“Hot-cross buns! Hot-cross buns! One a penny, two a penny, Hot-cross buns! If you have no daughters, Give them to your sons; One a penny, two a penny, Hot-cross buns!” ~ A popular Nursery Rhyme All right, then! You are…
Author: umashankar
I am just a watcher then. Sometimes I watch life, sometimes I watch death; many times I watch in between...
Unreliable Skunks
Having entered a phase of life where I tend to reflect more in retrospect than in prospect, it has dawned upon me why I’ve been in love with the character of Sherlock Holmes all these years. More than his prescient…
Merci, Mes Amis
"Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?" –Joseph Brodsky Yesterday, I attended a blogging community meet in a trendy restaurant specialising in exotic Mediterranean delicacies. The sponsors were a popular notebook company and as usual, they did…
Red Sorghum by Mo Yan
Mo Yan is not quite the toast of the writing community west of China. When the Nobel Prize for Literature went his way in 2012, it was deemed a ‘catastrophe’, a ‘betrayal’ and an ‘ominous signal’ by the fraternity, including…
The Box by Günter Grass
Günter Grass is a versatile artist, a colossal literary, cultural and political figure of Germany. He has been a recipient of several high prizes for his works, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. More than that, he has…
Beloved by Toni Morrison -A Review
'I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness.' -Toni Morrison Man is not God yet he has played God not only with his fellow animals but his fellow humans too. And what a God he has…
Don’t Cry for Headley, India!
Don’t cry for Headley, India. It is good for your feeble heart that you are not able to have him extradited. There would be a hundred compelling sentiments to get hold of the delinquent, a thousand compelling logics to twist…
A Hole in My Pyjamas
It’s a cold night and there is a hole in my pyjamas. It is shameless of me to be cribbing in a city that has never seen the mercury slipping below ten while the good old Delhi is raring to…
2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here's an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 34,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this…
The Indian Shepherd
In a deal that clicked a couple of years too late for me, Syed would sell the disused Nikon from his studio for a thousand rupees to me. He loaded it with a complimentary black and white roll too, making…
The Slippery Slope
A marble drops on the slate of mind and clatters to silence. It is the lone rattle in the void of ages. I freeze to attention and hold my breath to stop it rolling off the precipice. But it is…
In the Arc Light
I don’t suggest that you read ‘Personal Concerns’ because Amit has published a tête-à-tête with me in his latest post at his riveting blog. You read Amit for what he pens. His writing is intense yet panoramic, needle-sharp yet cosmic,…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 