Reviews & Musings

  “I accepted very late that I had become a husband, it took me a long time. Nearly 10–15 years to realise that she is my wife. Before that, she was just a woman who had my children, cooked for me, and took care of the house. I had no feelings beyond that.” ( Source ) Renowned actor, singer, and lyricist Piyush Mishra said this in an interview with journalist Shubhankar Mishra. The internet responded with the kind of melancholy admiration reserved for tragic lovers. Here was a man still faithful to his great love after all these years. But I could not stop thinking about his wife.

I picked up Kishore Kumar’s biography expecting to read about the maverick genius behind some of India’s most iconic songs. What I didn’t expect was to find a mirror—a reflection of every creative person who has ever struggled to fit into a world that demands conformity. 

In 2021 I stopped accepting unsolicited review requests for multiple reasons. (Well, that calls for another long post.) I still do review books but they are very few and the titles are very carefully chosen. Throughout 2022 I read books that I fancied choosing randomly.  In early 2023 I decided to start reading books by/on artists I admired on creativity, the art of creation, and the love of creation. These artists were not just limited to the world of writing. It included singers, lyricists, directors, actors, and a whole of artists from other fields. The process was slow because it was no longer just about reading a book. It was also about analyzing it, processing it, and learning from the book. And thus, was born a new journal – Learnings from the Masters . 

About the Author The Book of Indian Kings comprises stories and essays about some of the greatest rulers and statesmen in the history of India. Beginning with an essay on one of the country’s iconic rulers, the Mauryan emperor, Ashoka, by our greatest living historian, Romila Thapar, this volume brings together some of the finest writers of our time on a glittering array of monarchs, including Salman Rushdie on Emperor Akbar, Khushwant Singh on Maharaja Ranjit Singh, William Dalrymple on Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rajmohan Gandhi on Tipu Sultan, Jadunath Sarkar on Chhatrapati Shivaji, and Manu S. Pillai on Krishnadeva Raya.  Source: Amazon.in The Emergence of Empire: Mauryan India by Romila Thapar The First Hindu Empire by Abraham Eraly Raja Raja Chozhar by Kalki Krishnadeva Raya by Manu S. Pillai The Shelter of the World by Salman Rushdie Shivaji and His Times by Jadunath Sarkar Tipu Sultan by Rajmohan Gandhi The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the ...

Source: Goodreads.com Kashmir, a place that has been called heaven on earth, has been bleeding since decades now and sadly there is not much respite to its plight. While my heart goes out to all the Kashmiris who have faced the brutalities time and again, my mind is throbbing with questions as I try to delve deeper and understand the what, how and why. Written by Ashok Dhar, who was born and brought up in Kashmir, this book promises to be give you a first hand insight into the Kashmir issue.   *-*-* Stories of the trauma and betrayal faced by Kashmiris have been told, the events retraced and analysis offered. And yet, one of the most long-standing disputes in India’s post-Independence history remains unsettled. If it were up to Lal Ded, a Sufi poet, she would offer the most difficult solution so far—to look within. Kashmir As I See It, a personal journey interspersed with geopolitical analysis, is not only about the state but also about the voice that yearns to be...

Behind the Book:  Source: Amazon.in A renowned architect and artist on how public architecture in our cities has lost contact with the lives of the common people. Behind the seemingly ordinary life of a practicing architect lies a whole host of non-professional impulses that give shape to buildings. Stories of Storeys: Art, Architecture and the City is about these impulses and conditions—social, literate, personal and political—which are expressed, but often ignored in architecture. Bhatia looks at the ordinary, physical, visible and tactile involvement of our urban environment and the way it affects, communicates with, or influences us. An all-inclusive sociology of architecture, the book draws on the social life of some of architecture’s role players, people whose peculiar demands on design have come to characterize the building environment of our times, and times that are characterized by this progressive isolation of architecture from the society of common people...

Introduction Copyright (C) Privy Trifles ISBN:978-9386228918 Genre:  Non-Fiction/ History Publishers: Juggernaut Price: Rs. 599/- (I got the book for review from the publisher)

Introduction ISBN:  978-9382277446 Genre: Non-Fiction /Memoir Publishers: Aleph Books Price:  Rs.599/-  ( I got the book for review from the publisher ) In this remarkable and often unsettling book, Sumana Roy gives us a new vision of what it means to be human in the natural world. Increasingly disturbed by the violence, hate, insincerity, greed and selfishness of her kind, the author is drawn to the idea of becoming a tree. ‘I was tired of speed’, she writes, ‘I wanted to live to tree time.’ Besides wanting to emulate the spacious, relaxed rhythm of trees, she is drawn to their non-violent ways of being, how they tread lightly upon the earth, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, the unselfishness with which they give freely of themselves and much more. She gives us new readings of the works of writers, painters, photographers and poets (Rabindranath Tagore and D. H. Lawrence among them) to show how trees and plants have always fascinated us. She stud...