Art Matters by Neil Gaiman, Illustrated by Chris RiddellMy Rating: 5 of 5 Stars When I walk down a street I take often, I don’t need telling where the hump is or where the manhole splays. But even so, on days the street light doesn’t work, I feel a pinch; as if the little streak … More Book Review: Art Matters by Neil Gaiman, Illustrated by Chris Riddell (2018)
This is Water by David Foster WallaceMy Rating: 5 of 5 Stars ‘This is Water’. Water – Now I love that metaphor. I end up addressing many things and their traits and their progresses and their declines through this unbound source of immense satiation. But how does this fit into a speech delivered to students, facing … More Book Review: This Is Water by David Foster Wallace (2009)
Dear D, Yes, I know it was yesterday. But like your books, I suppose, you too wouldn’t care for worldly conventions; conventions like wishing someone on their birthday. So, I have taken the liberty, and without feeling guilty, of wishing you birthday a day late. Just why though? You can’t hear me. You can’t see … More Happy Birthday, Fyodor Dostoevsky!
Call Me By Your Name | Directed by Luca Guadagnino | Starring Timothée Chalamet, Armie Hammer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Amira Casar My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars I tried thrice – writing down my thoughts about this movie – and failed all three times. Every time I would begin scribbling, my fingers would come to a gradual stop, … More Movie Review: Call Me By Your Name by Luca Guadagnino (2017)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars I finished reading this book at precisely 0205 hours a week ago. The night still lay majestically over the impending dawn, and in its blackened stillness, swayed the echoes of this imperious book. The walls of my room, at once, turned into a … More Book Review – The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)
Cry, Heart But Never Break by Glenn Ringtved My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars Even to the most-learned men and women, few things are as scary, swamping and tearing as death. Like an end, that ultimate exit, beyond which everything becomes void and nothing remains to return, it hovers over us like a spying cloud, … More Book Review: Cry, Heart But Never Break by Glenn Ringtved (2001)
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi My Rating: 5 of 5 Stars [Originally appeared here (with edits)] It has been a few days since I turned the last page of this book. But the numbness reappears the instant I allow the pages to unfold in my memory. The silence which suddenly parts to let … More Book Review: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (2016)
Blindness by José Saramago My Rating: 5 of 5 stars Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. What an irony that a book which holds, loss, filth, loot, stomp, cruelty, disorientation, putrefaction, injustice, helplessness, murder, rape, misery, nakedness, abandonment, death and unimaginable suffering in its bosom, left me with a climactic emotion of … More Book Review: Blindness by José Saramago (1995)
It is Diwali. Or Diwali eve. Or Diwali weekend. And I am, all at once, in a pensive, nostalgic mood. Some happy occasions trigger memories that assume an ominous cloak of beauty and transform everything around them into a messenger of times bygone. Last year, my mamma was with me, here, celebrating. This year, she … More The All-Season Antidote
Here by Wislawa Szymborska My Rating: 4 of 5 stars “She wants me to live only for her and with her. Ideally in a dark, locked room, but my plans still feature today’s sun, clouds in progress, ongoing roads.” With this singular clarity, Wislawa Szymborska views memory. By running a casual yet assertive hand, she … More Book Review: Here by Wislawa Szymborska (2009)
SEEMITA DAS 