Some titles are outright offensive, and that makes them stand out in the lot, making you pick them up to read the fineprint. This book is one such: An Indian Citizen’s Guide on How to Avoid A Nation of Idiots. When we got a review request on Instagram (because apparently that’s where the entire world is, including three-fourths of Meraki Post), I was intrigued by the profile picture. After a few days, I had the... continue reading→
Bhagat Singh is among the highly respected Indian freedom fighters. He was among those that disagreed with the Mahatma, the latter being a Moderate and the former being a Radical. It is a sort of irony that I post this on the Mahatma’s birth anniversary. But today is when I get to sit down and do my bit of reviewing. The reason I picked up this book was that I find myself agreeing with Singh... continue reading→
My father is an ex-Mumbaikar. He lived there for almost three decades. My cousin lived his entire childhood there before moving to Bangalore. So many years of being away from Mumbai hasn’t changed how they feel about the city. I would not blame Rishi Vohra for sounding the way he does in his novel. The copy that I read was a review copy, which I got in return for the promise I made to Rishi... continue reading→
At Meraki Post, while we pride on original, honest content, we give equal importance to its presentation as well. A few weeks ago, we received a few kind compliments for the design of our site, along with some suggestions. We were touched by the support. We have spent significant time with the design; when the community recognises the effort, it makes our day. In our post, Taking the Road Not Taken, we spoke about a... continue reading→
I heard Manu Joseph on the stage during the Bangalore Literature Festival of 2017. He’d appeared on a talk about crime in fiction. During the talk, one of the writers read a short passage from her novel—the passage was about sloppy sex between what seemed like a female serial killer and her victim. It was so boring I did not listen. Joseph took a direct dig at her mentioning how he’d once read such a... continue reading→
An amusing story, this one. It’s not often these days that you get to read about the battle of wits between men and God. It seems as though that was something we left behind in our childhood. When I read the name of the story, I wasn’t super-excited to read it, but I did—the title is unusual, I thought. But I’m glad I read it. This story is of a priest of a temple of... continue reading→
I was excited to pick up this story because it was originally written in one of the languages that’s close to my heart. However, I somehow did not like the story. I’m not sure if this was because of the way it was translated, but I did not like this story at all. The story is about a man nearing fifty. Cardiac issues run in his family, and given that all of his uncles and... continue reading→
This story is about, ostensibly, an official in the Indian Embassy in the US. This man has just landed in New York, and is still getting used to the new world. His wife and children still haven’t gotten comfortable with the new land. It starts snowing one fateful day, and they’re stuck indoors. His wife and children ask him to take them to a sale. He tries to reason with them that it isn’t just... continue reading→
We just completed the Women’s Month here at Meraki Post. This story, if only had it been written by a woman, would’ve been apt for the month, for it talks of, apart from blatant selfishness that is, about the oppression of the women in our society in the name of dharma. Kamala is bedridden, and her husband—a professor of literature—returns from work. She recognises the fragrance, and momentarily, is happy about it. They talk for... continue reading→
When I met Veena in February, we spoke about a lot of things concerning literature and other things. Among those things was the Partition. I asked her, ‘Why are people so obsessed with the whole thing? Why are we still talking so much about it even though so many years have passed? Isn’t it time we moved on from that?’ Veena is a history freak. She reads a lot about this stuff. And of late,... continue reading→