Category Archives: Literature

VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Systems View of Life is a sublimely coherent book: from start to finish. It has 18 chapters that comprise of four sections that enlighten, educate and exhort the reader to change their way of thinking, and therefore, their deeds in the years to come, from a validated, high-point scientific base, juxtaposed and bolstered by a cogent, also perceptive, […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The Booker Prize has often thrown surprises — sometimes, with good intent; sometimes, without rationale. If Arundhati Roy’s brilliant novel, The God of Small Things, was chosen with agreeable objectivity, Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam, a modest novel, characterised the exact ‘archetype’ of the not agreeable. However, like it or not, Booker is Booker — […]

VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN I just finished reading Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, yet again. The term, ‘Scoundrel Christ,’ would make most devout Christians, as also others, recoil in anger, as it did when Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the book, and not the movie, was launched — more so, in India. Well, the […]

MASOOMA SAKRIWALA You and I, Are born to die Then why the fear Why, why, oh why? A number of things are waiting to be cherished Clutch on to them, or they’d perish Come on, buck up. Pull up your socks Stop mourning, or you’d be mocked. You are the rainbow of someone’s skies You […]

MASOOMA SAKRIWALA Stop fearing defeats; it is not the end Take a few more risks; start from where you stand. So what if you did not win? Accept it. Take it on the chin Not everyone succeeds every time Some fall, while others climb. You gave it your all; that you know But this is […]

MASOOMA SAKRIWALA A woman, as Eleanor Roosevelt, the renowned politician, diplomat, activist, and the longest-serving First Lady of the US, outlined, is like a tea bag — you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. She was absolutely spot on, and rightly so… for more reasons than one. Or, […]

HELEN FINCH It was Mo’s birthday.  She was going to be having a party after school. Some of Mo’s friends were coming but her friend Jez had refused. Mo couldn’t understand why?  He was her best friend and she was upset. “I don’t think Jez likes me anymore,” she said sadly at breakfast. Mum tried […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Books have a definite purpose. Hence, quite distinct perceptions, or readership outlines — of a decorum exclusively restricted to the realm of the tangible, not to speak of literary ornamentation. The world of books, like writing per se, is quite simply, the pursuit of two essentialities — intellect and substance in scaffolds and […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Arundhati Roy’s 1997-Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things [GOST], has to it more than just sublime magic. Forget what the critics said, or may say. The fact was, and is — Roy, with her elfin charm, poise, grace and elegance, not only came, and saw, but also conquered every book lover’s […]