Last week during one of our marathon telephone conversations my mother asked me which one of us, me or Frank, was the woman in our relationship. ‘Neither of us, obviously,’ I said. ‘That’s what makes us gay.’ ‘Very funny,’ my mom said. ‘Someone on Oprah said that often gay couples have one person who plays the man and the other who plays the woman. So I was wondering which you were.’ ‘Frank and I don’t believe in hetero-normative gender roles,’ I told her. I knew my mom didn’t know what ‘hetero-normative’ meant, so I figured she’d drop it. ‘So who does the cooking and cleaning?’ she asked. I could have truthfully answered ‘neither of us.’ Instead I asked, ‘Is that what you think womanhood is, Mom, cooking and cleaning?’
Rahul Mehta’s stories are inhabited by young, gay Indian men on the wrong side of the American dream: adrift in the world, in complicated relationships, and with uncertain futures. Here are lovers who go to a nightclub deciding to cheat on each other; a couple slowly breaking up while they holiday; a young man who can’t stop himself from burning up all his money; another who reluctantly prepares his grandmother for her US citizenship test.
In a voice that’s bare and wry, edgy and tender, Rahul Mehta writes of desire and family ties with rare candor. This is an outstanding debut.
A journalist sits in a café waiting for his subject—an artist called Drishya about whom he wants to write a novel. But Drishya doesn’t come. For that morning he has been visited by Maoists at his home and abducted by them…
So begins Palpasa Café, the extraordinary novel by Nepali journalist Narayan Wagle, which has become a sensation in the country. Starting with the murders of the royal family, it tells the troubled story of contemporary Nepal through the eyes of a romantic artist who falls in love, wanders the war-struck countryside and dreams of creating a café named after his beloved which serves the best coffee in the country.
Playful, moving and melancholic, fusing the boundaries between fiction and non fiction, Palpasa Café presents a rare picture of Nepal at war. It is one of the most important novels to come out of the country.
Was the first man you fell for a brooding desert prince? Or better still, a cruelly handsome feudal lord? Are you a spirited beauty, your fire contained—but only just—by the clinging brocade of your lehenga’s choli? A delicious Kama Kahani is sure to strike your fancy.
Madhubati, the beautiful, fiesty daughter of a Bengali teacher who tutors sons of rich zamindars, is pledged to Bidyut, the son of a family friend. But when fate brings her father’s dashing student Som into her life just as it did six years ago, the voluptuous village belle is forced to choose between fighting against their families-or against her fast-beating heart. Will love prevail over reason and class?
Was the first man you fell for a brooding desert prince? Or better still, a cruelly handsome feudal lord? Are you a spirited beauty, your fire contained—but only just—by the clinging brocade of your lehenga’s choli? A delicious Kama Kahani is sure to strike your fancy.
Rani, a radiant Punjabi beauty and the illegitimate daughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, is kidnapped by the notorious bandit Ranbir Singh, who decides to use her as a pawn in his revenge against the King. But soon she realizes she cannot ignore her desire for her captor, handsome and mysterious as he is. Torn between passion and loyalty, past and present, Rani must discover what really lies in her heart.
Was the first man you fell for a brooding desert prince? Or better still, a cruelly handsome feudal lord? Are you a spirited beauty, your fire contained—but only just—by the clinging brocade of your lehenga’s choli? A delicious Kama Kahani is sure to strike your fancy.
Devastatingly handsome Rajput lothario Shivendra of Jaigarh has a formidable reputation—until he meets his match in bewitching Nandini, the headstrong daughter of an impoverished zamindar from Multan. He decides he must have Nandini as his mistress, but she is determined to resist his indecent proposal, attracted as she is to him. Shivendra is persistent, however, and defies convention to bring them together illicitly. But for how long, and to what end? Through desert sandstorms and Mughal camps, the epic love story of the yuvraj and his impetuous lover unfolds.
Driving through India and want to know where to eat on the road? Try Highway on my Plate: the indian guide to roadside eating, the country’s first guide to dhabas and roadside restaurants. Adapted from the hit TV series on NDTV Good Times, ‘Highway on my Plate’, it lists the top eats on almost every major Indian highway and routes as presented by the popular anchors Rocky and Mayur. Packed with information, Highway on my Plate is an indispensable guide for all road trips.
Q: My girlfriend and I have both been working late these days, and are just not in the mood
for love by the time we get home at night. What can we do?
A: Welcome to the world of morning sex. All you need to get started is to set your alarm
half an hour earlier, and keep breath mints and condoms by your bedside.
They don’t call it ‘morning glory’ for nothing…
Single and sexy Laila is back in Mumbai and seems to have landed the perfect job as features editor and sex columnist of the popular men’s mag Guyzone. Her friends Karthika and Maya cannot stop teasing her as Laila definitely knows a thing or two about men. And there seem to be plenty in her life. There is Neil, Laila’s boyish yet charming photographer flatmate or Rahul, her ex-boyfriend, who still has the hots for her. These and other men are complications Laila can deal with but when Sameer, the suave CEO of Luxur enters her life, she knows she has found her match.
What happens when the tables are turned and Laila loses her heart in this unpredictable game of love? Funny, smart, and utterly entertaining, Girl Plus One captures the life of a spunky city girl and her quest for that perfect plus one.
In the nineteenth century, Bengal witnessed an extraordinary intellectual flowering. Bengali prose emerged, and with it the novel and modern blank verse; old arguments about religion, society, and the lives of women were overturned; great schools and colleges were created; new ideas surfaced in science. And all these changes were led by a handful of remarkable men and women. For the first time comes a gripping narrative about the Bengal Renaissance recounted through the lives of all its players from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. Immaculately researched, told with colour, drama, and passion, Awakening is a stunning achievement
Beato’s Delhi offers a pictorial history of Delhi, brought vividly to life through the visual virtuosity of Felice A. Beato, the famous nineteenth-century photographer who came to India to record the last embers of the 1857 ‘Mutiny’, and Jim Masselos who, in 1997, retraced Beato’s footsteps and photographed the same sites as far as possible. By the time Beato reached Delhi in January 1858, the British had already subdued the city, so he could not record the military campaign itself. However, his lens was perhaps the first to capture the battleground and other places of note in that campaign, providing for posterity some unique views of Old Delhi before substantial parts of it were demolished in the aftermath of 1857, or radically redeveloped as the years progressed. Beato’s luminous views are juxtaposed with Masselos’s present-day photographs of the bustling metropolis, shedding light on how the face of Delhi has transformed in the intervening 154 years. Supplemented with an illuminating text by Masselos and Narayani Gupta, Beato’s Delhi is a moving testament to the resilience of this ever-evolving city.
Nina, at thirty, sees herself as increasingly off the shelf. But then unexpectedly, a proposal arrives. Ananda is a dentist in Halifax, Canada. The two marry and she leaves her home and her country to build a new life with him. But there is always more to marriage than courtship. And as Nina discovers truths about her husband – both sexual and emotional – her fragile new life in Canada begins to unravel. The Immigrant is another mesmerizing saga about the complexities of arranged marriage and NRI life from this most beloved of novelists
