“A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something.” –Trinity in Matrix Yes, something changed in the Matrix here and it can’t quite be called a glitch. You are not a good writer…
Author: umashankar
I am just a watcher then. Sometimes I watch life, sometimes I watch death; many times I watch in between...
Manto: Selected Short Stories –A Review
Manto: Selected Short Stories has been exquisitely prefaced by Aatish Taseer, the grandson of noted Urdu poet M. D. Taseer, who puts Manto’s work, his life and translations under a critical lens, before moving on to present a version of…
Painter of Omens
Painting by Pino Daeni When Avi said he saw Dr Sharma’s wife’s ghost, what he meant he had seen a ravishing young woman, fairy white and buxom, sitting stark naked on the terrace of the house that overlooked his backyard.…
The Unaccustomed Earth – A Review
With the publication of Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri, the subtle chronicler of immigrant Bengali Diaspora, has arrived at a coveted literary milestone. Dissolution of identity on account of migration is more a backdrop than a force holding the centre stage…
Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil – A Review
“I don't miss you. I don't miss you when I open a window and light fills the room like water pouring into a paper cup, or when I hear a woman's white dress shine like new coins and I know…
Aerogrammes – A Review
Tania James is a quiet writer of the human disquiet. Her stories are peopled by scarred humans, her wings spanning the tedium and tribulations of the stranded, the alienated, the damaged and the bereaved. They are often émigrés, many of…
An Owl Reflects
I was born before I was born. All owls are. True to the species, my fate was chiseled on ancient rocks by comets hurled from alien space. No one could change it after that, not even God. Certainly not father.…
Boats on Land: A Bewitching Voyage
Boats on Land is a bewitching voyage to the Khasi heartland spanning over a century and a half, offered through a string of stories by Janice Pariat. The journey affords a panoramic focus on the lives of the ethnic people…
It Happened to a Wobbly-legged Boy
Many years ago, when time had still not shriveled my mother, and I was still a shy little boy, I was struck by a bout of measles. The only memory of the suffering that has survived the quicksand of consciousness…
The Red House – A Review
‘Prayer, faith, redemption, consolation, how did you hold the world together without these things?’ -The Red House The Red House by Mark Haddon is not just another ‘stream-of-consciousness’ novel out to spill the emotions of its characters on the freeway…
The Casual Vacancy: A Boatload of Miseries
Far, far away from the enchanted lands of Hogwarts and the sweep of magic wands, the author of Harry Potter tales has summoned a sordid world into existence on the terra firma of lowlife in The Casual Vacancy. So fiercely…
The Sense of an Ending – A Review
Unlike rolls of cinema, life that fades away into the past is not available for playback. Recollections are more a collage of overlapping images, colours fading into sepia, hues into grayscales, realities crisscrossing and blurring with wistful fiction. Like vignettes…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 