Flavours of kitchen drama

The smell of wood fire permeates through this collection of short stories as does an earthy flavour reminiscent of food cooked with love and heightened emotions. Author Bulbul Sharma is a familiar name, having delighted many a reader with her mountain tales and hauntingly beautiful illustrations. She now returns with Eating Women, Telling Tales, a collection of nine insightful stories.

Set mainly in small-town surroundings, the stories transport the reader to a land criss-crossed with myths, superstitions, convoluted relationships and gender politics. Death stalks constantly in these stories which are diverse and engaging, spreading across the entire spectrum of emotions ranging from the chilling to the ludicrous. Thus, we learn about the goat that narrowly escaped being sacrificed, female spirits and their celestial squabbles, the breaking in of a wilful young bride, the feisty woman who thought nothing of leaping across the terrace wall to spend the night with the neighbour.

There is a charming unhurried air to the pace of the stories as the author weaves a vivid world of sights, sounds and aromas. Sharma is at her best when describing vegetables, flowers and silent gardens dreaming on in the shade of old trees and equally evocative are the pictures conjured of smoke-filled homely kitchens where a whole lot of things besides food keep simmering.

Full report here Asian Age

Literature in High Places

The list of Asian literature festivals is ever-expanding

Bhutan, as you probably know, is the only country in the world to measure the Gross National Happiness of its citizens. For its book lovers, there’s going to be a spike in the graph, come May, when its capital, Thimphu, plays host to the India-Bhutan Foundation’s Mountain Echoes, the country’s first literary festival.
It joins the ever-expanding list of Asian literature festivals — there were jamborees in Hong Kong, Dubai and Karachi in the past month alone — and features some of the usual suspects: Namita Gokhale is programme consultant, Mita Kapur’s Siyahi is an associate, and Pavan Varma, the writer-diplomat who is currently India’s ambassador to Bhutan, is one of the lead movers behind it.

The procession on stage will be led by the Queen Mother, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck and the PM, Lyonpo Jigmi Yoser Thinley. Other names on the roster include Urvashi Butalia, Omair Ahmad, Mitali Saran, Bulbul Sharma, Rajkumar Hirani (mandatory Bollywood presence), Chetan Bhagat (alas, not in the same event as Hirani), Gulzar, Sampurna Chattarji, Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Patrick French, Sadanand Dhume, Penguin India’s Ravi Singh, Leila Seth and Sarnath Bannerjee.

Full report here Moneycontrol.com