August 16th
Amitav GhoshThere are days that exhaust one’s capacity for outrage: this is one such. The arrest of Anna Hazare to begin with: one does not need to be a follower…
‘Brazilian Adventure’ by Peter Fleming
Published in 1933, Peter Fleming's Brazilian Adventure is an immensely entertaining account of a hare-brained expedition into the interior of Brazil. The expedition was mounted, ostensibly, to search for traces…
BB King and Bihar
For several months now I've been looking forward to the publication of Taj Mahal Foxtrot: A Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age by Naresh Fernandes. The extracts I read…
Sundarbans journal, January 19, 2000
January 19, 2000 On board the Megha Sundarbans Stopped for the night at ‘Gerafitola’, after leaving Netidhopani and passing through Chamta Island. On the way,…
Agha Shahid Ali diaries: on abstraction
May 2001 Today I drove Shahid and Patricia into Manhattan for Shahid’s last class ]. He was very relieved that the course was coming to an end, even though he…
Thirteen Hong Street
Of late I'm often asked whether anything remains of the place that is referred to, in River of Smoke, as 'Fanqui-town' . This is of course the…
Book Tour Journals; Bengaluru (Bangalore); June 26-28
My visit to Bangalore began propitiously with an excellent dinner at the home of Shoba Narayan, whose books and articles I have been following for a long time:…
Letter from a historian
July 21 Dear Amitav, We met briefly when you were in Abu Dhabi for their book fair in 2009. At the time I was teaching at Zayed University there, but…
Modernism and the Museum
I cannot remember when I last came upon on a book as stimulating as Rupert Richard Arrowsmith’s Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London…
Accounts of China in Gujarati
A reader writes: Dear Amitav It would have slipped your mind but we spoke briefly during your sumptuous book launch in Mumbai last month. I had promised to…