Best of
India

1985

The City of Joy


Dominique Lapierre - 1985
    Made into a movie starring Patrick Swayze, this is the inspiring story of an American doctor who experienced a spiritual rebirth in an impoverished section of Calcutta.

Amritsar: Mrs. Gandhi's Last Battle


Mark Tully - 1985
    The book captures rise of Bhindranwale whose extremism played wedge between Sikh and Hindu, Sikh and Sikh and Punjab and India, the indecisiveness of Indira Gandhi who paid for the catastrophic aftermath with her life. Tully and Jacob bring tragedy of Sikh from many arresting angles. They met Bhindranwale and many other central characters in the drama. They gathered eye witness account from every quarter to fill in this remarkable picture of what occurred and present their thought provoking analysis of what happened.

Selected Poems


Rabindranath Tagore - 1985
    His ceaselessly inventive works deal with such subjects as the interplay between God and the world, the eternal and transient, and with the paradox of an endlessly changing universe that is in tune with unchanging harmonies. Poems such as 'Earth' and 'In the Eyes of a Peacock' present a picture of natural processes unaffected by human concerns, while others, as in 'Recovery - 14', convey the poet's bewilderment about his place in the world. And exuberant works such as 'New Rain' and 'Grandfather's Holiday' describe Tagore's sheer joy at the glories of nature or simply in watching a grandchild play.

India: The Siege Within: Challenges to a Nation's Unity


M.J. Akbar - 1985
    

Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories


R.K. Narayan - 1985
    

Glimpses of Bengal


Rabindranath Tagore - 1985
    It had been rightly conjectured that they would delight me by bringing to mind the memory of days when, under the shelter of obscurity, I enjoyed the greatest freedom my life has ever known.

Forget The Glory


Emma Drummond - 1985
    Meanwhile, 18-year-old Mary, widowed twice, is determined to improve her lot, and will eventually become lady's maid to Rowan's "beautiful shell" of a wife. Then at last--the 43rd is going to war! Rowan joyfully announces this on horseback to a stunned ballroom. While the over 600 men and 750 fine horses journey through exotic and dangerous terrain to relieve the decimated troops in the Crimea, there'll be a cholera epidemic and sandstorms, deaths and one pathetic desertion, and Rowan will battle storms within: marital disillusion; nightmare guilt about his (honorable) refusal to prevent the torture death of a bandit's girl; doubts about the glory of war; and his inexplicable attraction to the lowly Mary.

Nation of Fools: Or Scenes from Indian Life


Balraj Khanna - 1985
    Omi is just one of the boys in Camp Baldev Nagar expected to pass his exams, agree to an arranged marriage, and generally improve his station in life. However, he comes to resent the traditional life laid out for him by his hot-blooded, sweet-vending, social-climbing father. Creating a great deal of ill will as he challenges his father's authority, Omi strives to establish his independence and chart his own life. Along the way he surprises everybody, including himself.

Norman Lewis Omnibus: A Dragon Apparent; Golden Earth; and a Goddess in the Stones


Norman Lewis - 1985
    Omnibus containingA Dragon Apparent - Travels in Laos, Cambodia & VietnamGolden Earth - Travels in Burma (Myanmar)A Goddess in the Stones - Travels in India

The Frontier Scouts


Charles Chenevix Trench - 1985
    The intriguing and colourful story of the Frontier Scouts, Pathan tribesmen led by young officers of the Indian Army and experienced officers of their own tribes, told mostly in the words of those British and Pathan officers themselves.

Elements of Hindu Iconography: Vol. 1 & 2


T.A. Gopinatha Rao - 1985
    The book is in two volumes, each volume again in two parts. Vol. I, Part I contains a long Introduction discussing among other things the origin of Hindu image worship in India, explanatory description of the terms employed in the work, Ganapati, Visnu and his major and minor avataras and manifestations, Garuda and Ayudha-Purushas or personified images of the weapons and emblems held by gods. Vol. I, Part II deals with Aditya and Nava Grahas (nine planets) and their symbolic features and images worshipped, Devi (Goddesses), Parivara-devatas, and measurement of proportions in images. Vol. II, Part I begins with an Introduction discussing the cult of Siva which is followed by such important topics as Siva, Lingas, Lingodbhavamurti, Chandrasekharamurti, Pasupatamurti and Raudrapasupatamurti, other Ugra forms of Siva, Dakshinamurti, Kankalamurti and Bhikshatanamurti, and other important aspects of Siva. Vol. II, Part II contains descriptions of Subrahmanya, Nandikesvara and Adhikaranandi, Chandesvara, Bhaktas, Arya or Hariharaputra, Kshetrapalas, Brahma, the Dikpalakas, and demi-gods. In addition the book contains 5 Appendices including Sanskrit texts of Parivaradevatah, Uttamadasatalavidhih and Pratimalaksanani.The treatment has been made interesting by profuse illustrations, the two volumes containing as many as 282 photographs of sacred images.