Reflections: Ghoom Station
By Abhinay Dey
The place is called Ghoom, right? They wouldn’t have given the name unless it had something to do with sleep, my little self reasoned hopefully as I promised myself to build a house there when I grow up.
Book Review: Jeet Thayil’s ‘The Book of Chocolate Saints’
By Suranjana Choudhury
Dismas Bambai working with Indian Angle, a seedy news agency in New York, plays the interviewer, interlocutor, interrupter in Newton’s life. Newton Xavier is his subject. Through this venture, Dismas both creates and disrupts fictional illusions. He accumulates Newton’s childhood, his growth as an artist, his obsessive association with suicide, his whims and his desires.
Book Review: Sutapa Basu’s ‘Padmavati: The Queen Tells Her Own Story’
By Bhaswar Mukherjee
Did Padmavati really exist? Did she write the Padma-wali at all? These imponderables are an exercise in futility; what remains are the many life’s lessons that the trajectory of Padmavati’s passage tells. Between the bridge spanning chimera and reality, Padmavati: The Queen Tells Her Own Story will hold you breathless and the denouement spellbound.
Book Review: Dustin Pickering’s ‘Salt and Sorrow’
By Paromita Sengupta
Salt and Sorrow, like the other books of Dustin, is refreshing because it is, in some sense, old-school. Old school in the sense that it goes back to tackle fundamental questions about life and living, love and longing, truth and god.
Book Review: Kaushik Acharya’s ‘The Inevitable Zero’
By Hirak Dasgupta
This is as much a book for the general readers as for the academicians, quite simply because of the taut and gripping nature of the narrative. Vedic mathematics, Vedic philosophies, and the ways of our ancestors begin to unfurl like the petals of a lotus on its blooming day. Before you realize you are deeply affected by the book.
Book Review: Lopamudra Banerjee’s ‘Let The Night Sing’
By Wani Nazir
Lopamudra Banerjee’s recent book, Let the Night Sing, a bouquet of her poetic musings, without any hyperbole, belongs to the poetry that opens up even the shriveled and plugged channels of creativity in the reader. Opening the cover page of the book, the reader embarks on an odyssey with a longing that there be no end to it.
Book Review: Mallika Bhaumik’s ‘Echoes’
By Ronald Tuhin D’Rozario
I found this book powerful and brilliant. A few poems are like a flash flood. The words sweep the heart away. And some poems are like frost, conveying a profound sense of emptiness and void.
Book Essay: Recommending Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islam
By Raziuddin Aquil
Returning to the discussion on the ideal conditions for ihtisab, apart from being aqil and baligh, the muhtasib should also be a believer, for ihtisab is a contribution to the cause of Allah and a non-believer is not expected to have any interest in the matter. Thus, a kafir or an idolater cannot be a muhtasib.
Book Excerpt: From John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Narayanan’s ‘The Life of Hinduism’
By John Stratton Hawley and Vasudha Dalmia
Ayodhya is being reshaped by a new kind of Hinduism: a syndicated, textbook Hinduism that offers a new sense of political agency to many in the majority who have so far felt left out. As this new Hinduism takes hold, the tomb of Sisle Hazrat Islam and all it stands for is in danger.
A Conversation with author, Renu S. Persaud
By Adil Bhat
Self-mastery gives way to deep and meaningful relationships with our selves, and this kindness of self then extends to a deep and meaningful relationship with others. There is also the domino effect because when we pass on our own ability to respect others (by way of self-respect), they do the same, and so on. I discuss this in the hopes of my ultimate goal: The Kindness Revolution….my next writing.
Book Review: Rashida Murphy’s ‘The Historian’s Daughter’
By Bhaswati Ghosh
The Historian’s Daughter engages as much with its plot twists as with its honesty and narrative sweep. The language is crisp, the imagery vibrant, and the plotlines like stable trellises for the vines they support.
Book Excerpt: From N Ram’s ‘Why Scams Are Here To Stay’
By N Ram
Politically, Vyapam implicates or features senior BJP and RSS leaders, including ministers, in addition to a vast array of bureaucrats, intermediaries, fixers, and the participant victims, many hundreds of students and job-seekers ensnared in the racket.
Cafe Dissensus Everyday 