A humming word

A collection of seven stories, Men without Women by Haruki Murakami isn’t different from his other books, yet it is! The book revolves around relationships, supernatural phenomenon, love, deceit, but the translation in this book lacks the poetic depth that one yearns for in a Murakami book. Few stories are exceptional—it is a habit now for Murakami (genius dripping out at the top of his hat). But a few stories give a Deja-vu feel. Nevertheless, give it a try. The stories that I enjoyed were: 1.        The Woman Driver which starts with the common sentiment that women are bad drivers, it progresses onto a deep friendship between the two protagonists—a woman driver and her employer. Their camaraderie doesn’t translate to any physical relationship and that’s comforting. 2.        Scheherazade, inspired by a character in the Arabic folklore, is about a kleptomaniac, narrated by her paramour. The intricacies of the theft a...

The word is partition literature in itself. But who was Manto behind those stories? Behind Thanda Ghosht, Toba Tek Singh, who was this bespectacled man who was against partition and believed Bombay (now, Mumbai) was the love of his life? Can he be confined to being a writer who put his flesh and blood to write about he flesh and blood during the 1947 partition? And that what’s the movie does. A writer is a writer even beyond his books—his life are the pages of his life that he writes them. It isn’t a nine-to-five job—even when Manto was a father, husband, brother, he was a writer in motion—his thoughts, his words entered pages through the humdrum of daily life. He never wrote about silver linings or about freedom struggle but wrote about struggle for freedom of ordinary people living in the belly of our cities—things that people wouldn’t talk about. And Nandita Das has molded her cinematic expression like a poet would mold words into a poem and let the actors add assonance...

It took two weeks for India to inject religion into a virus – Daniel Fernandes, Indian Comic artist (source: Instagram) For a country with population bursting at its seams, Social Distancing is an alien concept. But you know what, we, Indians, have been doing it. Yes, we got thrashed and broke few saucepans and spoons, before learning it the hard way but we finally did it. Despite, working from homes, we wake up early in the morning, put on our masks, wash our hands and are off to the market. The shops are open at 5 am and close as early as 6 pm. In India, this concept is new. We are used to having our first cup of tea and coffee at 7 am. But look, what’s the Government’s done to us. We don’t hug each other anymore but say “Namastey” or   “Hi” depending on the time of the day. We wash our legs and hands and then send Whatsapp forwards to each other about our culture. The same culture that we banished and left our homes to work overseas—Australia, USA, Canada—we are everywher...