A book that is perhaps as challenging to review - and by review I mean judge - as it was to write. Chaudhari's restraint is stifling at times; his minimalist narrator divulges little; and the reader, while understanding the rationale of the repose of the novel, invariably ends up asking for a lit...
2007 bookcrossing journal:A Raag, as far as I could make out, is some kind of poetic song from northern India??This book is about Indian students, one, the narrator, in particular. They are studying at Oxford University. Each chapter stands alone and it could be a collection of short stories with...
He felt the need to go back to the world, to embrace it, to win it over, to enjoy it – the old desire and restlessness returned. But it was preempted by his family’s optimism and impatience; almost as soon as they sensed Shyamji was recovering, they began to make plans for the future. The discont...
They both came from the same source, an old woman whom Utpalda calls, with some irony, khurima (“aunt”) and gyana-bhandar (“treasure trove of wisdom”). The woman, herself homeless, would cook for the homeless on a porch near Sealdah Station. The memory is from circa 2003, and Utpalda is pretty ce...
But he had a job that was secure, a furnished flat; he had a good beginning in Calcutta. It is useless to speculate what his life and the lives of his wife and his children might have been like had he kept his job. But he had left it one day on an impulse, ready to listen to no one else, and they...
especially when the air-conditioner was switched on. And the Admiral, having gone in once to convey some message to Jayojit, had stepped out into a wall of heat. “This is not good for anyone,” he’d said. “This is why I don’t like this city. This swamp climate and that artificial coolness.” He scr...
He caught a much-prized glimpse of the platform. Camden Town and Chalk Farm were dispatched easily; less than five minutes after Mornington Crescent, the train slowed down for Belsize Park. The old Gujarati in the jacket had nodded off; the woman—Ananda saw them both through the window when he go...