nilanjana s roy

Month: January 2010

  • Book review: Too Much Happiness

    (Published in the Business Standard, January 2010) Too Much Happiness Alice Munro Chatto & Windus Distributed by Rupa & Co, POUNDS 11.99 In an Alice Munro essay on writing, she explained her view of the short story: “A story is not like a road to follow. It’s more like a house. You go inside and…

  • Food: India’s national dish

    (Published in Outlook, January 11, 2010. I had a wonderful sparring match with a foodie friend where we both agreed that India’s national dish should be dal–but that since there’s no chance of agreeing on what kind of dal, I said I’d stick with the choice of the masses.) In Looking Through Glass, Mukul Kesavan…

  • Speaking Volumes: Blyton Rocks

    (Published in the Business Standard, December 2009) The BBC thought she was a “mediocre…boring” writer; librarians at various times across the world have called her books sexist and racist; and over in the US, her name evokes polite puzzlement. But Enid Blyton is the only dead writer to make it to a list of bestselling…

  • Obituaries: Paul Samuelson, Dilip Chitre

    (Published in the Business Standard, December 2009)Paul Samuelson had a Nobel Prize in economics to his credit, a large and faithful following who venerated him for his resurrection of Keynesian economic theory, the ear of several US Presidents and a tradition of fruitful, running battles with the likes of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. But…

  • Apologies and a nibble: English vegetables, desi steak

    (Haven’t had time to update the blog for a while–my apologies. Here’s a place-holder–an essay on food, written in 2003, that I thought I’d lost. Enjoy.) Galangal and lemon grass were piled up in hillocks. The mushrooms were fresh and came in four varieties-white, dried dhingri, dried shitaake and dried, slightly dubious porcini. “Maydum,” said…