It was first depicted as a trauma for the Hindu population not in India, but in the House of Commons. The triumphalist accounts of the event in Turko-Persian chronicles became the main source for most eighteenth-century historians. It suited everyone and helped the British to divide and rule a multi-millioned subcontinent. In her new book, Romila Thapar, the doyenne of Indian historians, reconstructs what took place by studying other sources, including local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants of the period, court epics and popular narratives that have survived. The result is astounding and undermines the traditional version of what took place. What makes her findings explosive is the fact that the current Hindu nationalist regime in India constantly utilizes a particular version of history
Archives: Books
A Handful Of Rice
A poignant novel about the triumph of the human spirit over poverty’s privations and predicaments Ravi, the son of a peasant, joins in the general exodus away from destitution. The indifferent and harsh streets of the city lead him to the underworld of petty criminals. A chance misdeed acquaints him with Apu, a tailor. Ravi begins working as Apu’s apprentice, and when he falls in love with Nalini, Apu’s daughter, he joins the already crowded household. Apu dies, and Ravi perseveres with the respectable life, facing the problems of shortage of food, illness, dwindling customers. After the death of his son, he reverts to the life of a petty criminal, and is inexorably drawn towards a dangerous climax. In A Handful of Rice, Kamala Markandaya, best-selling author of Nectar in a Sieve, once again recreates the life of the poor with compassion and respect, presenting an overwhelmingly real book.
60 Indian Poets
60 Indian Poets spans fifty-five years of Indian poetry in English, bridging continents and generations, and seeks to expand the definition of ‘Indianness’.
Beginning in 1952 with selections from Nissim Ezekiel’s first volume of poetry which was published in London, it honours the canonical writers who have come to define modern Indian poetry—influential craftsmen such as Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004—and reinstates neglected or forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman, Gopal Honnalgere, Srinivas Rayaprol and G.S. Sharat Chandra.
The collection also introduces an astonishing range of contemporary poets who live and work in various parts of the world and in India. There are writers from Bombay and Berkeley, from New Delhi and New York, from Melbourne, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hong Kong, Sheffield, Connecticut and Itanagar, among other places—writers who have never shared a stage together but have more in common than their far-flung locations would suggest. Also included in the volume is Bruce King’s elegiac essay, ‘2004: Ezekiel, Moraes, Kolatkar’, and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s meditation on ‘What Is an Indian Poem?’ An essential feature of 60 Indian Poets is a set of rare and remarkable portraits by Madhu Kapparath.
This definitive anthology aims for ‘verticality’ rather than chronology. Exhaustive, and stunning in its scale and vitality, it represents a community ‘separated by the sea’ and connected too—in familial ways—by the unlikely histories of a shared English language.
Moving On
A father who delights in the human body, its mysteries, its passion, and the knowledge that it contains and conceals. A mother who wields the power of her love mercilessly. A sister separated in childhood. An uncle who plays games of life and death as a member of the Bombay underworld. A passionate love affair that tears the family apart. And a young woman left to make sense of the world and of her own sexuality. Shashi Deshpande’s novel is about the secret lives of men and women who love, hate, plot and debate with an intensity that will absorb every reader.
It is a story that begins, conventionally enough, with a woman’s discovery of her father’s diary. As Manjari unlocks the past through its pages, rescuing old memories and recasting events and responses, the present makes its own demands: a rebellious daughter, devious property sharks and a lover who threatens to throw her life out of gear again. The ensuing struggle to reconcile nostalgia with reality and the fire of the body with the desire for companionship races to an unexpected resolution, twisting and turning through complex emotional landscapes.
In Moving On Shashi Deshpande explodes the stereotypes of familial bonds with an uncanny insight into the nature of human relationships and an equally unerring eye for detail.
Multiple City
Founded by the chieftain Kempe Gowda around 1537, the story of Bangalore has no grand linear narrative. The location has revealed different facets to settlers and passers-through. The city, the site of bloody battles between the British and Tipu Sultan, was once attached to the glittering court of Mysore. Later, it became a cantonment town where British troops were stationed. Over time, it morphed into a city of gardens and lakes, and the capital of PBI – Indian scientific research. More recently, it has been the hub of PBI – India’s information technology boom, giving rise to Brand Bangalore, an PBI – Indian city whose name is recognized globally. Hidden beneath these layers lies a cosmopolitan city of sub-cultures, engaging artists and writers, young geeks and students. People from every corner of PBI – India and beyond now call it home.
In this collection of writings about a multi-layered city, there are stories from its history, translations from Kannada literature, personal responses to the city’s mindscape, portraits of special citizens, accounts of searches for lost communities and traditions, among much more. U.R. Ananthamurthy writes about Bangalore’s Kannada identity; Shashi Deshpande maps the city through the places she has lived in since she was a young girl; Anita Nair draws a touching portrait of a florist who celebrates the glories of the Raj; Ramachandra Guha describes his close bond with Bangalore’s most unusual bookseller; and Rajmohan Gandhi recounts the Mahatma’s trysts with the city. From traditional folk ballads to a nursery rhyme about Bangalore, from poems to blogs, from reproductions of turn of the twentieth century picture postcards to cartoons, Multiple City is the portrait of a metropolis trying to retain its roots as it hurtles into the future.
A Time Of Transition
Mani Shankar Aiyar looks back to the changes that have taken place during the -Time of Transition’ “the two decades since Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi left office after the Lok Sabha elections of November 1989. Rajiv Gandhi was the fourth prime minister of India in four decades of independence, but the last twenty years have seen as many as eight prime ministers and several more governments. Accompanying the change from single-party governance to the instability of coalition politics are major transformations in the pace, trajectory and even the goals of nation-building. It is these contentious transitions that are reflected in the five major themes of this volume: Democracy, Secularism, Socialism, Nonalignment, and Neighbourhood Policy. Mani Shankar Aiyar was both a witness to, and a reluctant participant in, these processes of change: as joint secretary in Rajiv Gandhi’s prime minister’s office, as an MP since 1991, and today as a cabinet minister in the United Progressive Alliance government. His columns for the Indian Express are analytical and vivid commentaries on their times, written in the author’s inimitable style. This collection sheds light on a critically significant era in contemporary India.
Sunlight on a Broken Column
Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather’s house by orthodox aunts who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of a ‘liberal’ but autocratic uncle in Lucknow. Here, during the 1930s, as the struggle for Indian independence intensifies, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics. But Laila is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against the claustrophobia of traditional life, from which she can only break away when she falls in love with a man whom her family has not chosen for her. With its beautiful evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column, first published in 1961, is a classic of Muslim life.
Middle India
Middle India, in this collection of seventeen short stories, Bhisham Sahni examines middle India the lower middle class not rich or famous or educated in convent schools, not cosmopolitan but urban or semi-urban. In these tightly told tales, he explores with precision of thought and expression the humanity of individuals and their places in society.The collection includes some of Sahni’s best known stories: ‘Dinner for the Boss’, a tragi-comic tale of a man trying to please his employer and a mother’s attempt to please her son; ‘Paali’, the drama of a young boy shared between a Muslim and a Hindu family during Partition; and ‘Sparrow’, a story of love and loss in a marriage. Among the other stories in this anthology are popular favourites like ‘Veero’, ‘The Witch’, ‘Before Dying’, ‘Radha-Anuradha’ and ‘Salma Aapa’.
Puffin Classics: Boyhood Days
‘I was then about seven or eight. I had no useful role to play in this PBI – World; and that old palki, too, had been dismissed from all forms of useful employment . . .’
Hidden inside an ancient palanquin on a hot, lonely afternoon, a young boy sets off on an imaginary adventure. He encounters gangs of bandits, arrives at palaces where kings bathe in sandalwood-scented water, and the hunter accompanying him gets rid of the tiger lurking in the forest with a bang! of his gun. The boy, gifted with a vivid imagination and a sensitive mind, grew up to become one of PBI – India’s greatest poets and thinkers.
In Boyhood Days Rabindranath Tagore recounts his growing up years with gentle wit and humour. He describes life in nineteenth-century Kolkata when the only light in the evening came from castor-oil lamps; when hackney carriages raced through the city’s streets and women travelled in palanquins to the Ganga for their bath. He writes about his early love for music and poetry, the myriad influences that shaped his thinking and about the other members of his large, gifted family. Boyhood Days brings to life an era long past and traces the journey of an icon from childhood to the time he takes his first steps in the PBI – World of literature.
Divya
‘His ideas and his contribution to Indian literature were . . . revolutionary’ -The Hindu
Divya leads a blissful life within the secure walls of the palace even as the world outside rages with caste politics and religious strife, until one night of pleasure changes her entire world. She gets pregnant only to be spurned by her lover. To preserve her high born family’s name she leaves her sheltered existence and trudges through life on her own, first as a slave and then as a court dancer. Adversity finally opens her eyes to the truth-a woman of a high family is not free. Only a prostitute is free. Divya decides that, by enslaving her body, she will preserve the freedom of her mind.
Set in the first century BC against a background of the conflict for supremacy between Hindu and Buddhist ideologies, Divya is a poignant tale that combines vivid imagination with rich historical details.
‘Reminiscent of George Orwell . . . Here too is the biting satire of society as seen through the savage eye of an uncompromising non-conformist’-Dawn