Archive - Tanuj’s Substack

A Word on Rohit Manchanda's Novels (not a review)

Novels' protagonists in the Manmohan Singh years, the vestigial flurries of Nehruvian India, and the provincial upbringing of cosmopolitan Indian…

Nov 12 •

October 2024

Conrad in Calcutta (a short story)

"Mr. Konrad, Józef, have you considered the possibility of a white man who will never be the captor, the master, the colonist? Of your own possibility?"

Oct 27 •

Appropriation (a short story)

“You’re resisting because it’s fashionable, not because you’ve suffered or are going to,” I said to Jyoti.

Oct 20 •

echoes & originals

I announced a short-story writing workshop, and it filled up in no time. Here's what led to it...

Oct 15 •

September 2024

Between the 'Cad' and the 'Angry Young Man'

Thoughts on the recent Salim-Javed documentary. This is an expanded version of the article published in Indian Express a few weeks ago, including some…

Sep 28 •

Love for Horses, by proxy - Part 1

From the days when I wrote my first stories in 2009 to today, my reading, writing and dreaming selves have loved horses.

Sep 24 •

About how I once became part of a movie crew; but also just a detailing of what my favourite movie, Jia Zhangke's 'The World', did to my dreams once…

Sep 11 •

Writers and Writing in Muzaffarnagar

Featuring my mother's literary life, a septuagenarian 'comrade' with an affinity for truth, and a crude estimation of the Hindi vanity-publishing market

Sep 3 •

August 2024

The Machine is Learning, Again

My 2020 novel The Machine is Learning, the tech-infused story of Saransh and Jyoti and Mitesh, sees a reissue

Aug 16 •

July 2024

Ridley Scott's Napoleon, and Tolstoy's

"Scott’s omissions are more mindless than driven by any desire to provide an easy portrait of unmitigated greatness."

Jul 21 •

The Story, The Story

"This story is aware of itself. A bit obsessively, perhaps to the point of knowing that it is about itself."

Jul 16 •

Midway through 'War and Peace'

Hair 'á la grecque', men with personalities wrapped in professions, and the modalities of boredom apropos fiction

Jul 1 •

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