I was simultaneously intrigued and irritated by the title of Sampurna Chattarji’s book—if it were actually funny and freaky and feisty, I suspected, it wouldn’t need to say so on the cover, and the pedant in me insisted that foodie wasn’t an adjective. But it is a beautifully brought out compilation of six separate collections, and the cover has a magnificent cast of peculiar humans, animals and food.
Any book beginning with four 16 year olds in a boarding school reminds you at once of the usual clichés about a detective story—stories of families, bullying teachers, secrets, unhappy classmates et al. But Sen Gupta’ story is different and refreshingly contemporary, almost necessarily so.
Overall, The Mystery of the Secret Hair Oil Formula is an engrossing read. At just under 100 pages, it manages to pack a lot of action and drama and leavens it with a healthy dose of humour that will keep its young readers engaged till the very end.
For a child, the love and presence of both parents means the world. However, often in spite of their love for the child, parents find it difficult to live together and separate or divorce.
A Town called Dehra is an ode to the delightful town, formally known as Dehradun, and those salad times that have long since disappeared. Autobiographical in nature, this collection of memories are evocative of horse-drawn tongas, gramophones and vinyl records and singers of forgotten genres like Nelson Eddy, Gracie Fields and Arthur Tracy.
The northeast in what is unfortunately a little known facet of Indian history formed an important theatre of operations during the Second World War. But this is relatively absent from our history, despite the existence of war memorials dotting the northeast. The northeast by itself is another place—if it makes an appearance in fiction, it does in anthologies of folk tales which feature the usual stereotypes of tribal head-hunters and anthropomorphic gods.