A cross between a collection of philosophical investigations and idle banter, In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays, is a celebration of what Milan Kundera defined as ‘Mystification: the active form of refusing to take the world seriously’. From an Erasmian encomium to laziness, a literary forensic report on the adult years of Sukumar Ray’s Pagla Dashu and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the joys of staying indoors, to the exquisite pleasures of an electric blanket-and with a science fiction story on colonisation bunged in-this book is the equivalent of a meandering river in which the reader dips his or her toes in, not knowing whether a dolphin will come by or a piranha take a snap. This is a book that’s equal parts serious as well as frivolous, except you never quite know which parts are which.