nilanjana s roy

Month: July 2012

  • The Wildings: Read an excerpt

    Excerpt: “The first thing the kitten noticed was the creature’s eyes: inquiring, intelligent, assessing. Its face was neat, the fur beautifully combed in bristles of brown and silver, the whiskers black and questioning. The ears were round and made it look almost cute; but the creature was nearly their size, it rippled with muscles, and…

  • Speaking Volumes: Fifty Shades of Gah

    (Published in the Business Standard, June 2012) By the end of June, Fifty Shades of Grey had become such a runaway bestseller that EL James’ Sadism 101 manual had reached the most unexpected places. It was on sale in a Mapusa supermarket, at all airport bookstores, available at Delhi traffic lights where young children hawked…

  • Speaking Volumes: The Happiest Bloomsday Ever

    (Published just after Bloomsday, in the Business Standard) The official menu for Bloomsday is not kind to vegetarians. To celebrate James Joyce’s Ulysses in the manner of Leopold Bloom, start with thick giblet soup and nutty gizzards, move on to “a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes”. The grilled mutton kidneys…

  • Speaking Volumes: Ray Bradbury, October Country

    (Published in the Business Standard, a few days after Ray Bradbury’s death.) In 1938, the pulp magazine Imagination! carried a story by a new and very young writer. Ray Bradbury, who died last week at the age of 91, was just 17 when he wrote Hollerbochen’s Dilemma, and neither he nor the title character survived…