Ashutosh Bhardwaj
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Book review: Gurcharan Das’s ‘Kama: The Riddle of Desire’
In Gurcharan Das’ latest, philosophy meets fiction in concurrent narratives that examine human desires across civilisations.
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Book Review- “The Disobedient Indian: Towards a Gandhian Philosophy of Dissent” focuses on how Mahatma Gandhi led anti-colonial struggle on the plank of disobedience
A powerful moral and philosophical argument for disobedience as a mandatory duty of every citizen in a democracy.
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Book Review-‘Ninety-Seven Poems’: Poems in new volume of Terribly Tiny Tales seem to be products of first draft
The poems in this book hardly betray any artistic ambition to survive for posterity or find a place in the annals of poetry. Their oath is to the present moment; they wish to be read, reviewed and examined only in the context they choose for themselves.
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Poetry of loss: Translations of two Urdu novellas bring forth the erosion of memories of a civilisation
Hussain’s Day and Dastan, a translation of his two Urdu novellas by Nishat Zaidi and Alok Bhalla, confirms his reputation as a major storyteller of the subcontinent.
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Women in arms: Poignant tales of female militants
One reason that India has seen several insurgencies in the past 70 years is because they secured the participation of women in large numbers.
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A portrait of Shankaracharya: Author Pavan Varma charts the thinker’s life and metaphysics in a lucid form
Adi Shankaracharya is among the most profound and perplexing figures of Indian civilisation
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Memoir of a sex slave: Autobiography of Yazidi woman enslaved by ISIS
The autobiography of a Yazidi woman enslaved by the ISIS is a comment on the abyss in which human civilisation finds itself in.
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Book review – Dispossessed: Stories from India’s Margins
Questioning privilege: A book presents field accounts of scholars as they encounter a life of deprivation that is completely and achingly different from their lives
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Unsung histories: Restless Waters of the Ichhamati
A translation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Ichhamati brings forth stories of the commoners that lived in 19th-century Bengal.
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Book Review: Devi – The Goddess of India
With each of the 52 hymns he composed for the Ganga, the river rose one step by another before its waters touched the feet of the couple, purified them and carried them away in its eternal embrace.
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Love and longing: A promising collection of poems
Love is often the nucleus of initial attempts at poetry by poets.
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Jasoda: Dry as desert novel that lacks fire to achieve ambitions
Sadly, Jasoda does not betray the maturity of a late work. It does not prick you. Like the land it is located in, it’s mostly arid.
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Book review: The Book of Chocolate Saints: Jeet Thayil’s work depicts male artist’s authority, touches heights of inventiveness not seen in Indian novels
“You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can’t hold on to her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.” So wrote Roberto Bolano in The Savage Detectives, which Jeet Thayil’s new novel The Book of Chocolate Saints resembles in more ways than a first glance can decipher.
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Threat of the past: A dispassionate view of a dystopian world where memory is the enemy
A dispassionate view of a dystopian world where memory is the enemy
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The Nation as Mother and Other Visions of Nationhood : A narrative of the nation
His point of departure is Rabindranath Tagore, who believed that “the idea of the Nation” is “one of the most powerful anesthetics that man has invented”. And yet, Tagore was not without profound love for his nation.
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Book review: The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk
Pamuk’s new novel The Red-Haired Woman does not emerge from his earlier essays on the father, but it situates the complex relation between the two males solely within the periphery of Oedipal emotion.
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Being corrupt
A reality check on why our society and politics can never be freed from corruption
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India Dissents: 3,000 years of Difference, Doubt and Argument by Ashok Vajpeyi; here is book review
That India is a grand celebration of plurality, in thoughts and deeds, can’t be emphasised enough
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The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy book review; Artistic Licence
Twenty years on, Arundhati Roy returns with a novel that yearns for an artistic insight, and some broken glasses
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Money, power, politics
Mayawati’s financial wealth grew by 50 times between 2003 and 2007. A WikiLeaks release of a US diplomatic cable noted that the rate to ‘acquire’ a BSP ticket for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections was around $2.5 lakh.
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Farewell to arms: A modest attempt to capture the dilemma of revolutionaries with silenced guns
Swati Sengupta’s book divides the surrendered Maoists under four chapters: young ones, men, women and couples.
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Falling apart
A historical novel pregnant with creative potential that fails to materialise
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The Burning Forest: A significant work on Bastar that weighs both violence and idealism behind the rebellion
This is a rare sociological insight in Nandini Sundar’s The Burning Forest, which mostly focuses on the decade in Bastar after Salwa Judum began in 2005.
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Book review: Democrats and Dissenters by Ramachandra Guha, here’s a history of hope
Meticulously researched and narrated with a storyteller’s flair, a collection of essays by Ramachandra Guha evokes respect, but might not unsettle
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I have held my tongue (about AKHILESH) as he is Mulayam Singh Yadav’s son: Amar Singh
Amar Singh, national general secretary of the Samajwadi Party, speaks about his relationship with UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, talks about why Cong vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s yatra may not make a difference for the party in UP, and predicts that the BSP may side with the BJP after the 2017 elections
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‘Those associated with Naxals have been rejected by the people during elections’
Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh talks about strengthening the state police to fight Naxals, defends himself in the PDS scam, and praises NGO work in the state
