Virality needs mass connect, and who could be better placed to acquire it than a brash, outspoken hugely successful, self-made immensely rich guy, who prefers to wear the ‘refugee’ tag, and speaks casual Punjhinglish to not just land his punches, rather conduct his business as well. ‘Ye apna banda hai’, is how people react when…
Category: Literature
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The Story of a Ship-wrecked Sailor – Who had the Courage to Dynamite his own Statue
Most heroes are accidental. It is the establishment that decides who should be celebrated and who must be relegated to obscurity. Survival in extreme circumstances boils down to sheer luck, as well as the difficulty in giving up the habit of living. As per anthropologists, the duty of human beings is to survive, thrive and…
Supratim SARKAR’s MURDER IN THE CITY : Twelve Incredible Case Files of the Kolkata Police
Supratim Sarkar, a 1997 batch IPS officer, wrote about 12 interesting criminal case files falling between 1934 and 2007 on the Facebook page of Kolkata Police. This generated a lot of positive buzz. Later these write-ups were translated and compiled into book-form by Swati Sengupta as Murder in the City. The first case…
Curb Your Enthusiasm- When Larry David got Fatwa’d & called on Salman Rushdie for Expert Advice
For the past two weeks, I have been gorging upon the HBO Series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. In the Third Episode of the Ninth Season, I was pleasantly surprised to watch a very ridiculously disguised Larry David walk into a room where Salman Rushdie expected him. Rushdie, damn! He seemed so alive, dapperly dressed, looked delightfully…
I Knew they would get me Someday : Salman Rushdie
I knew they would get me some day. There exist no escape routes. All roads to hell are guarded well by the jihadis. There is no way I could have befuddled this brigade of blind believers, and reached hell in a single piece, without them getting an opportunity to serve their Faith. The fatwa was…
Nambi Narayanan’s READY to FIRE – How the Rocket Man and the Indian Space Programme Survived the ISRO SPY SCANDAL?
Nambi Narayanan is the face of scientific intelligence, oriental wisdom, fortitude, patriotism, resilience, and as unfortunate as it might be, the ISRO Spy Scandal. The sensational case, that ultimately turned out to be a cooked-up story, grabbed headlines in the mid-1990s, and set the Indian cryogenic programme back by a decade and a half. Nambi…
कैसे डूब गया दिनकर दक्षिण के दूर दिशांचाल में ?
जिन दिनकर को समस्त भारतवर्ष ने राष्ट्रवादी चेतना एवं वीर रस के प्रखरतम राष्ट्रकवि के रूप मे जाना, उन्हीं रामधारी सिंह को जीवन के अंतिम वर्षों में विरक्ति-सी हो गयी थी । उनका आखिरी समय बहुत अवसाद में कटा । मद्रास में बीती अपनी अंतिम संध्या पर दिनकर ने डायरी में लिखा- “सब कुछ पाकर…
M.M.Godbole’s The Walking Brahmin – A First Person Account of the First War of Independence
Vishnubhat Godse was a poor Brahmin who resided in Varsai village in Maharashtra. Together with his uncle Rambhat, he embarked upon a yatra in 1857, crisscrossed the country on foot, conducted yajnas and anushthans at many places, earned a bit but lost it all, survived the mayhem of the first war of independence and returned…
Ambedkar’s WAITING FOR A VISA – Six Cases depicting the practice of Untouchability
The so-called untouchables were not considered as full-fledged citizens, and were denied any kind of recognition and rights. It is they, who were supposed to be eternally in wait for visa. I am not sure if Ambedkar coined the title himself, or someone else did, for the autobiography was published by People’s Education Society as…
Rakesh Maria’s Let Me Say it Now- A Biography of Mumbai Crime Scene from 1980s to 2015
The name ‘Rakesh Maria’ evokes two responses- I am reminded of Kay Kay Menon’s marvellous portrayal of the famed cop in Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, and Ganapati Bappa Maria rings in my ears, God knows from where! (the autobiography confirms that he was indeed cheered like that early on in his career in Akola). For…
A Discussion on Ambedkar’s Own Introduction to ‘Pakistan or The Partition of India’
I do not understand why ‘Thoughts on Pakistan’ is now marketed as ‘Pakistan or The Partition of India’. Does it have to do with the controversy it generated in the tumultuous decade of its publication? It was first published in the early 1940s after the Muslim League Resolution had called for the creation of Pakistan,…
Kenneth Anderson’s Tales from the Indian Jungles – The Best of Shikar Literature
Sample the prose- “The man sits with his back to a tree and the light from the campfire waxes and wanes, throwing him into sharp relief along with the tree-trunk against which he rests, to fade the next instant into obscurity and gloom. Leaning against the tree beside him is a .405 Winchester rifle of…
Abhinav Pancholi 