The later sections of the novel, however, struggle to hold the reader’s interest and after being totally absorbed in the tale of Tyll’s village, the reader is likely to feel lost in the ma...

Both a coming-of-age novel and a familial drama issuing from a social taboo, Silver Sparrow seeks to avoid the obvious binaries — wife/ whore, legitimate/illegitimate — by humani...

The early decades post Independence and through the Cold War years — comprising in all some 45 years of UN history — sees an Indian approach which, in Murthy’s words, “... it w...

What follows is a long-winded socio-cultural explication of “Nehruvian science” — the framework gradually expands to include Syed Ahmed Khan, Bankim Chatterjee, Rajendralal Mitra, Ma...

The rest of the essays chart out some of these protocols that navigate between the desired and the undesired, and, sometimes, even the undesirable, spreading over a range of historical contexts and th...

The book is divided into nine chapters, each of which begins with a quote followed by a personal narrative juxtaposed with images from Perera’s personal collection, only to usher his reader into...

The third chapter deals with the core of the phenomenon of musicophilia — a fervour unambiguously called deewangee or madness. Niranjana’s proposition, tying in with the notion o...

This theme of conflict between community values and individual autonomy, which Rohatgi touches upon, is further fleshed out by Kirpal’s excellent essay arguing in favour of marriage equality. Ki...

Almost every Indian cricketer has benefited from his advice. A player’s man, Paranjape’s humour is the stuff of legends; he even used it to admonish a player in his own subtle way. He woul...

A fresh and even more direct warning did arrive. Seven years ago. Chinese scientists discovered a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2 in bats in 2013. Their work was confirmed by US researchers. The Chinese a...