My mother tells this story of a time, back in the 1970s, when she and her sister-in-law decided their families could take care of themselves while they attended every concert they possibly could during the ‘season’ of music and dance in Chennai (then Madras). Balasaraswati, one of

Criminal Minds is the name of a popular television series and is one of several popular shows streaming on various digital platforms, but you would be excused if you weren’t aware of just how many people also enjoy reading about murders, espionage and mysteries of all kinds.

At the local beauty parlour recently I met a bespectacled 19-year-old whose disarming smile instantly got us chatting. “Are you from Nepal?” I asked, as she attended on my mani-pedi needs. “Darjeeling,” she replied. Right, I thought to myself, Nepali doesn’t mean she’s Nepali. Nepali means Indian

I always prided myself on being the kind of person who never judged a book by its cover until this overly righteous sense of self-worth hoisted me on my own petard (I have always wanted to use this strange phrase!) as I found myself unable to put

Haq achchha. Par uske liye koi aur marey toh aur achchha. The packed hall burst into laughter when chief guest Arun Shourie recited these lines by Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz which declare that it’s good to have rights but if someone else dies upholding them, it’s

What do you do when your teenage daughter tells you she’s just been raped? In Sohaila Abdulali’s case, her father gathered her into his arms and held her. Then he listened to how four men wielding sickles led her and her male friend up a mountain, attacked

I have been officially a ‘working woman’ for nearly 40 years, meaning I have woken up in the morning and gone to ‘office’. Most days, my handbag would hold, among other necessities, a book. Still, after all these years, I can count on the fingers of my

It’s a grey morning. The sky is overcast and it seems as though the rain will come pouring down any moment, but of course, this is Chennai where the sun is fiercely protective of its territory, so you never can tell. Still, the air is cool, the

American historian Audrey Truschke, the author of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth, was on a lecture tour in India recently. Her lecture in Hyderabad was cancelled because some protesters had threatened to disrupt proceedings. As she posted on Facebook, the Hyderabad police apparently advised the organisers

A few months ago, my son mentioned that he had recently read and enjoyed Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge. Although I couldn’t recall what it was about, I was pleased that he had attempted to read Maugham, a brilliant writer believed to have been the highest paid

If you are a reader, you know that books can be your best friends. If you are not, know that books can be your best friends. Reading is a conversation conducted silently most of the time, but if you are in the habit of reading aloud it