Giving presents is fun, although not the drudgery of looking for them. So before coming back to Sri Lanka for a visit this year, I asked my friends what they
In the month of May in Delhi, when temperatures routinely touch a high of 45 degrees Celsius, more than 600 people turned up to listen to Vikram Seth read from
Vikram Seth is surprised to hear that his bestseller, A Suitable Boy, is now part of the canon of postcolonial fiction taught in English graduate courses in the West. Especially
The ground beneath Salman Rushdie's feet is shifting. He emerged from his fatwa-induced state of siege last September, giving up his place as embattled champion of free expression
One of the brightest new stars in the American literary firmament is Jhumpa Lahiri, author of a recently published collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies. The US-born Lahiri
In Vidia's India: A Million Mutinies Now there is little landscape and hardly any weather. There is no smell, no heat or dust, no sweating men, no lisping
Himal calls from Kathmandu. They want a piece on English writing in Bangladesh. Deadline is not so long away. Is it possible? I suppose so. Dhaka e-mails are all knocked
Pre-Partition Pakistan had a tradition of writing in English, but only in recent years have Pakistani English fiction, poetry, and some drama started to come into their own. The distinguished
New Delhi and Islamabad seem to covet only territory. They do not seem to care much about their own civilians who have become refugees of this undeclared war. Himal'
Beyond failure of military intelligence, Kargil represents New Delhi's intellectual bankruptcy. A Ladakhi scholar in New Delhi provides a different perspective.
The Pakistani intrusion in Kargil has a
For his devastatingly critical book on the South Asian Subcontinent and its peoples, Nirad Chaudhari chose an intriguing title: The Continent of Circe. Who or what was or is Circe?
For Pakistan, Kargil may be a calculated miscalculation. India has to mask its initial intelligence failure by regaining the peaks regardless of heavy casualties. Both sides need a face-saving way
