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Our Freedoms: an anthology of stories, essays and poems on liberty
Buy Our Freedoms at Juggernaut “With the idea of freedom becoming a distant memory with each passing day, it is difficult to describe the tenor of disquieting times like this. The recently-published anthology Our Freedoms does just that while amplifying voices that hope to make India’s constitutional morality unfailingly stronger. Edited by columnist Nilanjana S. Roy, […]
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The post-Partition booksellers
In the days when Balraj Bahri Malhotra set up Bahrisons, Khan Market was a refugee market, not the upmarket, slightly soulless South Delhi hangout it is now. Sovereign Dairies, Empire Stores, grocery shops and small mithai shops kept him company for decades before the invasion of luxury brands and smart restaurants. Bahri died last […]
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Printer’s Devil: Bookstores under siege
Introducing a new monthly column for the Business Standard: Printer’s Devil will look at publishing and bookselling trends across India. The focus is on English language trade and independent publishers, but the column will also include trends from other Indian language publishing from time to time. August 1: Indies: Seagull’s Naveen Kishore and Zubaan’s Urvashi […]
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Speaking Volumes: The Unruly Past
(Published in the Business Standard, April 14, 2014) In 2003, a study asked 569 college students what their memories of 9/11 were. Seventy-three per cent “remembered” seeing television footage of the first plane crash into the north tower of the World Trade Centre; so did the neuroscientist Karim Nader, who was in New York at […]
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Speaking Volumes: The Pirate Wars
(Published in the Business Standard, March 17, 2014) One of the very few regrets I harbour about my journalism career is that I did not have the foresight to be in the Delhi High Court in 1996, when the case of Raja Pocket Books vs Radha Pocket Books was heard in front of their learned […]
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An open letter to S Anand
From The Hindu: The Delhi-based publisher Navayana has decided to cancel the agreement for release of the English translation of Mr. D’Cruz’s first Tamil novel Aazhi Soozh Ulagu (Ocean Ringed World) in the wake of his recent political stand on Mr. Modi. An open letter to S Anand and Navayana Dear Anand, Somewhere along […]
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Khushwant Singh, RIP
(Khushwant Singh died at the age of 99, just before his 100th summer. An old profile, in tribute.) What do smart sardars and UFOs have in common?You hear a lot about them but no one’s actually met one.(Politically incorrect joke found on the Internet.) I don’t know where you’d go to meet a UFO, […]
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Booklove: Rajendra Yadav’s last joust
(Published in the Business Standard, October 30, 2013) In the 1990s, the heart of Indian publishing in English and Hindi could be mapped across Daryaganj. Rickety stairs, often half-rotted, led to establishments as varied as the Marwari Library, the old offices of Rupa & Co, Cambridge University Press, and Hans, the Hindi literary magazine that […]
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Booklove: Freedom from the British ban
(Published in the Business Standard, August 20, 2013) The week after Independence is a good time to remember some of the less well-known achievements of the British, in the days when they ruled India. For instance, in 1910, the British government banned the wearing of a particular kind of dhoti. This dhoti, as Sisir Kar […]
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Speaking Volumes: From Dhishoom to Banksters
(Published in the Business Standard; apologies, there was a lot more to write on the subject that wouldn’t fit into the word count, so this does read a little like an excerpt from a longer essay!) In many of Delhi’s Hindi-language bookshops, the bestseller sections stock a range of strikingly familiar titles. Alongside perennially popular […]
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