otter of books

Category: Delhi writers

  • Delhi: a partial reading list

    (This is an old story–compiled this list in 2006 for Outlook, but can’t find it in my archives. It needs updating, but I still love most of the books featured here.) The Delhi reading list City of Djinns: William Dalrymple (Penguin) First published in 1993, William Dalrymple’s exuberant account of a year in Delhi wears […]

  • Speaking Volumes: Under construction-the great Delhi novel

    (Published in the Business Standard, March 22, 2010)Drawing a literary map of Bombay, or Calcutta, is a relatively straightforward exercise: writers fall into neat categories, and time periods, and claim their neighbourhoods easily. But as a recent collection of writings on Delhi indicates, this is the original Trickster City. In most of its centuries, Delhi […]

  • If It Is Sweet–a personal note

    Reading Mridula Koshy’s stories for the first time, almost a year-and-a-half ago, fresh into the publishing job I left this January, I had two distinct thoughts. The first was that these were the Delhi stories I’d been looking for; the second was that if all I managed to do was publish another three books like […]

  • Rap, cafes and writers

    (Published in the Business Standard, Speaking Volumes, December 19, 2006) Between the weddings and the concerts, most Dilliwallas know that winter in the capital belongs to the poets. In an era now forgotten, this meant the grand mushairas where scores and hundreds of poets gathered to match their wits and their metres. In our time, […]