Simon Jesukumar, an ageing widower in Chennai, passionately aspires to do something worthwhile with what remains of his life. Dominated by his wife during their otherwise happy married life, he struggles to break free from the haunting memories of the iron hand with which she led him. His aspirations are stirred by his nagging guilt about the slum, optimistically called Sitara, next door. As the story plunges into the heart of the slum, it brings together the most unlikely characters. Simon begins to understand why good intentions and small acts of mercy are no answer to the problems of a section of humanity he never knew.
Simon’s dilemma is ours: How can, or how should, the well-off help the poor?
Coming from one of the finest chroniclers of modern Indian life, The Story That Must Not be Told holds up a mirror to a moving, unseen, and deeply unsettling reality.
Archives: Books
The Story That Must Not Be Told
The Naive And The Sentimental Novelist
What happens within us when we read a novel? And how does a novel create its unique effects, so distinct from those of a painting, a film, or a poem?
In this fascinating set of essays, based on the talks he delivered at Harvard University as part of the distinguished Norton Lecture series, Pamuk presents a masterful theory of the novel. Drawing on Friedrich Schiller’s famous distinction between ‘naïve’ writers-those who write spontaneously-and ‘sentimental’ writers-those who are reflective and aware-Pamuk reveals two unique ways of processing and composing the written word. He takes us through his own literary journey and looks at the works of writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust, Mann, and Naipaul to describe the singular experience of reading. Unique, nuanced, and passionate, this book will be beloved by readers and writers alike.
Rebels in Rajasthan
Let the Magic Flying Jharokha take you to distant lands and nail-biting adventures! But first; solve this clue—
Desert bare
Maiden fair;
Lock of hair
Vayu and Deeya’s Uncle Jadoo has been kidnapped by an evil djinn. Now they need to locate the seven keys that will free him. But the djinn has hidden the keys in secret places all over India. Helping the children is a magic window frame; or jharokha; that can take them anywhere they want to go! With Uncle Jadoo’s clue in hand; and Jhoky; the boy from the Jharokha by their side; Vayu and Deeya land up in the deserts of Rajasthan; where they not only need to find the key; but also save a princess in distress!
Fir
Dashing DSP Bikram Chatterjee of the West Bengal Police hates his boss, the boorish SP Toofan Kumar. And he knows his boss especially resents his affair with screen goddess Shona Chowdhury-it’s a rank thing. Bikram is keenly aware of the two distinct worlds he inhabits: the posh circles of Toofan and Shona-a world he instinctively distrusts-and the grimy world of crime with which he is familiar, even comfortable. Then Robi Bose, former darling of Calcutta’s Page 3, is found dead with bloody froth on his lips and Bikram is given the task of investigating this high-profile death in double-quick time. This, in addition to all his other duties-cultivating informers, breaking up drug-smuggling rackets on the Indo-Bangladesh border and providing security for occasionally violent football matches. And as the investigation draws him in, Bikram finds his two worlds colliding in unexpected ways. Gripping, gritty and one hundred per cent honest, F.I.R. inaugurates the DSP Bikram series-the first desi police procedural.
She Writes
Every woman has a story to tell.
Random House India, in collaboration with MSN, presents an extraordinary collection of stories from twelve talented women writers across the country—a woman trapped in a stifling marriage makes a shocking discovery, a repressed memory is suddenly brought back by a dead tree, a self-styled nun finds unlikely love in a Tibetan monastery. Rich and deeply evocative, She Writes is a celebration of some of the most exciting writing talent in our country.
Winner names: • Anisha Bhaduri • Geeta Sundar • Sheela Jaywant • Prarthana Rao • Aprameya Manthena • Chitralekha • Belinder Dhanoa • Yishey Doma • Santana Pathak • Amrita Saikia • Jyotsna Jha • Shreya Manjunath
Season Of The Rainbirds
Set during a monsoon season in the 1980s in a small town in Pakistan, Season of the Rainbirds is centred on the mysterious reappearance of a sack of letters lost in a train crash nineteen years previously. Could the letters have any bearing on Judge Anwar’s murder? The letters and the judge’s death trigger a series of tragic events and as the murder investigation progresses, dark tales of passion and betrayal unfold and long-buried secrets come to light.
The narrative segues between several characters—the judge’s family, a cleric troubled by local inhabitants’ lapses, a Muslim deputy commissioner defiantly involved with a Christian woman, a feudal landlord and a crusading journalist reporting on the delivery of the mail packet—and comes to a head when the journalist disappears and the country lurches between fear and uncertainty following an assassination attempt on the president.
One of the most exquisite fictional debuts, Season of the Rainbirds is a compelling portrayal of a society in strife, of a timeless world where daily rituals are played out against an ominous landscape of oppression, decadence, bigotry and power.
Maps For Lost Lovers
Set in a nameless British town that its Pakistani-born immigrants have renamed Dasht-e-Tanhaii, the Desert of Solitude, Maps for Lost Lovers is an exploration of cultural tension and religious bigotry played out in the personal breakdown of a single family. As the book begins, Jugnu and Chanda, whose love is both passionate and illicit, have disappeared from their home. Rumours about their disappearance abound, but five months pass before anything certain is known. Finally, on a snow-covered January morning, Chanda’s brothers are arrested for the murder of their sister and Jugnu.
Maps for Lost Lovers traces the year following Jugnu and Chanda’s disappearance. Seen principally through the eyes of Jugnu’s brother Shamas, the cultured, poetic director of the local Community Relations Council and Commission for Racial Equality, and his wife Kaukab, mother of three increasingly estranged children and devout daughter of a Muslim cleric, the event marks the beginning of the unravelling of all that is sacred to them. It fills Shamas’s own house and life with grief and, in exploring the lovers’ disappearance and its aftermath, Nadeem Aslam discloses a legacy of miscomprehension and regret not only for Shamas and Kaukab but for their children and neighbours as well.
An intimate portrait of a community searingly damaged by traditions, this is a densely imagined, beautiful and deeply troubling book written in heightened prose saturated with imagery. It casts a deep gaze on themes as timeless as love, nationalism and religion, while meditating on how these forces drive us apart.
The Man Before The Mahatma
At the age of eighteen, a shy and timid Mohandas Gandhi leaves his home in Gujarat for a life on his own. At forty-five, a confident and fearless Gandhi, ready to boldly lead his country to freedom, returns to India.
What transforms him?
The law.
The Man before the Mahatma is the first biography of Gandhi’s life in the law. It follows Gandhi on his journey of self-discovery during his law studies in Britain, his law practice in India and his enormous success representing wealthy Indian merchants in South Africa, where relentless attacks on Indian rights by the white colonial authorities cause him to give up his lucrative representation of private clients for public work—the representation of the besieged Indian community in South Africa.
As he takes on the most powerful governmental, economic and political forces of his day, he learns two things: that unifying his professional work with his political and moral principles not only provides him with satisfaction, it also creates in him a strong, powerful voice. Using the courtrooms of South Africa as his laboratory for resistance, Gandhi learns something else so important that it will eventually have a lasting and worldwide impact: a determined people can bring repressive governments to heel by the principled use of civil disobedience.
Using materials hidden away in archival vaults and brought to light for the first time, The Man before the Mahatma puts the reader inside dramatic experiences that changed Gandhi’s life forever and have never been written about—until now.
Operation Lipstick
Anna Sanderson is not your average thirty-something. She’s a war journalist based in one of the most troubled countries in the world—Afghanistan. Sexy, tough as nails, and ballsy as hell, she won’t stop at anything to get her scoop or the man she wants. But the game changes when she meets Mr Delectable—handsome, aloof, and secretive, he frustratingly keeps Anna guessing if he’s into her or not.
Things take a nasty turn when Anna’s best friend Kelly discovers that her boyfriend, Rich, has been cheating on her and Anna unearths a series of secrets which tie in her man. The mission—Operation Lipstick—takes Anna on a journey into the heart of the Helmand Province and the lair of the most feared movements of the world—the Taliban. Will Kelly get her revenge? Will Anna survive to tell her story? Will she get her man?