Paromita Chakrabarti

1 week ago | indianexpress.com | Paromita Chakrabarti

As much a novelist of ideas as a storyteller of psychological and political nuance, Mario Vargas Llosa was a central figure of the Latin American Boom, alongside Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, and Carlos Fuentes. He distinguished himself early with a restless intellectual engagement with politics that was deeply rooted in Latin America yet universal in its philosophical topography.

3 weeks ago | indianexpress.com | Paromita Chakrabarti

Story continues below this adThe truth is, our generation doesn’t really know what we are up against. We have passed down the wisdom we have grown up with — don’t talk to strangers, look on either side before you cross the road, be careful with your words, be kind — but we don’t quite know how to navigate this vast, uncharted territory of the internet, on which one can be a million different people from one day to the next. Our finger on its pulse is indecisive, vacillating.

1 month ago | indianexpress.com | Paromita Chakrabarti

I must have good vibes because I seem to be among the handful who did not break out in hives at the latest Archewell Productions show on Netflix. As life hacks go, With Love, Meghan has very little to offer. The majority of us are unlikely to go harvesting honey or picking berries from our backyard (unless, of course, you’re a type-A overachiever with a hobby farm). I am definitely unlikely to ever make a balloon arch from scratch, but a one-pot pasta?

1 month ago | indianexpress.com | Paromita Chakrabarti

In Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish asks, “Where can I free myself of the homeland in my body?” Zahid Rafiq’s The World With Its Mouth Open, a debut collection of 11 short stories set in another troubled paradise, knows the futility of such an attempt. Instead, it embraces the homeland tighter, capturing the grief and unease of a world on the verge of breaking apart.

1 month ago | indianexpress.com | Paromita Chakrabarti

If homecoming had a colour, mine would be the mellow gold of a retreating Delhi winter morning. It’s the sort of colour that my city isn’t quite privy to. Winter in Kolkata is the burnished gold of nolen gur, the orange-crimson of an early dusk, the shadow of a tremor in my mother’s hand, the slush grey of my father’s hair. It’s the shapeshifting colour of change in my neighbourhood, where every time I return, the faces keep changing. So much of returning to Kolkata is now laden with nostalgia.