In the small villages of India, the setting sun brought an end to everything—including Anna Mani’s precious reading time. Determined to change this, Anna dreamed of a world where light could last beyond nightfall.
But when modern electricity finally arrived, it came with a cost: skies clouded with dark, choking smoke. Anna
realized that the first solution isn’t always the best one.
Discover the inspiring true story of a scientist who turned her childhood frustration into a lifelong quest, harnessing the clean and powerful energy of the sun and wind.
In 1595, the Muslim warrior queen Chand Bibi of the Deccan sultanates defeated the most powerful forces of her time: Mughal imperial armies. Who was this queen? And what kind of world made her possible? In this, the first book about Chand Bibi, the author focuses upon the inadequately studied subject of Muslim female power in premodern India. But In Search of Chand Bibi is not just another book about a Muslim woman of medieval India. It is also the author’s personal journey as a historian and the process of doing research about the past.
The eleven stories cover a wide variety of themes, but all have in common the stylistic experimentalism which came to blossom fully in Tomb of Sand. There is an iconoclasm to Geetanjali Shree’s writing, especially beginning with this collection. Readers will soon learn that nothing is sacred to the author: narrative and genre conventions are summarily pushed off their pedestals and in their place we find…what? Entirely new ways of conceiving and presenting storytelling unfurl before us as we come to question our own rigid preconceptions of the short story genre. In one story, a woman spends all day compulsively walking in circles around her housing complex. There is no introduction, no explanation, no denouement. In another, a woman goes on a writer’s retreat, and in a pseudo-sci-fi turn of events, falls passionately in love with the sky. The other participants in the retreat are robots. In a third, “Butterflies” (included here), a narrator staying in a cottage in Kerala is overwhelmed with the grief over past events, but is surprised out of her self-indulgence by a mysterious group of young women who are either nurses or diabetes patients; she’s never sure which. Plots break, sentences shatter, grammar careens, new words are formed, and new narrative structures are erected and felled. Once Elephants Lived Here reveals to us the pathbreaking experiments that led to Geetanjali Shree’s magnum opus Tomb of Sand.
One evening, a group of young people gathers before a Sadhvi in a Jain Sthanak. Their questions are simple, though difficult to answer: how to live well, how to deal with anger and attachment, how to make sense of suffering, how to stay honest in the middle of ordinary life.
What follows is a series of conversations in which the teachings of the Tirthankars are slowly understood in today’s context. Ahimsa, karma, aparigraha, dhyana, kaivalya, and the householder’s path are seen afresh as part of everyday life.
In The Heart of Jainism, Daaji brings Jain wisdom into everyday life through stories, conversations, and reflections.
On a desolate, sinking island, a group of children witness their mothers living lives of cruelty and servitude.
Bought and sold by Amma, the sadistic madam who was once herself sold into slavery, the women have learned to accept their fate. Yet their children weave fantastic tales of escape, imagining that someday they will leave the island and enjoy a life of freedom.
When Kusum Khan, a young, educated woman from the city, is forcibly brought to the island, she too is subjected to Amma’s violent induction. Yet Kusum refuses to yield, and soon the collective complacency of her fellow prisoners turns into ferocity and defiance. Together, they begin a rebellion that will upend their island, their world and the very order of things. An earth-shattering drama of resistance and female power, Uprising gives voice to the silenced through the story of a revolution no one saw coming.
Is there a moment, so pliant, that we can nudge it towards any future we desire?
Sometimes I believe that there is such a moment. In a lifetime, once.
In an unnamed nation that’s about to rupture, Priyamvada (Poppy), a Hindu and Tariq, a Muslim are in love. In a few hours, Tariq intends to propose; Poppy intends to say yes. Both assume that they’ll fend off political blowback. For, surely, their privilege will protect them.
But will it? Will Poppy and Tariq sustain a love so wholesome, so cossetted, that it remains impervious to a dystopian state? Or will the two be rent apart by chance and circumstance? What will their lives look like as they plunge into a brave new future, together or apart?
Written in alternating chapters, Like Being Alive Twice trails fact and possibility—the tale as-it-was and the tale as-it-could-have-been-if-only—arranging and rearranging, tweaking and nudging; hoping to find a lasting peace in one or the other story; hoping, above all else, that such peace will prevail over murderous times.
Politically urgent, stylistically intrepid, and relentless in its commitment to scrutinizing love, loss and the language of privilege, Like Being Alive Twice tells of the frantic pursuit of life piled upon life, even as a bloodied world closes in.
Sometimes life takes you to places so dark,
You can’t even see the stars.
But don’t forget the light that’s inside you–
That you’re made of stars too.
A Light That Never Goes Dark is an illustrated collection of poetry and prose you can turn to when you feel dark inside. Whether you’re navigating difficult seasons, heartbreak, growth or simply the complexity of being human, it is here to hold space for you and gently guide you back to the light that exists within.
Sitara is so close to having it all figured out.
At 29, she’s a lawyer with a career that’s going nowhere and a love life that’s nothing short of a nightmare. Worse, she’s slowly becoming her colleague Nikhil’s ‘uncommitted’ plus-one—all while being spectacularly, hopelessly in love with him.
It’s fine. She’s fine. This is all completely normal.
Of course, Sitara has options: she could open her bakery or write that novel she’s been penning in her head for years, or finally turn her upcycling hobby into something that could make her truly happy—and pay the bills. Instead, she goes to work.
And then there’s Samar. Her sworn enemy. The headache that just won’t go away. The man, who has decided to take Sitara on as his personal project. He’s infuriating, charming and somehow lately, always around her.
As Sitara’s constant run ins with Samar threaten the carefully curated stability Sitara keeps close to her chest, she begins to wonder if she really is wasting her life.
With her feelings in disarray, Sitara has a choice to make—keep waiting to be chosen, or finally choose herself.
I’ve been trying to belong to something bigger than a country.
Not a flag. Not a map.
A memory. A rhythm.
Thus begins Siddhesh Gautam’s graphic novel as it transcends time and space to introduce you to the iconic figures from the anti-caste movement in the subcontinent. Across several dream sequences, the author who is also the protagonist of this novel, engages in deep and powerful conversations with the men and women who fought tirelessly against the caste system and its horrors. Through these conversations, he also gains the inspiration and courage to carry on the anti-caste movement, to make sure those whose lives were spent in this fight did not go in vain.
