Strange and mystic business
Allenby Street in Tel Aviv is a busy place at lunch time. Amidst the roadside cafes, the pizzerias, the shop fronts full of mannequins in...
All Writings
- Mar 1, 2009
- 3 min
Rainy day stories
I reach once again for the 1925 collection of Hemingway’s stories In Our Time, which contains the short story that best encapsulates what...
- Feb 1, 2009
- 5 min
Tormented by a restless breeze
I do not believe that I am qualified to write on Faiz Ahmed Faiz. But the memory of a long ago Moscow afternoon tempts me. As a young...
- Dec 7, 2008
- 4 min
Long shadows of short stories
The sky is a splattered sunset orange. The sun, a blazing hoop of fire, balances itself on the taught line of the horizon and then sinks...
- Nov 2, 2008
- 5 min
A slim selection
There are times when the mind hesitates to enter a substantial book, aware that it will not be able to do justice. I thought I had sent...
- Sep 7, 2008
- 4 min
The Exile
When they fought each other for the throne after my father’s death, guns were mounted on those minarets and cannonballs flew over...
- Aug 3, 2008
- 4 min
Inspiring a masterpiece
Normally I only glance furtively at obituaries; one never knows what, or rather, whom one may find in those columns. But the other day,...
- Jul 6, 2008
- 4 min
Cairo from a café
The night throws its canopy gently over the Great Pyramids at Giza, as if it were reluctant to smudge their sharp silhouettes. And as the...
- Jun 1, 2008
- 5 min
Wayward wanderers
As opposed to travelling, aimless, whimsical wandering has been the source of some literary masterpieces… I step out without purpose,...
- May 4, 2008
- 4 min
Chronicling the hills
There comes a point in every long-gestation literary project that one doesn’t want to see it anymore. One hands it over to the editor...
- Mar 2, 2008
- 4 min
Theroux: Tips and tales
In an entertaining and typically ironic talk in Delhi last week, Paul Theroux did at least two good things. First was the epiphany:...
- Feb 3, 2008
- 4 min
Magic of green baize
When authors and editors put their heads together to decide on the name for a book, it is not an idle moment. The name, perhaps more than...
- Dec 2, 2007
- 4 min
The allure of Cote d’Azur
The infusions into literature and art of the light and reflections on the blue waters are too many to relate. An image in sepia from a...
- Nov 4, 2007
- 4 min
Storyteller of the sea
From my room in The Oriental hotel, I can gaze endlessly at the muddy Chao Praya, as it flows sluggishly past the concrete and glass...
- Oct 7, 2007
- 5 min
Open letter to Sir Naipaul
Dear Mr. Naipaul, Forgive me for not calling you Sir Vidia. Somehow, that doesn’t trip off my tongue easily. Perhaps it is the democratic...
- Sep 2, 2007
- 4 min
Memories in the mist
Sometimes the very slimness of a book attracts. While there are times that one loves the feel of several tomes on the bedside table, each...
- Aug 5, 2007
- 4 min
Silences of Shangri La
Sometimes things have a way of building up gently, unobtrusively. Serendipitous straws in the wind have been pulling me back to James...
- Jul 1, 2007
- 4 min
Not such an idle fellow
To the writer of a column called “Second Thoughts”, it should have long occurred to read a book called Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow....
- Jun 3, 2007
- 4 min
Reluctant writers
THE allure of a literary recluse is difficult to resist, particularly in a world where authors are falling over each other to be in the...
- May 6, 2007
- 4 min
Song of the road
CALL it a leftover fantasy of youth, or perhaps the last burst of middle-aged angst, but I still want to do a Kerouac. Just pick up the...