The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future. As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

    

    Meanwhile India, newly-independent, is struggling through a time of great turmoil as the agony of partition still throbs in people's minds - driving a wedge through friendships, families and political unions.

    Translated by Eliot Weinberger.

    Study of Islamic canonical decisions (Fatwas) issued in India during the last hundred years.

    To deal with Hindu Dharma or.more correctly,Veda Dharma or Sanatana Dharma,within the compass of a book,is like trying to contain an ocean in a jar.It is a task that can be accomplished only by a Great Master.Such a Master was Pujyasri Chandrasekharendra Sarasvati Swami who has in the discourses constituting this book given an illuminating account of Hindu Dharma in all aspects.He has brought to bear here not only his vast erudition but also his intuitive insights and synaptic vision.It is doubtful if in modern times any other Acharya has given such a lucid and comprehensive exegesis of the sastras. The Paramguru discusses the basic texts of Veda Dharma-the four Vedas,the six Vedangas,Mimamsa,Nyaya,the Puranas and Dharmasastra.These encompass various systems of thought and various points of view and the great master tries to make them part of one unified vision that is Hinduism.He combines ancient wisdom with modern knowledge and it is thus he finds common points between the metaphysics and physics of sound in the chapters in which he expounds the Vedas and tells us why their sound must be preserved.It is all in the context of varna dharma to which we owe the achievements of the great Indian civilization. Altogether it is an integrated view of Sanatana dharma that emerges in which the ultimate Vedic message of liberation here and now is underlined.

    

    Some have said India stands for "I’ll Never Do It Again." Many more are drawn back time after time because India is the best show on earth, the best bazaar of human experiences that can be visited in a lifetime. India dissolves ideas about what it means to be alive, and its people give new meaning to compassion, perseverance, ingenuity, and friendship. India—monsoon and marigold, dung and dust, colors and corpses, smoke and ash, snow and endless myth—is a cruel, unrelenting place of ineffable sweetness. Much like life itself. Journey to the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, the world’s biggest party, with David Yeadon and take "A Bath for Fifteen Million People"; greet the monsoon with Alexancer Frater where the Indian and Pacific Oceans meet; track the endangered Indian One-Horned Rhinoceros through the jungles of Assam with Larry Habegger; encounter the anguish of the caste system with Steve Coll; discover the eternal power of the "monument of love," the Taj Mahal, with Jonah Blank; and much more.

    Goa Freaks begins in the mid 1970s and tells of Cleo's love affair with Goa, a resort in India where the Freaks (hippies) of the world converge to partake in a heady bohemian lifestyle. To finance their astounding appetites for cocaine, heroin, and hashish, the Freaks spend each monsoon season acting as drug couriers, and soon cleo is running her own "scams" in Canada, Australis, and the United States. (She even gets her Aunt Sadie in on the action.) Wish her earnings she builds a veritable palace on the beach- the only Goa house with running water and a flushing toilet. Cleo becomes the hostess of Anjuna Beach, holding days-long poker games and movie nights and, as her money begins to run out, transforming the house into a for-profit drug den. Tracing Cleo's love affairs, her stint hiding out at the ashram of the infamous Bhagwan Rajneesh, and her sometimes-harrowing drug experiences, Goa Freaks: My Hippie Years in India is candid and compelling, bringin to life the spirit of a now-lost era.

    A South Indian Journey is a magical mixture of history and travelogue, and an unforgettable portrait of India - past, present and future.'A wonderful introduction to the history and culture of the south, and a work of love' William Dalrymple'A supremely well-informed and affectionate portrait of Tamil Nadu and its people...One of the most enlightening books on South India ever written' Rough Guide to IndiaMichael Wood was born and educated in Manchester. He was an open scholar in Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford, where he held a Bishop Fraser scholarship in Medieval History as a postgraduate. He has made a number of internationally successful tv series, including In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, and four of his books have been UK non-

    The case being exactly opposite, throughout the medieval period, the lower castes fought shoulder to shoulder with the upper castes against the foreign invaders and tyrannical rulers. Present study is only a beginning in this direction, based for the most part on medieval Muslim chronicles.

    In this remarkable book, a courageous anthropologist who knows the region intimately presents a very human portrait of the struggle. She argues that, despite its apparent defeat, it can only be in abeyance while the root causes, which have prompted so many young Sikhs to take up arms and fight for an independent Khalistan, remain unaddressed. Through the skilful use of interviews, Dr Pettigrew takes us into the worlds of Punjabi farmers, Sikh militants, and the police commanders responsible for containing a vicious conflict whose ramifications have spilled beyond the Punjab into wider Indian politics.

    Raga Mala is an unprecedented look at Ravi Shankar, master of the sitar and one of the most enduring and inspriational performers of the twentieth century.

    

    Written shortly after his harrowing escape from Cawnpore in 1857, with the details fresh in his thoughts, he relates the battle, siege, escape and massacre from the most horrible incident of the rebellion.

    Covering the full range of Indian cinema, from Hindi musicals to the impressive diversity of regional Indian Art Cinemas, this edition of the reference text includes expanded coverage of mainstream productions from the 1970s to the 1990s.

    This digest edition ties in with promotions and advertising for the Warner Brothers' movie to be released this summer.

    Incidentally they contain a large number of references to the social, political, and religious condition of India at the time when they were put together. We do not know for certain what that time exactly was. But every day is adding to the number of facts on which an approximate estimate of the date may be based. And the ascertained facts are already sufficient to give us a fair working hypothesis. In the first place the numerous details and comparative tables given in the Introduction to my translation of the Milinda show without a doubt that practically the whole of the Pâli Pitakas were known, and regarded as final authority, at the time and place when that work was composed. The geographical details given on pp. xliii, xliv tend to show that the work was composed in the extreme North-West of India. There are two Chinese works, translations of Indian books taken to China from the North of India, which contain, in different recensions, the introduction and the opening chapters of the Milinda{1}, For the reasons adduced (loco citato) it is evident that the work must have been composed at or about the time of the Christian era. Whether (as M. Sylvain Levy thinks) it is an enlarged work built up on the foundation of the Indian original of the Chinese books; or whether (as I am inclined to think) that original is derived from our Milinda, there is still one conclusion that must be drawn--the Nikâyas, nearly if not quite as we now ha ve them in the Pâli, were known at a very early date in the North of India.

    While the eleventh century Tamil poet Kamban's version inspires his Ramayana, Narayan's Mahabharata is based on Vyasa's monumental work. In Gods, Demons and Others, he includes stories from Kalidasa's Sanskrit classic Abhijnana Shakuntalam, the Tamil epic Silappadikaram, the Shiv Purana and the Devi Bhagwatam.

    Three chief categories of seekers have been kept in view in selecting passages for this compilation: those who wish to obtain a greater life-mastery; those who, while pursuing the common goals of life, also aim at something beyond the ordinary life and seek to grow towards a higher or spiritual state of being; and those for whom spiritual growth is the primary purpose and occupation of life......

    The book also argues that identities constitute a powerful constraint on the pursuit of economic interests.

    

    Siegel set out in search of the old man—called Brahm Kathuwala—to hear his stories and to learn about his uncommon life. But what started out as a study of other people's stories became a compelling story itself. City of Dreadful Night is an astonishing work of fiction, a tangle of tales that transports the reader from the Medieval India of magicians, witches, and vampires, through the British India of Brahm Kathuwala's childhood, into the chaos and political terror of contemporary India. Vividly recreating Indian literary and oral traditions, Siegel weaves a web of possession, reincarnation, and magical transformation unlike any found in the Western tradition. Flesh-eating demons, Rajiv Gandhi's assassin, even Bram Stoker and Dracula populate the serpentine narrative, which intermingles stories about the characters with the terrifying tales they tell.Siegel pursues Brahm Kathuwala from the ghastly lights of the cremation ground at Banaras through villages all over north India. Brahm's life story is revealed through countless tales along the way. We learn that he was raised, and abandoned, by two mothers—one the destitute floor sweeper who bore him; the other her employer, a wealthy Irish woman who read and reread to him the story of Dracula. We hear of his marriage to the daughter of a cremation ground attendant, his battles against her demonic possession, and their painful parting. We come to understand the daily life and motivations of this "horror professional," who uses terrifying tales to ward off the evil he himself fears.This unorthodox book is more than a story; it blends scholarship, fantasy, travelogue, and autobiography—fusing and overlapping historical accounts and newscasts, literary texts and films, dreams and nocturnal tales. Siegel uses imagination to explore the relation of real terror to horror fiction and to contemplate the ways fear and disgust become thrilling elements in stories of the macabre. This book is the product of Siegel's deep knowledge of both Indian and Western literary and philosophical traditions. It is also an attempt to come to grips with the omnipresence of political and religious terror in contemporary India. Shocking, original, beautifully written, City of Dreadful Night offers readers a captivating immersion in the wonder and terror of India, past and present.

    Proclaimed as the greatest poet India has ever produced, Tagore left an astonishing legacy undimmed nearly 70 years after his death. But he was also an enigmatic, complex and contradictory figure, torn between India’s spiritual values and the spirit of the West. In this definitive biography, Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson explore the man behind the myth, presenting the power of his person, the power of his name and the power of his work. The result is an enlightening and exquisitely rendered portrayal--not of the legend but, to quote Tagore, of "the figure that once moved."

    What the Hindus need most at present is an intellectual and cultural awakening.

    

    originally in vinyl, but we have made arrangements to have the volume rebound, an excellent edition. Available only through South Asia Books, the vinyl covers offered by other dealers tend to split. Our special ed. will be a useful aid for years to come.

    There is the story of Jumman the labourer, who thinks the Qazi of Jaunpur is actually his donkey! And the strange adventure of Dhania who, stealing out for a midnight snack, gets stuck in honey. Or the account of how a lowly weasel put the mighty Yudhishtir in place. And what happens when Bhim tries to match his strength against that of Hanuman!Culled from all parts of the country, and spanning heaven, earth and the netherworld, these stories let us into a world of enchantment, wisdom and loads of fun.

    His love life has always remained a carefully guarded secret. In this volume, for the first time, is revealed Bose's relationship with Emilie Schenkl, the Austrian he married in Europe. It contains 162 of his letters, written between 1934 and 1942, and published for the first time along with eighteen of Emilie Schenkl's letters that have survived.