Novel set in 3rd and 4th century India

    Sabas brother, Y, is to get married and, since the day her mother and sister began scanning the horizon for prospective brides, theres never been a dull moment at home. Saba, though, just cannot understand what the fuss is all about. A literature student pulled away from her beloved books, she finds the blogosphere a good place to rant in and to share with the world how a wedding can make everything around you go haywire.Join Saba and her family as they quarrel over shopping, expenses and responsibilities, and as they realize gradually that theres nothing like a wedding to bring a family together.

    This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration.

    Kesavadev, one of the prolific writers of 20th century Kerala. In the “introduction” to this book, the author contemplates on the social progress to which Kerala was slowly waking up in the beginning of twentieth century. His analyses of these developments often give birth to his literary works, as what happened in this book too, the author says. Dev, as the writer has been popularly known in Kerala, recalls that there were three main aspects for the social progress witnessed by Kerala in the first half of twentieth century (the introduction written in 1963 takes into account half a century preceding it to make this inference). The destruction of matrilineal system (marumakkathayam), which had a tint of feudal character in it, the social mobility of Ezahvas, who had witnessed backwardness in a caste-ridden society, and the progress of Christian community in the economic and education front were the three aspects.

    His collection brings together the best of Kalki’s short stories, which contain some of his most colourful and enduring characters and themes of Tamil popular fiction of the nineteen thirties and forties. There is in these stories the heady urgency of the freedom struggle, the piquant humour of the parodied Tamil gothic and devastating social satire. In her sensitive translations, Gowri Ramnarayan has succeeded in capturing the nuances of the gently mordant wit that made Kalki’s stories the highlight of the magazines they were originally published in, creating for themselves a dedicated following that flourishes undiminished to this day.Coinciding with the centenary of Kalki’s birth, this volume is a well-deserved tribute to a writer whose breadth of vision and genius imagined and served a new India.

    But like most Indian middle class families, his parents are impatient to see him settled in a government job. Despite all obstacles, making no complaints, he continues to follow the hard path, holding up the promise he had made to himself, trying to fulfil his father's wishes, and failing over and over. Almost everyone - his parents, friends, and the love of his life - leaves his side in the middle of his journey. To worsen things, he is diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the seriousness of which nobody could decipher before it was too late. Will a dreamer be sacrificed for social standing? Will a heart be crushed to uphold a hollow image? Left alone and misunderstood by everyone he knew, this is Vishesh's intense story of repeatedly falling down and trying to get up on his own, to prove that everyone who dares to follow their heart is not a commoner; he is The One From The Stars.

    

    The Stories, set in Calcutta, bring to the fore the darkness lurking in the human psyche and bare the baser instincts. The stories, compactly written and marked by insightly dialogues that raise contemporary issues like man-woman relationships and its strains, moral and ethics, environmental degradation, class inequality, rapid and mass-scale unmindful urbanisation, are devoid of sentimentalisation. The result is they remained focused and move around the central character who is named Rahul in all the stories. We encounter the events that shape, mar, guide Rahul's life and also the lives of those around him, making us question the very essence of existence. Rahul symbolises modern man; he is not just one character, but all of us rolled into one. The story cycle stands out for two reasons - its brilliant narrative and the dispassionate style with which betrayal in personal relationships and resultant loneliness has been handled. The poems weave a maze of dreams, images, reflections and stories. They are written in a reflective and many a time in a narrative tenor within a poetic idiom. The poems are inseparable in a hidden way and are magically sequenced like various kinds of flowers in a garland or chapters of differing shades in a novel. Calcutta features in some of the poems like the looming backdrop of Gotham City in a Batman movie.

    One day, their paths cross and their destinies are forever changed.Thirteen year old Aryan Khosla has no friends, rarely meets his busy and quarrelling parents, and is tormented by a gang of school bullies. He feels his birth was a mistake and thinks no one would notice if he disappeared from this world.Thirty-three year old Ria Marathe, a successful scriptwriter, lost her husband and only son in a terrible accident, and later came to know her childhood sweetheart husband was cheating on her for a long time. Faced with a lifetime of misery, she has decided to commit suicide.Sixty-three year old Rana Rathod, a long forgotten author, has carelessly lived off the trust created by his wealthy family and feels betrayed by his two children who sided with his wife during their brutal divorce thirty years back. He fears he is going to die a bitter man.Will Aryan lose his childhood to his loneliness? Will Ria lose her life to her tragedy? Will Rana lose his dignity to his past sins?Circle of Three is about finding a new beginning in life, of forgiving and ultimately, finding hope.

    Humour flows effortlessly for her, which is the biggest strength of the novel.' The Hindu‘I am very grateful to have my faith in new Indian fiction restored. This is a classic, timeless book that illuminates and entertains by turn.’ Suchi Govindarajan‘A delightful read from start to finish. There were places where I was grinning so much as I read it that my kids were looking at me strangely. But under the humour, the frivolity, the nostalgia of an Eighties life, there are several growing-up lessons taking place. Yet, the book never gets maudlin… although it does leave you with an ache for things that could have been. Brilliant writing.’ Andaleeb WajidSet in small-town Kerala of the 1980s, Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth is part coming-of-age story, part social satire and part comedy of errors. Geetha, elevenish, is off for the annual family vacation in Kerala and is looking forward to all the fun with her cousins – visits to the beach and trips to the market to buy glass bangles and kites and shuttlecocks, evenings in the veranda listening to her grandfather’s ridiculous ghost stories which he swears are all true, marathon card games and ferocious boys-versus-girls battles with the bristles of brooms made from coconut fibre… But as the summer unfolds, Geetha finds herself spending more time instead at the back of the house with the free-spirited cook, the hypochondriac cleaner, the virile gardener, a cheeky helper girl… ...And Babu, son of Koovait Kannan, the bumbling plumber who made good. Babu’s family is immersed, meanwhile, in the wedding preparations for Babu’s sister, who is marrying the most eligible bachelor in the neighbourhood: Constable Venu, an expert thrasher of suspects and son of that wealthy black-marketer of supplies, Ration Raaman. But Babu’s mind is otherwise occupied… with thoughts of a face as rounded as a Malgova mango, of an oiled plait as thick as the ropes used to tie the fishing boats, of eyes that sparkle like the sea on a sunlit morn… As Geetha and Babu’s closely linked but widely divergent lives intersect, both are about to lose some of the blissful ignorance and innocence of childhood. Charmingly quirky and often laugh-out-loud hilarious, Mango Cheeks, Metal Teeth gently explores the themes of growing up, loss of innocence and the intimate yet aloof nature of upstairs-downstairs relationships.

    Haunted by illness and obsessed with death, he moves to Mumbai from his village Udali, breaking away from his feudal roots. He encounters young men frustrated by the system but refuses to become one of them. Suddenly, he takes a fancy to education and pursues masters in Arts, without his family knowing about it.Bidhar is the story of a pessimist who struggles to move on in life.

    The pages of this book contain stories of every bachelor who fell in love, did stupid things and discussed India's foreign policy at the neighbourhood tea stall.'Bakar Puran' is the past, present and the future of those bachelors which will always be the same. The language and style has the realism of a bachelor pad. Here, there is no garb of elitism in expression. Whatever it is, it just is.

    He was an employee of Hindustan Shipyard limited which is building India’s nuclear submarine fleet. This is the fourth submarine engineer in the last twelve months who perished under mysterious circumstances. Navy leadership gets suspicious about a covert sabotage operation being carried out by an unknown enemy, to slow down India's attempt at acquiring a potent nuclear deterrent platform. After deliberations at different levels, an Intelligence Bureau agent is sent to Vizag to work as an undercover operative. What secrets will she uncover? Will she become the next target of an enemy spy ring? Would the Indian Navy exact revenge from a belligerent enemy?

    The book is about how army rule works, how he try to achieve what he desired to do at raarang dhang. Interaction with various peoples from different location and grade. Whether he succeed in his goal.... Do read...

    When he first arrives in Aayakudi to investigate a curious tip about a ghost, the place seems like an ordinary, traditional farming village. Soon, though, Rajendran finds himself entangled in a head-spinning mystery involving ancient treasure, spirit possession, and a series of grisly killings. There's also the beautiful, troubled daughter of the village panchayat president... and the notorious evil sorcerer who wants her dead. Indra Soundar Rajan, one of the stalwarts of the Tamil pulp fiction scene, has been writing his unique brand of supernatural mystery thrillers for over 30 years. He's also known for his television screenplays, such as the long-running superhit serial Marmadesam (Land of Mystery). He lives in Madurai.