Indian Express editor Raj Kamal Jha sheds light on why he believes stories like Nirbhaya’s need to be told through fiction. ♦ In 2012, the initial response to the gang rape of a physiotherapy student in Delhi was gut-driven, a tidal wave of pure outrage and protest. A documentary followed a few years later. If the …
Interview: Raj Kamal Jha on ‘The City and the Sea’ Read More »
An interview with Sunjeev Sahota ♦ A version of this interview was originally published in India Today. By his own admission, British writer Sunjeev Sahota’s novels “tend to come down to a few brown people living in north England or India”. But within this framework, Sahota wove richly detailed lives and unique voices in his …
Originally published as part of Khabar Lahariya’s long-form series “Sound Fury & 4G“ ♦ A few years ago, a daroga, or excise officer, was investigating a local leader in Mahoba, Uttar Pradesh for bootlegging liquor. The daroga, a Dalit, sanctioned a raid on the upper-caste neta’s home. Khabar Lahariya reporter Suneeta Prajapati, who had her …
Book Review ♦ New Kings of the World: The Rise and Rise of Eastern Pop Culture, By Fatima Bhutto Originally published in Open. As 2014’s feeble monsoon faltered to a close, India burnt for Fawad Khan. The Pakistani actor had just crossed over into Bollywood with Khubsoorat, reducing women across the country ‘to wobbling blobs of …
WRITER | EDITOR U.S.A. <-> India > about me < Instagram Twitter Linkedin RECENT POSTS From Benaras to Banda, Women Are Working Out Banda, Fitness Culture, Gyms, Lalitpur, Small Towns, Uttar Pradesh, Women From Benaras to Banda, Women Are Working Out There is no excerpt because this is a protected post. The Book of Love: …
Ryan Lobo wrestles with the controversial tradition of bull-baiting in Tamil Nadu. ♦ Originally published on VICE India. For the past few years, Jallikattu has been a flashpoint—often covered in the news as a conflict between tradition and modernity, or between India’s northern and southern centres of power. The Tamil celebration—in which men wrestle with bulls in an …
A Photographer Takes the Bull by the Horns in His Jallikattu Series Read More »
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Setting out to rediscover Calcutta, Amit Chaudhuri rejuvenates the genre of city writing ♦ Cities have been the incubators of literature since at least the time of Plato in Athens, or of Kabir in Kashi. In turn, they have also played muse, inspiring an entire metropolis of fiction and non-fiction that attempts to describe them. …
William Dalrymple on researching Return of a King, his history of the First Afghan War ♦ In Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, William Dalrymple’s third book set during the decline of Mughal rule, the Scottish historian and adoptive Dilliwala chronicles the first British military foray into the land of Khurasan, between 1839 and …
Magazine review ♦ Name: RT Book Reviews Circulation: 70,000 Date of Birth: 1981 Frequency: Monthly Price: $4.99 In a little brick building in Brooklyn, the offices of RT Book Reviews (formerly known as Romantic Times) are divided between two suites. In one, paperbacks and curios line shelves set in converted fireplaces, and against a wall painted with pink …