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Arun Ferreira is from the East Indian community, the original Mumbaikars, whose villages became the localities of a sprawling metropolis. He graduated from the prestigious St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and has been an activist since his student days.Ferreira is also a cartoonist whose drawings on social and political issues have appeared in various publications, as well as in student and worker magazines. Since his release in 2012, he continues to actively engage with issues of political prisoners, prison reforms and democratic rights. He is presently pursuing a degree in law and researching the history of the democratic rights movement in Mumbai

Poignant, witty, melancholic and intense, this is the best of four decades of prose from one of India's masters of the written word. The worst thing about being a human being is being a human being. 'I wish I was bird', as the railway clerk in Nissim Ezekiel's poem says. But if I were, the worst thing about being a bird would be being a bird. Welcome to the world of Adil Jussawalla, poet, columnist, critic. The essays and entertainments collected in this volume take in everything from language to poetry, from ethics to model aero planes, from death and addiction to travel and alienation. In these pages, you will meet poets, novelists, construction labourers, gamblers and, most startlingly, Jussawalla himself as a boy who lost himself at the movies as the acned adolescent on a ship watching a storm at sea as the flaneur of South Mumbai. Poignant, witty, melancholic and intense, this is the best of four decades of prose from one of India's masters of the written word.

In this eclectic and deeply personal collection, India's grand old man of letters brings together precepts, prayers and practical advice by prophets, poets and philosophers, and his favourite passages from the seminal texts of the world's major faiths. The Bible and the Granth Sahib speak to us from these pages, as do the Quran and the Vedas. The songs of mystics and saints like Kabir, Rumi and Teresa of Ávila mix with the verse of poets like Ghalib, Tagore and Keats. In the final section, Khus

Selected and translated by renowned writer, editor and translator Arunava Sinha, the twenty-one stories in this anthology represent the finest example of the genre. Some of the world's finest short fiction has originated (and continues to flow) from) the cities, villages, rivers, forests and plains of Bengal. This selection features twenty-one of the very best stories from the region.Here, the reader will find one of Rabindranath Tagore's most revered stories 'The Kabuliwallah' in a glinting ne

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Many popularly held views about the past need to be critically enquired into before they can be taken as historical. For instance, what was the aftermath of the raid on the Somanatha temple? Which of us is Aryan or Dravidian? Why is it important for Indian society to be secular? When did communalism as an ideology gain a foothold in the country? How and when did our patriarchal mindset begin to support a culture of violence against women? Why are the fundamentalists so keen to rewrite history textbooks?The answers to these and similar questions have been disputed and argued about ever since they were first posed. Distinguished historian Romila Thapar has investigated, analyzed and interpreted the history that underlies such questions throughout her career; now, in this book, through a series of incisive essays she argues that it is of critical importance for the past to be carefully and rigorously explained, if the legitimacy of our present, wherever it derives from the past, is to be portrayed as accurately as possible.

Portrait of a Serial Killer is an unforgettable celebration of India and Indians by one of our most beloved writers.Published on the hundredth anniversary of Khushwant Singh's birth, none of the essays in this collection has been published in book form before. A chilling account of the serial killer Raman Raghav rubs shoulders with an extraordinary portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru followed by an exuberant encounter with Dev Anand, as well as nearly twenty other profiles of saints, charlatans, writ

Degree Coffee By the Yard: A Short Biography of Madras brings forth the rich history of the city of Madras before it was on its way to becoming Chennai. Nirmala Lakshman has done a wondrous task of painting a culturally affluent and worthy image of the coastal city of India. Madras had many things to offer to the people and with an extensive historical background replete with freedom fighters, British traders vying for its resourceful land, luminaries and rogues, political leaders and many other

This Unquiet Land is a peep into the complexities about India as a nation on the move. Based on the author's real life experiences, from a time when she was a reporter on the field, to the behind the scene deals in the highest power circles, the book is a compelling read for anybody interested in India and its problems.The book also covers the impact TV has had on the masses and how news on TV makes such a big impact in the long run. Having a ringside view of some of the most gruesome incident

Ruskin Bond's writing brings the world to us in profound and remarkable ways. His signature style is simplicity itself, but the themes he tackles are big, deep and universal-love, loss, happiness, grief, and all the shades of emotion in between. These are stories of city and small town, mountain and lowland, and of life lived slowly and lightly. For over fifty years, these tales have charmed and beguiled several generations of readers. Last year, Ruskin Bond made a selection of his favourite sto

The First Firangis chronicles the lives of fascinating yet little-known foreigners from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who decided to become Indian.The Indian subcontinent has been a land of immigrants for thousands of years: waves of migration from Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, the Middle East and Greece have helped create India's exceptionally diverse cultural mix. In the centuries before the British Raj, when the Mughals were the preeminent power in the subcontinent, a wide array o

India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country'sStandard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language. Seventy-sixper cent of Indian students don't make it to college.

The clouds are moving ecstatically from Kashi to Mathura and the sky will remain covered with dense clouds as long as there is Krishna in Braj.These lines were composed by Mohsin Kakorvi, a Muslim poet, to celebrate not Lord Krishna's birthday but that of the Prophet Muhammad. Awadh, the author's birthplace, was steeped in this sort of syncretism in which Islam and Hinduism complemented and celebrated each other and Urdu culture merged with Awadhi and Brajbhasha. Sadly, this glorious culture ha

Extraordinary Indians is a collection of profiles of fifty eminent Indians (and one Pakistani) from a variety of backgrounds and professions. Published on the seventieth anniversary of India's independence, it is intended to provide the reader with a glimpse of the kind of people who have made this country great.Over the course of a long and prolific career, Khushwant Singh met and wrote about hundreds of people. The people in this book are those he admired deeply for their integrity, talent, g

What is true nationalism? What is pseudo-nationalism? What is anti-national? What is patriotism? Is the shouting of nationalist slogans important to prove one's patriotism? Why is Bharat Mata ki Jai so important to the right wing? Why does the law of sedition continue to exist on the statute book of an independent country? Who should the sedition law be used against? Why is cultural freedom important to a nation? What sort of India do we want? What sort of Indians do we want to be? What sort of

The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women's heroism has tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women portrayed-Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal-share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which they are willing to fightto the death if need be. In every case this belief leads them to confrontation with a horrified patriarchy.In the book we meet lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan, who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth.

For thousands of years, the Indian subcontinent has proved a fertile ground for the world's most captivating erotic love poetry, and the genius of its devotional writing harnesses great energy and mystical insight. It is in fact often hard to tell whether the poets are offering poems of spiritual longing using the garments of love poetry or writing erotic pieces in the guise of devotion. Perhaps, in a land where erotic sculptures routinely ornament its many temples and gods are known for their explosive sexuality, this question has little meaning to these remarkable writers. In their devotional traditions, eroticism and mysticism seem inseparable.This collection spans 2,500 years and includes work originally sung or recited by well-known bards: Kabir, Mirabai, Lal Ded, Vidyapati and Tagore. There are also poems from the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit poetry and Punjabi folk lyrics. The poets have largely emerged from the ranks of the dispossessed: leather workers, refuse collectors, maidservants, women and orphans. Their vision is of a democratic society in which all voices count. Often they faced persecution for speaking candidly, or daring to speak of spiritual matters at all. The notes include profiles of these legendary lives. Several of these poets simply vanished, absorbed into a deity, or disappeared in a flash of purple lightning. A few produced miracles-most of them are surrounded by clouds of mystery. Andrew Schelling has drawn on the work of twenty-four translators, including A. K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Deben Bhattacharya, Dilip Chitre, Gieve Patel, Ezra Pound and Robert Bly to build the finest anthology of India's erotic and spiritual poetry ever assembled for the general reader.

Mihir has followed Indian cricket since his school days in Mumbai and The Nine Waves in his own style will bring out the subtleties and the nuances, pulls and pressures, theculture and colour, the politics and the people that make Indian cricket different from othercountries

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The sounds and flavours of the land south of the Vindhyas-temple bells, coffee and jasmine,coconut and tamarind, delicious dosais and appams-are familiar to many, but its historyis relatively unknown. In this monumental study, the first in over fifty years, historian andbiographer Rajmohan Gandhi brings us the South Indian story in modern times. At heart, thestory he tells is one of four powerful cultures-Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu; aswell as the cultures that have influenced them-Kodava, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya, Tulu andindigenous.When the narrative begins at the end of the sixteenth century, the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur,Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar have combined to defeat the kingdom of Vijayanagara, oneof the last great medieval empires of the South. After the fall of Vijayanagara, less powerfulnayakas or sultans ruled the region. Competition raged between these rulers and the manyEuropean trading companies. By the seventeenth century, only the French and Britishremained to fight it out, in association with Indian rulers and princely states.