yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

  Banaras Talkies Author: Satya Vyas Translated By: Himadri Agarwal Publisher: Ebury Press, An imprint of Penguin Random House ISBN: 9780143454595 Number of pages: 207 Price: 199/- Thanks to the team at Purple Pencil Project  for publishing the review.  The Hindi version of Banaras Talkies came out during 2015. This campus life story is based in the Banaras Hindu University (BHU)– the author’s alma mater. The book, he says, is ‘ as fictional as you think and as factual as you can understand ’.   Given that it is his first book chances are high that his experiences find place in the story. This translation has come up 7 years hence courtesy the Ashoka Centre for Translation . The translator has invested time on a campus observing ‘ action ’. She found ‘students from Banaras Hindu University even in a swanky private college nearly a thousand miles away from where the novel was set ’. Banaras Talkies is about three young men Jaivardhan, Anurag aka Dada and S...

  Between Heaven and Earth – Writings on the Indian Hills Editors: Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma Speaking Tiger Books First Published: 2022 Pages: 420 Number of pieces (non-fiction): 37 Price: 699/- Thanks to team at The Hindu for publishing this  here .  An anthology provides a glimpse of life in hill stations in the north, south, east and west of India. If you are tuned to the news, the hills today are about traffic, water shortage, landslides, cloudbursts, work-from-home, tourist-hostels, drugs, over-populated towns, empty villages and so forth. Long before the pretty mountains were ‘colonised’ with the British perching ‘English townships’ on hilltops to escape from the ‘heat of the plains’, they were home to the ‘devis or goddesses’, tribal communities and Mother Nature. Between Heaven & Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills, edited by Ruskin Bond and Bulbul Sharma, is an anthology which provides a glimpse of life in hill stations, warts and all. Quaint resorts Bond...