The immaculately dressed Chowringhee, radiant in her youth, had just stepped on to the floor at the nightclub.’ Set in 1950s Calcutta, Chowringhee is a sprawling saga of the intimate lives of managers, employees and guests at one of Calcutta’s largest hotels, the Shahjahan. Shankar, the newest recruit, recounts the stories of several people whose lives come together in the suites, restaurants, bar and backrooms of the hotel. As both observer and participant in the events, he inadvertently peels off the layers of everyday existence to expose the seamy underbelly of unfulfilled desires, broken dreams, callous manipulation and unbidden tragedy. What unfolds is not just the story of individual lives but also the incredible chronicle of a metropolis. Written by best-selling Bengali author Sankar, Chowringhee was published as a novel in 1962. Predating Arthur Hailey’s Hotel by three years, it became an instant hit, spawning translations in major Indian languages, a film and a play. Its larger-than-life characters—the enigmatic manager Marco Polo, the debonair receptionist Sata Bose, the tragic hostess Karabi Guha, among others—soon attained cult status. With its thinly veiled accounts of the private lives of real-life celebrities, and its sympathetic narrative seamlessly weaving the past and the present, it immediately established itself as a popular classic. Available for the first time in English, Chowringhee is as much a dirge as it is a homage to a city and its people.An excerpt (Chapter 1) from the book :http://arunavasinha.in/2011/05/27/cho...

    Every story has its roots in the mundane. But it's the simple rendering of the profound and profound rendering of the simple which lends all these tales a unique flavor. Each story will suck you in with the simplicity of the plot, depiction of wide, and at times, disparate range of emotions and undoubtedly, the brilliance of the narrative. As far as story-telling goes, Masala Chay is piping hot, and of course: addictive.In this second venture, the characters come even more alive. By the time you start to read about them, you have visualized each and every person you know. Each story comes with a flavor of its own, which is unique to it. Every story gives a feel of the relation you have been in, at some point of time. If it wasn't for these moments life wouldn't be complete and if it wasn't for this book, you will never go back to revisit these memories. These stories will make you laugh, with their innocence, leave your eyes moist with the dark emotions.Every human has a list within them, lists of things they did, they never did or still dream of doing. These short stories are all about that. In short, if you want to know why this book should be part of your collection? Because no matter what these stories bring out from within you, they will make you react to each situation in them as if it's your own

    In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

    These poems show Collins at his best, performing the kinds of distinctive poetic maneuvers that have delighted and fascinated so many readers. They may begin in curiosity and end in grief; they may start with irony and end with lyric transformation; they may, and often do, begin with the everyday and end in the infinite. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.

    The subject is unquestionably a daring one: the events which bring about the marriage of Lord Siva to Uma and the birth of Skanda. The prose order of each sloka has been given in the commentary by using bold type, the words not actually repeated by Mallinatha being enclosed within rectangular brackets. The notes explain allusions, grammatical peculiarities not noticed by Mallinatha, copious extracts from other commentaries being given for this purpose. The book includes text, the commentary of Mallinatha, a literal English translation, notes and introduction.

    Between Em, the mother, driven frequently to hospital after her failed suicide attempts, and The Big Hoom, the father, trying to hold things together as best he could, they tried to be a family.

    And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, chosen by Keillor for their wit, their frankness, their passion, their "utter clarity in the face of everything else a person has to deal with at 7 a.m." Good Poems includes verse about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendance. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds. It's a book of poems for anybody who loves poetry whether they know it or not.

    His works were extraordinary bestsellers for their era, achieving fame both here and abroad. Now, for the first time in over 25 years. Poems and Other Writings offers a full-scale literary portrait of America's greatest popular poet. Here are the poems that created an American mythology: Evangeline in the forest primeval, Hiawatha by the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the midnight ride of Paul Revere, the wreck of the Hesperus, the village blacksmith under the spreading chestnut tree, the strange courtship of Miles Standish, the maiden Priscilla and the hesitant John Alden; verses, like "A Psalm of Life" and the "The Children's Hour", whose phrases and characters have become part of the culture. Erudite and fluent in many languages, Longfellow was endlessly fascinated with the byways of history and the curiosities of legend. His many poems on literary themes, such as his moving homages to Dante and Chaucer, his verse translations from Lope de Vega, Heinrich Heine, and Michelangelo, and his ambitious verse dramas, notably The New England Tragedies (also complete), are remarkable in their range and ambition. As a special feature, this volume restores to print Longfellow's novel Kavanagh, a study of small-town life and literary ambition that was praised by Emerson as an important contribution to the development of American fiction. A selection of essays rounds out of the volume and provides testimony to Longfellow's concern with creating an American national literature.

    A text that makes use—and deliberate misuse—of both British and Indian literary conventions, Six Acres and a Third provides a unique "view from below" of Indian village life under colonial rule. Set in Orissa in the 1830s, the novel focuses on a small plot of land, tracing the lives and fortunes of people who are affected by the way this property is sold and resold, as new legal arrangements emerge and new types of people come to populate and transform the social landscape. This graceful translation faithfully conveys the rare and compelling account of how the more unsavory aspects of colonialism affected life in rural India.

    Though counted among the five supremely virtuous women, honoured as pancha sati in mythology, the name Draupadi still bears stigma and is often contemptuously uttered by people in society as the woman who brought about the greatest war of all times.Pratibha Ray makes a determined effort for a balanced portrayal of the epic character and brings to the surface the broader and deeper aspects of Draupadi's mind that lay submerged in the majestic sweep of the grand Mahabharata.

    The subject of that love is Matilde Urrutia de Neruda, Pablo's 'beloved wife'.

    By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.Introduction by Arthur Lall

    Includes his classics "Mending Wall, " "Birches, " and "The Road Not Taken, " as well as poems less famous but equally great.POEMS INCLUDED:ForewordThe PastureInto My OwnGhost HouseMy November GuestLove and a QuestionA Late WalkStarsStorm FearWind and Window FlowerFlower-GatheringRose PogoniasWaitingIn a ValeA Dream PangIn NeglectThe Vantage PointMowingGoing for WaterThe Trial by ExistenceThe Tuft of FlowersPan with UsA Line-Storm SongOctoberMy ButterflyReluctanceMending WallThe Death of the Hired ManThe MountainA Hundred CollarsHome BurialThe Black CottageBlueberriesA Servant to ServantsAfter Apple-PickingThe CodeThe Generations of MenThe HousekeeperThe FearThe Wood-PileGood HoursThe Road Not TakenChristmas TreesAn Old Man’s Winter NightA Patch of Old SnowIn the Home StretchThe TelephoneMeeting and PassingHyla BrookThe Oven BirdBond and FreeBirchesPea BrushPutting in the SeedA Time to TalkThe Cow in Apple TimeAn EncounterRange-FindingThe Hill WifeThe BonfireA Girl’s GardenThe Exposed Nest“Out, Out –”Brown’s DescentThe Gum-GathererThe Line-GangThe Vanishing RedSnowThe Sound of the TreesA Star in a Stone-BoatThe Census-TakerMapleThe Ax-HelveThe GrindstoneWild GrapesThe Pauper Witch of GraftonFire and IceMisgivingSnow DustFor Once, Then, SomethingThe OnsetGood-by and Keep ColdThe Need of Being Versed in Country ThingsFragmentary BlueThe Flower Boat

    Mistaken for a holy man, he plays the part and succeeds so well that God himself intervenes to put Raju's newfound sanctity to the test. Narayan's most celebrated novel, The Guide won him the National Prize of the Indian Literary Academy, his country's highest literary honor.

    A collection of astonishing originality and intensity, it spoke of politics, sexual emancipation, and what it meant to be an American. From the joyful “Song of Myself” and “I Sing the Body Electric” to the elegiac “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Whitman’s art fuses oratory, journalism, and song in a vivid celebration of humanity. Containing all Whitman’s known poetic work, this edition reprints the final, or “deathbed,” edition of Leaves of Grass (1891–92). Earlier versions of many poems are also given, including the 1855 “Song of Myself.”Features a completely new—and fuller—introduction discussing the development of Whitman's poetic career, his influence on later American poets, and his impact on the American cultural sensibilityIncludes chronology, updated suggestions for further reading, and extensive notes