Quill and Canvas
May 26, 2009
There is a quaint little bookstore in Gurgaon, India called Quill and Canvas run by Shobha Sengupta and her husband Vivek. It is what you would expect your own cosy attic to be. Cramped but cosy, full of books of all genres, paintings by contemporary artists all existing cheek by jowl. I remember going there for a panel discussion with Sankarshan Thakur of Tehelka (http://www.tehelka.com/) the magazine that is credited with some sensational exposes, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (media person and economist) and Amit Baruah is the Foreign Editor of Hindustan Times. Read more
The 6Bridges Interview
May 20, 2009
We have all heard about being separated from each other by 6 degrees of separation. With some people you wish the degrees of separation would be 600 instead and less than six for the ones you are desperate to meet. The group that started the website at 6bridges.com (their byline says it is “An exclusive global community of Indian Professionals”) did it to connect Indian professionals across the globe. The site focuses on 6 key areas (another six) : Career growth, entrepreneurship, Re-skilling, money management, leisure and professional networking. We got chatting about this and that. Let us cross the 6bridges:
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Beyond B-schools
January 26, 2009
Books are flowing from IIT and IIM portals. And they are for the masses
By Mandira Nayar in The Week dated 25th Jan 2009
Dil Chahata Hai changed everything. The movie not only proved that Aamir Khan-with the right haircut and the facial hair-can believably pass for a 25-something, but also that the young in their eccentricity have their own vocabulary. The DCH moment opened up doors for writers and film directors to finally use personal experiences to tell India’s urban story.
Rohithari Rajan, 29, an IIM-A graduate, probably never realised selling soap had fringe benefits (other than rare free samples). Stranded in villages he could barely identify on a map on a rural stint with Hindustan Unilever, Rajan decided to venture into a territory that his degree would have never prepared him for-fiction. Read more
Netting Numbers
December 28, 2008
It has been a good year for Indian fiction. People are buying commercial fiction and are comfortable reading stories that are about “people like us”. These have started making commercial sense as well. The Tribune is a newspaper published from Chandigarh has a section on books in its supplement called Spectrum. Roopinder Singh writes a piece in The Tribune dated 28 December 2008 on Indian fiction selling in larger numbers. Read more
Media Recommends Married But Available
December 6, 2008
The Telegraph says,
” Married But Available (HarperCollins, Rs 195) by Abhijit Bhaduri follows Mediocre but Arrogant and is likely to be followed by Middle-Aged but Active. It is the story of Abbey, an MBA in the Eighties, when MBAs were just beginning to be accepted as god’s greatest gift to the corporate world. The prose is hardly of Booker quality, but the plot could interest a film maker wishing to capture on celluloid the pains and dilemmas of a man the rest of the world calls successful.”
The Telegraph has announced it way in advance that I am not getting the Booker Prize. Uh.. OK… I reconciled to that thought in a heartbeat. It is that bit about the movie deal that distracted me. I will quickly need to figure out how to spend the millions of rupees that come from a movie deal with Bollywood. It is not about greed. But do you think they meant Hollywood is knocking on the door… no seriously because that would be a game changer. i would have start thinking of millions of DOLLARS to spend (after the movie deal, of course)
“Low on heavy fundas and high on humor and a feel-good read.” - Times of India
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