Mathures Paul

"There is something about Kolkata and India that gets into your blood!” J Chloe Braun has been writing articles and short stories most of her life. Having spent 12 years working with underprivileged women and children, her journals and memories gave birth to Hurdy Gurdy, a fictional account of one brave woman’s escape from spousal abuse. Raised in the small Armenian community, one of her aunts by marriage was an Anglo Indian. “Along with my parents she had a tremendous influence on me — encouraging me to read by buying me books, to be always willing to read my work, to study music and to think! Kolkata was a great place to grow up in – with its rich culture and hospitable people. Most of my teachers were Anglo Indians – my English teacher was tremendous. She not only taught us to speak proper English but to love the language as well.” The seeds for Hurdy Gurdy was sowed at a writing competition. “The topic (of the competition) was ‘Unusual customs or practices’, or something like ...

By Mathures Paul Silence is golden. With every footstep along the less-treaded green grass of South Park Street Cemetery one discovers on headstones names that inspired mortal souls to pen works of labour. In full bloom, branches still hang low over the tombs of the forgotten. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee. Buried in the cemetery, Rose Aylmer’s death inspired poet Walter Savage Landor to write this verse. As a 17-year-old carefree girl, Rose strolled alongside Landor on the mountains of Wales. She arrived in the city in May 1798 to join her aunt, Lady Russell (after whose husband Russell Street was named). But as luck would have it, she died of cholera a year after her arrival. Heartsick, Landor penned his elegy to Rose Aylmer that was engraved on her tomb in 1910. Even in death she remains a mystery for some. A few locals attribute her death to choking on pineapple and a few to an overdose of the fru...

Casually dressed, soft-spoken and a patient listener, Pascal Bruckner is an acclaimed French novelist. Born with an instinct for the fresh, Bruckner belongs to the Generation of 1968, a revolutionary era in the history of France. In town to promote The Divine Child (Rupa France), a novel published sometime back, he is a man who doesn’t divorce politics, culture and sexuality. “There are numerous ways to exhibit the spirit of resistance. In France, everybody wants to resist, some against the government and others against culture. In Divine Child the question that I place before readers is what if a child were permitted to choose, before birth, whether or not to enter the world,” says Bruckner. In the book, Madeleine Barthelemey is pregnant with twins. Doctors advice her to undertake their education in utero. Soon Celine is born. But she has to forgo her eruditeness upon entering the world. Being a spectator of her fate, Louis refuses birth and embarks on a rebellion. In chapters like “t...