THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

I never really enjoyed reading Hemingway, forgive me guys for I have erred. I dislike the dry dialogue sessions when he, the author could easily have told me what the characters said and took me to the real fun, the journey into the depth of their psyche, rather than leaving the whole trip to the reader’s whim. The point is not that everyone has the right to read a story and take the journey into a character’s psyche in one’s own terms but it is the difficulty involved in convincing the reader of doing so. Perhaps, it was OK with Hemingway, not with me. I mean, the reader’s right to interpret a story in whatever way one wants it, will remain unquestioned until the reader chooses to be otherwise. The times that I live in, demand a different narrative sensibility. One that is short, fast, and to the point. People have no time for subtle analogies. I don’t know if I achieved that in my latest short story; saying is one thing, doing another. I would like to get your feedba...

Read the poem that I wrote for my recently published anthology: "I write these words, my dear, for the time when wordless passion overrules the days of our togetherness. Saving what I wished I could tell you in detail in the pages of my memories. I write these words, my dear, for the days that make our tomorrow, so no one forgets what it was like to have met you and felt the need for you. I write these words, my dear, for those who wander in search of love; to tell them what they seek is in the depths of the bottomless ocean in the eyes of the beloved. I write these words, my dear, of the gift you are, my love. " Buy: Better Than All Happy Ever Afters

Routledge Publishers publishes a book in 2001. The book is, Modern Man in Search of a Soul , written by German psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. I consider Jung, one of my gurus. The book seems significant to me in two ways. One: Its title reminds me of another life changing book namely Man’s Search for Meaning . Two: I have an intuitive awareness that all human beings undergo some form of soul-searching at least once in their lifetime. What I realize today is more significant than a man’s soul-searching. I realize that sometimes, celebrations search for man. Before untangling the knots of this puzzling thought let me take a moment to wish each one of you out there, reading, thinking, and sharing human being, a very happy Onam. A celebration is in search of man. By ‘man’ I do not mean a gender specific entity. I would like to use the term to refer to the entire human kind. Apart from being a Malayalam nostalgia, Onam is yet another celebration where the role of humanitari...

There is no other way to fool someone better than to speak of these two in antagonistic sense. Technology is not in antagonism with tradition nor is tradition antagonistic to technology. They are in mutual alignment. In fact, their mutual correlation even surpasses those devices and symbols that come to our minds when we contemplate these two universal notions. Let me elaborate on what I have already said with a new example. Occasionally, my computer breaks down. I use an old desktop version of it. I am no computer savvy. But I use this legend of technology whenever I can. The limits to which it could help us have no limits. Therefore, when this device breaks down I feel great anxiety. What would happen to all my readers’ souls across the universe that are at this moment in dire need to peruse some wise damn pearl of wisdom that I puke out random! This worries me a great deal, as it might, any self-confident writer, blogger, or columnist. One of the many painful realities ...

I published a book named Better Than All Happy Ever Afters to legitimate the celebration of Valentine’s Day. This happened on February of this year (2016). The book made me not very rich financially but it definitely made me wealthy in terms of relationships. Through the work on this book, I got to know many young voices, talented and certainly bearing the mark of genius in literary art. The underlying existential dilemma was palpable in the Editor’s Note that I wrote in that book. Love becomes a challenge. It obviously is; ask any sufi poet for better clarity on the supernatural aspects of love. For mortals, it certainly comes with its own qualms and worries. There was another underlying problem with Valentine’s Day. It was a day that celebrated open celebration of love and romance. When would someone commemorate an open celebration? When that particular aspect of existence is no longer present, right? Celebrations have this odd reality around them: they always mean the depa...

Image Courtesy: www.historytoday.com What does Freedom mean? We are gathered on this Monday, 15 August 2016 to celebrate the political freedom India earned from the British Empire. What does this notion of political freedom mean to the present generation of Indian citizens? The scars of the freedom movement and the partition that came after the attainment of the epic resolution are no longer the priority for the younger minds. As a teacher, over the six years that I spent with the young Indian citizen infused me with an understanding that underscores the indifference they experience towards the colonial past. I mean, all of it is a good story. Having physical and close-psychological encounter with the colonial rule is the only way to experience that fact as such. No representation, verbal, visual or auditory is enough to put the person through whatever transpired in those two hundred years of slavery. In fact, in India, slavery under colonial rule must be differently defined, ...

Image Courtesy: Penguin “…and I know that this one lifetime, however long, cannot satisfy my heart” (111). __ Ruskin Bond The Commentator says; When it’s about love, some believe it’s natural to make mistakes. The truth is ‘mistakes’ and ‘love’ do not coexist. Mistakes are not love. Love is not a mistake. Before the book review, let me recount to you a love story flew by my life a couple of months back. As some of you know, I love blogging. As some others of you are well aware, more than blogging, I love the experience of writing. Blog or my other publishing ventures, this love for writing is at the core of it all. A couple of months before, I had thought of writing a review of the book Delhi is Not Far by Ruskin Bond, author of The Lamp is Lit . Opening a word document, I wrote the title of the book with the author’s name as a ‘clever’ appendage. Then I kept it to gather some inspiration and relevance. Then I forgot. To be more precise, I pushed the priority to love to ...

The Commentator says; The calamity of today’s higher education in English literature in India is the blind tailing of western canons. This bias has incurred serious damage to the products of such a handicapped academia: the students. Major English writers in India are sidelined for the shameless inclusion of those whose Indian-ness could only be proved after referring to a dozen researched articles. Five years back, I used to teach R K Narayan in the MA English classroom, his novel The Guide . I read it as a maters’ student too. Now, a few years later, this author’s name appears only as a passing reference in the history of Indian English Literature. Sad— sad for the whole generation of students. R K Narayan’s short stories are often prescribed for students in lower grades as if they are not worthy of the perusal of university students. My Days is R K Narayan’s autobiography. This book deserves to be in the reading-list of any serious scholar of literature. Unlike ma...