In the years that followed after I set up this blog, there was a subtle shift in the way I processed new information. I haven't written prolifically in the six years of this blog. I took time to refine my thoughts into a coherent, complete form before publishing them. These were small essays than a [...]
Category: Writing
Hate Cleaning? I love it! – Scraping through in Oslo
The city is cold. This is not a statement on weather here. Even on weather’s count, cold season of cities in lower latitudes is Oslo’s summer. It manages to keep an attractive and highly refined façade of affluence and lifestyle that unfurls into layers of nuances only on repeat visits. Parts of the city that [...]
The art of preface: Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India
For two days a week that I spend working at a university, I spend a part of my time reading preface of books and digging archives. If a preface gets my attention and is compelling enough, the book gets read for sure. Jyoti Puri's Woman, Body, Desire in Post-colonial India (Routledge) is one such. The [...]
To become young fools again
'We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies...' Pico Iyer writes in a reflective and philosophical piece on why we travel. His keen eye on how the experience changes the traveler and the place he travels to, is revealing in a way. In these years that I have re-read the piece, it [...]
When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi's book When Breath Becomes Air is an unsettling read which at the same time leaves the reader with a compelling sense of optimism. It is a stirring experience of knowing a man's mind from the frighteningly close distance of his own words, as he prepares himself to meet his end. It certainly doesn't seem [...]
Reading Biographies
Reading biographies can be an unsettling feeling. Since school, I have read several biographies - first being Gandhi's My Experiments With Truth. It has become one of my favourite genre of reading for its deliverance and reflexivity that it comes along with. However, it has taken several years to understand the nature of discomfort, or [...]
Is travel writing dead?
Granta Magazine pursued this question with a clutch of writers in Issue 138 on Journeys. In the bookstore last week, I took to a corner and began pouring down the responses. It wasn't driven by curiosity. Instead, it was to figure out if there is a general perception among the authors (many of whom are noted [...]
