Malayalam cinema is great. Here’s a beginner’s guide that I found on the internet. I’d like to write more about it – in a casual way, as my understanding isn’t really good enough to write […]
The value of low-end tech or: Why you need to stop reading tech reviews right now
I used to be a consumer tech reporter. And I have the frequent flyer miles to prove it. A routine part of my workweek involved flying halfway across the country to attend press conferences about […]
Critics going after Critics going after Critics: Baffler and Nanette
This is a response to this myopic review by Soraya Roberts about Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette. The whole purpose of the review seems to be diagnosing and questioning the “near-unanimous critical praise” that Nanette has received […]
Was Jinnah right?
Will a democracy with one vote for every citizen eventually, inevitably, put the minority at the mercy of the majority? Pakistani-American academic Akbar Ahmed says he wrote the 1998 film Jinnah because, among other reasons, he had […]
Helmets, patriarchy, and the state
Traffic was sparse and the sun was fierce as a blue van pulled up by the footpath just past the MGR Memorial on Chennai’s iconic beachside promenade, Kamarajar Salai. The van, one of a few […]
Lessons learned from renewing Indian passport
In the hope that the next person who Googles passport renewal doesn’t have to read and decipher 50 different Quora posts, still be extremely confused about what exactly the rules are, and end up getting […]
An internal disagreement among infidels
I’ve always had a problem with atheism. Not with atheists mind you; I’m usually more likely to get along with them than hardcore theists. This is, as the title suggests, more of an internal disagreement […]
Notes on The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2015) by Seth Dickinson
There is a great peril in making a novel about something. That sounds a bit trite but I will illustrate this point with Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. Dickinson’s novel has very obvious issues […]
Notes on Lord of Light (1967) by Roger Zelazny
The line that is most often quoted from Zelazny’s Lord of Light is that one about people calling him Mahasamatman anf him shortening it to just Sam. I’m guessing this is Zelazny’s way of indicating […]
On the difficulty of coming up with new ideas
It’s pretty hard to come with a completely original idea these days. It might be because almost all of the basic ideas, the low-hanging fruit, have already been thought of and anything that remains to […]
Notes on The Pastel City (1971) and A Storm of Wings (1980) by M John Harrison
Like the Holdfast books discussed in the previous post, the Viriconium series also revolves around a fantastical last refuge of humanity in a post-apocalyptic world. But that’s where the similarity ends. While Suzy McKee Charnas […]
Notes on A Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978) by Suzy McKee Charnas
There’s not much I can say about Suzy McKee Charnas’ two books that haven’t been said already in this review by Cheryl Morgan. The Holdfast Chronicles are a tetralogy (of which I have only read […]
Notes on The Underground Railroad (2015)
The Underground Railroad is an extremely successful book and for this it must be analyzed. It won the Pulitzer prize and must now pay the Pulitzer price. It also won the National Book Award but […]
Looking back, looking forward: My Janussian thoughts on the doorway of 2018
Janus is the Roman god of thresholds and beginnings, entrances and exits, watcher of archways, pauser, dawdler, time-taker, looking both sides before crossing any portal, poor Janus, will he ever go anywhere, doesn’t he know […]
Authors, Editors and the Ownership of Texts
This is a response to my friend Chitralekha on her post, "Does an editor own the text?" To tackle this issue as Chitra lays it out, I feel the first thing we can dispense with […]