She was not a friend, nor a classmate, nor a social sibling –the veil under which some people fraternised in the college. We were graduating in the same year and we both had English Literature and she was in the…
The Song of Jar Jar Binks
I can smell the diction Taliban just beyond my window. I can hear the rat-a-tat of their words, its robotic monotony, rattle of Kalashnikov. Peeking out the pane, I see skyscrapers raised on cacophony of flakes and wafers; buzz and…
Sam Was Sad
It was a sultry summer morning when I first met Sam twenty five years ago. My roommate was groveling for an omelet, sprawled in his bed. He had been missing his turn at cooking breakfast for the fourth day in…
A Mélange of Monologues
I was young when my family pulled out of a city to the backwaters of the country. Of the many heartbreaks I weathered, the loss of my small book club was the most debilitating. The civilisation I was uprooted from…
Flames and Ashes
It is a Sunday morning and folks are huddled up in sheets. The protesting whine of autos whisking the unwilling souls to their workplaces has been lulled for the interregnum. The birds are a riot of notes and I am…
The Monk in the Rain
I’ve had a love-hate relationship with March, the onset of summers since early days. The weather in that small patch of year is just perfect, neither hot nor cold and rarely wet. The air is fragrant with panicles bursting on…
Cold Cross Buns
“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…
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…
One Grain Amongst the Storm 