The Literary City
Episodes
The Soviets, Rajiv Gandhi And Delhi In The '80s - 'For No Reason At All' A Novel By Ramjee Chandran
29 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFor No Reason At All is a thinly fictionalised version of a very interesting and a very real story. High stakes and high intrigue—the ...
Discovering The Lost Glory Of India With William Dalrymple And The Golden Road
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe Indians often wear our heritage with pride, but how much of it do we truly understand?William Dalrymple’s latest book, The Golden R...
108 Reasons To Love Art and Alka Pande - A Conversation With Kamini Sawhney
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis special edition of The Literary City is a conversation about the transformative power of the arts—particularly the visual arts. O...
Anirudh Kanisetti And His Conquest Of The Mediaeval Deccan
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAs writers, we know that how we say something matters as much as what we say. The right words, arranged with care, can influence thought...
Malcolm Gladwell And The Revenge Of The Tipping Point
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMuch of what we understand about global trends is filtered through the lens of the United States. What happens there often shapes though...
Celestial by Abhay K And 10 Indian Languages by Karthik Venkatesh
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode of The Literary City, we embark on a journey with two distinguished guests—each bringing a unique perspective to our e...
The Literary Life Of Ramachandra Guha
20 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMy guest today is a titan of Indian history, Ramachandra Guha.He is known for his monumental works on Gandhi and Indian history, but tod...
The Lighthouse Family: A Compelling Novel From The Turkish Ambassador
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMy guest today, is an author from Turkiye, Firat Sunel. He is a career diplomat. He is currently the Turkish Ambassador to India.Firat i...
Churchill And India Fighting Retreat With Historian Walter Reid
12 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textYou know how some people just seem to have that star quality? Winston Churchill, he was one of those. No matter how many books, document...
A Disquiet In The Queen Of All Nations With Abhijit Sengupta
28 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn what is meant to be his quiet and reflective corridor of retirement, my guest today, Abhijit Sengupta grapples with a disquiet that l...
The Secret Of More With Tejaswini Apte-Rahm
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe essence of historical fiction is telling stories set in a particular period of time. They transport us to a different place, offerin...
Mani Shankar Aiyar And The Memoirs Of A Very Literary Maverick
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMy guest today is the remarkable Mani Shankar Aiyar. If you haven’t heard of him, let’s simply admit that you’ve been living under...
The Art Of The Thriller And The American Boyfriend With Ivy Ngeow
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn an essay, published in a 1964 edition of The Times Literary Supplement, V S Naipaul wrote:"The language was ours, to use as we p...
What Happens When The Big Man Passes On? After Messiah With Aakar Patel
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMost of us do not colour code our threat levels. But nations do.Following 9/11, the Homeland Security Advisory System in America in 2002...
Reason And Hope In A Dark Time With History's Angel And Anjum Hasan
26 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textGood literature can help us navigate our own emotions and motivations, and it helps us see the world through the eyes of the writer. The...
Prof Ganesh Devy - The Man Who Discovered Over 700 Languages In India
12 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAs a curious and casual reader of linguistics, one of the first things I learned is that there is no monolithic object called a single l...
Tree And Serpent With John Guy Curator At The Met In New York
29 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAs part of Siddhartha’s awakening, he became aware of a spiritual energy in nature where trees had souls, birds had wisdom, and flower...
Ahmed Naji Discovers Literature In An Egyptian Prison - The Story In Rotten Evidence
15 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textToday I‘m excited to be speaking with Ahmed Naji, a writer who spent two years in prison in Egypt for writing what the authorities jud...
Centres Of Power - In The Den With Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi And Chinmay Gharekhan
01 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhy were the 1980s pivotal in so many respects? Think the giddy days of glasnost and perestroika, the end of the cold war—of the whole...
With Tenzin Dickie And The Defiance Of Tibetan Literature In The Bardo
18 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textA few weeks ago, I was reading LitHub, one of the many literary magazines I enjoy greatly, and I found an essay that caught my immediate...
Godfrey Pereira And The Insane Story Of An English Smuggler In Bombay
04 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis is the incredible but true story of an Englishman—a dockworker in Bombay in the 1940s, who became a smuggler around the time of I...
A Tumbleweed In Shakespeare & Company - Jeremy Mercer
20 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhen George Whitman, in 1951, established a bookstore he wanted it to be more than a literary sanctuary for book lovers. He turned it in...
Aamina Ahmad And The Return Of Faraz Ali
09 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAuthors have for a long time used literary expressions of anguish as a powerful tool to connect with readers. They may use language and ...
John Keane And The Shortest History Of Democracy
25 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere are many who believe that the cradle of democracy was Greece. But if anything, Greece may lay claim to the etymology of the word d...
The Insatiable Feminism Of The Fabulous Shobhaa De
11 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThat was my guest today, the incomparable Shobhaa De.Shobhaa is one of the most famous writers in India and her reputation has travelled...
Nilanjana Roy And The Literature Of The Black River
21 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNilanjana Roy is the girl who, as a child, ate books — in fact, she was known to have devoured them whole. This is obviously a referen...
Jeet Thayil And The Epic Of Names Of The Women
07 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn the beginning of the episode, you will hear my guest Jeet Thayil read from his book, Names Of The Women — women whose paths crossed...
The Compelling Prose of Lynda Rutledge And West With Giraffes
21 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIt is said that you don’t rescue dogs. They rescue you. This saying reflects the connection we can have with our pets. Especially dogs...
The World–A Family History With Simon Sebag Montefiore
07 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThis interview was recorded live at Blossom Book House, Bangalore.Many years ago I saw a TV commercial that stuck with me. It showed a m...
Karen Anand - The Culinary And Literary Adventures Of The Masala Memsahib
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere’s something primal about watching food shows on TV. Or any food show. Even restaurants that have a glass pane through which you ...
To Hell And Back With Barkha Dutt
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhen the government exempted media from the lockdown, logically, this was to ensure that the media could do its job—which was to bring...
The Compelling Book Of Bihari Literature With A Poet-Diplomat Abhay K
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe ability to write well used to be a necessary qualification for high office. Whether prose or poetry, literature was important as a t...
The Amazing Reign Of Raja Raja Chola With Kamini Dandapani
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere’s much interest of late about the Chola empire.For many reasons. The reason that looms large is the recent blockbuster movie, Po...
Huma Abedin The Indomitable Peace Within
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere’s something about Huma. Something happens a few seconds after you meet her. You fall in love with her.Now, this immediate attrac...
Jerry Pinto, His Muse And The Education Of Yuri
08 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe way I read the book, the story is about the travails of a young Indian who must make the long and labyrinthine transition from boy t...
Winner of The Booker Prize 2022 Shehan Karunatilaka
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere is an old saying, “Dead men tell no tales”.But how wonderful and useful it would be if we could follow a conversation into the...
TJS George And The Inevitability Of The Absurd
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere is a point late in the lives of the very accomplished, when they unscrew the caps of their pens and write a compelling memoir of t...
How To Find Draupadi With Koral Dasgupta
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, the central character, the fulcrum of the story is Draupadi…in my view. But epics in mythology, t...
On The Journey To Ithaca With David Davidar
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhat and when was the first English language novel?There are some contenders for this honour, but the most plausible for me would be Pam...
The Conspiracy To Love Cubbon Park Bangalore With Roopa Pai
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textDifferent cities have different things they buy into. In Paris there’s style—you never want to look sloppy in Paris. In New York it...
In The Freedom Struggle On A Train To Tanjore With Devika Rangachari
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe great author Gustav Flaubert once said, “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe."I am not buying that ...
John Zubrzycki And The Shortest History Of India
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHistory was never considered to be a subject that would lead to gainful employment and I dare say, rewarding matrimony. Maybe that’s w...
The Art And The Realpolitik Of Mallika Sarabhai
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textBeing raised by very famous parents has its benefits. But equally, it is difficult to emerge from their shadows in which one must twist,...
Wadiyar Of Mysore The Maverick Maharaja With Deepti Navaratna
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHistorically and traditionally, the arts have enjoyed the patronage of kings.We all know that culture broadens minds. It’s an importan...
Aasma-i-Noor The Cursed Jewel Of Indian History With Sudipta Sen Gupta
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textEvery once in a while, you read a book, watch a gripping movie or a TV show; and you ask yourself the question, “Was that a true story...
The Literature Of The Middle Finger With Saikat Majumdar
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIndians live in many skins.We deal with an extraordinarily diverse and multi-layered thing that we call “Indian culture”.There have ...
A Journey To The Top Of The World With Chess Legend Viswanathan Anand
16 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textChess is a finite game with finite variables. Yet, phrases like “infinite possibilities” and “unpredictable outcome” seem comple...
One Crimson Spring Changed History. At Jallianwala Bagh With Navtej Sarna
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textNo matter how many times you have heard it, the story of Jallianwala Bagh is terrifying. But when most of us first heard the story of th...
The Voices Of Trauma. Reliving The Partition With Kavita Puri
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textFor those who might not know, when Pakistan was carved out of India to serve as a separate country for Muslims in the sub-continent, peo...
"Guest In Another's Land." The Remarkable Literature Of Omar El Akkad
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhat’s literary fiction?It’s not easily defined. Maybe because literary fiction is not what it is but it isn’t. Essentially, it is...
Are Translations The Next Big Thing? Inside The Craft Of Kalyan Raman
19 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textRecently Indian author, Geetanjali Shree's book Tomb Of Sand, won the Rest Of The World version of the Booker Prize.In literary cir...
The Joy Of Breaking Free With Vaasanthi. Her Life, Her Writing. And Her Muse
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn one of his dispatches from the front lines, in North Africa during WW2, Ernest Hemingway wrote this about Italian soldiers. When thes...
Untold Intrigues Of Charles Sobhraj And Fragments Of Farrukh Dhondy
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMost know who Charles Sobhraj is. But even if he has become something of a legend, Sobhraj was—by many accounts—a thief and murdere...
The Romance Of Rani Jindan —The Last Queen By Chitra Divakaruni
21 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe more experienced writers are aware that the hardest thing to do is to write without trying to be clever. Some writers are born to c...
Born A Muslim By Ghazala Wahab Introspective Quest And Questions
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textA very interesting study at Hebrew University found that the brain inflates numbers under some circumstances. University psychologists c...
Laura Murphy On Violence, A Murder And How The Slaves Of Azad Nagar Won Their Freedom
07 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textForty years ago, in 1982, two young men broke into the New Delhi home of an Indian Member of Parliament—and they held him and four oth...
Finding The Bebop With Jazz Writer Scott Yanow
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMy guest today is Scott Yanow—one of the best known and most prolific jazz reviewers.Writing about jazz is special, because of the dyn...
Shrabani Basu On Why Queen Victoria Loved Abdul Karim And How Conan Doyle Saved A Parsee Lawyer
24 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textA few years ago, I went to a movie theatre in New York City’s Chelsea, a theatre that screens indie films, to watch this new movie, Vi...
Advaitha, Social Politics And A Romance With Pavan Varma
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMy guest today is Pavan Varma. He is Vice President of the All India Trinamool Congress, a former member of Parliament, former Press Sec...
Finding The Indian Voice In English Literature With Poile Sengupta
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn the late 80s, the Indian voice in English literature started to be heard in a meaningful way. But in the early days, the writing was...
Bringing Grammar To Spirituality With Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam
03 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThere is no easy definition of spirituality.There certainly is no dictionary definition of it.So I decided to make sport of finding how ...
Factors And Fibonacci On The Golden Road With William Dalrymple
26 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textI will admit that until I had read William Dalrymple, I knew little of the history of Delhi, which is inextricable from the history of I...
Brevity, Bio Physics And The Short Story With Indira Chandrasekhar
19 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAlmost every famous author—Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Marquez and many before and after them—has written memorable sh...
The Fortuitous Rise Of Sanjoy K Roy And The Jaipur Literature Festival
12 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe reason I use the word fortuitous in the title of this episode of The Literary City is because Sanjoy K Roy, one of the founders of t...
The Fabulous Rajas—Last Shakespeareans Of Bangalore
05 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn old Bangalore, when you drove past the airport on the largely deserted road towards the suburb of Whitefield, was a farm, with trees ...
The Prose Of Protest And The Suppressed Smile With Aakar Patel
29 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAbout two decades ago I offered Aakar Patel a job as editor of Explocity. And just when we were all set, the famous and reputable newspa...
Bandleaders In Zanzibar And Chronicles Of The Goan Diaspora With Selma Carvalho
22 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textEven a mildly curious glance at any of the millions of communities of migrant people the world over will yield something interesting.The...
The Asanas Of Love, Hate And Mills & Boon With Milan Vohra
15 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe most difficult prose to write is the prose that is easiest to read.Writing on weighty matters is easy, if you are well-informed on t...
The Suresh Menon Guide To Assassination And Lesser Forms Of Literary Criticism
08 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe largely unspoken reason why so many people believe good grammar is a thing to diss, is because speaking English well is associated w...
Hamartia, Comma, Hubris, Comma, And The Literary Laws Of Aditya Sondhi
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIn this episode we spend quite a bit of time examining the comma.This, the smallest of literary squiggles, is also the most important of...
Twisting In PJ O'Rourke's Shadow
22 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWe pause in our interviews and other segments in this episode, to pay tribute to a brilliant mind of our times—writer, satirist and br...
Rubi Chakravarti Battles Bigotry With Bluster And A Beatific Smile
15 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe most enduring mnemonic of theatre is the twin masks of happy and sad. Comedy is Yin to Tragedy’s Yang. The most enduring vision of...
Across The Universe With Douglas Adams And Bruce Lee Mani
08 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textHow many of us stop to consider how much rock music owes to literature? Many of rock or folk lyricists of the 60s and 70s (and into the...
Shakespeare, Joan Didion And Amrita Shah Walk Into A Bar. And, "No Loos In Texas".
01 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textMost, if not all of us, who studied English in school will recognize the opening passage in the podcast…which are the opening lines fr...
The Utterly Urbane Autobiography Of Mahesh Dattani. And How Do You Break A Leg?
25 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textThe famous Alyque Padamsee said that Mahesh Dattani "...had given 60 million English-speaking Indians an identity."Padamsee&ap...
The Importance Of Being Seated Opposite Oscar Wilde And The Love Story In Wordle
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textIf there is, at all, succession in life cycles, Prasad was a child of the Roaring Twenties. And not— as many might fall to wrongly ass...
How To Hurl A Critic With Great Force. Also Bodice Ripper Romances.
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAnita Nair is one of India's best known authors, whose books have been translated variously and widely, into many languages and acr...
When Schubert Met Shakespeare. And Spilling The Beans About Coat-tails
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textWhat do you ask a guy who is one of the country's foremost classical pianists, a Shakespeare fanboi, a theatre company founder and ...
Arm Wrestling Women At Koshy's. And What's A "Duffer"?
04 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textAs everybody knows, the principal measure of gender equality is arm wrestling. Our guest on the show today is well-known actor and TV bo...
Trailer
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Send us a textExplocity Podcasts presents The Literary City With Ramjee Chandran. This podcast is devoted to words—written, spoken or signed. Words ...