Having been close to Khushwant and hearing countless stories firsthand, reading the book made me feel as though I am sitting by him, listening to him recount his impression of ideas, people and places. He remains the best raconteur I knew, and will probably never meet anyone better.
The Spinner’s Tale is a confusing title for this book. The Making of a Jehadi would have been a more apt title for it. It begins with an improbable scene.
Walt Whitman, the American poet, essayist and humanist, had famously declared, ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
In 1989–90, an Islamist insurgency broke out in the Kashmir Valley. This was a time when much else was happening around the world. The mighty Soviet Russia had taken a beating in Afghanistan.
Books on actresses working in the public theatres in India are a rarity and in that sense Sarvani Gooptu’s The Actress in the Public Theatres of Calcutta is a bit of a novelty. It begins with a premise of tracing the journey of women and their engagement with early theatrical practices in Calcutta.
The Theatre of Veenapani Chawla: Theory Practice Performance is a timely book in more ways than one. It is tragically timely in that it appeared just a few months before Veenapani’s sudden death shocked us all in late 2014. Veenapani Chawla’s practice has, it seems to me, remained almost neglected.