Before I write anything about “The Deoliwallahs”, I should mention that one of the co-authors of the book, Dilip D’Souza is a good friend of mine. I have read a lot of his writing, right from his reddif.com days. “The Deoliwallahs” is a book about how 3000 Chinese Indians were locked up in an internment
An experiment on a global scale
ONE of the things that stops me from writing about India is that I feel I am no longer qualified to write about it as much, since I do not live there anymore. But here we are, in the middle of a pandemic and confined into our own homes. And within those four walls, you
Thoughts on Alex Chee’s “How to write an autobiographical novel”
When I started reading Alex Chee’s “How to write an autobiographical novel” I had no idea what I was getting into. I had never heard of the author. I was browsing through one of the best-of-2018 books section of a website when, under the title, “Books about the life of a writer”, Alex Chee appeared.
My tribute to Dolores O’Riordan
I’ll be honest: the reason why I started exploring The Cranberries’ music was because before watching the video of their 1999 hit, “Promises”, I had never seen a lady wielding an electric guitar. She was the lead vocalist Dolores O’Riordan. Dolores passed away suddenly, yesterday. She was 46. The effect of that song then was
The Woman in Red
In 1999, I was in the city of Indore, trying to be a graduate. It was a quiet little city in the heartland of Central India. It was “small town India” – it did not have a significant urban population. During those days, there were no cinema halls in Indore where we could watch English
Cusps of Life
Last year we moved to Sydney. It was a move that me and my wife had been planning for more than 3 years. The idea was to move to Australia and get a job. I wouldn’t go into the details, as much has happened over the last year and a half: job, setting up a
Arundhati Roy’s Ministry of Utmost Happiness – my review
Somewhere towards the end of Arundhati Roy’s latest book, there is a paragraph about a cat that is found in a houseboat in Kashmir that is being raided by the Indian Army. The soldier grabs her and then throws it away in the dark waters below. “She flew through the air, yowling, with her fangs