On the cover of an Indian magazine are two children, a boy and a girl, twins, standing shyly near their mother. They are about 10 years old. The boy is taller and clearly weighs more than the girl, though his eyes are more bashful than hers. The mother’s face is...
MAXIMUM CITY: BOMBAY LOST AND FOUND by Suketu Mehta. Alfred A. Knopf. Hardcover, 560 pages. $27.95. www.aaknopf.com Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet,” Mehta projects. “God help us.” Mehta’s Bombay is a bustling, scary, fascinating, perplexing,...
There it was again, the fluttering in my stomach, the ache in my throat, the sudden dryness in my mouth. Count to ten, I tell myself, one, two, three, four … infinity, infinity plus one, infinity plus two. Don’t look at him, no, no, look at him. There, you feel better...
WHERE THE RAIN IS BORN: WRITINGS ABOUT KERALA edited by Anita Nair. Penguin India. Paperback. 315 pages. When the sage Parasurama threw his battleaxe into the sea, creating the territory now best known as God’s own country, Kerala, he also unearthed a wealth of...
WHERE’S THE PARTY YAAR? Director: Benny Mathews. Players: Kal Penn, Sunil Malhotra, Serena Varghese, Tina Cherian. 98 min. Rating: R. Theatrical release. Even though Where’s the Party Yaar? from a Houston-based trio of filmmakers—writer-director Benny Mathews and...
