Magic Square


Salini Vineeth - 2020
    scholar, practically living in her research lab, leading an uneventful life. Amudha’s life takes an adventurous turn, when she finds a puzzle in an old Mathematics book. Surprisingly, the puzzle has nothing to do with Mathematics. Amudha embarks on a journey to solve the enigma. Every twist and turn in her journey is filled with suspense and surprises. The journey challenges and threatens Amudha. Whenever Amudha solves a part of the puzzle, a new one presents itself. Will Amudha solve the puzzle? How far does the rabbit hole go? What awaits her at the end of it? Will Amudha be the same person if she comes out of it? Read on Magic Square for answers.

Milk Teeth


Amrita Mahale - 2018
    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.

The Diary of a Space Traveller and Other Stories


Satyajit Ray - 2004
    what has become of them. Has he decide to stay on Mars, his original destination? Or has he found his way to some other planet? Our diaries unearthed from his abandoned laboratory revael even stanger and more exciting adventures in this amzingly original story.

Son of the Thundercloud


Easterine Kire - 2016
    For endless miles he walks through a landscape as desolate as his heart. Until two ancient women who have waited for rain for four hundred years lead him to the Village of Weavers where a prophecy will be fulfilled. A single drop of rain will impregnate the tiger-widow and her son will slay the spirit-tiger. The traveller will help the woman bring up the boy. He will witness miracles and tragedy and come close to finding a home again. And he will learn that love and life are eternal.In her new novel, Easterine Kire, winner of the Hindu Prize, combines lyrical storytelling with the magic and wisdom of Naga legends to produce an unforgettable, life-affirming fable.

White As Milk and Rice: Stories of India’s Isolated Tribes


Nidhi Dugar Kundalia - 2020
    The original inhabitants of India, these Adivasis still live in forests and hills, with religious beliefs, traditions and rituals so far removed from the rest of the country that they represent an anthropological wealth of our heritage.This book weaves together prose, oral narratives and Adivasi history to tell the stories of six remarkable tribes of India—reckoning with radical changes over the last century—as they were pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them fathomed.

Blood Brothers: A Family Saga


M.J. Akbar - 2006
    Akbar's amazing story of three generations of a Muslim family —based on his own—and how they deal with the fluctuating contours of Hindu-Muslim relations. Telinipara, a small jute mill town some 30 miles north of Kolkata along the Hooghly, is a complex Rubik's Cube of migrant Bihari workers, Hindus and Muslims; Bengalis poor and 'bhadralok'; and Sahibs who live in the safe, 'foreign' world of the Victoria Jute Mill. Into this scattered inhabitation enters a child on the verge of starvation, Prayaag, who is saved and adopted by a Muslim family, converts to Islam and takes on the name of Rahmatullah. As Rahmatullah knits Telinipara into a community, friendship, love trust and faith are continually tested by the cancer of riots. Incidents—conversion, circumcision, the arrival of the plague of electricity—and a fascinating array of characters: the ultimate Brahmin, Rahmatullah's friend Girija Maharaj; the worker's leader, Bauna Sardar; the storyteller, Talat Mian; the poet-teacher, Syed Ashfaque; the smiling mendicant, Burha Deewana; the sincere Sahib, Simon Hogg; and then the questioning, demanding third generation of the author and his friend Kamala, interlink into a narrative of social history as well as a powerful memoir. Blood Brothers is a chronicle of its age, its canvas as enchanting as its narrative, a personal journey through change as tensions build, stretching the bonds of a lifetime to breaking point and demanding, in the end, the greatest sacrifice. Its last chapters, written in a bare-bones, unemotional style, are the most moving as the author searches for hope amid raw wounds with a surgeon's scalpel.

In the Country of Deceit


Shashi Deshpande - 2009
    Teaching English, creating a garden and making friends with Rani, a former actress who settles in the town with her husband and three children, Devayani’s life is tranquil, imbued with a hard-won independence. Then she meets Ashok Chinappa, Rajnur’s new District Superintendent of Police, and they fall in love despite the fact that Ashok is much older, married, and—as both painfully acknowledge from the very beginning—it is a relationship without a future.Deshpande’s unflinching gaze tracks the suffering, evasions and lies that overtake those caught in the web of subterfuge. There are no hostages taken in the country of deceit; no victors; only scarred lives. This understated yet compassionate examination of the nature of love, loyalty and deception establishes yet again Deshpande’s position as one of India’s most formidable writers of fiction.

The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk


Sudha Murty - 2012
    Take Vishnu, who achieves every material success but never knows happiness; or Venkat, who talks so much that he has no time to listen. In other stories, a young girl goes on a train journey that changes her life forever; an impoverished village woman provides bathing water to hundreds of people in a drought-stricken area; a do-gooder ghost decides to teach a disconsolate young man Sanskrit; and in the title story, a woman in a flooded village in Odisha teaches the author a life lesson she will never forget.

The Frogs


Preeti Shenoy - 2018
    The Frogs is an unforgettable read by one of India’s most-loved authors.

Delayed Monsoon


Chitralekha Paul - 2011
    The rain drops hit the parched earth with a vengeance. The aroma of soaked earth fills the air. A sense of rejuvenation spreads around, as new life springs out, transforming the barren landscape into a thriving oasis. Abhilasha, the mother of a grown up girl felt the same when she finally meets the love she had longed for. A union in the most unusual of circumstances and in the most unusual of places—the internet. Abhilasha was caught in a dilemma whether to listen to her mind or to follow the beats of her heart.But this conflict served as an impetus which pushed her to a new height. Going through an emotional roller-coaster, finally she reached a stage where her passion turned into compassion, the most powerful form of love, where all conflicts appear trivial, finding their way into a harmonious homogeneity. In this new scenario none of her loved ones was left behind. A strong conviction bonded and inspired everyone to undertake life's journey where the rough edges were smoothened by the healing touch of love.A story woven around the life of an Air Force officer's wife with a glimpse into what goes on behind the closed gates, guarded by vigilant men in uniform. An insight into the life of Abhilasha and her dilemmas, the seemingly ordinary incidents but which are interwoven into a complex puzzle that she must solve.

The Quilt & Other Stories


Ismat Chughtai - 1994
    The narrator of this story, a precocious nine-year old child, is sent to visit an aunt. This aunt, ignored by a husband whose only interest seems to lie in entertaining slim-waisted young boys, suffers from a relentless bodily itch, an itch, her niece discovers, no doctor can cure and only her maidservant can relieve. Frank and often wickedly comic, Chughtai's stories were the imaginative core of her life's work, drawn from memories of the sprawling Muslim household of her childhood. With her mastery of the spoken language, economy of form, and her fine eye for the details of the intricate and hidden world of women's experience, Chughtai captured the evolving conflicts of Muslim India. Her exploration of the myriad and subtle tyrannies of middle-class gentility, and, equally, of those unexpected moments of sexual liberation and spirit, is unrivalled in contemporary Urdu literature.

Escape to Nowhere


Amar Bhushan - 2012
    An inquiry is promptly launched and Ravi, the suspect is placed under an elaborate regime of surveillance. The investigation subsequently throws up a huge amount of evidence, showing the suspect stealing sensitive data. As panic sets in, investigators acrimoniously debate whether to allow the suspect to walk free or physically force him to own up his crime. For Jeevnathan, the problem also is how to keep the tiring watchers going and persuade an edgy Chief to stay on course. As the story enters 96th Day, paradoxical consequences follow.Loosely inspired by a true incident that took place in 2004 when a senior intelligence officer suspected of being a spy for decades vanished, the story also treats us to a rare insight into the state of security awareness of employees in the Agency, constrains in conducting aggressive operations, pitfalls in liaison relationship, competing interests of intelligence services, hazards in co-ordination of intelligence inputs and the Kashmir imbroglio.

Girl from Fatehpur


Sarita Varma - 2013
    “Sana, you are only a kid…you will soon forget all this. Besides, don’t you also love Shahrukh Khan?”A decade has gone by and Sanjana, now a highflying professional in Mumbai, had thought she was over her childhood crush on Rajan. However, a chance encounter at a family wedding in her hometown Fatehpur re-kindles all her old feelings for him. But what about Krish, her persistent suitor who is also a senior colleague in the office? He just will not take no for an answer! His unexpected arrival in Fatehpur results in heated rivalry between the two men.Will the ensuing tension and misunderstanding put an end to all her hopes of happiness? Her first love Rajan, or Krish, her handsome eligible colleague…who will win Sanjana’s impulsive heart?

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders


Daniyal Mueenuddin - 2009
    An aging feudal landlord's household staff, the villagers who depend on his favor, and a network of relations near and far who have sought their fortune in the cities confront the advantages and constraints of station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Mueenuddin bares—at times humorously, at times tragically—the complexities of Pakistani class and culture and presents a vivid picture of a time and a place, of the old powers and the new, as the Pakistani feudal order is undermined and transformed.

Forbidden Desires


Madhuri Banerjee - 2016
    Imagine there is a stranger who enters your life and makes you realize you are living a lie. Imagine there is a love so deep that you need to sacrifice everything you have to save it. Imagine you find out your partner is cheating on you. What will you do?Naina, Ayesha, Kavita and Kaajal are four women who know nothing about each other and live cocooned in their individual worlds. Until one day, they’re forced to reckon with shocking truths they never imagined! Their desires haunt them, provoke them and make them fight to choose a new path in their lives. Will these women survive their stories of passion, betrayal and pain?Bestselling author and film writer Madhuri Banerjee brings to you a new romantic thriller that interweaves varied stories of women and their passions, to show us how all relationships ultimately crash into each other.