Have you read Désirée by Anne-Marie Selinko? I read it when I was in school; I think it was the first really thick book I read.Yes, it came even before Gone […]
Oranges in No Man’s Land
I find that so may writers seem to have a compulsion to write long, complex, layered work. So many new books are thick paperbacks, full of things happening on every […]
Book-Reading at Crossword, Mulund!
Blue Shoes and Happiness
A colleague of mine saw me reading the book and commented on how it looked like a children’s book. Many people don’t know yet that I spend more time reading […]
A Doll’s House
I cannot believe that Ibsen changed the end of the end of A Doll’s House for its production in Germany! What happened to [t]hat slammed door [that] reverberated across the […]
Miss Julie
Outstanding. To create passion like this and alternate between expressed passion and subdued passion is incredible. Miss Julie – headstrong and confused – wavering between strength and weakness – is […]
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
Why does ‘easy to read’ somehow strike me as a slightly negative comment in the context of this book? Yet, I would not say I disliked the book. The gentle […]
Sylvie and the Songman
What a crazy book. And that’s a compliment. There were parts of the book that I read only because I wanted to finish the book. I pushed myself to read, […]
A Note of Music
Everything is made out of notes, vibrations. Many people think the universe started with a great big bang. What’s that if it isn’t a note, albeit a rather loud one? […]
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison introduced me to the real horror of slavery. When I read Beloved, I simply could not get over the idea of black slaves being forced to wear the […]
The Dictionary at School
The portion for the exams has been completed; students are fed up with revision. So, a colleague of mine decided to do something different – she read out a […]
Non-Cooperation
Leela Samson, in her book Rukmini Devi writes: ‘Mrs Besant disagreed with Gandhi on the issue of non-cooperation. Her opinion was that mass civil disobedience was fraught with dangerous possibilities. She was […]
Mourning Achebe
So many people have written about Chinua Achebe so knowledgeably in the past few days; I can’t come close to that. I know next to nothing about him, but the […]
More Readers?
I, Varsha Seshan, author of The Story-Catcher and English teacher at your school… … donated two books to Vishwashanti Gurukul library. One for the primary school library and one for the whole […]
Wide Sargasso Sea
Post-colonial literature frightens me. When I think of it, I wonder whether I have to read it closely and carefully, and then pretend to the whole world that I understood […]
Not Just a Witch
I sometimes feel that a book that is easily read and easily forgotten cannot be a great book. Easy to read is always an important factor, but when it’s also […]
Will I ever call it junk?
How do teachers throw away cards they receive? The children I read to gave me so many cards. Some were beautiful; some were thoughtful; some were sweet. How can I […]
Book-Reading – A Different One
An acquaintance who is part of the Teach for India programme asked whether I would be willing to come to a small government school in Chandannagar and talk about my […]
The Circus Boy
I did two more book-readings yesterday – The Circus Boy and The Old Yellow Scooter. The reactions were completely different! Children never stop surprising me. The first reading (The Dictionary) was […]
Why I Write for Children
My first reading at St. Mary’s school yesterday told me, yet again, why I love writing for children. The number of questions they asked me and the way they interacted […]