tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79502892012-01-28T13:00:11.257+05:30Stuff. And nonsense.Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.comBlogger4521100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-82208494978140013782012-01-26T12:33:00.005+05:302012-01-26T12:45:48.621+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard on January 23rd and 24th; both were written at the Jaipur Literature Festival. This is the first piece.)There were two Jaipur Literature Festivals this year. The first was the festival that attracts readers by the thousands, to hear celebrities like Oprah, writers of the calibre of Tom Stoppard or Bama Faustina, to have their books signed by Chetan Bhagat,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-65753564965601503832012-01-26T12:22:00.002+05:302012-01-26T12:33:00.870+05:30

The official recordings of the sessions by Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru, Jeet Thayil and Ruchir Joshi where the writers read out from the Satanic Verses as a gesture of protest are not available on the festival site. Ten other discussions/ readings that stood out for me:1) Michael Ondaatje, discussing Cat’s Cradle with Amitava Kumar.2) David Remnick and Samanth Subramanian on Obama, with

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-70215709170320507292012-01-17T09:48:00.001+05:302012-01-17T09:50:50.788+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, January 17, 2012)In all the claims made for Chetan Bhagat, tireless father of the Indian bestseller, this is one you will never hear: he disturbs the peace. In all the arguments made against Salman Rushdie’s attendance at the Jaipur Literature Festival this week, the gist of them is just this: he disturbs the peace.Bhagat’s Revolution 2020 (‘Love. Corruption.

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-89865676051720725332012-01-10T10:24:00.004+05:302012-01-11T20:08:43.244+05:30

(Carried in the Business Standard, 10 January 2012)At the Bhowanipore cemetery in Calcutta, visitors can walk down the neat rows of graves with their tidy crosses towards the civilian section, to the plot where Charles Dickens’ son rests in peace. Lieutenant Walter Landor Dickens was one of the young “griffs” who died early in the service of the East India Company, on New Year’s Eve, 1863. It

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-19882751256447197152012-01-03T10:14:00.003+05:302012-01-03T10:21:55.710+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, January 2, 2012)South Asian fiction in 2011 was alive and thriving, despite premature reports of its demise. To be fair, Chetan Bhagat and the authors of bestsellers such as The Saga of Love Via Telephone Tring Tring made it ridiculously easy for even the marginally talented to look like writers of staggering genius.Debuts of the year: Shehan Karunatilake’s

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-36744292277652116972012-01-03T10:09:00.004+05:302012-01-03T10:33:45.023+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, December 27, 2011)From the biography of a killer disease to a tale of three lovers and one murder, the Opium Wars to the life of a woman who found madness instead of God, this year’s non-fiction by Indians or set in Asia took a wide view of the world. What follows is a highly eclectic selection.The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (Deborah Baker, Penguin

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-70062169400249379212012-01-03T10:09:00.003+05:302012-01-03T10:14:27.163+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, December 27, 2011)From the biography of a killer disease to a tale of three lovers and one murder, the Opium Wars to the life of a woman who found madness instead of God, this year’s non-fiction by Indians or set in Asia took a wide view of the world. What follows is a highly eclectic selection.The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism (Deborah Baker, Penguin

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-10731637088709922252012-01-03T10:05:00.002+05:302012-01-03T10:09:46.832+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, December 20, 2011.)Except for the books, they had little in common. The writers and book lovers who died in 2011 spanned worlds of experience, from Diana Wynne Jones, who survived a horrifying childhood to become a writer of children’s books, to Vaclav Havel, the playwright who ushered his country safely into revolution and beyond. This column pays tribute to

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-14188297722976357142012-01-03T09:37:00.004+05:302012-01-03T10:05:35.444+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, December 13, 2011. This is a longer version of the column that was carried in print.)It was a measure of the relative innocence of Delhi (and India) in 1978 that the murder of two children would hit the city so hard. In the absence of the noise of today’s TV channels or the feeding frenzy of the tabloids, the deaths of Sanjay and Geeta Chopra felt, to

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-61593819963759277042011-12-12T10:24:00.006+05:302011-12-12T10:33:42.016+05:30

(This was carried in Forbes Life's winter 2011 issue--a look at some of the most interesting books of the year in translation.)“We live more of our lives in translation than you might imagine,” said the writer from Chile. His life was an extreme illustration of this. Born in Chile, Ruben had moved to Denmark as a political refugee, and begun to write in Danish as an adult. His books were

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-7501411029263325492011-12-09T10:07:00.007+05:302011-12-09T11:25:54.509+05:30

(This is a response to Shashi Tharoor's article, which appeared in the Deccan Herald today. Other links of interest: the India Ink round-up of censorship in the country, and the NYT India blog post that reported Union Telecom minister Kapil Sibal's attempt to ask for "pre-screening" of certain social media sites. All views expressed in this post are strictly personal.)Shashi Tharoor begins by

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-74095523470546424102011-11-16T12:38:00.002+05:302011-11-16T12:40:55.924+05:30

The End of the Gods: The Myth Of RagnarokAS ByattHamish Hamilton/ Penguin IndiaRs 399, 177 pages“Writers don’t make up myths,” Marina Warner observes, “They take them over and recast them.” This, she says, is what Jorge Luis Borges calls the murmuring exchanges of writers across time and cultures. “The more literature talks to other literatures, and reweaves the figures in the carpet, the richer

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-84005010174873118952011-10-30T11:23:00.003+05:302011-10-30T11:34:37.417+05:30

(This review was written at high speed, and I wish I'd done more justice to Batuman's book. The Possessed sent me back to the Russian classics after a decade, and what Batuman does is make you read the books as though you're reading them again for the first time. Review published in the Business Standard, October 2011.)The PossessedElif BatumanGranta Books/ Farrar Straus GirouxRs 753 PG Wodehouse

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-13562323824430303112011-10-12T10:40:00.010+05:302011-10-12T14:19:49.075+05:30

(I had just finished editing the chapter on censorship, part of my collection of essays on reading, when we heard that Delhi University had voted to drop Ramanujan's essay on Many Ramayanas from its history syllabus. One of the saddest parts of writing the censorship chapter is that it's never finished: there is always a new ban, a new act of censorship. This is a rough draft-in-progress of the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-51510137747679479722011-10-05T16:45:00.005+05:302011-10-05T16:53:19.614+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, October 5, 2011.)The Cat’s TableMichael OndaatjeJonathan Cape,PRICE NOT MENTIONED, 287 pages“There’s a great line by Ornette Coleman about music,” Michael Ondaatje said in a recent interview. “He says you begin with the territory and what follows is the adventure.” In his sixth novel, Cat’s Table, Ondaatje knows both his landscapes well. There is the Oronsay,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-66522464546470586822011-09-25T18:59:00.003+05:302011-09-25T19:28:15.000+05:30

Every year around this time, I dust off two old pieces I'd written on banned and censored books in India, here and here. I read through these lists with a sense of failure: for all of our pride in India's democracy, the rise of Indian writing in English and this country's openness to argument and debate, we still have a deep unease when it comes to protecting free expression.As a reader, which is

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-63615962996044792011-09-07T12:42:00.003+05:302011-09-07T12:50:49.279+05:30

Police numbers/ stations/ helplines:Police 100 Commissioner of Police 3319661(O) 3319721(O) Police Headquarters 3352678 Chanakyapuri Police Station 3011100, 3012003 Parliament Street Police Station 3361100, 3542700 Tughlak Road Police Station 3014878, 3012100 Tilak Marg Police Station 3382100 Fire Service 101

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-7117002788799856012011-09-06T10:28:00.004+05:302011-09-06T10:37:09.447+05:30

(From my food writing files, in honour of the weather, this August 2010 piece on khichdi, carried in the Business Standard.)As the rain clouds settle in and the skies darken, a primitive instinct kicks in: like so many Indians, I must make or eat khichdi, preferably with the accompaniments, but at need, just the plain rice-and-dal dish that has travelled down to us from the time of the Vedas. (

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-49580944774356200662011-09-05T13:08:00.003+05:302011-09-05T13:19:57.638+05:30

The problem with the debate over parallel imports is that it has, inevitably, pitted the interests of readers, students and academics against the interests of authors, publishers, and well, readers again. As someone who might write books at some point, and who's worked in the publishing industry, I was very glad to hear that the controversial 2(m) amendment had been dropped. The parallel imports

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-32337982693141946062011-08-29T19:35:00.004+05:302011-08-29T20:31:41.928+05:30

The controversy over Harud, the festival of literature to be held in Kashmir, came to a head today with the organisers pulling out until further notice. Here's the press release from Teamwork, which also organises the Jaipur Litfest: HARUD - THE AUTUMN FESTIVAL OF LITERATURE FROM THE HARUD FESTIVAL SECRETARIAT New Delhi, 29th August, 2011: It is with great sadness that we announce the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-92085822141205120812011-08-03T09:41:00.003+05:302011-08-03T10:31:02.222+05:30

(I began writing Speaking Volumes around 1996-97. Tony Joseph, who was then the features editor of the Business Standard, suggested a weekly column on books after it became glaringly obvious to the paper that I was challenged, to put it politely, where number-crunching was concerned. Since then, the column has run without a break for years, except for a week in 2005 when I was travelling in Sri

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-64486084116152200232011-07-31T12:29:00.008+05:302011-07-31T14:48:23.395+05:30

The really dangerous part of Slutwalk Delhi is dodging media cameras and avoiding the mikes thrust in your face. When it starts, the media-aam junta ratio is 3:1, which leads to the spectacle of a reporter trying to persuade a younger colleague from another magazine to give her soundbytes. "You're marching too, no? Say something as a woman, na?" The younger reporter declines.By 11 am, the pace

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-80387452474972756542011-07-26T10:27:00.003+05:302011-07-26T10:38:07.236+05:30

(Published in Biblio, July 2011.)The Groaning Shelf and other instances of book lovePradeep SebastianHachette India, Rs 395, 295 pagesISBN: 978-93-80143-03-3In 1994, the Internet in India was an infant, alien presence, and to log on was akin to conducting an arcane temple ritual. With sufficient patience and enough supplication, the creaking modems of those days might grant you a brief,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-90228708268663218642011-07-26T10:23:00.003+05:302011-07-26T10:26:32.164+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, July 25, 2011. Will probably do an expanded version of this soon, with a greater focus on reader's rights and how we stand in danger of losing them.)It takes less time than you might guess to convert a reader wedded to the idea of the physical book into a Kindle or an iPad enthusiast. As most ebook newbies have discovered over the span of the last few years,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-38044036395616000222011-07-26T10:21:00.002+05:302011-07-26T10:23:42.209+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, July 18, 2011)“Spent a morning writing and we are now in sight of Minas Morghul,” JRR Tolkien wrote cheerfully to his son Christopher in 1944. He was happily occupied, despite the tendency of the book to grow almost of its own volition, and believed he would finish soon. It would take a full nine years before Tolkien was writing to his publisher to finalise

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-71626894546937957942011-07-12T10:15:00.004+05:302011-07-12T10:39:01.876+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, July 12, 2011)Perhaps the most sympathetic portrait of the censor’s hard lot in life is to be found in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, where Yossarian is assigned the task of censoring letters while he’s in hospital. It is a monotonous job, and Yossarian does his best to innovate:“To break the monotony he invented games. Death to all modifiers, he declared one day,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-64044958718644016752011-07-11T15:12:00.010+05:302011-07-11T23:09:36.519+05:30

"If you travel alone after 2 am and become victim of a crime, the police alone can't be blamed. It is advisable that a relative or friend is with you at odd hours." Delhi Police chief, BK Gupta, on crimes against women in the capital.I'm assuming the Delhi Police chief, Mr BK Gupta, is a conscientious man who often patrols the city at 2 in the morning, remarking on the astoundingly high number of

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-72540379025574707702011-06-30T12:45:00.002+05:302011-06-30T12:52:14.961+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 2011)The first issue of Granta, on New American Writing, came out in 1979. This was 11 years after Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, six years after the Boston Women’s Health Collective published Our Bodies, Ourselves and nine years after Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch challenged conventional history. (To offer a little Indian context, it would be five

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-46087593539255218432011-06-30T12:41:00.012+05:302011-06-30T12:56:06.102+05:30

(Published in Forbes Life India's Monsoon Edition, for their Curators of Interestingness series. I don't think I've ever enjoyed writing and researching a column more.)For the last month, I’ve been unexpectedly contented, occasionally joyful, often outright happy, and this drove me round the bend for about two weeks. Here’s the problem with unexpected, apparently long-lasting happiness: I didn’t

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-28861660352128090842011-06-30T12:29:00.022+05:302011-06-30T12:36:19.235+05:30

(Published in Forbes India, January/ February 2011, for its Curators of Interestingness series.)BOOKS: FREE SPEECH“Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you?” From Plato’s Apology, concerning the trial of Socrates.In 399 BC, the finest and most prominent citizens of a state known for its commitment

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-56568272126075338732011-06-22T16:34:00.005+05:302011-06-22T16:46:39.189+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 20, 2011; one of the last mainstream papers left in India where you can send in an 800-word column on poetry and not be told to go write about Chetan Bhagat.)No one could claim that poetry is dead in India; the closest we can come is the lament of the (English language) publisher who says that poetry doesn’t sell. We still think in rhyme and stanza, from

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-9543464974717183582011-06-17T19:34:00.002+05:302011-06-17T19:40:58.178+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 17, 2011.)River of SmokeAmitav GhoshViking/ Penguin India533 pages, Rs 699And yet, it is also so familiar: Everywhere you look there are khidmatgars, daftardars, khansamas, chuprassies, peons, durwans, khazanadars, khalasis and lascars.” Letter to Paulette from Robin Chinnery.In 1917, the Bengali writer Sharat Chandra released the first part of an epic,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-18895997111378900772011-06-08T10:16:00.001+05:302011-06-08T10:19:02.859+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 7, 2011)1. The fact that I possess a womb should disqualify me from commenting on V S Naipaul’s latest broadside. A writer who believes that no woman is his equal as a writer, that women suffer from a “sentimentality, a narrow vision of the world” and that women writers are “quite different” is not going to take the criticism of women readers seriously.2.

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-68730944568071258922011-06-02T09:44:00.000+05:302011-06-02T09:45:35.806+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 31, 2011)Writing in the shadow of the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001, Salman Rushdie commented: “The fundamentalist seeks to bring down a great deal more than buildings. Such people are against, to offer just a brief list, freedom of speech, a multi-party political system, universal adult suffrage, accountable government, Jews, homosexuals, women’s

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-72638898355447842402011-05-31T17:44:00.002+05:302011-05-31T17:47:09.375+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 17, 2011)What can I write? I am no writer of essays. I am a theatre man. I wrote some plays because I am a man of the theatre, not because I am a writer.” Badal Sircar, letter to The Drama Review, November 1981.There were few headlines; the death of Badal Sircar this Friday at the age of 86 in Calcutta, as it was called, was tucked away, eclipsed by the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-51619061056867261852011-05-11T11:28:00.003+05:302011-05-11T11:33:13.987+05:30

(Thousands of women come out on the streets to protest via SlutWalks, after a Toronto constable suggests that women could protect themselves better by not dressing like sluts.)“Of course he’s a rapist, did you see the trousers he was wearing? And that vest? Why would a man wear that kind of clothing if he wasn’t out cruising for a victim?”“The give away is the brand of jeans. If you see a bunch

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-15990474507451158162011-05-06T14:04:00.003+05:302011-05-06T14:09:33.252+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 2011)“We pray that you do not take these statements out of turn or consider them to step outside the bounds of etiquette.” In 1994, the words of the late Osama bin Laden were measured, almost diffident, as he began to articulate his sense that the Muslim world was under siege. Just two years later, in 1996, Osama bin Laden had found his voice, as Steve

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-90742721980417753962011-04-26T11:10:00.001+05:302011-04-26T11:13:25.130+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, April 26, 2011)In the first chapter of The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee starts with a quote from Shakespeare, and a personal story about a patient, Carla.He runs through the conversation he will have with her, and notes ruefully that there is something rehearsed even about his sympathy, given the demands of the months he’s spent working as a

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-6406209653283950542011-04-26T11:00:00.004+05:302011-04-26T11:10:27.451+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, April 26, 2011. This was such a sad column to write; Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea set me and several other friends on a journey of exploring how best to make donations of money, books or time to local libraries, and briefly inspired a few very big dreams. The sense of betrayal is very strong, for many of us who were Mortenson fans, and I'm hoping that the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-81882142126271586972011-04-05T16:55:00.004+05:302011-04-05T17:27:06.559+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, April 5, 2011. Also read Salil Tripathi in The Daily Beast on India's troubled history of limiting free speech.) At the height of the uproar over Joseph Lelyveld’s new biography of Gandhi, one question deserved to be asked: what would we do with a negative, critical biography of a revered national figure? The answer, sadly, is dismal: we would probably ban

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-7318440452235231392011-02-22T23:32:00.004+05:302011-02-23T10:08:04.300+05:30

In Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, there is a wonderful section on the fascination Japonisme held at a certain time in Europe, when Japanese bibelots, netsuke, robes and paintings found their way into Parisian salons: “Anyone would sell you anything. Japan existed as a sort of parallel country of licensed gratification, artistic, commercial and sexual.” Often, what the collectors of

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-4760537585716327172011-02-22T23:26:00.004+05:302011-02-23T10:07:21.236+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, February 15, 2011; image from www.allvoices.com, AFP.)Around the time that Shehan Karunatilaka began writing the first notes that became Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, another Sri Lankan writer was defining what drove him back to the desk, one novel after another. "In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-54299420662390185152011-02-21T20:31:00.006+05:302011-02-22T11:29:09.653+05:30

(Published in India Today, February 2011; this is a longer version.)The Sly Company of People Who CarePicador India,Rs 495, 281 pagesRahul BhattacharyaVS Naipaul made two observations that should be committed to memory by all aspiring authors, and travelers. The first was that his travel books, specifically the ones about India, were all books about himself as much about the country. The second

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-76176806708949963682011-02-21T19:01:00.003+05:302011-02-21T21:05:05.416+05:30

(The debate over parallel imports is a matter of public interest--it affects readers, writers and the publishing industry. This is why the publishing industry thinks the 2m amendment will be bad for business--copyright lawyers have had a very different perspective. To follow the debate, read back on Divya Dubey's blog: here, here, here and here. Previous posts on Akhond: here and here--

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-86055283683664682492011-02-21T18:53:00.002+05:302011-02-21T19:00:15.475+05:30

(This was a follow-up to the blog post on parallel imports, below; carried in the Business Standard, February 19th. Thomas Abraham and Prof Shamnad Basheer continue the debate over at Divya Dubey's blog, in considerable depth.)Call this the war of the slogans. On one side, copyright lawyers and the Ministry of Human Resource Development offer the lure of cheaper books for Indian readers. On the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-44075082124401740842011-02-09T09:45:00.005+05:302011-02-09T11:32:32.224+05:30

Just a quick summary of the intense debates around the possibility of opening up the Indian publishing market to "parallel imports". This is in many ways a very technical issue; the proposed amendments to the Indian Copyright laws would allow parallel imports of books in India, and would effectively change the way publishers in the country do their business, the kind of books readers would see in

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-89430701460655598232011-02-02T12:47:00.002+05:302011-02-02T12:51:33.810+05:30

On writing with the reader in mind:Martin Amis: I never think of you. No, I think you’re dead if you’re writing for a certain reader.Richard Ford: I couldn’t disagree more. I think if you don’t have a public, you don’t have a self as a writer. Get outside your room, get into the lives and houses of others, and live and reside there away from yourself.Junot Diaz: For me, by having an audience

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-49186085024846006292011-02-02T10:16:00.003+05:302011-02-02T10:21:29.874+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, February 1, 2011)In three new books, an oncologist, a physician and a neuroscientist offer astonishing insights into our bodies and minds. Siddhartha Mukherjee’s biography of cancer is a kind of medical war journalism; Oliver Sacks explores the ways in which we might author our own experience; and Vilayanur Ramachandran conducts an investigation into the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-83479192909190541412011-01-26T14:03:00.005+05:302011-01-29T19:59:45.087+05:30

“You have held an Indian audience silent for over forty five minutes…”Of all the discussions, debates and readings at the festival, this was my favourite, because it was such a pure reading. Coetzee offered only a brief introduction, took no questions; this was not the usual ten-minute excerpt, either. Only poets read a complete piece of work these days, and sometimes playwrights. The fiction

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-64043747328845130762011-01-26T12:33:00.003+05:302011-01-26T13:02:50.088+05:30

Martin Amis on writing about sex:“It’s impossible to write autobiographically about sex. What voice can you use: ‘Bravo, I took her again in the morning?’”and on writing:“To accuse a novelist of egotism is like accusing a boxer of violence.” “But writing is not a collaborative art. A writer comes most alive when they are alone.”“If life is a foot, fiction is a shoe.”Junot Diaz in an earlier

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-4203824697857049142011-01-13T00:22:00.002+05:302011-01-13T00:26:36.302+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, January 2011)Among the spotless white mundus and crisp cotton saris of visitors to the Hay-on-Thiru festival held earlier in the year, one writer fitted in, keeping his cool despite the Kerala heat. Miguel Syjuco, the young winner of the Man Asian Prize for Literary Fiction 2008, had spent much of 2009 and 2010 in a quietly triumphal tour of literary festivals

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-66793929949530033002011-01-13T00:20:00.002+05:302011-01-13T00:28:35.386+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, January 10, 2011)“Well, if I ever struck anything like it, I'm a nigger. It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.” (From Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)It’s impossible for those outside the US to understand just how loaded the “n-word” is, and how much weight it carries. It may be the one word in the English language that has become truly

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-52076954109967084712011-01-13T00:17:00.002+05:302011-01-13T00:19:45.857+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, January 3, 2010)Perhaps the only way to understand the Jaipur Literature Festival is to think of a traditional mehfil crossed with a darbar. Over six years, the JLF has grown from a sleepy, intimate local festival held on the lawns of the eccentric Diggi Palace to Asia’s largest literary festival, packed with authors and celebrities (the two sometimes, but not

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-75753769030673921472010-12-28T10:59:00.003+05:302010-12-28T11:09:54.212+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, 28 December 2010)“Section 124-A, under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizens. Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. If one has an affection(sic) for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-6673332207854673232010-12-22T23:25:00.009+05:302010-12-23T00:05:35.286+05:30

I have a lot of respect for Kavita Krishnan and her work in the field of women’s rights in India. Reading the first four paragraphs of her opinion piece in the Huffington Post on rape, I was in complete agreement with her. Krishnan confirmed my understanding of the way rape laws work in this country-—the conviction rate is low, reporting rapes is often a difficult, brutalizing process, and the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-59401873628842797602010-12-07T14:00:00.001+05:302010-12-07T14:03:30.430+05:30

From Delhi’s courtesans and merchants at the time of the Mutiny to the search for the perfect hilsa, Indian non-fiction had more variety on offer this year than in the previous five. Here are some of the highlights—an indicative rather than comprehensive list, for reasons of space—of 2010 in general non-fiction.Business: The second-best thing about All The Devils Are Here (Portfolio/ Penguin,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-78362358685854155652010-11-25T10:30:00.003+05:302010-11-25T10:41:56.584+05:30

(I wrote this for Jagori and Gauri Gill’s Transportraits, an exhibition on women and mobility in the city. It’s somewhere between a rant and a cross letter to the editor.And two brilliant examples of what the exhibition had to offer:Blank Noise's Step By Step Guide To Unapologetic WalkingAmruta Patil's Navigation, Safe Passage.)Getting around your city: a user’s guide1) Weapons: Chili-water in a

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-3635973158715689412010-11-25T10:15:00.004+05:302010-11-25T10:24:16.541+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, November 2010.)Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance BarsSonia FaleiroPenguin/ Hamish Hamilton,Rs 450, 216 pagesIn Maximum City, Suketu Mehta’s 2005 blockbuster about Bombay, he writes about his relationship with a bar dancer who grew to confide all of the details of her life to him, from the nature of her clients to her habit of cutting

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-71926978678340765642010-11-25T10:08:00.001+05:302010-11-25T10:13:59.735+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, November 12, 2010)At the height of Stalin’s rule, Mikhail Bulgakov was learning an aspect of the craft of writing that is rarely taught in creative writing courses today: the art of outwitting the censor. This practice, well-known to all writers who live under dictatorships, could lead to bizarre leaps of creativity.In his 1925 Heart of a Dog, for instance,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-87755103650052257302010-11-09T10:36:00.003+05:302010-11-09T10:41:57.486+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, 9 November 2010)In the homes of Indian writers of a certain generation, there’ll always be the Writers Workshop shelf, given over to hand-bound books, the cloth borders taken from Orissa saris, the title often hand-calligraphed. You don’t find them in bookstores that often these days, but there was a time when Writers Workshop represented, in effect, the sum

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-53028901537067816582010-11-03T14:03:00.002+05:302010-11-03T14:12:38.715+05:30

(This was first published in the Business Standard, 2nd November, 2010)In the 13 years since Arundhati Roy wrote and won the Booker Prize for God of Small Things, her position in the pantheon of small goddesses has shifted and changed radically. She and Salman Rushdie were, for a while, part of the India Shining story. Middle-class India chose not to engage with the content of their work—Rushdie’

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-30340874540250918282010-11-03T13:55:00.002+05:302010-11-03T14:03:05.413+05:30

(I've written for Business Standard for over 15 years now, and never in that time been asked to censor my opinions. The only column they couldn't carry was one on the Ambani book, Polyester Prince, because the matter was sub-judice and we couldn't legally comment on it at the time. It was very distressing, then, to hear that the newspaper wouldn't carry Mitali Saran's column on the India Today

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-83764008190088823102010-11-03T13:48:00.005+05:302010-11-03T13:55:14.891+05:30

(I'm running behind on blog updates--my apologies. This was published on 26th October in the Business Standard. This is part of a series of articles and columns I've been writing over the last ten years on censorship and free speech issues--I wish the politics of this country hadn't made that archive necessary.)“What we have developed today is a marketplace of outrage. And if you And if you set

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-80494921796177653042010-10-23T03:17:00.002+05:302010-10-23T03:22:44.931+05:30

(My apologies, this should have been posted earlier; I'm travelling at present.) PEN Statement on Rohinton Mistry BanTHE PEN ALL-INDIA CENTRE20 October 2010Dear Friends and Colleagues,The PEN All-India Centre strongly condemns the removal of Rohinton Mistry’s novel, Such A Long Journey, from the SYBA syllabus of the University of Mumbai’s Literature course. We also express our great

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-23228696947400955432010-10-19T10:04:00.005+05:302010-10-19T10:11:57.058+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, October 17, 2010. This was written before The Buck Stops Here show on Rohinton Mistry and the withdrawal of his book from the Mumbai university syllabus.)“That you say you are offended, insults me mortally. And if you insult one Rat mortally, you offend all Rats gravely. And a grave offence to all Rats is a funeral crime, a crime punishable by –” Salman

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-38625024053147029672010-10-18T17:54:00.004+05:302010-10-18T20:23:03.687+05:30

The India Today plagiarism case makes me think of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika library system, also known as Shaktida. Shakti Roy was the unacknowledged genius who ran the group's archives for years, long before the Internets made it easy to Google everything under the sun. He had the mind of a superior search engine; if two people, one working on the Society pages and one working on the Stockmarket

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-39352114801061077932010-10-08T11:46:00.005+05:302010-10-08T11:51:33.197+05:30

(Published in Outlook Traveller, October 2010)If it hadn’t been for a decade of reading Gerald Durrell, I may never have dated a man who was the companion of the Princess of Patparganj. The Princess, who was treated like royalty and had better manners than most of the nobility, was a young, comely pink piglet who had been rescued from a possibly fearsome fate in the bylanes of Feroze Shah Kotla.

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-56617720906883885022010-10-08T11:40:00.002+05:302010-10-08T11:45:04.706+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard on October 5, 2010, three days before the Nobel went to Mario Vargas Llosa.)This Thursday, the next Nobel Laureate in Literature will be announced. Salman Rushdie, alas, is way down on Ladbroke’s list of betting odds along with Mahasweta Devi, but some would consider 66/1 a sporting chance — in honour of his new book, Luka and The Fire of Life, I’ve put a small

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-22244888437897871622010-10-08T11:38:00.001+05:302010-10-08T11:40:05.912+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, September 21, 2010)I think it’s very good to ask yourself who you are and why you’re here and what has made you.” In 1974, when V S Naipaul made that statement to an audience of students, he had been asking himself those questions for over a decade. Twelve years had passed since he had written The Middle Passage, his first collection of travel writings; 16

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-85544089316781038292010-09-21T14:59:00.004+05:302010-09-22T23:56:12.223+05:30

(Following a clarification on the rules of eligibility regarding publication dates for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the jury is happy to announce the revised longlist. It was brought to the jury's attention that two novels previously discussed and endorsed were, under the rules, eligible for contention in the final analysis. Here is the final longlist.)1) Upamanyu Chatterjee: Way

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-12539007351524437522010-09-21T14:57:00.001+05:302010-09-21T14:59:44.431+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard on September 12, 2010)“I think it’s very good to ask yourself who you are and why you’re here and what has made you.” In 1974, when V S Naipaul made that statement to an audience of students, he had been asking himself those questions for over a decade. Twelve years had passed since he had written The Middle Passage, his first collection of travel writings; 16

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-5225236657993860422010-09-15T11:37:00.003+05:302010-09-15T15:49:56.517+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, September 14, 2010)The Booker shortlist doesn’t always offer the best books of the year—judges are fallible, the competition intense, and it often happens that works left off the list will continue to find readers and faithful acolytes. A few years ago, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland failed to make the cut, but did brilliantly despite its omission; this year,

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-81660317637797231912010-08-24T10:12:00.004+05:302010-08-24T10:17:18.626+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, August 24, 2010)As the most recent chronicler of the Mutiny of 1857 makes the passage from Jamia Milia University to the Saket Mall, he peers out at the current ghadar on the streets. “This city has never stopped being under construction,” he says, “for centuries.”The tamasha over the Commonwealth Games, the unpreparedness of Delhi and the prevalent corruption

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-75062809560742613582010-08-24T10:07:00.002+05:302010-08-24T10:11:25.662+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, August 24, 2010; revised to include corrections.)As Siddhartha Sarma claimed the first Crossword award for Best Children’s Book in Bombay this week, a bunch of writers at the Jumpstart festival were asking a key question: should adults read books for children?Technically, The Grasshopper’s Run is a children’s book—published by Scholastic last year in the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-59358063923865884852010-08-17T17:00:00.003+05:302010-08-17T17:04:19.598+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, August 17, 2010)As another August 15 passes by, here’s a thought: what would our country have been like if the leaders of the freedom movement had not been readers? It’s easier to see them as writers. Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiographies, letters and other work have provided gainful occupation for thousands of scholars. Pandit Nehru, incarcerated in jail, bereft

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-9548216946432588672010-08-05T09:44:00.003+05:302010-08-05T10:19:04.143+05:30

My second column for the International Herald Tribune's Female Factor series is up. This one's on women fighting back against street harassment and other kinds of violence against women. "Something familiar emerges in the stories the women share, regardless of their ages or class backgrounds. All have experienced fear on the streets, fear when traveling alone. Few use the term “eve teasing” when

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-83580869094928112122010-08-05T09:31:00.004+05:302010-08-05T09:37:42.070+05:30

“Reading literature and having a damn good time had become quietly but decidedly uncoupled,” writes Lev Grossman in an essay on the rise of the trashy hybrid novel. He could have been writing about India, where the rise of imitation pulp fiction—the Third World version of Eric Segal, not even the Third World version of Stephen King—and the growth of worshippers at the broad church of illiterature

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-16775390493839516742010-08-02T15:28:00.003+05:302010-08-02T16:01:50.781+05:30

I'm reading university vice-chancellor Vibhuti Narain Rai's deeply sexist comments on women writers: "There is a race among women writers to demonstrate who is the greatest prostitute", "feminist discourse has reduced to a grand celebration of infidelity". (More here: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Textual-violence/654764)He's under pressure to resign now, with women writers (including the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-61572443107097893382010-07-28T10:45:00.001+05:302010-07-28T10:47:18.994+05:30

What Gutenberg really did when he invented the printing press was simple: he changed the relationship between book and reader. It’s often forgotten that pre-Gutenberg, you were either a patron—able to afford to commission your own manuscript, copied painstakingly by scribes from an exemplar—or a privileged member of the Church, or, more commonly, just a listener. What the arrival of the e-book

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-4992690743581993242010-07-21T15:43:00.004+05:302010-07-21T15:52:06.018+05:30

The definition of South Asia is not permanently fixed,” publisher and writer Urvashi Butalia observed recently. Neither, by implication, is the definition of what puts the India in the term “Indian writing”, and in different ways, three separate Indian/ Asian prizes are looking for new ways to populate the shelf of South Asian literature.For the Vodafone Crossword, now over a decade old, the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-67208965849088956272010-07-14T16:00:00.004+05:302010-07-14T16:06:43.189+05:30

Collected StoriesHanif KureishiFaber & Faber, Rs 850, 671 pages(Published in the Business Standard, July 13, 2010)For a generation of Americans, John Updike was the writer they came of age with, and then followed into the plains and plateaus of middle age. Hanif Kureishi, for a certain generation of British Asians, has become their Updike, the uber-cool, edgier version who understood the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-90671179308775300842010-07-13T09:42:00.002+05:302010-07-14T16:03:15.783+05:30

It was in 2003-2004 that a minor academic work by the scholar James Laine set off a fierce, orchestrated campaign of political protests that led to the state banning of a book, threats to the author and other Shivaji scholars and the ransacking of the BORI library in Pune by members of the then little-known Sambhaji Brigade. In the wake of the recent Supreme Court judgement overturning the ban on

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-13046698613397900692010-07-06T16:16:00.002+05:302010-07-06T16:19:02.869+05:30

There is no real way of measuring the books we love the most. It’s like measuring the love one has for family and friends: there will be different choices for every stage of your life, and different degrees of attachment. As every reader knows, reading is intensely personal, and the books you love change you and stay with you in ways that even a lover will not. But if there’s one book that comes

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-81145314599938255762010-06-29T11:24:00.004+05:302010-06-29T11:27:56.642+05:30

Many years after 1975, I had the opportunity to see some of the posters that Indira Gandhi’s Congress used as propaganda for The Emergency. They came from the same school of writing as the Soviet Union’s Mother Russia propaganda, as though Mrs G’s department had taken creative writing classes from Glavlit and the GRU: “The Nation is on the Move! Emergency for a Stronger and More Prosperous Future

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-41775844931183678252010-06-26T11:46:00.004+05:302010-06-26T12:00:14.586+05:30

Traditionally, it’s the women who do it. Mothers, aunts, grandmothers, wives, sisters, daughters, pouring their love and their frustrations into what they put on the plate; the extra sandesh, the meal that took six hours to cook and a week to plan. Then we grew up, and moved out, and there were no more Mashimas or Nanis to supervise our kitchens, our tables. We learned to fend for ourselves, to

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-16354089902920102262010-06-22T11:04:00.002+05:302010-06-22T11:07:45.485+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 22, 2010)In 2008, a friend called, incoherent with excitement. “Jose Saramago has a blog!” It seemed ridiculous. Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel literature laureate who passed away this weekend, was then 85. Many writers avoided blogging, on the basis that it took away from the “real” writing, and Saramago’s books were a monumental, Borgesian tower of

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-40432333430290166002010-06-21T08:42:00.003+05:302010-06-21T11:37:54.142+05:30

In response to the allegations of sexual harassment against him, the former Penguin chief has issued a press release. Here's a previous post covering the allegations and the development of events. Statement by Peter A. Downard,Litigation Counsel to David Davidar I have been engaged as litigation counsel on behalf of our client, David Davidar. In recent days David Davidar has been subjected to

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-1064024247054813512010-06-17T19:59:00.002+05:302010-06-17T20:02:20.910+05:30

The LacunaBarbara KingsolverFaber, distributed by Penguin,Rs 550, 507 pages“I think our first responsibility, and also our first treasure as writers, is to represent ourselves,” Barbara Kingsolver said in an interview early in her career. She was speaking specifically of women’s writing; and even at that stage of her writing life, 15 years ago, she was instinctively suspicious of categories. “But

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-19556256745622824452010-06-15T12:20:00.004+05:302010-06-15T12:25:24.487+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 15, 2010)In the fifteenth year of the Orange Prize, the debate over the world’s first literary prize exclusively for women has shifted. It used to be about men grumbling that women didn’t need a prize of their own; now the complaints sound suspiciously like the Orange is working so well that the men would also like a prize just to themselves. Tough, since

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-63327591553713196752010-06-12T09:17:00.019+05:302010-06-22T15:24:39.277+05:30

David Davidar's departure from Penguin Canada sent shockwaves through the publishing world. It seems he's facing sexual harassment charges--stories here and here. For all of us who know David or who've worked with him in publishing, the urge to spring to his defence will be great, but it'll be a while before either he or Lisa Rundle are free to speak openly about the charges. This is David's

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-27156062247119124962010-06-08T10:29:00.002+05:302010-06-08T10:34:54.753+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 8, 2010)A few months ago, Norberto Fuentes wrote an autobiography of Fidel Castro, a book that starts and ends in Castro’s voice, where by page 150 the reader has forgotten that this is a fictional creation. Fuentes’ relationship with Fidel was a dark and troubled one; he was once one of Castro’s supporters, then one of Castro’s prisoners, and finally one

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-24240707156253745972010-06-07T22:50:00.002+05:302010-06-07T22:53:47.126+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 2010, in the food column)The arguments against fish are many, especially in a north Indian city like Delhi. Fish is bony — often, in fact, the tastier the fish, the bonier it is. Its fragrance is persistent, and for some, too pungent to handle. Meat is relatively easy to understand; the subtleties of buying fish change from coastline to coastline and can

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-75714629577056812802010-06-03T10:34:00.002+05:302010-06-03T10:38:27.069+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 3, 2010)Ayn Rand and The World She MadeAnne C HellerTranquebar, Rs 495, 567 pagesHere is my second-favourite Ayn Rand story. Challenged by a journalist to present her philosophy while standing on one foot, the philosopher, novelist and all-round provocateur stuck her foot in the air and stated her creed: “Metaphysics: Objective Reality. Epistemology:

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-82425039485841380652010-06-02T21:29:00.004+05:302010-06-03T00:59:51.512+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, June 1, 2010)The fantasy of any Indian reader who’s travelled to countries with bigger and better bookstores is simple: we want to be able to buy the books we love when they come out. Many great books, especially histories, biographies, science writing and world literature/ poetry/ drama in translation will never be stocked in Indian bookshops. Many will come

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-45258867028248071682010-05-27T12:29:00.004+05:302010-05-27T12:35:51.188+05:30

(BOOK REVIEW FOR BIBLIO/ MAY 2010)Way To Go Upamanyu Chatterjee,Hamish Hamilton (Penguin)Rs 499, 359 pagesISBN: 9780670083527Life is nasty, brutish and at 359 pages, not short, in Upamanyu Chatterjee’s sequel to his 1994 novel, The Last Burden. In the intervening 16 years, India has become more corrupt, more vicious, more consumerist and stayed as grimy as it was in the first book. Chatterjee’s

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-67569653816432229542010-05-25T13:32:00.004+05:302010-05-26T23:22:39.412+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 25, 2010. Spoiler alert: if you haven't read either the Blaise series or the Millennium trilogy, this reveals a lot of backstory.)Forty two years before Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, became this decade’s princess of crime fiction, Peter O’Donnell created the original Princess. As Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (The Girl With the

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-84231188394673109892010-05-20T17:28:00.002+05:302010-05-20T17:31:54.732+05:30

(This is an old piece, written and published in August 2007. Posting it chiefly for my personal records.) When an author, artist or a film-maker is attacked, the assumption most people make is that the assailants hate the person in question. This is not true. Most assailants, whether they are bigots, religious fundamentalists, old-world conservatives or merely unemployed, have good reason to love

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-80298682794482660982010-05-18T10:57:00.002+05:302010-05-18T11:00:11.984+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 18, 2010; image from Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza)Highway 443 connects Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and remains one of the most visible symbols of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is, in effect and even after recent rulings, a segregated highway, inaccessible to Palestinians without work permits and accessible in highly limited ways to Palestinians who

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-13855235641820518222010-05-16T10:06:00.005+05:302010-05-17T11:55:37.332+05:30

Just a quick round-up of the controversy over the Dan David Prize--chiefly as an aide-memoire for myself. Funded by an Israeli philanthropist, the Dan David Prize was offered to Amitav Ghosh and Margaret Atwood this year for their literary achievements. Both were urged to refuse the Prize, as a way of showing solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and as a gesture of protest against Israel's

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7950289.post-24239969896770819252010-05-12T09:17:00.005+05:302010-05-12T09:24:20.778+05:30

(Published in the Business Standard, May 2010; photograph by Saibal Das.)As Tagore’s 150th birth anniversary became a trending topic on Twitter, the social media site, it seemed like a good time to ask which Tagore we were celebrating. (Sticklers will point out that we’re celebrating a year early—technically, the Nobel Prize winning poet and prolific writer would have turned 149, not 150, today.

Nilahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01889738572888646065noreply@blogger.com3