My latest “The Bookist” column for HT Brunch: “Eight Essential Tips for Writers” or “10 Rules for Writing Fiction” or “Advice from Writers” – such bland compilations often include the following line from Kurt Vonnegut: “Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” But then you come across novels… Read more »
Posts Tagged: The Bookist
The Small Voice of Literature
My latest column for the Hindustan Times is on the literature of small towns. Politicians offer propaganda in a loud voice. Ditto for pundits. I love the small voice of literature. As Joan Didion said, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. The writing about small towns or about provincial life is appealing because… Read more »
Language Se Lafda Nahin Karne Ka
My latest The Bookist column in HT Brunch here.
Partition Lit.
My piece for HT Brunch on the literature of the Partition has a somewhat dissenting take on Manto: In the famous story Toba Tek Singh by Urdu writer, Saadat Hasan Manto, we get a brilliant, biting commentary on the arbitrariness of borders. Manto’s protagonist, Bishan Singh, lives in a lunatic asylum. He doesn’t know whether… Read more »
Yaddo
From my latest The Bookist column “What Is It, Dear Heart?”: I am at Yaddo writing a novel about the messiness of love. Yaddo is an artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York. I have been here for a month. I write every day, I walk in the woods, and before I go to… Read more »
On Poetry
My latest column (“The Bookist,” a monthly column for Hindustan Times Brunch) is on poetry: One night in the early Eighties, in the basement theatre of Shri Ram Centre in Delhi, I heard the Hindi poet Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena read his long poem Kuano Nadi. This was my discovery. I had taken a DTC bus… Read more »