nilanjana s roy

Tag: Naipaul

  • A seat at the table

    Where I grew up, we were taught – or we didn’t have to learn, it was in the air, something you could catch like a virus that settled in your gut – to pay attention to men. If those men were geniuses, then they were owed more than your attention. Adulation, or an unquestioned acceptance…

  • The BS column: A Million Mutinies, Now?

    (Published in the Business Standard, November 6, 2012) Despite his gifts as a writer, Naipaul’s many areas of blindness make his non-fiction less and less relevant over the years Girish Karnad is not in need of a defence; the speech he made at the Literature Live festival in Mumbai last week was eloquent enough. In…

  • Speaking Volumes: Some notes on Sir Vidia’s spleen

    (Published in the Business Standard, June 7, 2011)1. The fact that I possess a womb should disqualify me from commenting on V S Naipaul’s latest broadside. A writer who believes that no woman is his equal as a writer, that women suffer from a “sentimentality, a narrow vision of the world” and that women writers…

  • Book review: The Sly Company of People Who Care

    (Published in India Today, February 2011; this is a longer version.) The Sly Company of People Who CarePicador India,Rs 495, 281 pagesRahul Bhattacharya VS Naipaul made two observations that should be committed to memory by all aspiring authors, and travelers. The first was that his travel books, specifically the ones about India, were all books…

  • The BS Column: Naipaul-The Twilight of his Travels

    (Published in the Business Standard, September 21, 2010) I think it’s very good to ask yourself who you are and why you’re here and what has made you.” In 1974, when V S Naipaul made that statement to an audience of students, he had been asking himself those questions for over a decade. Twelve years…

  • The BS column: Naipaul’s twilight travels

    (Published in the Business Standard on September 12, 2010) “I think it’s very good to ask yourself who you are and why you’re here and what has made you.” In 1974, when V S Naipaul made that statement to an audience of students, he had been asking himself those questions for over a decade. Twelve…