I don’t know how many writers this is true of, though I hear, on one online writers’ forum, that it affects thousands. But here’s my tale of my quest to write freely and independently and express myself fully, post 2008 (when I published The Killing of an Author): This month, the royalties from my #Amazon…
Imagine living in a world with just one mirror, a mirror that is permanently fogged up except for one square centimeter of clear space in which you must see yourself. That’s what you are risking when you take that first benzodiazepine pill, and particularly if you use it nonstop for three weeks or more. Russell’s…
How does one even begin to describe a big book packed with a cornucopia of intellectual and historical riches, one that is from a lively writer, historian, and linguist? Though the title, Dancing on the Edge of the Widening Gyre: A History of Our Times, may have apocalyptic overtones, it is not a futuristic fantasy…
Growing up in an innocent and sheltered pocket of Southwestern India, bordered on the west by the Arabian Sea, on the east by the Western Ghats mountains, and on its southern side by a state with speakers of Malayalam, a language totally incomprehensible to me, I did not really know the difference between black and…
This post was originally a response to someone quoting a few lines from one of my books (Impressing the Whites) without the larger context of the book itself and of my other work. But it’s absurd for me to react to every such post. My books range from 60,000-125,000 words, and anyone may select…
Once upon a time, I thought it a criminal waste of precious, Universe-given time and life to watch grown men running after an inflated ball. Or batting it, or bowling it. Once upon a time, as a child, I did both: kick balls, and hit them with bats and hockey sticks (hockey I was better…
The title of my new book, “Works in Progress,” emphasizes my position that nothing is final for me: I am always open to rethinking my conclusions (if any), and my stories are just one tiny strand in the vast tapestry of human history and thinking. I have a bad habit of publishing and unpublishing books,…
(Random thoughts, in 1996, of an evolving, changing mind*.) Butter Chicken in Ludhiana is a hilarious book, though having admired its author greatly, and perhaps too much, I suddenly began to ask myself, “Who does Pankaj Mishra think he is?” [Okay, he is a writer, and so am I. Writers write stuff.] For it is…
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