Pico Iyer has a great column in a recent issue of Time that highlights India Becoming. “Impressively lucid and searching,” he calls the book. “In his clarity, sympathy and impeccably sculpted prose, Kapur often summons the spirit of V.S. Naipaul.”
blogging
Depressing: India has world’s most toxic air
Sunday, January 29th, 2012According to a recent study by Yale and Columbia universities, India has the most toxic air in the world. The study also produced a composite index of environmental indicators, on which India ranked in the last ten. Depressing, frightening, and rings all too true for many of us who live next to steaming garbage dumps or in over-crowded cities.
Videos from the Jaipur Lit Fest
Sunday, January 29th, 2012Jaipur was a wonderful, over-the-top and amazingly stimulating experience. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. There was a lot more than the Salman Rushdie controversy going on there. Here are two video links of the talks I did, both from Saturday, January 21st.
In the morning, I moderated a discussion with Philip Gourevitch. We talked, among other things, about genocide, political violence, interventionism, humanitarianism, and narrative non-fiction writing.
In the afternoon, I was on a panel of travel writers reading from their works. I read (last) from India Becoming.
Further demolishing the Chindia myth
Thursday, January 19th, 2012According to a Chinese government report, the country’s urban population for the first time topped 50%. In India, 70% of the population is still rural. Yet another reason why the frequent coupling of these two (future?) world powers is simplistic and mistaken.
Rushdie’s visit to Jaipur; censorship and illiberalism in India
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012Things are getting hairy at the Jaipur Lit Fest, with protests and threats surrounding Salman Rushdie’s visit. For many writers–myself included–this is yet another sad chapter in what feels like a rising tide of intolerance and illiberalism in the country. Will threats of violence succeed in keeping Rushdie away? I hope not. See this artice on the Jaipur controversy; and this earlier piece, by Basharat Peer, on “India’s Free-Speech Crisis.”
Jaipur Lit Fest
Sunday, January 15th, 2012This year’s Jaipur Literature Festival looks absolutely wonderful. I’m honored and excited to be part of it. Check out the list of speakers and the program. What a lineup. My events on are on March 21st.
Why didn’t Raj Rajaratnam take a plea bargain?
Monday, October 24th, 2011A great piece by Suketu Mehta in this week’s Newsweek. A couple of exclusive interviews really offer insight into Raj Rajaratnam the man, and particularly how his South Asian background and milieu have shaped him. I’ve often wondered, while watching this case, why Rajaratnam didn’t take a plea bargain. Now I think I understand better.
Blistering Barnacles! Spielberg’s Tintin on the way
Wednesday, October 19th, 2011I still own some of the Tintins that my father used to read to me when I was a boy. I grew up on the exploits of this intrepid and mysterious (because we know so little about his private life) reporter. I find myself laughing at Calculus or Jolyon Wagg or the Thompson twins as hard today as I did thirty years ago. Few things give me as much pleasure in life as reading Tintin to my two boys every night before they go to sleep.
So it is with some trepidation (but tremendous excitement) that I intend to go see Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn” this winter. My trepidation is heightened by the contradictory reviews I’ve been reading–some glowing, others scathing. I plan to take my boys–but I hope that the Hollywoodization of these comics won’t spoil the sense of innocence and purity that I (and I think they) still attach to these books.
In the meantime, for those less ambivalent about the whole thing, here’s a brilliant preview. And, for Indian readers, did you know that Tintin has now been launched in Hindi?
Falling Man: A portrait of Manmohan Singh
Monday, October 10th, 2011Great, in-depth political reporting. An excellent profile of Manmohan Singh and his government, from Vinod Jose in Caravan Magazine. You rarely get to read such behind-the-scenes political reporting in India. His account of the discussions and debates within the government during the summer of 1991 is particularly interesting. It would be great to see a whole book on that fateful summer–a kind of Bob Woodwardian analysis of the key players (and their compunctions and interests) who so radically remade India.
Rural India Disappears
Monday, October 10th, 2011Blog Post, The New Yorker Online
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, famously described the country as an “ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer” of history had been inscribed, without ever fully effacing the previous ones. Sometimes, though, I can’t help feeling that this place is less a palimpsest than a brutal, erasable slate: layer upon layer of newness, the past a commodity, disposable and easily forgotten.


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