Kevein Books and Reviews

Magic Square is a mystery novella by Salini Vineeth. Despite the book being short in length, it is a terrific read and the author has made all aspects looked equally distributed with an élan. The story is staged against the prominent places of South India. As we get into the novel, we get introduced to Amuda, our main character. The author has put in brilliant efforts to transform this ‘once pessimistic character’ into the ‘driving force’ of the novel. While reading this book, it is evident to feel that the mystery is solved by a common human being, rather than by a great or larger-than-life character, the kind of characters we see in Colin Dexter, Daniel Silva and Robert Galbraith books. As a matter of fact, a great aspect. By all angles of semblance, Amuda is a simple girl pursuing PHD in Bangalore. She has opted for PHD when she failed to grab a job after doing M.Tech. Nevertheless, she knows that she is meant for something great in her life, though she remains in dilemm...

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Sadashiv – the author of ’23:59:59’. In this interview, Sadashiv talks about his writing aspirations, and the route to getting his book published. Stay on...while we chat with him. What inspired you to write this book? Any tales to tell… The moment I entered XLRI, I knew there was a story to tell! Honestly, earning money was one of my motivations. Incidentally, amidst of all brilliant minds of my generation, I was a below average student at my B-school, you know the one of those who starts searching their name from the bottom, on the rank sheet. All the euphoria of joining the best B-school comes down within a week. A rat race gets intense and against the popular belief, so-called glamorous B-school life becomes a series of frustrating failures. Everyone goes through a phase where he or she questions the choices, the reasons, and the motivations of joining a B-school – and therein lies a story – which turn...

Home is a beautifully written short story by Ruskin Bond about the indispensability of home. The story has been covered in the book Children’s Omnibus, a book full of like such stories. Basically, in this story Ruskin highlights the chemistry that cooks at home between children and their parents. Here, we see Suraj, a thirteen-year-old boy, who loves playing cricket and roaming in the bazaar but he is poor at studies. His father upon seeing his report card scolds him for playing cricket, eating excessive food, and not studying well. On the other hand, Suraj remains silent like an obstinate child. And when his father becomes irritated as he is getting no response, he grunts Suraj to leave the home. Suraj takes that remark seriously and leaves the home. He has a crisp note of five in his pocket. He otherwise spends money on toys and viands but now as he is out and knows that he will not be going back home, he thinks to spend it judiciously. His main concern is how to get food...

How do you test the brilliance of an author, especially new one? By reading a lengthy novel or an anthology? If we had to do this, we would pick up a collection of short stories. Because in a novel an author gets plenty of time to build, to rake-up, to dredge-up and play around the characters. However, in the matter of short stories one has to build the backdrop, describe the characters along with their peculiarities and eccentricities, and then narrate a tale that should sound exactly riveting, that too all within a limited time frame. Isn’t a challenging proposition? If we had to consider these many aspects, we would not shy away to say that Sattam Dasgupta is another natural born storyteller. Recently he published his first book, Parting of the Strangers and Other Stories - a collection of sixteen short stories. Many of his stories emanate from the Indian society that we often come across in neighborhood, social gathering, and at times in pub or bar. Combined all we f...

Does the title (23:59:59) sound strange? May be, well the book is neither a science fiction nor a fantasy novel. For your senses, it is a ‘B-school’ fiction. For many, the title may suggest that there is someone’s fight to race against the time? Well, this proposition fits quite well if you get inside one of the best Indian B-schools in India. There you will find everyone running pell-mell, as almost all students wish to race ahead than their time and caliber so that they can have dazzling career. But the question is, how would you come up with a dazzling career from the best B-school, it looks easy, is it so? In India, MBA is conjectured as a money-minting degree. Hence, students from across the nation strive for this degree that too from a reputed college? The new-age novel 23:59:59 by Sadashiv Pradhan possesses the same question. Well, if you think you know the answer, excuse us, you need to think again. Coming to the story of 23:59:59, we see it is about some students’ ...

In the novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ by Ruskin Bond we see that Binya obtains a beautiful blue umbrella by exchanging her leopard’s claw with some city picnickers. Her blue umbrella is so beautiful that almost everyone in the village is jealous of her. They say that this kind of stuff is often carried by Mem-Sahibs, and it does not suit to a village girl like Binya. Coming to Ram Bharosa, his name means ‘Ram the trustworthy’. He is a shopkeeper, probably middle-aged, not very old. He runs a tea shop on Tehri road, but he also sells curd, soft-drinks, toffees and so on, mainly food items. Once a day, a bus halts by his shop and passengers drink tea or slurp curd. By all means, he is the richest man in the village. However, at the same time he is greedy too. He often let people or students take items on credit and at the time of calculation, he charges them extra and when they can’t pay he snatches some of their valuable stuff for his personal use or to sell at his shop. Howe...

The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond is a popular novel featuring Binya and her elder brother Bijju. The novel revolves around Binya and her little beautiful blue umbrella; however we also see some other interesting characters like, Bijju, Ram Bharosa, and a boy named Rajaram. In this post, we are going to talk about Bijju, the third main character of the novel. Bijju’s real name is Vijay Kumar, but in the foothills of Himalaya it is a custom to call people by their nicknames, for Binyadevi it is Binya, and for Vijay Kumar it is Bijju. Bijju is a twelve-year-old boy and wears a leopard claw in his neck like his younger sister Binya, who is ten years old. Though we see that there is good understanding and love between sister and brother, still they differ in their temperament. Binya is kind to the cows Neelu and Gori, while Bijju is a bit hot-tempered boy. For this reason, whenever it’s dark he herds the cows vehemently for home. On the other hand, Binya and Bijju share vian...