11:09) |
| Sarju Kaul
Hay is the flavour of summer in Britain. For 10 days from May to June, booklovers gather at the annual literature festival at Hay-on-Wye in Wales.
The small village of Hay-on-Wy... |
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Power struggle (06 June 11:03) |
| Ramesh Ramachandran
Bill Emmott's Rivals is ominous, chilling, and prophetic. It dwells on the past, examines the present, and delves into the future of India, China and Japan as they chart... |
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Zeroing in on the dream city (03 June 10:24) |
| Karan Udeshi
The History, origin and heritage of a city remains buried in its heart. Mumbai, the city of dreams, has enclosed within itself a million experiences since the mid-sixteenth cen... |
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Enchanted by a dream in verse (30 May 10:27) |
| Yusuf Jameel
After being led astray for years, Srinagar, the picturesque summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, on Saturday (May 17) evening hosted a distinctive literary function. The event,... |
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The Black Knight & the Clash of Steel (20 May 11:25) |
| Review | Aloke Roy Choudhury
The struggle for supremacy between Mittal Steel of the Netherlands and Arcelor of Luxembourg and the final victory of the former has become part of entrepreneur... |
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Kotwal takes revenge (20 May 11:25) |
| Extract | Vijay Tendulkar
The following is part of an extract of Vijay Tendulkar’s renowned play Ghasiram Kotwal, a political satire, from the book Vijay Tendulkar Omnibus.
(Ghasiram is ... |
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‘He was a great scholar’ (20 May 11:24) |
| Memoir | Makrand Deshpande
Vijay Tendulkar was one of the greatest playwrights in India. He was the investigative journalist of society. I first met him several years back, not as a playwri... |
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A solution for every soul (16 May 11:11) |
| Focus | Sushila Ravindranath
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who swear by the Chicken Soup For The Soul books, and those who sneer at them. Love them or hate them, they a... |
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Darker side of India (06 May 10:11) |
| Review | Sushila Ravindranath
This is Aravind Adiga, journalist-turned-writer’s first novel. Reportedly it received one of those advances from his publisher all writers dream about. It ha... |
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‘Naipaul is not easy to understand’ (06 May 10:09) |
| Meanwhile | Nayare Ali
British historian Patrick French visits India several times a year, often combining work with family visits. This time, he has also added Bangalore to the list.
Fren... |
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Music breaks all shackles for janaki (29 April 11:22) |
| Review | Susheela Ravindranath
The title says it all. Music is the metaphor running through the narrative. The chapters are named after the format of a Carnatic music concert, starting from... |
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Chandamama’s charm turns 60 (26 April 01:27) |
| Lakshmi Govindrajan
Remember Vikram and Betaal staring out of an Indian comic book or mythological characters coming out of fairytale books as vivid illustrations? Who will not remember Cha... |
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Shobhaa shares her super take on Superstar India (26 April 01:26) |
| Focus | Olga Tellis
Shobhaa De is one of the most prolific writers in English in the country today. Her curiosity about people is insatiable and this is reflected in her books. What strikes... |
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Khurshid plays a new role (22 April 11:57) |
| Meanwhile | Sarju Kaul
London: It’s a snapshot of Mughal history with Bahadur Shah Zafar acting as a guide.
Former Union minister and Congress leader Salman Khurshid, has returned to wri... |
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