Somewhere, halfway through Yasmin Khan’s wonderful new book, I go looking for a picture of Aruna Asaf Ali, née Ganguli. I have only the vaguest recollection of her, but the woman Khan describes is entirely fascinating. When we first meet her, Aruna, the wife of Congress party member Asaf Ali, is “more noted for her … Continue reading
Naresh Fernandes arrives for his session at Cinnamon Colomboscope covered in sweat. It’s a hot day but Fernandes has been on a brisk walk around Slave Island. He is fascinated with the parallels he sees between this city and his own – the frenetic development, the deepening class divide,and the contradictions inherent in democracies that … Continue reading
I find Laki Senanayake perched among his sculptures in the Barefoot gallery, laughing as he talks with the staff. He’s bare-chested, dressed in a bright orange sarong, his modesty preserved by a shawl in bright pink, red and orange slung over his shoulders. He has a red lighter tucked into the fold of fabric at … Continue reading
Jan Ramesh De Saram uses his phone as a torch, casting a small circle of light at his feet as he walks down the corridor. The passage ends in darkness, where bats squeak and flap their wings. A row of abandoned rooms are occupied only by an upturned chair or two, lonely rejects from the … Continue reading
I have always loved the story of how my grandparents fell in love. Thatha was cycling down a street in Chennai, on his way to work, when he passed by Pattima’s house. She was on the balcony, brushing her beautiful long hair. They locked eyes and smiled shyly at each other. The rest – a … Continue reading
Anuradha Roy’s opening line in Sleeping on Jupiter soon proves itself a lie. Her protagonist, Nomita tells us: “The year the war came closer, I was six or seven and it did not matter to me.” But the reader knows better than the little girl — the proximity of conflict always matters. Nomi lives in … Continue reading
Simon Singh is immediately recognisable in a crowd — his dramatic haircut riffs on a Mohawk and his oval, gold-rimmed glasses glint in the light. One of Britain’s leading science communicators, Singh left Cambridge with a PhD in particle physics and followed that with a stint at CERN. He then joined the BBC as a … Continue reading
Bettany Hughes was once described as the ‘Nigella Lawson of History’. Ask her about it now, and she bursts out laughing. In that moment, the similarities between the two women could not be more obvious — vivacious, uninhibited and good looking, both exert a magnetic pull on TV viewers across the world. However, the focus … Continue reading
How do you find lesbians in 19th-century London? For her first book Tipping the Velvet, three-time Man Booker Prize nominee Sarah Waters went looking for women cross-dressers in police and prison records. There was other evidence too: medical histories, love letters, records of women living together as long-term companions, all of which provided rich fodder. … Continue reading
\All week, the 2015 Zee Jaipur Literary Festival has been churning out headlines – from the announcement that Amish Tripathi’s much anticipated new book The Scion of Ikshavaku will be about Lord Ram, to the cordial meeting of the once bitterly-estranged writers Paul Theroux and VS Naipaul. The last drew some of the biggest crowds … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 