Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The storytelling is expansive and both the parts of the trilogy are replete with stories, not just popular tales of Murugan’s birth, his leaving Kailash to Pazhani in anger after losing the competition for the Fruit of Wisdom, the war with Surapadman and his victory and his marriage to Theivanai, but stories of how everything emerged from a dark, endless Vast to begin with;

Hauser also provides fascinating accounts of the various remedial methods adopted by people across centuries: from devout prayers to throwing out of earthenware, inhalation of aromatics to wearing beak-shaped masks and more.

A head-on collision with injustice, oppression, inequity, discrimination, etc., do not a good poem make. The language may be rousing, the rhythm may be seducing, yet, in the ultimate analysis, whereas the poem may delineate an injustice of history, it may not be an imaginative tour de force like Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy’ or Mona Zote’s ‘What Poetry means to Ernestina in Peril’.

This verse reflects on the endless passage of time and the gradual wearing away of moments. In solitude, a chance encounter symbolizes a sudden, unexpected connection or escape from the ordinary. Amidst the turmoil, love remains patient and hopeful, waiting to embrace the boundless, timeless essence of the beloved.

His deceptively simple imageries stand as some of the finest specimens of poetry affirming his enduring legacy in a rapidly changing art world.

If the book has a flaw, it is the almost anticlimactic dénouement, where everything falls into place tamely and Twain sails away without making any major waves or being touched by this fascinating palimpsest of a city teeming with stories.

In moments of solitary quietness, Chowdhury strikes intimate relations with insects and other non-human beings. Interestingly, a slow-moving caterpillar, or a dancing butterfly enhances his craving for self-consuming privacy all the more.

In between the tidy frame is a story well worth telling—of the unique socio-political situation of Goa that made possible a wide variety of relationships between people of different communities—Hindu Indians, Catholic Indians, Portuguese whose ties were with Europe, and descendants of Portuguese extraction who were as much sons and daughters of Goan soil as the Indians.

Among the protagonists of the novel are dwellers of Zamin Par, occupants of Zamin Andar and spirits of Zamin Upar, all of whose comings and goings have been inextricably woven together into the narrative. Intertwining the humdrum of daily human existence are stories of the superior knowledge or comprehension of prophesies, extrapolations, curses, and spells cast by supra-terrestrial peris

It is in these moments in the book that Dhingra’s extraordinary writing skills manage to transfer the olfactory effects experienced by her, for the readers to vicariously savour through her descriptive details about the fragrances.

Set in Nepal and its borderlands before the arrival of the internet, the novel begins by describing the marriage of a fourteen-year-old Meena with Manmohan, a twenty-one-year-old Nepali boy she has never met. The narrative documents Meena’s problematic marital journey and her diasporic life.

Death, the time and manner of its arrival, how it transforms people and their lives, and the ways in which each person deals with his/her loss, grappling with guilt, regret, questioning—is almost a character as it moves through the pages, forcing the reader to confront those very feelings of loss

The book also gives hindsight into the shrinking spaces in academic institutions and the rise of Right-Wing politics in India. This is demonstrated when the narrator’s student Salman is killed for his love affair with a Hindu woman. Pat, who runs a signature campaign for his justice, has been charged by the police for doing so.

Incidentally, the novel is one long narration, with no chapter divisions. It is also significant that there are very few dialogues. We see and hear everything through the stream of the narrator’s own consciousness, though he repeatedly complains that his story is controlled by others.

Well one may ask, what is this naïve eulogy on spiritual journeys? Is this reviewer not aware of the corrupt practices of big and small ‘spiritual’ establishments of this land? She is. As she is aware of the universal need for compassion and goodness.

Under the Bakul Tree is a heartwarming coming-of-age tale. It celebrates friendship, hope and determination as it unravels the devastating effects of poverty and of an education system that has failed the students who are at the lowest rung of the social order.

he Saveur coffee shop becomes another milestone in this bildungsroman novella, as Takako makes new friends and literally wakes up to smell the coffee and is soon ready to face the world again. Her days at the Morisaki Bookshop become what Satoru had hoped

The email communication begins with the calf escaping from the farm and declaring:‘Sinister things are happening here on the farm, but nobody talks about them. I dare not stay here any longer. Dare not wait and see what is going to happen to me. I don’t want to disappear suddenly. Love from me

Does the M4 remind us of the Five Found-Outers and others of the kind inspired by Enid Blyton? The additional nuance here is that of the social angle. As mentioned, Shimplya is a fisherman’s son. Mirchi is the local scrap-collecting boy, and it is he who leads to the exposure of the kingpin of the wildlife mafia in Maulsari and the release of 1280 endangered turtles (minus the 110 which had suffocated in captivity)(p. 224).

Before long, Chidambaram Pillai became drawn into the scheme initiated by a few Tuticorin traders to charter a steamer from a Bombay-based firm called Shah Line Company. He successfully exerted himself on behalf of this syndicate. By April 1906, the first chartered steamers arrived in Tuticorin; two months later there commenced a regular ‘Swadeshi’ service to Colombo. Soon, though, there was discord between the Swadeshi syndicate and the Shah Line Company. In an audacious move, Chidambaram Pillai now set about to create an indigenous shipping company with its own steamers. The first prospectus appeared in August 1906, and by October SSNCo was registered as a limited liability joint-stock firm. We learn, too,