My wife and I started reading “Mother Mary Comes to Me”, simultaneously, I in my kindle and she with the physical book. This is Arundhati Roy’s 2025 memoir exploring her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, framed by Mary’s death at 89 and drawing from Roy’s life in Kerala and beyond. My wife was shocked by the brutal honesty of the book, its depiction of people and the events in her life. Its portrayal of Roy’s relatives, some of whom happen to be known to us personally...

Abraham Verghese’s book, “The Covenant of Water” has become a best seller. The Story begins in 1900, in the princely state of Travancore. The place is Parambil, a fictional village in Travancore, a princely state renowned for its unique cultural and historical identity. Today this is part of Kerala, the southern-most state of India. St Thomas Christians flourish here. Much of the novel’s events unfold against this backdrop. Mariamma, a 12-year-old girl is being married off to a widower thirty...

My way of painting is to spread paint over the entire canvas in patches reflecting the general layout I want to create and then apply the...