Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji, was famously described by Mahatma Gandhi as his ‘conscience keeper’. The eighty-odd largely unpublished letters presented here span the period from the run-up to Independence to its early years, providing deep insight into the struggles and endeavours of Indian public life. Frank, brave, even bitter at times, they reveal the fierce debates, strong differences of opinion and continuous negotiation between the two leaders on matters crucial to the country’s future.
Introduced and annotated with trademark brilliance by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the letters offer us a rare glimpse of the lives of two of the tallest Indians of our age, when idealism rode strong but was also challenged.
Archives: Books
Indian Railways
The railways brought modernity to India. Its vast network connected the far corners of the subcontinent, making travel, communication and commerce simpler than ever before. Even more importantly, the railways played a large part in the making of the nation: by connecting historically and geographically disparate regions and people, it forever changed the way Indians lived and thought, and eventually made a national identity possible.
This engagingly written, anecdotally told history captures the immense power of a business behemoth as well as the romance of train travel; tracing the growth of the railways from the 1830s (when the first plans were made) to Independence, Bibek Debroy and his co-authors recount how the railway network was built in India and how it grew to become a lifeline that still weaves the nation together.
This latest volume in The Story of Indian Business series will delight anyone interested in finding out more about the Indian Railways.
The Shadow Lines
As a young boy, Amitav Ghosh’s narrator travels across time through the tales of those around him, traversing the unreliable planes of memory, unmindful of physical, political and chronological borders. But as he grows older, he is haunted by a seemingly random act of violence. Bits and pieces of stories, both half-remembered and imagined, come together in his mind until he arrives at an intricate, interconnected picture of the world where borders and boundaries mean nothing, mere shadow lines that we draw dividing people and nations. Out of a complex web of memories, relationships and images, Amitav Ghosh builds an intensely vivid, funny and moving story. Exposing the idea of the nation state as an illusion, an arbitrary dissection of people, Ghosh depicts the absurd manner in which your home can suddenly become your enemy. Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award.
The Rebel
Ram Jethmalani has been called many things-a legal legend, a wizard of the law and a magnet for controversy with a knack for defending the most notorious figures in India. With a career spanning the entire history of independent India, and still going strong, he has managed to command respect and evoke anger in equal measure. But did you know that he is the most pro-Israel politician in Asia; one of the founders of the prestigious National School of Law, Bangalore; one of the first to raise the issue of corruption in India; founder of the Sunday Guardian in the late eighties, one of the longest-serving parliamentarians; and that he is married to two wives at the same time?
In The Rebel: A Biography of Ram Jethmalani, Susan Adelman, a long-time friend, presents the most updated, authentic and detailed account of his life. Peppered with personal accounts, unknown facets of his life and insider titbits, the book reveals the man behind the larger-than-life persona of Ram Jethmalani.
Pyre
‘Pyre glows with as much power as [One Part Woman] did, and adds immeasurable value to contemporary Indian literature’-The Hindu
Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. After a hasty wedding, they arrive in Kumaresan’s village, harboring a dangerous secret: their marriage is an inter-caste one, likely to upset the village elders should they get to know of it. Kumaresan is naively confident that all will be well. But nothing is further from the truth. Despite the strident denials of the young couple, the villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and, outraged, they set about exacting their revenge.
A devastating tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling savagery, Pyre conjures a terrifying vision of intolerance.
Current Show
Sathi is a young soda-seller in a run-down cinema hall in a small town. Ill-paid and always weary, he finds relief from everyday tedium in marijuana and his friends-vulnerable, desperate young men who work around the movie hall. An intense and tender friendship with one of the men sustains Sathi, until a train of events casts the meagre certainties of his days and nights into disarray.
Slick, visceral and startlingly inventive, Current Show unfolds in a manner that simulates rapid cinematic cuts. Murugan’s keen eye and crackling prose plumb the dark underbelly of small-town life, bringing Sathi’s world and entanglements thrillingly to life.
‘[Murugan’s] characters, dialogues and locales are unerringly drawn and intensely evocative . . . A superb writer’-Indian Express
‘The most accomplished of his generation of Tamil writers’-Caravan
Seasons Of The Palm
‘A powerful novel . . . [Murugan] recounts the everyday brutality of caste society in relentless detail’-The Hindu
Shorty, a young untouchable farmhand, is in bondage to a paternal yet powerful landlord. He spends his days herding sheep and tilling the fields, caught between the rigours of an unforgiving life and the solace he finds in nature and the company of his friends. He struggles to keep a fragile happiness, but endless work and a stubborn hunger gnaw away at his spirited innocence. And before long, Shorty must confront the unyielding reality of his situation.
Poignant and powerful, Seasons of the Palm is merciless in its portrayal of the daily humiliations of untouchablility, but is also lyrical in its evocation of the grace with which the oppressed come to terms with their dark fate.
‘[Murugan’s] characters, dialogues and locales are unerringly drawn and intensely evocative . . . A superb writer’-Indian Express
‘The most accomplished of his generation of Tamil writers’-Caravan
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
‘Cinema is your experience, your vision of life.’—Adoor Gopalakrishnan
A couple living in defiance of society, trying to make ends meet; a rootless, rustic simpleton unaware of his responsibilities; a selfish, middle-aged man clinging to old feudal ways; an ex-revolutionary wasting himself, sleeping and eating and drinking, much to the disgust of his old comrades; a writer who finds the true meaning of love and freedom in prison; and a prostitute discovering love only to be separated from her lover by the guardians of society.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s characters are drawn from real people, real lives. His cinema manages to frame details that often escape our everyday glance, turning the mundane into the magical, the commonplace into the startling. Yet, very little is known about the auteur.
In Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema, the first authorized biography of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, Gautaman Bhaskaran traces the ebbs and flows of the life of this enigmatic director. From his birth during the Quit India Movement to his lonely childhood at his uncles’ house; from life at Gandhigram, where Adoor studied rural development, to his days and nights at the Pune Film Institute; and from his first film, Swayamvaram, to his latest, Oru Pennum Rantaanum, Bhaskaran’s lucid narrative tracks the twists and turns of Gopalakrishnan’s life, finding an uncommon man and a rare auteur.
The Modern Gurukul
Are you confused about how to raise your kids?
How many hours should they spend with the TV, iPad or Xbox?
Do you worry about what they should eat, drink and read?
As the urban, nuclear family is becoming the norm, replacing the traditional joint family, what happens to the children who grow up with a single support system? In The Modern Gurukul, Sonali Bendre Behl shares her three principles of parenting that will help you find a balance between tradition and modernity, and show you how to raise your child in the digital age. Personal, anecdotal and honest, it highlights the need for a return to our roots to raise a healthy, curious and, most importantly, compassionate child.
The Professional
It is a universally acknowledged truth that an immigrant in England must be in want of a visa. In 1980s London, young Sri Lankan Chamath, recently down from Oxford with a degree in Maths, struggles to reconcile himself with the workplace. When his father writes him to say, ‘You’re on your own now, mate’, assuming that the magic word ‘Oxford’ will open any door to him, he realizes that push must now come to shove. Working on a building site as a casual labourer, he is approached by two men who ask him whether he would like ‘a bit of work after hours, to earn some dosh on the side’. Chamath gets dragged down below the invisible grid that exists in any big city, into a blue-grey twilight world of illegals. Hired as a male escort, a ‘professional’, a career at which he excels to his great surprise, he finds an unlikely means of making his way through the world. Then, two former clients, an older couple, decide to rescue him-with disastrous consequences. Masterfully and hilariously told, The Professional is sage, canny and witty as Ashok Ferrey always is: an exploration of the nature and meaning of love, of time, of memory.