*REVIEW*REVIEW*REVIEW*

How nice, and what relief, a GOOD review -- not merely because it is positive towards the book, but because it allows me to feel that a dialogue has been established: A Humanist Plea, by Sumana Mukherjee, appearing in THE HINDU's excellent monthly supplement, The Literary Review. Given the extremely stepmotherly treatment meted out to literary pages in other leading newspapers, THE HINDU is to be warmly commended for its generous allotment of space.

In the same issue, but in the magazine section Ranvir Shah's interview with me appears with the title Streams of Subversiveness -- he very modestly omits to mention that the book launch to which he refers took place courtesy HIS foundation, Prakriti, at The Park's discotheque, PASHA (ref. my post of a few days ago). He asked the kind of questions that were fun to answer. There's also a photograph of me which makes me look like a friendly gargoyle -- ordinarily, I look like an UNfriendly one, right? -- which is no surprise because the photographer stood practically two inches away from the underside of my chin as he clicked away industriously. I keep wondering why no-one has informed the news-reporters of the world that in case they want to sell more copies of their newspapers, what they need is ATTRACTIVE pictures, and that even if their subjects are middle-aged grizzly bears such as me, it is far preferable to shoot from slightly above, rather than straight up the nostril. Maybe they need to carry around a pair of stilts? Or maybe I should just get the underside of my chin -- or chins, is perhaps what I should say -- tattooed with something too obscene to print in the newspapers? That'd show 'em! Hah.