Tag: writers
-
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…
-
Günter Grass and the losers of history
(Published in the Business Standard, April 14, 2015) When I heard that Gunter Grass had died at 87, in the town of Lubek, I thought of what he had been at 17 and 18. He was still a boy then, despite what he’d seen in World War Two. He weighed just 110 pounds in his…
-
Speaking Volumes: So long, and thanks for all the fish
(Published in the Business Standard, December 20, 2011.)Except for the books, they had little in common. The writers and book lovers who died in 2011 spanned worlds of experience, from Diana Wynne Jones, who survived a horrifying childhood to become a writer of children’s books, to Vaclav Havel, the playwright who ushered his country safely…
-
"Why do you write?"
(Published in Business Standard, Speaking Volumes, January 02, 2007)This column is dedicated to all the people who patiently answered the question I asked over and over again in 2006: “So why do you want to be a writer?” There were so many of them out there. Some had done fruitless rounds of publishers’ offices. Some…
nilanjana s roy 