Kevein Books and Reviews

The window is a screen and the world outside is a picture. This statement briefly sums up the theme of the short story ‘The Window’ by Ruskin Bond. The narrator takes a room on the roof of a long building. There are no other rooms on the roof; his room is the lone one. The beautiful thing about the room is its window. From the window, the narrator sees the world that lies out and far. He watches sunrise from there, and on the street down he observes people shuttling up and down, like passers-by, tongawallah, cycle-rickshaws, men, and children and so on. Just opposite the window, there is a huge banyan tree on which crows, mynahs, squirrels and other interesting insects live and fidget with each other.

After some days, an eleven-year-old girl called Koki comes to this place, possibly to while away the summer in the hill station. The narrator watches her from the window and says that there is magic in his room. She comes and then he made her watch the world of colors through the window…

It’s time for another author interview. Today, with us, we have Mohan Nair, who currently lives in Cochin, Kerala, India. He teaches Management in SCMS Cochin School of Business. Prior to teaching, he did Mechanical Engineering and was working with Indian Oil Corporation in its management cadre for 25 Years. 4 years ago, he quit the job and switched over to teaching as a profession after acquiring a doctoral degree in management.
What is the genre of your book? Do you enjoy writing this kind of book, or there is something else that you want to experiment with? The book ‘Nair Told & Untold’ is a collection of satirical short stories dealing with day to day affairs of people living around us. In each of the stories a character Nair is present adorning a role suitable to the theme of the story. In some stories Nair would be the protagonists, in some others he could be merely an observer and in some others he could be a person wielding some influence on the life of main characters of…

The Prospects of Flowers is a beautifully written short story by Ruskin Bond. The story is not that lengthy but it delves into some of the prominent themes of life that persist in the Himalayan towns and villages. As the story opens, the author subtly regrets the loss of time. He mentions there was wonderful colonial time with lot of mansions built in the hill stations by the British people to save themselves from the searing heat of the plains. One such place was Mussoorie. But now all those big mansions that once reflected the glory of opulence and comfort now lie in abeyance. Now, no one lives there; they have been deserted by their inhabitants. Probably, one strong reason is that India became an independent country and white-skinned people returned to their home country, England.

Well amidst all the ruins, lies a well-maintained cottage of Miss Mackenzie. The garden houses all flowers one can think of in the heaven. She maintains her garden and loves the flowers as they are her p…

After reading ‘Forever and Little More’ by Praneet Dabral, it becomes difficult to predict whether the novel falls in the genre of romance or some other category. It seems a cute love story, but there are elements of sadness and tragedies in it. It seems a biography of a lover, well there is more to that. On the other hand, the author has made it a riveting read by mixing two techniques simultaneously – flashback and biography style.

Tanish Cainthola is the protagonist of the novel. His story, mainly a love story, shuttles between two times i.e. 1977 and 2012. Basically in 2012, he is brooding on the events that happened in 1977-78. He returns to his hometown Snowdon after 34 years from Mumbai. He is frustrated with himself for many reasons.
In the attic, he finds a broken bat and a diary which once was written by him. The diary is mainly about his love affair with Jessica Jones in the winter of 1977. It has been long that he has kept his past suppressed but this time he finds hard t…

The Age of Azmoq is an epic fantasy novel by the Indian author Rajamayyoor Sharma. This is the first book in the Valantian Imperium trilogy. Before you start reading this book, you must understand the continent of Valantia because this continent makes the backdrop of the novel. The overall setting of the novel, including time and place, is different. For this reason, it is recommended, well in time, kindly see the map of the continent Valentia, and at the end, see the appendix to get knowledge about its military i.e. ‘The Valantian Imperium’ and ‘The Valantian Military’ and so on. As a reader, midway you feel as you are coursing through a book that actually is a military fantasy fiction. Well, there is more to that.


The book possesses a question: for what reasons battles are fought for? As we all know, for greed and power and to seize resources like coal, gold, diamond, and lately oil. As the title suggests, Azmoq is a powerful metal and whosoever can procure it and use it in the arm…

Writing short stories is a challenging proposition, especially for new writers. You have to build the set, describe the characters and their peculiarities, and then narrate a tale, that too all within limited pages. Not many authors rise up to this challenge, well Mohan Nair has done it wonderfully with his first book Nair Told & Untold, which is a collection of 15 short stories.

All these stories offer a fascinating insight into the lives of Malayali people, their culture and religious values that not only influence their daily life but thought process as well. The flavour of the stories may sound local because one character ‘Nair’ is made available persistently through all stories, though his roles differ from one story to another. In the first story, at Kabeer's Tea Stall, he is a silent spectator where one pessimist customer is made satisfied through product differentiation theory. Whereas, in Slaughtering Eyes, Nair is an intelligent commando who busts the secret trainin…