The continuing lockdown intended for safety and the good health of the community can get us down worse than Monday morning blues. All I will say is: Take your medicine regularly and you’ll be fine. Yes, the medicine is books. Books are the best antidote for frustration,

There’s a train journey in the book we’re looking at this time, a 15-hour trial by fire for a bunch of English singletons, travelling regular sleeper class express from Delhi to Mumbai, replete with the sights, sounds and smells of India unplugged with all the consequent turbidity.

Angel Tungaraza is Tanzanian. She lives in Kigali, Rwanda, with her husband, Pius, on deputation to help the small nation rebuild itself following the genocide resulting from the hatred between two groups of people, a hatred further fanned by politics. Now the killing has ended and the

As governments around the world react in a panic to the speedy dispersal of the corona virus, bans have been issued to travel; colleges and universities have declared long breaks with some of them postponing exams; conferences have been cancelled. There is one silver lining, though: this

Readers of Rotary News are   familiar with the ground   realities of the education    system in India. They don’t need proof of its denial to thousands of less privileged; at the same time, Rotary is itself engaged in innumerable projects that make quality education accessible to children. Children

It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for a while now: If The Oceans Were Ink by Carla Power. A Pulitzer Prize finalist and named one of the ‘10 Titles to Pick Up Now’ in O, the Oprah Magazine, it is a book for readers across the social

Oh, I don’t read.” Like, it’s a waste of time. Like, it’s the in thing. Like, bro, who does that! The frequency and nonchalance with which I’ve heard this statement being tossed about over the last few years should have finished me off but

Mathamma works at the Madras Literary Society (MLS) located on the campus of the Directorate of Public Instruction in an early 19th century sandstone building with a high ceiling and beautiful rosewood embellishments. For some years now, diehard fans and well-wishers of the MLS have been trying

One of the reasons I am a fan of M S Dhoni is that he always speaks about the importance of living in the moment. In the context of his sport, cricket, he always points out that yesterday’s victory or defeat ends with yesterday and who knows what tomorrow will bring. All that matters is being

Whatever the weather — wet or dry or cold or hot — this is the season for long reads. In the last 10 days, I’ve had the good fortune of visiting two topnotch bookstores in San Francisco, both of which stock new as well as used books.

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