Ash Talks Books

# Review   of   # KnotForKeeps   The first few stories, 'Apportionments of love' by Sharanya Manivannan, 'Conjugular' by Chitra Viraraghavan and 'Heaven Forbid' by Krishna Shastri Devulapalli, almost made me want to abandon the book. In 'Conjugular', the author uses the phrase "if you take my meaning" multiple times. I'm not sure if she meant it as a stylistic device, but it really started grating on my nerves and detracted from the story. In 'Heaven Forbid', the author fat-shames   his friend's 90+ kg wife and also writes a dialogue shaming people with mental illnesses, "Why can't she get a mean, nasty sex offender or schizophrenic who charges less, da?" ( Referring to a person with schizophrenia as a schizophrenic is not the worst crime he has committed here. Putting that person in the class of mean, nasty sex-offenders is just atrocious.) Since I don't read Hindi poems, I skipped the...

Anuja Chandramouli’s ‘Ganga’ begins with a prelude— Pralaya or the great deluge. “Sleep continued to elude her as she watched over those who slept. It did not bother her in the least. Why rest when you can flow forever and ever?” Anuja tells the story of the daughters of Himavan and Mena— that of Ganga and Parvati. As a reader, I found the character sketch of Ganga endearing.   Parvati is described as a “quiet child who is perfectly content to be alone with her thoughts,” while Ganga’s “natural ebullience” makes her “spirited and headstrong.” The roles of the sisters in Lord Shiva’s life are etched out, and while Parvati is devout and serious, Ganga is playful and defiant in the way she relates to Him. Anuja tells the story of how Parvati becomes His consort while Ganga delivers the child born of Parvati’s and Lord Shiva’s union. Ganga finds a place in His tresses and is the “other mother” to Kartikeya and Ganesha. When Ganga tells Ganesha that she was the one who told Pa...

Book Review In hot blood: The Nanavati case that shook India by Bachi Karkaria, Juggernaut Books, 2017 The Nanavati Case was an event, which turned Bombay of the 1950s and 60s into a seething cauldron of intense emotions. A handsome Parsi war hero and naval commander Kawas Nanavati learns from his English wife Sylvia that she was having an affair with a Sindhi businessman and friend Prem Ahuja. On the afternoon of 27 April 1959, Nanavati storms into Ahuja’s bedroom and “meets, shoots and leaves” turning himself in to the law. When the cause celebre comes for trial, the legal eagles have a field day, the courts are turned into a circus, and the media frenzy is stoked by the flamboyant Russi Karanjia of ‘The Blitz’ sending the tabloid’s circulation soaring in that pre-television era. Coming to the party are a galaxy of political, naval and legal luminaries—Nehru, V.K.K Menon, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, Katari and Nanda, Nani Palkivala, H.M. Seervai, Ram Jethmalani and others. ...

‘Stories at work: Unlock the secret to business storytelling’ by Indranil Chakraborty, Portfolio/Penguin, Gurgaon 2018. The boredom-killing stratagem of storytelling has become the new business in business communication and invaded boardrooms. CEOs are discovering the virtues of storytelling as the medium for their message in this age of information overload and attention deficiency. Storytelling has also provided a platform for the voices of Kalawatis and Sufiya Begums for larger causes. Indranil Chakraborty is one of the small tribe of business storytelling trainers in the world with the gift of the gab and with experience in large organisations. He has authored the book, which is halfway between a magazine article and a research paper, a la mode, to be a bedside companion for corporate czars and their cohorts. Stories can range in size from a six-word gut-wrenching terribly tiny tale by Ernest Hemingway to the monumental epic Mahabharata, which seeks to point the moral com...

I finished Zac O' Yeah's hashtag # book , 'A walk through Barygaza' on hashtag # amazonprime last night. Barygaza is the old name for Bharuch in Gujarat. I had first heard of the writer in 2014 when he was scheduled to attend a book event at Urban Solace, Bangalore. I had even bought his book 'Mr. Majestic' then, but could neither read the book nor attend the event. So when I saw this hashtag # travelogue by this hashtag # Swedish hashtag # writer who is settled in hashtag # Bangalore , I read it immediately. It was entertaining, written with positivity and humour and also strewn with facts he had unearthed through extensive research. I have read very few travelogues, but this one encourages me to read more of them.

The first time I read ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ by Lynne Truss was over a decade ago. I had written about it on another one of my blogs here.   I was thrilled that a book on punctuation was so darn funny, but I was also pleased with myself for having discovered an ‘error’ in the book. On the cover, it said ‘The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation”. As an enthusiastic copy editor, I insisted it should be ‘The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’. Then I found numerous other word zealots like me had discovered this very ‘error’. Now, of course, a search on the Internet for this ‘error’ on her book throws up articles both in favour of and against the presence of that hyphen. Not too long ago, I had a heated exchange of words in a Reading Group I belong to, with a 70-year-old man, no less, about this. To be fair, I hadn’t known his age, else I might have been predisposed to be more polite. Anyway, coming back to the book, when I re-read it now cover to cover,...

When I was working in an e-learning company way back in 2004, my colleagues had asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I quickly said ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. And it is this copy of Stephen King’s  memoir that I re-read after all these years in 2018. “If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”, says King.  He then goes on to say that every writer needs a writers’ toolbox. He says the commonest tool is vocabulary, which goes on the top shelf of the toolbox. The next tool is grammar, followed by the elements of form and style. He argues that the paragraph, not the sentence is the basic unit of writing—"Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe."   #StephenKing's #memoir 'On Writing' takes us to his childhood when he wrote stories and collected rejection slips. Some of the anecdotes shared also give us a peek into his rebellious...