Translator's Note: Mansarovar
“[Nature] will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my...
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Jun 18, 20235 min
Who’s the Boss?
N Kalyan Raman Ever since Rajinikanth, the superstar of Tamil films, announced his intention to make a formal entry into the political...
Jun 18, 20234 min
'Sarpatta Parambarai’ and the cinematic exploration of Dalit subjectivities
N Kalyan Raman The setting is North Madras, specifically the harbour area and its hinterland of a few square kilometres. Residents of the...
Jun 18, 20234 min
Who Killed Perumal?
N Kalyan Raman The brutal harassment and silencing of Perumal Murugan, a leading Tamil writer, on the basis of certain passages in his...
Jun 18, 20234 min
The delicate poetry of ordinary life
N Kalyan Raman A Town That Laughed by Manu Bhattathiri, Aleph Book Company, 2018 Manu Bhattathiri’s first novel, The Town That Laughed,...
Jun 18, 20237 min
Life in the Details
N Kalyan Raman The Hills of Angheri by Kaveri Nambisan, Penguin India, New Delhi, 2005 , 392 pages, Rs. 350/= Kaveri Nambisan’s novel,...
Jun 18, 20235 min
The Art of Losing
N Kalyan Raman Low a novel by Jeet Thayil, Faber & Faber, 2020 It’s not by accident that Dominic Ullis, the name of the protagonist in...
Jun 18, 20236 min
Poets in their time
N Kalyan Raman The Book of Chocolate Saints, a novel by Jeet Thayil, Aleph Book Company, 2017 raw-jawed, weak-fleshed there, stopped by...
Jun 18, 20234 min
The way we were
N Kalyan Raman Plastic Emotions by Shiromi Pinto, Penguin Viking, 2019 Starting from the late 1940s, newly decolonized counties in Asia...
Jun 18, 20233 min
The Tamil Mind
N Kalyan Raman Tamil Characters: Personalities, Politics, Culture by AR Venkatachalapthy, Pan Macmillan India, 2018 We have existed as a...
Jun 18, 20235 min
Can Scientists Be Religious?
N Kalyan Raman Science and Religion in India: Beyond Enchantment, Renny Thomas, Routledge, 2022 While religion has had, and continues to...
Jun 18, 20234 min
Palm Tree Tappers to Sickle Makers
N Kalyan Raman Nine Rupees an Hour: Disappearing Livelihoods of Tamil Nadu, Aparna Karthikeyan, Context, Westland Books, 2019 A world...
Jun 18, 20233 min
A City Has Many Names
N Kalyan Raman Madras, Chennai and the Self: Conversations with the City by Tulsi Badrinath, Pan Macmillan, 2015 Rapid and uncontrolled...
Jun 18, 20234 min
The Last Scriptwriter: An empathetic portrait of Karunanidhi
N Kalyan Raman Karunanidhi: The Definitive Biography by Vaasanthi, Juggernaut Books, 2020 In her recent biography of Muthuvel...
Jun 18, 20234 min
The Last Scriptwriter
N Kalyan Raman Karunanidhi: A Life in Politics by Sandhya Ravishankar, HarperCollins, New Delhi, 2018 Though the Dravidian movement is...
Jun 18, 20235 min
The Man behind the Icon: AK Ramanujan’s Diaries
N Kalyan Raman Journeys: A Poet’s Diary (Eds) Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez, Penguin Random House India, 2018 “The value of...
Jun 18, 20233 min
In Search of New Frontiers: The brains and blood behind ISRO
N Kalyan Raman Ever Upwards: ISRO In Images VP Balagangadharan, PV Manoranjan Rao, BN Suresh, Orient Blackswan, 2019 It was only in the...
Jun 18, 20233 min
Smell the Kapi
N Kalyan Raman Degree Coffee by the Yard: A Short Biography of Madras by Nirmala Lakshman, Aleph Book Company, 2013 The book under...
Jun 18, 20236 min
How do state governments sustain the illusion of governance even when they fail their people?
N Kalyan Raman Despite the State: Why India Lets Its People Down and How They Cope by M. Rajshekhar, Westland Books, New Delhi, 2021 With...
Jun 18, 20234 min
Discovered in translation
N Kalyan Raman Culture, Language & Identity: English-Tamil in Colonial India 1750-1900 CE Language, Culture & Power: English-Tamil in...
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