Described by Rabindranath Tagore as ‘revelations of my true self’, the poems and songs of Gitanjali established the writer’s literary talent worldwide. They include eloquent sonnets such as the famous ‘Where the mind is without fear’, intense explorations of love, faith and nature (‘Light, oh where is the light?’) and tender evocations of childhood (‘When my play was with thee’).
In this new translation to mark Tagore’s one-hundred-and-fiftieth birth anniversary, William Radice renders with beauty and precision the poetic rhythm and intensity of the Bengali originals. In his arrangement of Tagore’s original sequence of poems alongside his translations, Radice restores to Gitanjali the structure, style and conception that were hidden by W. B. Yeats’s edition of 1912, making this book a magnificent addition to the Tagore library.
Annawadi is a slum in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport, and as the Indian economy booms, Annawadians are electric with hope. Abdul, a reflective teenager, sees ‘a fortune beyond counting’ in the recyclable garbage that the city’s richer people throw away. He is so fast, sorting waste, that he’s close to lifting his whole family out of the slum. Asha, a woman of formidable wit and deep scars from a childhood in rural poverty, is eyeing an alternate route to the middle class: political corruption. With a little luck and the right connections, her sensitive, beautiful teenaged daughter might soon become the first female college graduate in the slum. And even the poorest Annawadians, like Kalu, a homeless 15-year-old scrap-metal thief, feel themselves inching closer to the good lives and good times they call ‘the full enjoy.’
But then Abdul the teenaged garbage sorter is falsely accused in a shocking tragedy; a terrorist attack and a global recession rock Mumbai; and suppressed tensions over religion, caste, sex, power and economic envy turn brutal. As the tenderest human hopes intersect with the harshest realities of life in an Indian megacity, the true contours of a desperately competitive age are revealed. And so, too, are the resilience and ingenuity of the people of Annawadi.
In Katherine Boo’s fast-paced and riveting book—beautifully written, rigorously researched and intimately reported—the impact of poverty, inequality, corruption and global change is made human through breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking, stories that will stay with you forever.
Culture of the Sepulchre is not only a retelling of Idi Amin’s brutality and buffoonery, which unfolded in the seventies, it is also a heart-rending saga of the forced evacuation of the Indian diaspora from Uganda and their trials against the backdrop of a fierce internal armed conflict.
Madanjeet Singh, the Indian High Commissioner to Uganda at the time, gives a first-hand account of the unimaginable violence and savagery unleashed by a man who designated himself ‘His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular’ (and by some accounts even appointed himself the King of Scotland), as well as the ghastly and macabre events that followed Amin’s defeat by the rebel forces led by Museveni.
This is also an account of the extraordinary courage demonstrated by Madanjeet at a time of great personal turmoil—his sister died under mysterious circumstances and his trusted servant turned criminal—and the great risks he took to evacuate hundreds of families desperate to escape the murderous environment
‘The body was the only truth she knew. It was the body alone that was left, even as she went beyond the body.’
Journeys form the leitmotif of these astonishing new stories by Ambai. Sometimes culminating in an unconventional love affair, some are extraordinary tales of loyalty and integrity; others touch on the almost fantastic, absurd aspect of Mumbai. Yet others explore the notion of a wholesome self, and its tragic absence at times. These stories are illuminated by vivid and unusual characters: from an eccentric, penurious singer-couple who adopt an ape as their son, to a male prostitute, who is battered by bimbos for not giving ‘full’ satisfaction.
Crucially, some of the stories, like the title one, engage uninhibitedly with a woman’s relationship to her body. For Ambai, feminist par excellence, the sensual body, experienced as a natural landscape changing with age, is at the same time, the only vehicle of life and tool for mapping the external world.
The cubicle: a small, compressed, half room where we spend half our lives bored, stressed, and secretly planning holidays. Where imagination and creativity die a slow death and ‘out of the box’ can mean only one thing—leaving the office.
Mayukh, a young and harried manager, can’t believe his misfortune when he discovers one morning that his computer has been taken over by a virus. Especially when he has enough work on his plate to last him a lifetime. But things take a strange turn and soon the virus starts a revolution that gradually frees our hero from the tyranny of pressure and the shackles of stress. It reconnects him with his true self and family, and brings him more success than he could ever imagine.
So if you’ve been spending more time in your cubicle than anywhere else, The Cubicle Manifesto is the revolution that you’ve been waiting for; one that you can start in the comfort of your own cubicle.
What if life threw you a magnificent opportunity, only to knock you down later and laugh at you? Would you fight back or let it pass?
Nisha’s life is far from perfect. At twenty-six, she is plump, plain-looking, and without a boyfriend. A chance date and a bizarre twist of events lead her to the altar with suave Samir Sharma, only to be abandoned eight years later. As she struggles to stand on her own feet, Akash, a younger guy, enters her life. Can Nisha find love a second time?
Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake is an unusual, a heart-warming, and gripping love-story between two people who have so much to lose by getting into a relationship with each other, yet so much to gain.
