On the ‘Verses’, and Soft Targets
The regrettable Rushdie affair is kind of over, with media moving onto other stories, I suppose. A lot has been said on the subject, and I guess people are bored. But then, the advantage of a blog...
View ArticleGulaal – The Fringe Bollywood
I am an unabashed fan of Anurag Kashyap. I guess I’m one of the few who believes Black Friday is his sleepwalking film, and weakest, and that No Smoking is his best film. And yet, I did not watch...
View ArticleBukowski In My Dream
The other day Bukowski was in my dream, unshaven tired looking, yet his eyes full of left-over fire write you scumbag he thundered until you do you’ll not know how much you suck at it and when I know,...
View ArticleOutliers: The Fairy-Tale of Success
Here is a compressed re-write of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers for dummies (what Gladwell already writes for dummies? double dummies then). I’ve re-written it so that even a child can understand it....
View ArticleHarry Putter and Amul Butter
Or another Amul advertisement you’ll never see on billboards: Nothing royal about it, just regular butter. It won’t embarrass you!
View ArticleKaffeeklatsch
I remember the days bitter aftertaste of coffee the gemutlichkeit: conversations, debates, intellectual wanking poseurs we all were now enrolled domestics bourgeois workaholics we shake our collective...
View ArticleRetribution, Thy Name is Human
So looks like we’ve moved on from Kasab’s hanging. Not that I had a doubt we would be hung up on it for too long, for in India there is always something else to beat to death (pardon the...
View ArticleSemantic Crisis
traitor, he bellowed trey-ter emphasizing each syllable as if words need our support to stand out to believe in themselves maybe they do especially words like those living through identity crisis words...
View ArticleOf eternity and lifetimes
Let’s aim for eternityshe saidand we should be goodfor the lifetime we did notwaste our breathson subsequent lifetimes what’s the pointwhen you have to aim for eternityagain and again honestly,...
View ArticleFifty thousand shades of religion
“What’s you name”, asks a fifty-sixty-something aunty living in my building to my kid as we get into the elevator. Never known to talk to strangers, he lets us do the talking. “Rehaan”, says my wife....
View ArticleJulie & Julia (2009)
When a movie cast boasts of the classy Meryl Streep, and at the heart of the movie is cooking, no third reason is required to watch a movie for me. And I wasn’t at all disappointed. Quite the contrary....
View ArticleOn courage, etc
sometimes what we call courage is just hardheadedness proved right in hindsight proved wrong, even, many times but rather than pontificating we choose to retell stories omitting that which jars in an...
View ArticleEm for Imelda, P for Poignancy and Pinto
I cannot recall the first time the name Jerry Pinto captured my attention. Back in high-school days, I had asked the paperwallah to deliver Sunday Times — because I wanted to improve my language, and...
View ArticleHence Cooked (Review of Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of...
Or is Emily Matchar reading challanged? I cannot thank Emily Matchar enough for making me take up Michael Pollan’s Cooked for immediate reading. Of course, I’d have picked it up sooner, rather than...
View ArticleThe Power of Halwai — review of Chennai Express
So yes, I watched my first film in theaters after four years. Or five, maybe. The last one was Quantum Of Solace, which I watched thanks to my wife’s cousins who wanted to watch a movie. Any movie. It...
View ArticleThe Silver Lining Playbook
We live on, embracing the reassuring banality of existence …
View ArticleWhy We Write
Before I go on and on into tangents, which is pretty much a certainty, who exactly is this ‘we’? Well, it’s “people like us”, that term which is gaining worldwide popularity. But since I cannot really...
View ArticleAround the Wall
They built the wall around the city but the city escaped the wall and now the wall stands there irrelevantly undefeated guarding ruins while the city thrives unguarded around the wall
View ArticleThe Reassuring Banality
we should live on embracing the reassuring banality of life yes I know, we long for the magical the ethereal pure platonic relationships perfection the Atlantis or a unicorn we want to live in a world...
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