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.

    Landlords rule over a feudal system that forces peasants to break their backs in the fields or be punished. As a small spark of defiance begins to spread among communities, the landlords vow to break them; party organizers suffer grisly deaths and the flow of food into the marketplaces dries up. But it only strengthens the villagers' resistance. Finally, the landlords descend on one village to set an example for the others. An exciting new release from this Chennai-based poet, writer and activist.

    So she is elated to learn she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner in a union beneficial to both. For Sardaji’s first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him children. Roop believes that she and Satya, still very much in residence, will be friends. But the relationship between the older and younger woman is far more complex. And, as India lurches toward independence, Sardarji struggles to find his place amidst the drastic changes.Meticulously researched and beautifully written, What the Body Remembers is at once poetic, political, feminist, and sensual.

    Chronicling the Indian struggle for freedom and independence from Great Britain, Tharoor directs his hilarious satire as much against Indian foibles as the bumbling of the British rulers.

    Nobles at the court of Awadh, the chess-addicts Mir and Mirza, move to an undisclosed location to play undisturbed as their kingdom falls around them..Shorts stories were the inspiration for fourteen of master filmmaker Satyajit Ray's movies, every one of them a classic - Devi, Jalsaghar and Shatranj Ke Khiladi, among them. This book brings together all of those stories in one volume. These tales, by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, Rajshekhar Basu and Premchand, are milestones in Indian literature quite apart from their cinematic glory. The anthology also contains two stories by Ray himself -Atithi and Pikoor Diary, that illustrate his own craft as a writer. From the dramatic to the starkly real, the humorous to the dark, the lyrical to the prosaic, Fourteen Stories... sparkles with narrative brilliance. Read together, these stories also provide us with the context for a new insight into the mind of one of India's most loved and revered filmmakers.

    Looking for safe harbour, livelihood, and a new place to call home. Communities congregated around churches and markets, sharing lord and land with the native East Indians. The young among them were nudged on to the path of marriage, procreation and godliness, though noble intentions were often ambushed by errant love and plain and simple lust. As in the story of Annette and Benji (and Joe) or Michael and Merlyn (and Ellena).Lovers and haters, friends and family, married men and determined singles, churchgoers and abstainers, Bombay Balchão is a tangled tale of ordinary lives – of a woman who loses her husband to a dockyard explosion and turns to bootlegging, a teen romance that drowns like a paper boat, a social misfit rescued by his addiction to crosswords, a wife who tries to exorcise the spirit of her dead mother-in-law from her husband, a rebellious young woman who spurns true love for the abandonment of dance. Ordinary, except when seen through their own eyes. Then, it’s legend.Set in Cavel, a tiny Catholic neighbourhood on Bombay’s D’Lima Street, this delightful debut novel is painted with many shades of history and memory, laughter and melancholy, sunshine and silver rain.

    As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India.

    After the sudden death of her celebrated husband, Shashi is alarmed to realize that overnight, she has lost her life’s moorings. Meanwhile, their fiercely independent daughter Tara, a Sanskrit scholar, has been drawn into a passionate involvement with an older man, which threatens to consume her in ways she did not imagine possible.Amidst a rising tide of religious fundamentalism in India that is determined to put women in their place, Shashi and Tara attempt to look at themselves, and at each other, in a new light. But is it possible to emerge from an eclipse unscathed?An astonishing feat of the imagination, The Illuminated is as sophisticated in the quality of its prose as it is provocative in its thematic focus on questions of identity. A remarkable novel of ideas, it marks the arrival of a tremendous new literary talent.

    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.

    Virmati, a young woman born in Amritsar into an austere and high-minded household, falls in love with a neighbour, the Professor--a man who is already married. That the Professor eventually marries Virmati, installs her in his home (alongside his furious first wife) and helps her towards further studies in Lahore, is small consolation to her scandalised family. Or even to Virmati, who finds that the battle for her own independence has created irrevocable lines of partition and pain around her.

    The plot of the novel reveals the various dimensions of life in the backdrop of the Sannyasi Rebellion—such as the plight of the people wrecked by lack of food and hunger that drove them to the brink of cannibalism, the militant rebels, and women’s participation alongside their husbands. It is considered one of the most remarkable works of Bangla language and Indian literature. The rebellion was fought by the sannyasi’s or monks and the common multitudes who took up arms against the tyranny of the British colonisers and their excesses, especially taxes in such a time of privation. Bankim also gave us the song ‘Vande Mataram’ which became the rallying call for rebels. The first two stanzas eventually became the National song of India. One of the gems of Indian Literature, ‘Anandmath’ carries a deep sentiment of nationalism which was the essence of the freedom struggle.

    But you have died.’Anushtup Chatterjee is thirty-two years old.He hates his mother. His job is a dead end. And his girlfriend has left him.Then one silent moonlit night, he wakes up in a deserted field in the middle of nowhere, with no recollection of where he is or how he got there. His wallet is gone. So is his cell phone.He is not alone though.There is another man there, a stranger with a gentle voice and a humble mustache, who has something rather unbelievable to say to him.That he, Anushtup Chatterjee, has already died.Mysterious and achingly poignant, Arnab Ray’s Yatrik is a story about hope and aspiration, love and regret, of the choices we make and those that life makes for us.

    The revelation shakes her out of the monotony that her life has become. It's time for a change.She finally dumps her loser boyfriend, quits her high-paying but extremely demanding job and goes back home to meet her family after nearly seven years.At home she finds a bucket list and she knows it's a sign of what she needs to do. With her is an old neighbour and friend who's just broken off with his girlfriend. Sparks begin to fly! However, what she learns is that you need to really live before you begin to love!

    covers partition and then life in East Punjab.

    The central character, Bimala, is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip. Her attempts to resolve the irreconciliable pressures of the home and world reflect the conflict in India itself, and the tragic outcome foreshadows the unrest that accompanied Partition in 1947. This edition includes an introduction by Anita Desai.