Cometh the hour, cometh the man” is a popular saying. But given the sudden flood of books on Narendra Modi, it could well be “Cometh the man, cometh the book”.

Ashok Malik

In assessing a book or a creative work, the term “straight from the heart” is often overused and reduced to a meaningless cliché.

So many unexpected and inspiring things happened in Delhi this past December, that Nivedita Menon’s publishers couldn’t have hoped for a better time to launch her book Seeing Like a Feminist. Bestseller lists show that it’s been doing well — even with the F-word in bold capitals on the cover: a word which has never been popular, and seldom been handed to anyone as a glowing compliment, but still seems to have reached the very nadir of unpopularity in the last few years.

After three weeks with Devdutt Pattanaik’s Business Sutra as my reading companion, I have reached Page 185 (the book is 400 plus). And yet I venture to write this review because, 1) I am way past my deadline, and 2) that is the nature of this book.

For Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, a self-help book is an oxymoron.

There were Hindus and Muslims — but there were also Parsis and Christians when “India cracked” in 1947. Bapsi Sidhwa grew up in Lahore and has spent most of her life in the United States. Her novels — including India Cracked, also published as Ice Candy Man and filmed as Deepa Mehta-directed Earth — and her latest collection of short stories draw heavily on the young Parsi girl’s experiences during the tumultuous days of Partition and its immediate aftermath as well as the South Asian immigrant’s exposure to the United States.

Last October, when Maharashtra politician Bal Thackeray died, television channels which had been keeping a close watch on his health immediately started analysing his life and legacy. The next day his funeral was covered live by all channels, complete with pundits in TV studios discussing every aspect of his political career. Some anchors and analysts got a tad emotional, recalling their association with Thackeray — most of their memories were pleasant.

The Lost Girl is based on an intriguing futuristic idea — What if we could create copies of the people we love? Life is eminently unpredictable, but having an authentic copy of a loved one might take the sting away from sudden loss.

If you always thought that dieting is boring, then think again! For here comes a quick-fix solution to make your edibles not only healthy but tasty to the tongue as well! So forget those steamed, insipid vegetables and a bowl of bland, fatless food.

How does one become two? How did Hindustan get divided into India and Pakistan? What goes into a partition? What gets taken out, ravaged, savaged, bloodied, battered, maimed, murdered, lost? What happens to a soul that straddles nations and religions? What happens to the language in which Hindustan has been written and translated?