I know Sudha Murty as the lady who wrote to Ratan Tata in 1974, bravely calling him out on the discrimination against women in a job advertisement by the company, which stated “lady candidates need not apply”. I also know of her and her husband Narayana Murthy’s programs and
There are so many primeval experiences that are universal yet remote if one tries to approach them through language. Amruta Patil finds the words and the images; images she calls ‘scaffolding for the text’ to describe these moments. Whether it’s suggesting that humans have a weakness for cigarettes because
The Riot Peddlers are a three-piece punk band from Bombay comprising Ashwin Dutt on drums, Arun Singh Ravi on vocals and guitar, and Animesh Das on bass, and the trio has recently released its debut E.P., Sarkarsm. They are also, supposedly, India’s best hardcore punk act. Now, this
Krishna Udayasankar is a full-time lecturer living in Singapore. Her novel Govinda is the first of an intended three books in The Aryavarta Chronicles. As fast-paced as it is educative, Govinda is a labour of intensive research and passion and has a refreshingly in-depth approach to its characters, otherwise familiar
Despite having a successful career in banking as the head of marketing at H.S.B.C., Shoma Narayanan chose to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. On a whim, she decided to enter the Mills & Boon 'Passions' contest in 2010. Not only did her entry
Founded in 2010 by Bidisha Basu, Koel Chatterjee, and Utsa Shome, Leaping Windows began life as an Internet-only lending library for comics books, graphic novels, and manga in Mumbai. In just two years, it has grown to become a full-blown brick-and-mortar library and café---it is the place to be if
If there is a required reading list for Indian writing in English, P. Sivakami’s masterful first novel The Grip of Change (published originally in Tamil in 1989, translated into English by the author herself) should be on it. In what was a watershed moment for dalit narratives in India,
Eschewing all the usual clichés about how once upon a time Sunday morning meant B. R. Chopra’s Mahabharat on Doordarshan and how it was so much more viewable than Ramayan, let me pose you a question: do you remember how non-dramatic the background score of Mahabharat is? I recently
A writer, an art critic, a journalist, and an editor all rolled into one, Janice Pariat’s work has appeared in magazines and newspapers as renowned and varied as Eclectica, The Caravan, Nether, Open, and The Asian Age. She founded and edits an online literary journal called Pyrta and contributes
I have always wanted a tattoo. Nascent pictographs created from the controlled symbiosis of needle and ink on nothing but bare skin---yes, it has held a certain allure for me. But, of course, it was off limits. Read: strictly forbidden by my parents. My mom: “You will get A.I.
If it is anything to go by, the blurb at the back of The Book of Destruction by Anand tells you exactly what to expect from this slim, eerie text. It outlines the narrative trajectory from the first story to the third story in the book without giving anything away.