A collection of my book columns published in newspapers and magazines
Of traitors and Cadavers: The Gospel of Yudas by K. R. Meera
Of Traitors and Cadavers There’s nothing like a book that arrests you from the moment you set your eyes on it. K.R. Meera’s The Gospel of Yudas is that kind: a book that you don’t hold in your hands—it holds you instead. You don’t turn the pages at your leisure, but the book turns you…
The poems of Lal Ded: Confluence of Sufi and Yogic tradition
When you think of mystic or Sufi poets, how many women Sufis can you recall? There are few female names in the realm of mystic poetry, and fewer still that are well known. There are, however, certain names that form an integral part of the culture and oral literary tradition — not to mention folklore…
H is for Hawk: Finding meaning in grief
The book itself is a search for meaning—meaning in loss, meaning in wildness—meanings that she, in a thought-provoking inversion, rejects at the end, revealing them for what they are: a desire to merge the self with the natural world and superimpose ourselves upon it.
The Bones of Grace
Finding the fossils of this walking whale is Zubaida’s mission in life—Zubaida, born to Bangladeshi parents who were freedom fighters in the war of independence, educated at Harvard, selected to go fossil digging in Dera Bugti.
God Help The Child by Toni Morrison
The strikingly black lady in pristine white beckons from the covers of Toni Morison’s God Help The Child, her white dress dissolving into the whiteness of the covers. That is Bride, the protagonist of Morrison’s book that holds so much pain, so much hurt… ugly, uncovered truths like scratched wounds with pink raw flesh lying…
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