The central characters of this play portray the modern, middle-class, Indian family: a daughter who lives inAustralia with her husband and children, a son who is a media professional, a younger daughter who is willing to marry a 'suitable' boy from the US whom she has never met, a doting mother, an ageing father rapidly losing his authority, and a loyal cook. Wedding Album operates at two levels: it explores the traditional Indian wedding in a globalized, technologically-advanced India even as it juxtaposes the very different life experiences and expectations of the family and the loyal cook. By doing this, Karnad reveals how particular notions ofwealth, well-being, sexual propriety, tradition, and modernity form the basis of middle-class society in contemporary India. This play has already been staged at numerous venues and was translated by Karnad himself from Kannada into English. An outstanding addition to OUP's corpus of plays by Girish Karnad, this volume will be of value not only to students and teachers of modern Indian drama, but also to general readers.

    Bestselling author Ira Trivedi travelled from Shillong in the northeast to Chennai in the south, Konark in the east to Mumbai in the west, and over a dozen other cities and towns, in order to gain unprecedented insights into how the nation has sex, gets married and falls in (and out of) love in the 21st century.The book explores the sexual proclivities and mating habits of young Indians on college campuses and in offices; examines the changing face of Indian pornography and prostitution, especially the world of high-class hookers; probes the oppression the LGBT community faces in a nation where the Supreme Court shocked wide sections of society with its ruling on Article 377 that re-criminalized homosexuality; and delves into history, economics and sociology to try and understand how the nation that gave the world the Kamasutra could have become a closed, repressed society with a shockingly high incidence of rape and violence against women—the dark underside to the greater sexual freedom that men and women in our cities have begun to enjoy today.Trivedi goes deep into one of the most enduring institutions of Indian society—marriage—and investigates how it is faring in modern times. She interviews marriage brokers, astrologers, lawyers, relationship counsellors, ‘love commandos’, parents and nervous young brides and grooms, amongst others, to present a nuanced picture of the state of marriage in the country. She discovers that while arranged marriage is still the preferred form of finding a partner for the majority of urban Indians, love marriages are increasing at a tremendous rate. Also on the rise are divorces, extra-marital affairs, open marriages, live-in relationships and the like. Supporting her eye-opening reportage with hundreds of interviews, detailed research, authoritative published surveys and discussions with experts on various aspects of sexuality and marriage, Trivedi has written a book that is often startling, sometimes controversial, but is always entertaining and original. India in Love will change the way urban Indians view themselves and one another.

    The book follows the breakdown of the marriage, her decision to get a divorce, the trauma of doing so, depression and finally overcoming it all to become a stronger, happier person.Written with much wit, wisdom and warmth, it is a memoir, which anybody who has loved and lost will relate to

    Ships That Pass tells the story of Tara and Shaan, near strangers to each other after fourteen years of being married, and Tara's sister, Radhika, recently engaged, almost on a whim, to someone she barely knows. Even as Radhika tries to understand how a once ideal marriage has come undone, and struggles with her own feelings for an older man, tragedy strikes: Tara dies in mysterious circumstances and Shaan is arrested for murder. In the aftermath, Radhika realizes that while life may seldom turn out as expected, the only hope lies in finding the courage to take one's chances. A meditation on the nature of love and marriage, this subtle novella is vintage Shashi Deshpande. '[A] mesmerizing writer. . .you can never walk away from her stories.' About the AuthorShashi Deshpande, daughter of the renowned Kannada dramatist and Sanskrit scholar Shriranga, was born in Dharwad. She studied economics in Mumbai, then moved to Bangalore, where she gained a degree in law. Her writing career began in 1970, initially with short stories, of which several volumes have been published. She is also the author of eight novels, the best known of which are That Long Silence, which won the Sahitya Akademi award and is considered a landmark in Indian writing in English; The Dark Holds No Terror; Small Remedies; Moving On; and The Country of Deceit.

    A meeting is in progress to decide the fate of the establishment and its residents. And the zeitgeist of the 1990s appears to have touched everyone and everything around them.Ira is now a journalist on the civic beat, unearthing stories of corruption and indolence, and trying to push back memories of a lost love. Kartik works a corporate job with an MNC, and leads a secret, agonising, exhilarating second life. Between and around them throbs the living, beating heart of Mumbai, city of heaving inequities and limitless dreams.Milk Teeth is subtle, incisive, unputdownable.

    According to the Devi Bhagavata, the universe is but her manifestation. The worship of Durga is believed to be more than 4,000 years old in India.

    He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.

    It also had an unexpected effect on its author: Orenstein realized that talking about girls is only half the conversation. Boys are subject to the same cultural forces as girls—steeped in the same distorted media images and binary stereotypes of female sexiness and toxic masculinity—which equally affect how they navigate sexual and emotional relationships. In Boys & Sex, Peggy Orenstein dives back into the lives of young people to once again give voice to the unspoken, revealing how young men understand and negotiate the new rules of physical and emotional intimacy.Drawing on comprehensive interviews with young men, psychologists, academics, and experts in the field, Boys & Sex dissects so-called locker room talk; how the word “hilarious” robs boys of empathy; pornography as the new sex education; boys’ understanding of hookup culture and consent; and their experience as both victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. By surfacing young men’s experience in all its complexity, Orenstein is able to unravel the hidden truths, hard lessons, and important realities of young male sexuality in today’s world. The result is a provocative and paradigm-shifting work that offers a much-needed vision of how boys can truly move forward as better men.

    But the same things that have made it so have also made a good marriage more fulfilling than ever before. In this enlightening and hugely entertaining book, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the sexual torments of Victorian couples to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is-and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was only 200 years ago that marriage began to be about love and emotional commitment, and since then the very things that have strengthened marriage as a personal relationship have steadily weakened it as a social institution. Marriage, A History brings intelligence, wit, and some badly needed perspective to today's marital debates and dilemmas.

    Through hundreds of interviews and the results of a scientific national survey of women, this book demonstrates that women are actually not random and that they really can be systematized and "mapped." In fact, much to men's delight, this book shows that women are actually quite easy to understand and please--as long as you know what it is they need. This simple map will guide you to loving your wife or girlfriend in the way she needs to be loved. The bestselling author of "For Women Only"teams with her husband to offer men the key to unlocking the mysterious ways of women. Through Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn 's national scientific survey and hundreds of interviews, "For Men Only" reveals what you can do today to improve your relationship. And believe it or not, as Jeff assures men, "It's not splitting the atom." And for every guy who rarely reads a manual: Quick-Start Guide Included! "When we featured Shaunti's book "For Women Only" on "FamilyLife Today," ""the phone rang off the hook! When Shaunti and Jeff come back on our broadcast, I'm buying some more phones. This is fresh and relevant--good stuff for every marriage. Read it!" "-Dennis Rainey, President, FamilyLife "Story Behind the Book "As I was writing "For Women Only "to help women understand the inner lives of men, over and over I heard that men wished there was a way to understand their wives, but they felt it was probably impossible. I heard from them, 'You are writing this little slim volume about men, but if it was about understanding women, it would have to be the size of an encyclopedia! Women are random and complicated!' These men were surprised and encouraged when I assured them that women are neither random nor complicated, and we can be understood. Men just want to love their wives well, and "For Men Only "will help them do that." "--Shaunti Feldhahn"

    Sudha is as beautiful, tenderhearted, and serious as Anju is plain, whip-smart, and defiant. yet since the day they were born, Sudha and Anju have been bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend.The cousins' bond is shattered, however, when Sudha learns a dark family secret. Urged into arranged marriages, their lives take sudden, opposite turns: Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household, while Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. Then tragedy strikes them both, and the women discover that, despite the distance that has grown between them, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of India and America, this is an exceptionally moving novel of love, friendship, and compelling courage.

    Her patience snaps, eventually. Pure in her love, this gentle woman is transformed into an avenging angel, raining death and doom on all her foes, until the gods are forced to intervene. Ilango Adigal's Tamil classic, Shilappadikaram presents life with all its flaws but also with hope.

    She teaches science and maths in the Bihar Public School. Ameya is the only son of a millionaire farmer-cum-builder and over and above that, he’s educated too. They meet and fall in love quite easily, the drawback being the dowry system prevalent in Bihar. With Ameya’s parents expecting a huge dowry and Surekha’s parents having a tough time eking a living out of their humble income, it seems like the match between the two lovers is one made in hell. Ameya isn’t one to take things lying on his back. But when the parents who adore him otherwise are so set against the marriage, will he be able to make Surekha his?

    The novel was Cobalt Blue, the story of a brother and sister who fall in love with the same man, and how a traditional Marathi family is shattered by the ensuing events – a work that both shocked and spoke to Marathi readers.

    The establishment and running of businesses tap into caste networks, both in terms of arranging finance and providing access to a ready workforce.By and large, caste has only been studied from a religious, social and political angle. Though it is widely accepted that caste has economic ramifications, any study of this aspect has been limited to looking at caste groups in terms of their per capita income, their representation in various professions, and other statistical details.Caste as Social Capital examines the workings of caste through the lens of business, economics and entrepreneurship. It interrogates the role caste plays in the economic sphere in terms of facilitating the nuts and bolts of business and entrepreneurship: finance, markets and workforce. Through this qualitative view of caste, an entirely new picture emerges of caste which forces one to view this age-old institution in new light.