Meet 11: Loneliness

31 March, 2017 It was a somewhat lonely session with only three people able to make it. Discussion veered toward the difference between `loneliness' and `solitude'. Wendel Berry wrote ` In solitude one’s inner voices become audible [and] one responds...

An Un-necessary Woman

Makarand shared his thoughts on Rabih Alameddine's book `An Un-necessary Woman'. Reproduced here is a review of this book on GoodReads   Aaliya Sohbi lives alone in her Beirut apartment, surrounded by stockpiles of books. Godless, fatherless, divorced, and childless,...

Meet 10: Shiva

3rd March 2017: It was Maha Shivratri last week and we were supposed to have met then.  So the theme `Shiva' seemed very appropriate. But then, we ended up postponing the session but..continued with the theme. Discussions sparked off by...

Kannappa Nayanar and Bhilla worship Shiva

Two stories that are popular in two different parts of India but are very similar. They highlight that it is not the manner  of worship but the devotion with which it is done that is important. At least so far as...

Meet 9: Fear

Contributions this time explored the nature of fear, the utility of fear and a new (to most of us) genre of story-telling - the chat story. Enjoy... Torture by Hope, a short story (original in French) by Count Villiers de...

What fear can teach us

A TED Talk by Karen Thompson Walker on `What fear can teach us' Extracts: Fear is a kind of unintentional story-telling that we are all born knowing how to do. If we all try to read our fears we too...

Meet 8: Animals

Yes, THAT was the theme. Animals. So, we had some contributions that were bang on target and some that had tenuous links to it and some were ..well... about  animals but not from the realm of literature. Here is what...

How the Monkeys Saved the Fish

A Tanzanian Folktale The rainy season that year had been the strongest ever and the river had broken its banks. There were floods everywhere and the animals were all running up into the hills. The floods came so fast that...

The Lion’s Share

A Nubian folk tale One day the lion, the wolf and the fox went out hunting together. They caught a wild ass, a gazelle and a hare. The lion spoke to the wolf, "Mr. Wolf, you may divide the venison...