Poet, novelist, painter, musician and Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore was one of modern India’s greatest literary figures. This collection brings together some of his best works—poems, short stories and plays in one volume. Be it the wit, magic and lyricism of his poetry or the vividly etched social milieu of his stories, or the sheer power and vibrancy of his plays, Tagore’s versatility and unceasing creativity come alive in these writings. The title play ‘The Land of Cards’ is a satire against the bondage of orthodox rules, while in ‘The Post Office’, a child suffocated by his confined existence dreams of freedom in the world outside. From a son’s cherished desire to protect his mother in the poem ‘Hero’ to a fruit-seller longing for his daughter faraway in the story ‘Kabuliwala’, Tagore’s works convey his humanism and his deep understanding of human relationships.
Archives: Books
Feluda Mysteries
Feluda, Topshe and Lalmohan Babu are holidaying in the seaside town of Puri, when they discover a dead body on the beach. And soon Feluda’s holiday turns into an edge-of-the-seat hunt for the killer.
Some very odd things are happening in this little coastal town. Ancient Buddhist manuscripts vanish. An unknown man walks on the sand leaving very strange footprints. Lalmohan Babu finds an amazing astrologer but Topshe is not so sure. And something really spooky is going on in an abandoned house by the sea. Feluda races against time to unmask a murderer with many faces who will not hesitate to kill again.
One of Feluda’s most chilling cases is brought alive by Tapas Guha’s brilliant artwork, and twists and turns in the story will keep you riveted till the breathtaking showdown!
Monkey-Man
3 January 2000, It is the start of the new millennium. On Ammanagudi Street in Bangalore, a strange creature is spotted. As the beast seizes the imagination of the city, the first people to sight It — Shrinivas Moorty, a teacher in a local college, Pushpa Rani, who works in a call centre, Neela Mary Gopalrao, secretary to an influential man, and Sukhiya Ram, her office boy — are invited to talk about it on Bali Brums’s hugely popular radio show. What was it that they saw? A bat? A malevolent avatar? A sign of the displeasure of the gods? The grotesque mascot of a city that is growing too fast and crumbling too soon? Or merely a monkey that has lost its way?
Using evocative prose that reflects her profound understanding of human nature, Usha K.R. delves into the lives of her characters and their unexpectedly linked destinies in a city that has grown from a ‘Pensioner’s Paradise’ to frenetic hub of the country’s IT industry.
Possession
‘“Caroline thinks Valmiki belongs to her . . . People don’t easily give up what they think are their possessions. The English never have.”’
Anasuya, an Indian writer, meets the wilful Lady Caroline Bell at a party and is soon swept away by the manic energy that surrounds her. She watches as Caroline takes charge of Valmiki, a humble shepherd boy who expresses himself through painting, and whisks him away from his ragged family in a small south Indian village to London, introducing him to modernity, luxury and high society.
Initially dependent on Caroline, Valmiki becomes increasingly like her, learning the ways of the West through her unorthodox methods. But he is also unable to sever all connections with his past as he depends equally on the Swamy, an ascetic who first recognized his talent. As he grows to become his own person, one who sees the people and things around him as his possessions, Valmiki questions whether Caroline’s motives for nurturing him are purely altruistic and turns to the Swamy for advice.
Anasuya, who has been a mute spectator to Caroline’s games and machinations, fears for Valmiki’s well-being as the Swamy and Caroline head towards an inevitable clash of egos, one that is sure to end in destruction.
In Possession Kamala Markandaya deftly explores the ties that bind benefactor and artist, master and disciple, displaying the ease with which boundaries can blur, turning patronage into possession.
The Veiled Suite
Blended with the intricacies of European and Urdu traditional cultures, the poetic works of Agha Shahid Ali had the power to transform the ordinary into something extraordinary.
The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems is an anthology of his life works that spans to thirty years of his career as a poet and six successful volumes that he had the chance to publish during his lifetime. This book opens with his last poetic composition The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems, a canzone, which was published posthumously. He had penned this poem a year prior to his death.
This book contains some of his famous poems like Postcard from Kashmir, A Lost Memory of Delhi, Snowmen, Cracked Portraits, Story of a Silence, Poets on Bathroom Walls, Now No Longer Little, Medusa, The Blessed Word: A prologue, Some Visions of the World Cashmere, New Delhi Airport, I have Loved, and many more remarkable poems.
From his early works to his mature translations of Ghazals, the readers can evidently see his progression from his directly descriptive poetic works to the dynamic and stratified compositions of his later collections in this book. This is the underlying factor that adds to make The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems, the ultimate book for his fans.
Ash & Tara And The Emerald Dagger
It is the year 1568. Emperor Akbar is on the throne and all is well in Hindustan.
Or is it?
Meet Ash and Tara, two feisty kids who battle the vilest villains in Akbar’s court.
Devious minds are at work, planning to steal Akbar’s precious emerald dagger, which the emperor believes brings him good luck. Ash and Tara, twin brother and sister, growing up in a village across the Yamuna land up in Agra Fort and get to know of the conspiracy. Can they stop the ruthless Magesh and his accomplices from carrying out the plan? Or will they get framed for the theft and end up on the wrong side of the world’s most powerful monarch?
The breathless adventure twists and turns its way through the magnificent Agra Fort, the bylanes of medieval Agra and the dark, stormy forests across the Yamuna. Each story in the brand new Ash and Tara series will keep you engrossed till the final action-packed ending even as you get to know and love Akbar, Birbal, Ash, Tara and their friends like never before.
The Scientific Indian
Nuclear capability; self-sufficiency in food production; an array of indigenous satellites and missiles; an unmanned Moon mission—India’s achievements in the scientific domain in recent years have been spectacular. But; according to the country’s best-known scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and his close associate Y.S. Rajan; we’ve only just begun. In a century that many experts predict may belong to India; the realization of the vision of a better future for everyone will require a keen understanding of our needs and this can only be achieved by tailoring our research and innovations to the goal of national development.
India to the forefront of the world in the decades to come.
The Scientific Indian will speak to every curious and adventurous mind; and especially to tomorrow’s scientists and technologists; encouraging us to dream big; and urging us to work hard to make our dreams come true.
In The Scientific Indian; the authors of the path-breaking India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium return after ten years to the core areas of scientific advancement that are crucial today: space exploration; satellite technology; missile development; earth and ocean resources; the biosphere; food production; energy and water harvesting; health care and communications; to name a few. For each aspect; the authors provide the context of recent progress on the global platform as well as Indian breakthroughs; before outlining a pragmatic vision of technological development that will propel
Captive Imagination
Poet, Marxist critic and activist, Varavara Rao (VV) has been continually persecuted by the state and intermittently imprisoned since 1973, but he never stopped writing during all these decades, even from within prison. When he was subjected to ‘one thousand days of solitary confinement’ during 1985-89 in Secunderabad Jail, a leading national daily invited him to write about his prison experiences.
While prison writing is a hoary tradition, no writer has had the opportunity to publish his writings from jail. VV, however, did meet the demands placed on him as a writer, despite constraints of censorship by jail authorities and the Intelligence section. He decided to test his creative powers in jail on the touchstone of his readers’ response and expressed himself in a series of thirteen remarkable essays on imprisonment, from prison.
A Better India
The Lost River
The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as -Sarasvati’ in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, this river was rediscovered in the early nineteenth century through topographic explorations by British officials. Recently, geological and climatological studies have probed its evolution and disappearance, while satellite imagery has traced the river’s buried courses and isotope analyses have dated ancient waters still stored under the Thar Desert. In the same Northwest, the subcontinent’s first urban society”the Indus civilization”flourished and declined. But it was not watered by the Indus alone: since Aurel Stein’s expedition in the 1940s, hundreds of Harappan sites have been identified in the now dry Sarasvati’s basin. The rich Harappan legacy in technologies, arts and culture sowed the seeds of Indian civilization as we know it now. Drawing from recent research in a wide range of disciplines, this book discusses differing viewpoints and proposes a harmonious synthesis”a fascinating tale of exploration that brings to life the vital role the -lost river of the Indian desert’ played before its waters gurgled to a stop.