Love on Ward Bangalore
The Bottle Imp and I have been having a lot of fun. The drinking till drunk, the giggling, and the unprecedented success in teasing sweet young scientists was all good but this book was the highlight of the week. I whined until Bottle Imp bought it for me. It is rather expensive for an whine-acquired...
Daljit Nagra
Two very different meetings. Now photography I know next to nothing about and poetry I imagined I understood a lot about. It’s surprising but not disturbing to realise that every year you know less and less. I don’t know much but I know Daljit Nagra is adorable. No Gunga Din, this gig WHEN DALJIT NAGRA...
The Immigrant
My review of Manju Kapur’s The Immigrant for Tehelka. MANJU KAPUR is a writer whose books are best enjoyed for their aftertaste. If you had read Difficult Daughters, Kapur’s first book, when it first came out you probably barely remember the plot. Somewhere through the mist of overly spiced cooking and italicised honorifics, what stays...
Slips between the lip and the strip
Chitra Ganesh, Tales of Amnesia, Ghost Dhruvi Acharya, Words III The story about Amar Chitra Katha was great fun to do especially because everyone I talked to also seemed to be having a good time. WHEN ANANT PAI, an engineer from Karnataka, started Amar Chitra Katha in 1967 he wanted to bring entertainment into the...
Squatting Sitka
Bottle Imp gave me a copy of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and what a cool it has turned out to be. In 1939, apparently there was an idea that the US would allow Jewish refugees to live in a district in frozen Alaska. Does that sound insane? Well not very much more than Polish refugees...
Things not to do
Read Janet Malcolm when you are hating yourself. Read Janet Malcolm when you have had a 20 minute interview. Read Janet Malcolm when you are still a reporter Some excerpts: “every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally...
The Great Tamil Escape
Read about the Blaft anthology of Pulp Fiction here. More about Blaft at their website. And talking of pulp I must insist that you go out and buy Jilly Cooper. The covers will make you wince, you will wonder why the books are all set in a fictional English county called Rutshire (there is an...
Be Cool
There are some writers that you always associate with the person who first introduced you to them. When I read Elmore Leonard I always think of Bent. He lent me all the Elmore Leonards I first read. When I saw this I knew he would love it. This book is catnip for any Elmore Leonard fan. For non-fans too...
Second-hand Bookshops
Delhi 1. Your best bet is Daryaganj’s Sunday book market. Buy all your best sellers and genre fiction from the guys who are selling everything for Rs 20 or Rs 10. Save the rest of your money for the seriously good buys. Though Daryaganj booksellers are not the experts that the old Flora Fountain guys...
Things to do at the Sunday Book Market
NS Harsha, Cosmic Orphans 1. Get mildly drunk afterwards at Thugs so the summer haze is even hazier as you clutch your books on the way home. 2. Buy Ikea catalogues even if you have no interest in light Scandinavian furniture. Because apparently its a national pasttime and do you want to be left out....
Name-place-animal-book
Zadie Smith describes On Beauty as an old-fashioned novel. It really is the kind of book you read as a kid, the kind that made you feel melancholy and cheated when it was over. Because it had no business getting over. The houses and streets of mythical university town Wellington are now familiar to me...
