Nikhat Kazmi is “arguably India’s best-known film critic”. (The Times of India.) She’s the author of Dream Merchants–“a pioneering work that looks behind the glare of the silver screen”. (Indiaclub) It seems she’s also a plagiarist. Jabberwock, Jai Arjun Singh’s addictive blog, read her review of Shark Tale. And noticed, shall we say, certain similarities […]

The Seventy Most Beautiful Words in The English Language: Mother, Passion, Smile, Love, Eternity, Fantastic, Destiny, Freedom, Liberty, Tranquillity, Peace, Blossom, Sunshine, Sweetheart, Gorgeous, Cherish, Enthusiasm, Hope, Grace, Rainbow, Blue, Sunflower, Twinkle, Serendipity, Bliss, Lullaby, Sophisticated, Renaissance, Cute, Cosy, Butterfly, Galaxy, Hilarious, Moment, Extravaganza, Aqua, Sentiment, Cosmopolitan, Bubble, Pumpkin, Banana, Lollipop, If, Bumblebee, Giggle, Paradox, […]

Courtesy The Times, which decided to enliven its obituary of Arthur Hailey (‘Airport’, ‘Hotel’ etc) by letting us know just why the only thing more solid than his writing was the mass of blocky prose he could stick between two covers. IN THE BEGINNING: FIRST LINES The president of General Motors was in a foul […]

From The Modern Humorist (via Beautiful Stuff), The Holy Tango of Poetry: If poets wrote poems whose titles were anagrams of their names. They have unsung gems–Emily Dickinson’s Skinny Domicile, William Carlos Williams’ I Will Alarm Islamic Owls. And T.S. Eliot’s Toilets. Toilets by T.S. Eliot Let us go then, to the john, Where the […]

Ram Guha has responded to William Dalrymple’s response to his response to the Dalrymple review that started the whole kerfuffle, and no, the Babu’s way too tired to link to all that stuff again. Here’s what Guha had to say: “Having got the abuse out of the way, however, he concedes that his elite/mofussil theory […]

Maya Jaggi profiles Edwidge Danticat, whose uncle became the most recent Haitian casualty of America’s Homeland Security and asylum policies (see post for Saturday, November 20; also see Maud, Tingle Alley, Moorish Girl and MobyLives.) “I live in a country from which my uncle was catastrophically rejected, and come from one which he had to […]

In 1997, Malcolm Gladwell wrote ‘Damaged’, a profile of Dorothy Lewis, a psychiatrist who studied serial killers. This spring, he writes, Lewis went at the urging of her friends to see ‘Frozen’, a play by Bryony Lavery. She hired a lawyer, accusing Lavery of plagiarising her life and using sections verbatim from Gladwell’s profile. The […]

Suhayl Saadi (Psychoraag) said in an interview recently: “…I didn’t want a curry cover. I didn’t want this woman dancing in a sari, or a DJ playing records. It’s been done and that’s not what the book is about.” (It’s an interesting interview. It describes him as “a cross between Irvine Welsh”–Saadi lives in Scotland–and […]

But before we go, one last bow from our Curry Cover Special: the sari, caught in a rare moment of po-mo irony. Enjoy. 

Next week, check back with Kitabkhana for “Curry Covers Two: Boats and Buildings”. Until then, we’re sticking with saris, the Indian book jacket designer’s Choice Number One.