Book picks similar to
The Cabuliwallah and Other Stories by Rabindranath Tagore
fiction
short-stories
india
indian-authors
The Women Who Forgot to Invent Facebook and Other Stories
Nisha Susan - 2020
Three dancers in Kochi mastermind their sex lives over email. A young wife in Mumbai becomes obsessed with a dead woman’s online relics. Strange (and familiar) troll wars drag at a writer’s peace of mind. Her daughter’s cellphone conversations deeply worry a cook in Delhi. A young mother finds a job monitoring disturbing content for a social media company.The stories in this dazzling debut collection tap into the rich vein of love, violence and intimacy that technology, particularly the Internet, has brought to the lives of Indians over the last two decades. Two decades that transformed India’s digital landscape, where would-be lovers went from cooing into cordless phones to swiping right on cellphones.Whimsical in its telling and brutal in its probing of the human mind, these stories breathe unexpected life into the dark and joyful corners of a country learning to relish and resist globalisation.
MEGHNA
Sundari Venkatraman - 2014
He is an only son of the rich banker. Rahul is totally attached to his father but does not care for his mother. Read the book to find out why….Rahul is exulted with his efforts at work paying off and plans a holiday with his best friend Sanjay Srivastav who lives in Mumbai with his wife Reema, kids Sasha and Rehaan and most importantly, his sister, Meghna. Rahul recalls meeting Meghna just before they parted six years ago. Meghna works for a website and also teaches modern dance as she loves it. She’s thrown for a toss when Rahul comes visiting. She had thought he had forgotten them.But how could Rahul do that? Sanjay’s his best friend and Rahul had always treated their home as his own. Sanjay’s mother had been more of a mother to Rahul than his own. Rahul had stayed away after moving to England or so Meghna believes. Thus begins the story of Rahul and Meghna, the teasing, the flirting, the anger, the tears… …will they find love?ASIN: B00KUPUURS
Women Dreaming
Salma - 2016
Asiya dreams of her daughter’s happiness. Sajida dreams of becoming a doctor. Subaida dreams of the day when her family will become free of woes. Parveen dreams of a little independence, a little space for herself in the world. Mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, neighbours… In this tiny Muslim village in Tamil Nadu, the lives of these women are sustained by the faith they have in themselves, in each other, and the everyday compromises they make. Salma’s storytelling – crystalline in its simplicity, patient in its unravelling – enters this interior world of women, held together by love, demarcated by religion, comforted by the courage in dreaming of better futures.A beautiful novel by writer and activist Salma, translated from Tamil by Meena Kandasamy.
It Rained All Night
Buddhadeva Bose - 1967
I, Maloti Mukherji, someone’s wife, and someone’s mother—I did it. Did it with Jayanto. Jayanto wanted me, and I him … How did it happen? Easy. In fact I don’t know why it didn’t happen before—I’m surprised at my self-restraint, at Jayanto’s patience.’ Banned when it was first published in the Bengali in 1967 on charges of obscenity, It Rained All Night went on to become a best-seller. Maloti, an attractive middle-class Bengali girl, marries the bookish college lecturer Nayonangshu only to find him insecure, sexually timid and unable to satisfy her. She discovers passion in the arms of the confident, earthy journalist Jayanto whose love provides her solace from the demands of her wifely duties. Maloti and Jayanto’s growing intimacy does not go unnoticed by Nayonangshu, but his pride restrains him from reaching out to his wife. Bold, explicit and shockingly candid, It Rained All Night is an unforgettable tale of desire, adultery, jealousy and love.
In the Ravine & Other Short Stories
Anton Chekhov - 1970
This may be a surprise at the first encounter with even his most famous stories, because they are rarely driven by plot or anticipation. They are often gentle in character, elusive in purpose; but they create a resonance in the imagination that rings long. Here are 12 stories, from the brightly comic to the overtly tragic, each full of the sharpest observations of personality and situation, and with implications beyond their brief form; the dying actor, the children playing a game, the cabman with his tragedy, the orator's mistake and, perhaps most richly of all, the family laid bare in 'In The Ravine'. With music by Tchaikovsky and Balakirev.
Man-Eaters of Kumaon
Jim Corbett - 1944
Brought up on a hill-station in north-west India, he killed his first leopard before he was nine and wenton to achieve a legendary reputation as a hunter.Corbett was also an author of great renown. His books on the man-eating tigers he once tracked are not only established classics, but have by themselves created almost a separate literary genre. Man Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, one which offers ten fascinating andspine-tingling tales of pursuing and shooting tigers in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of this century. The stories also offer first-hand information about the exotic flora, fauna, and village life in this obscure and treacherous region of India, making it as interesting a travelogueas it is a compelling look at a bygone era of big-game hunting.
A House for Mr Biswas
V.S. Naipaul - 1961
Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, he yearns for a place he can call home. He marries into the Tulsi family, on whom he becomes dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in a struggle to weaken their hold over him.
Daura: A Novel
Anukrti Upadhyay - 2019
As he becomes more and more involved with the lives and troubles of the common people in his district, he finds himself sucked deeper and deeper into the dark heart of the desert. And there, with the help of the mysterious musician, the Sarangiya, he has an encounter with beauty in its purest, most absolute form. An encounter that precipitates a dangerous descent. The pages from the journal he keeps are combined with the narratives of those around him—a Tehsildar, a Circuit House guard, a camel-herder, a pair of tribal girls, a Medical Officer, a Police Superintendent and the Collector's orderly—to create a compelling account of his slide away from reality. Half-real and half-fable, and redolent with the songs and myths of Rajasthan, Anukrti Upadhyay's Daura announces the arrival of a powerful new literary talent.
The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die
Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay - 2017
Somlata has just married into the dynastic but declining Mitra family. At eighteen, she expects to settle into her role as a devout wife in this traditional, multi-generational family. But then Somlata, wandering the halls of the grand, decaying Mitra mansion, stumbles upon the body of her great aunt-in-law, Pishima.A child bride widowed at twelve, Pishima has finally passed away at the ripe old age of seventy. But she isn’t letting go just yet. Pishima has long harbored a grudge against the Mitras for keeping her in perpetual widowhood, never allowed to fall in love.. Now, her ghost intends to meddle in their lives, making as much mischief as possible. Pishima gives Somlata the keys to her mysterious box of gold to keep it out of the Mitras’ hands. However, the selfless Somlata, witnessing her new family waste away their wealth to the brink of bankruptcy, has her own ideas.