Confessions of an Epic Indian

Click here to read “My Sister, The Moon” at Pratilipi

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The free book-of-the-month for October 2008 will be SHOCKWAVE: Book 1 of The Vortal Codex.
It will be serialized online from Tuesday 7th October with a new excerpt posted daily (every morning before 9 a.m. IST) until the entire book is online, free for all to read. I’m not sure how many days exactly, but […]

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This is to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read the full manuscript of Iron Gods online and a tenfold thank-you to those who wrote a comment with your feedback, every single one of which glowed with praise.
I believe that’s what they call ’sweet music to my ears’, […]

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© ASHOK K. BANKER 2006-08. PLEASE DO NOT COPY, FORWARD, PRINT, OR OTHERWISE PASS ON THIS COPYRIGHTED EXCERPT AS THIS IS A DRAFT IN PROGRESS FROM AN UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT AND MAY BE MISUSED WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE. THIS EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT IS MEANT ONLY FOR YOUR PERSONAL READING PLEASURE. THANKS AND BEST WISHES, ASHOK K. BANKER, SEPTEMBER […]

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IRON GODS: PALIMPSEST
by Ashok K. Banker
Book One of The Ganesa Palindrome
the complete novel will be available to read online for free!
From Wednesday 3rd September to Sunday 14th September.
Exclusively at the IRON GODS website.
It will be password-protected. The only way to get the password is to ask me for it, by leaving a […]

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I really liked this movie. It’s not what I expected. For one thing, it’s a movie about failure, which is rare. For another, it actually works, doesn’t spiral entirely into despair (though it comes close enough to be genuine) and still manages to climb out of the self-pity trap of its characters and raise a […]

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She was born 31st August 1946. Died 1990. She’s 18 and 19 in these pictures, I’m between 1 and 2 years old. The house is my maternal grandparents’ house in Sankli Street, Byculla. The pics were taken by my foster-father Bhagwandas Luthria, screen name ‘Sudhir’. My mother and father had already separated and divorced, literally […]

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This hilarious little piece is from McSweeney’s, which, in case you haven’t discovered it yet, is only one of the smartest, most nerdy (in a good way) online lit-zine around. I’ve block-quoted the first couple of paras below. Appropriately enough, I was alerted to it by Writer-Director Abbas Tyrewala’s Facebook Page. It helps if you’re […]

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Yet another great B&W graphic novel collection, this one by a great graphic novelist. Like any loyal comic fan, I read about the underground or small-press origins of many comic artists and writers–sometimes even self-published as stapled pamphlets–and longed to get my hands on those early efforts. Like […]

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This is a really cool graphic novel online. Free to read!
I first read Family Man by Dylan Meconis. It was good but Click is more my thing. It’s a realistic B&W graphic novel, like some of my favourite graphic novels–Box Office Poison, Blankets, Earthboy Jacobus, From Hell, Bone, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work…
I haven’t finished it yet, […]

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This is a draft of the book video script for the first book in the Ganesa series. It also serves as a nice blurb for the book itself. Way too long to fit on the back of a book cover, but I’m posting it here for those of you who have been curious about this […]

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I’m not a great gamer myself. For one thing, I lack the competitive urge, don’t really get a kick out of smashing, killing, beating, shooting, etc. Usually when I play a game, I’m more interested in the aesthetics, the background. I’ve actually wasted hours wandering around in an environment, completely ignoring the ‘missions’ given to […]

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The Beijing Olympics, for me, will always stand as the finest Olympics ever staged.
I was blown away by the Opening Ceremony, with the Closing Ceremony a close second.
To me, that Opening Ceremony was the greatest live show ever staged on this planet. I’m not kidding. I can’t imagine anything matching that. I’ve watched […]

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If you’ve read my Introduction to the Indian editions of my Ramayana Series–and if you haven’t, I doubt you’d be here!–you know that I hold Irawati Karve’s Yuganta in high regard.
Yuganta is perhaps the finest book ever written about the Mahabharata. And I say that after reading a few. Well, quite a few by […]

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BEIJING — In gymnastics today, the odds-on favored Hamstrovakian team took the gold in the Women’s Synchronized Dangling. Pictured here, from top, are teammates Uvula Stolichnaya, Ivana Hugankissya and Olga Reallylongfunnynameski.
Caption and pic from Cute Overload

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As promised, here are some recent pics of Willow with a couple of friends. Different days, different times…and yes, different dogs.
Excuse the blurry pics–if you’ve spent time around puppies then you know that trying to take pictures of them is similar to taking pictures from a moving ST bus on a back […]

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This review appeared on Abhinav Kishore’s blog and was brought to my attention by Abhinav himself who wrote in to me. As the 16,000th reader to write to me (since 2003), Abhinav receives a free signed copy of one of my books from me.
If you would like to see your review of one of […]

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Here’s a neat new online gimmick.
There’s a service called Odiogo that lets you set up a feed for your blog. Once you do that, Odiogo converts all your blog’s new posts into audio mp3 files. The files are read aloud by computerized voice sampling software, so it’s not really a living person reading your […]

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My agent, John Jarrold, has been the biggest help of my writing career. He gives indispensable advice, and knows the industry inside out. He’ll not only help knock a book into shape, but will work hard behind the scenes to make sure an editor is actually keen to read a submission. He’ll even guide me […]

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This is a slideshow of pics taken by me on one of my early morning walks with Willow on the Lokhandwala Back Road, near where I live.
Just so we’re clear, I’m not an early morning walker. I prefer to go to the gym to get my tri-weekly exercise, and for some reason, […]

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