This week CHAITANYA KALBAG takes off on Sasthi Brata’s best-selling novel “Confessions of an Indian Woman-Eater”. Vrata is one of those typical Indians who have followed in Nirad Chaudhuri’s footsteps: the man who lives off dishwashing in some seedy Gulf restaurant while writing home about the cushy job he’s got, working in pile-carpeted comfort. …
Fortnightly Take off on Bestsellers A short, spicy travelogue-cum-novel, “Train To Uzbekhistan” is replete with descriptions of the locomotive that hauls the assortion of bogies, one of which holds Dukhwant Singh. The author has drawn obvious inspiration from Agatha Christie and we find him attempting half-heartedly to describe the distribution of the compartments, just like…
A newspaper cartoonist once went into deep Africa and found that some German scientists had frozen to death a scant hundred miles from the equator. He came back to America and told his readers. Robert Leroy Ripley also told them a lot of other things that they found rather difficult to believe. In the process…
Hovel is another masterpiece in analytical fiction by Bailey, whose previous successes included Hangar Zero Nine and Tyres. The book measures 11 cms by 18 cms, is printed on glazed 20 Ibs paper and is set in Monotype Garamond. The blurb on the jacket tells you that Bailey is a master at looking into…
I’ve been seeing too many Hindi movies. Talk about the bus system, or the weather, or your television set, and I prefer to opt out. But initiate a debate on the Relative Physiques Of Hindi Heroines, and I can walk away with the Dale Carnegie plaque. Which is why a lot of friends advised me,…
The Buns of Camerone is MacFat’s sixth book. The dust-jacket says it’s a thriller in the true Fleming Le Carre tradition. I would prefer to call it a thriller. it combines the preposterousness of a thriller with the eleventh-hour look of a filler. If you are ignorant of what ‘filler’ means, ask the nearest journalist. …
Take a dash of Proust and add a few drops of Sartre. Mix with a tablespoon of Ezekiel and set mixture in front of Vrinda Nabar on TV screen. When half-baked, sprinkle some grated poetry and simmer at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Garnish with scraps of leftist doctrines and dress with chopped Charminars. Add Nirad…
Our fourth bestseller take-off this fortnight is the controversial ‘Freedom at Midnight’, a book that sold the maximum hardcover editions in India in the past ten years. SLAVERY AT NOON by Harry Rollins and Feminique Rapierre. Published by Lucas. 555 pages, Rs. 55. The authors attempt to present fiction as pulp history. Rollins and…
Gone are the days of traffic jams on Thursday evenings when everyone rushed home to see Chhaya Geet. Gone also are the days when Kamleshwar spent hours telling us why the trains were not back on the tracks. Now it’s only affluent sons who buy TV sets so their parents can spend the evenings at…
One evening twenty years ago in Puttaparti, a village in Andhra Pradesh, a 60 year old man lay close to death. As his wife and daughter looked on anxiously his breathing became erratic and he went into a coma. An hour later, his body began to turn cold and the relatives clustered around his bedside,…