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I am reading William Dalrymple’s City of Djinns after finishing VS Naipaul’s Magic Seeds. The two books couldn’t be more different. Dalrymple’s book is a delightful read, rich in anecdotes about modern Delhi and loving evocations of its past. Dalrymple admires the Muslims who ruled Delhi for centuries for their beautiful buildings, their love of
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Confessions of an American Media Man by Tom Plate This is a book anyone interested in newspapers and magazines will enjoy. The American journalist Tom Plate, whose syndicated column appears in The Straits Times, looks back on his working life before he became a full-time teacher at the University of Calfornia, Los Angeles. And what
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It’s Valentine’s Day. So here’s a poem to all those lucky couples who like me and my wife have been married for decades. Many happy returns of the day! The Longly-Weds Know By Leah Furnas That it isn’t about the Golden Anniversary at all,But about all the unremarkable yearsthat Hallmark doesn’t even make a card
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I was surprised to find I had never posted my favourite poem here. I had quoted a couple of lines a long time ago, but never posted the whole poem. The poem: Fern Hill by Dylan Thomas. I have loved it ever since I read it in my schooldays in Calcutta (Kolkata). That was a
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The Inheritance Of Loss by Kiran Desai The Inheritance Of Loss, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, is like the world itself, both tragic and comic and with moments of great beauty. The protagonists are misfits one and all — Sai the orphaned teenager, her grandfather the retired judge, and their cook preserving an
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Temptations Of The West by Pankaj Mishra A young man at an Indian university library chanced upon a book that changed his whole life. He wanted to read everything by the author and all the things he had written about. He ended up in America, writing for the New Yorker, New York Times and the
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One of these is a famous poem by one of the finest 20th century English poets, the other written by a contemporary American poet. Here are the opening lines from both poems. Guess which one is English, which one American. One is witty, the other… well, I hope you enjoy it as much as I
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I posted Auden’s beautiful love poem last night from a selection of his verse edited by the poet, John Fuller. The name sounded familiar. I wondered if he was related to the poet, Roy Fuller, whom I read long ago in the ’70s. Checking on the net, I found, yes, John Fuller is Roy Fuller’s
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Nothing touches the heart more than a beautiful love poem. And here is WH Auden at his finest. He wrote it in 1940 when he was 32 or 33 years old. The poet John Fuller in his selection of Auden’s poems gives no further information, no annotations. But it is so simple, so beautiful, no
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The 13th of the month is as good a day as any for an affirmation of life. Grin and bear it. RésuméDorothy Parker Razors pain you;Rivers are damp;Acids stain you;And drugs cause cramp.Guns aren’t lawful;Nooses give;Gas smells awful;You might as well live. Now read her New York Times obituary published in June 1967: Dorothy Parker,
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