Books

The Two Faces of Bishan Singh Bedi

Boria Majumdar

The Two Faces of Bishan Singh Bedi In a country where biographies are akin to hagiographies, Suresh Menon’s book on the spin bowler is refreshingly objective

Seeing is Unbelieving

Janice Pariat

Contemporary artists explore the power of illusion in our lives

‘Don’t Read My Books with a Red Pen in Your Hand’

Aastha Atray Banan

Chetan Bhagat scratches his head over criticism of his books, and talks of writing as an emotional endeavour

A Hindi Film on Paper

Madhavankutty Pillai

The reaction of a literary snob on turning the pages of a Chetan Bhagat book for the first time

Nowhere Men

Shruti Ravindran

Alien cults, Wall Street analysts, missionaries, ethnologists and rockstars go on an existential quest in the desert

Cricket’s Bad Boy

Boria Majumdar

Shoaib Akhtar’s autobiography is a bitter man’s rant against his more accomplished peers

The F Word

Arshia Sattar

At a time when many women are rejecting the ‘feminist’ label, those who led India’s first wave of feminism review the battles they fought

‘The Discipline of the Short Story is Terrifying’

Parvati Sharma

Alan Hollinghurst on fighting laziness, living in the world of his novels and the pressures of being a gay writer

Couplet Omlette

Vivek Narayanan

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s translations of Kabir, with a generous dose of American slang, are awkward at times. But the remix experiment is worth the risk of failure

His Father’s Ghost

Hartosh Singh Bal

There is no doubt about Aatish Taseer’s skills as a writer, but there’s a limit to how much one can read about his troubled relationship with his father