It is impossible not to fall in love with Poonachi
Unless you have read Poonachi, you will never know how even a goat can make you shut your eyes and sigh. Poonachi, or the story of a black goat is written by Perumal Murugan and even though it is a fable, it leads you right into the heart of nearly every kind of experience that...
Which way to go?
While on treks even I have often noticed, as did Oorja, the protagonist in ‘Mapping Love,’ the debut novel by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari, that everyone is ‘in a hurry although everything around them is slow. They know that they have to make things happen before the sun sets…’ The narrative pace of this book, as...
Love sandwiched between drugs, fanaticism, politics, and patriarchy
I remember when I was posted in Bhatinda, a friendly chemist there near Birla Mill colony told me that he sells tons of Dulcolax. So many cases of severe constipation? I asked. Addicts actually, he replied, and so I realized that drug addiction was rampant in those parts of Malwa region in Punjab. This happened...
If only we weren’t ruled by such idiots
India and Pakistan may be two different countries now but have a lot in common…. And reading ‘City of Spies’ by Sorayya Khan made me sit back and smile. Yes, of course, like our friends in the neighbouring country, we too often think we are ruled by idiots, we too are constantly killing ourselves, we...
Like having a bisi-bele-baath in Paris
Off the beaten track. Not the way most murder mysteries travel in and out of violence. Well, as Arjun Iyer, the protagonist of this novel might have chosen to express, the book is like having a bisi-bele-baath in Paris. His deeply loyal but irascible, devil-may-care Inspector Munuswamy might pick up some other custom-made analogy or...
A birdwatcher reaching out to the soul of intrigue
A sense of great possibilities, a space to explore and discover, and a world that wins a place in a reader’s world can be transformative enough to not just give us a massive adrenaline rush but also add life to our life. This is how my mind perceives a thriller and this is way better...
My echo, my shadow, and me…
The unexpected is one super reservoir of joy but it is equally true that the unanticipated sound or a visual that is like a detour from the usual will inevitably trigger fear in us. Like our own shadows that sometimes scare us. Or an echo that seems linked to the unnatural. It is not just...
A cocktail of stories that charm the mind
I love reading short stories because they resemble a couple on a park bench watching an ephemeral sunset (or a sunrise, if you prefer) waiting eagerly to discover at least one startling moment every time they are there. ‘It happens’ is a collection of short stories written by Bhaswar Mukherjee that I have just finished...
Stories from Uttarakhand
Stories are good when they connect with readers and thus to say that some are only for children can sometimes lead us to miss out those that have been written well. ‘Tales from the Himalayas’ is a collection of 17 stories by Priyanka Pradhan that many may miss if they assume the volume is for...
Life finds a way… it always does
This book tells me that even when ‘every inconvenient truth, every wrinkle has been smothered’, life can twist and turn in ways that can transmute a delicate Murano wine glass into an aluminum bowl in a jail cell… just as it has transformed Kamini Pratap Singh, a ‘girl from the dingy gullies of Varanasi’ to‘learn...
No one takes my brinjals! – Review of a thriller
One doesn’t often get to read a thriller written by an Indian author where intrigue, suspense, murder, kidnapping, and even a chase runs for a long distance with guffaws, smirks, laughter, and even satire to keep company. Now, if the title of this review intrigues you, let me just add that I’m not talking about...
When readers imagine what happened in a story
Review of ‘Shadow of the past’ by Mayank Manohar. Let me say at the start that Mayank, the author, has everything in place for him… a tale that relates to lot of people, experience of writing short and long pieces, and the courage to move a perfectly fine idea into a novel. He was probably...
