I think I shall start a re-reading project and write about it here on this blog. This is for two reasons. Read more

We’ve been having strange weather in Bombay the last two weeks. It’s blazing hot, dry heat during the day – 36 degrees and above (yesterday it was nearly 40 degrees and it feels like 43 degrees today) – but night temps have been as much as 20 degrees lower. Read more

It’s appraisals season and I’ve been thinking about careers. Not mine specifically. Just careers in general. Because I’ve been sitting with the people who report to me (who are mostly very young), asking them what they want from their professional lives, and it made me wonder. What would I have said if anyone had ever asked me that question? Read more

A few weeks ago, I read a review of a book by a psychiatrist in which he said that the life you live in your head is just as much a part of your personality as the life you really live. Read more

Nadeem Aslam has another book out. Oh bleep. I’m always reluctant to start a book by Nadeem Aslam. That’s because he writes incredibly sad books. They’re heart-wrenching. They’re so poignant that you can’t even cry. You just crumple up inside. Read more

Every now and then people tell me that everyone is writing a book, so when am I writing mine?

To which I say, never. And then they act as though I’m just being perverse, that I will not write a book just because everyone is writing a book. Read more

Here’s a funny thing. I read about five books a week on an average, and the range of my reading is wide. It takes in everything I’m interested in and I’m interested in a lot.

Yet, when my friends and family ask me to recommend books for them, I find it very hard to suggest more than a couple of titles, and even those suggestions are tentative. ‘You may like this,’ I say doubtfully. ‘I loved it, but I’m not certain if you will.’ Read more

[I wrote this in 2004, when I was working in Delhi. It seems as relevant now as it did then. So here it is. Oh, and by the way, some hotels' plans for a ladies' only floor have become reality since I wrote this piece.] Read more

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself explaining to a friend how I buy books.

An explanation was required since I was talking about titles and authors he had never heard of, that I hadn’t heard of either before I bought the books. So how did I hear about these books in the first place, and what made me buy them, he asked. Read more

I feel a bit Shakespearean today.

I don’t want to sit at the office and look at ridiculous stories about ridiculous celebrities. Read more