1 Tamils played a major role in the life of Gandhi, starting with the satyagraha in South Africa. Vincent Lawrence, working as his clerk, was one of the first residents with Gandhi at Durban. A Christian Tamil, he was from an ‘untouchable’ caste. The friction with Kasturba on account of Lawrence opened up Gandhi’s mind […]
“There are forms of oppression and domination which become invisible – the new normal.” -Michel Foucault The Victorian era of England was widely known to be the period of vast industrial developments, chaotic familial conditions, economically downtrodden situations, religious skepticism as well as fanaticism, utterly patriarchal social systems, up-scaling scientific inventions, innovations and subtly immoral […]
The other day we were kicking around a few short stories in a WhatsApp group and someone said ‘I don’t get it’ and I said to myself, “Well, it’s about women not ‘getting it’ at all or not ‘getting enough of it’ or ‘not getting the right kind’”. I also realized that it’s been a while […]
Giridharan Rajagopalan has been diligently working at his short fiction since 2006 and it is indeed shocking that the collection published this year is his first, especially if one takes into consideration that some of the very best ones in this book have appeared online as early as 2013. Indifference being the permanently prevailing zeitgeist […]
A young composer stands by the lift in his apartment building. He is fully dressed and carries a briefcase with him. He sheepishly nods his head and smiles to his neighbors who spot him there. His attempt is to pull a facade that he is waiting for the lift to come. Luckily for him there […]
The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides: Alex Michaelides is born in Cyprus to a Greek father and English Mother. Michaelides now lives in England. He is a screenplay writer. The Silent Patient is his debut novel. Story: Alicia Berenson is thirty-three years old. She adores her husband Gabriel. Gabriel is a photographer and Alicia is […]
On November 8th Proust, who did not rise from his bed, received Élie-Joseph Bois, a reporter from Le Temps, and spoke to him for an hour and a half about “a thousand things.” The newspaper’s editor Adrien Hébrard, who was Marie Scheikévitch’s lover, had arranged for the interview as a favor to her. The primary topic […]
You just discovered yourself as a different person. You, the same person who once wore a thick-rimmed spectacles doesn’t need the same anymore to see what lies ahead. Yes, the one who could be easily bullied can fight back now. And now, you don’t have to stop at self-defense. You can now even save the […]
Back in 2011, when the Game of Thrones was first aired, even the writer George R.R.Martin wouldn’t have thought that in the next few years, it will be one of the greatest shows ever aired on TV. Hold your dragons. On the other hand, especially during the last season, he would’ve exactly known how the […]
Jurek Becker’s “My Father, the Germans and I” is another book that I stumbled across randomly in the library. I picked up the lightweight hardbound book just because I liked the feel of it and the title held some interest to me. I had never heard of the author before. I am so glad that […]
Some writers begin to write with talent, quickly earn a reputation among readers and critics, and then are suddenly silenced forever. We had two such men at the Yiddish Writers’ Club in Warsaw. One, Menahem Roshbom, had managed, before he was thirty, to publish three novels. The other, Zimmel Hesheles, had at the age of […]
You have been watching tennis for many years. You remember Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, McEnroe and Conners on the wane; Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg, Steffi Graf and Gabriala Sabatani on the rise. Seles and Hingis. Agassi and Sampras. Even Ivanisevic and Jana Novotna. Federer and Nadal. Djokovic and Murray. You have moments and […]