Aliya lives a life confined to the inner courtyard of her home with her older sister and irritable mother, while the men of the family throw themselves into the political movements of the day. She is tormented by the petty squabbles of the household and dreams of educating herself and venturing into the wider world. But Aliya must endure many trials before she achieves her goals, though at what personal cost?
Set in the 1940s, with Partition looming on the horizon, The Women’s Courtyard cleverly brings into focus the claustrophobic lives of women whose entire existence was circumscribed by the four walls of their homes, and for whom the outside world remained an inaccessible dream. Daisy Rockwell’s elegant and nuanced translation captures the poignance and power of Khadija Mastur’s inimitable voice.
Archives: Books
Plastic Emotions
Plastic Emotions is inspired by the life of Minnette de Silva-a forgotten feminist icon and one of the most important figures of twentieth-century architecture. In a gripping and lyrical story, Shiromi Pinto paints a complex picture of de Silva, charting her affair with the infamous Swiss modernist Le Corbusier and her efforts to build an independent Sri Lanka that slowly heads towards political and social turmoil.
Moving between London, Chandigarh, Colombo, Paris and Kandy, Plastic Emotions explores the life of a young, trailblazing South Asian woman at a time of great turbulence across the globe.
Go!
Bright-eyed aspirants in sports-from badminton to gymnastics-are training across the country. Homegrown leagues are attracting the world’s best athletes and professionals. The country boasts multiple World No. 1 teams and athletes, and sporting achievements are handsomely rewarded.
Much of this was simply unthinkable at the turn of the millennium. Today, there is no longer a doubt that an Indian can excel at sports. A country is changing the way it looks at sport and, along the way, how it looks at itself.
Go! features a never-before-seen collection of essays by leading athletes, sports writers and professionals, who together tell a compelling story of India’s ongoing sporting transformation.
Trial by Fire (Hindi):Agnipareeksha
At 4:55 p.m., a swirling mass of thick, smoke engulfed the balcony section a well-known cinema hall in posh south Delhi. In the absence of fire exits and ushers to help the patrons, the people seated on the balcony found themselves trapped. By 7 p.m., fifty-nine people had died.
Among these were Unnati and Ujjwal. Their parents, Neelam and Shekhar, decided to fight the prolonged battle to ensure their kids get justice, for they saw no other reason to live. It’s been twenty-one years now, since the fire. But their fight with justice, for justice continues. This is their story.
Jaya
High above the sky stands Swarga, paradise, abode of the gods. Still above is Vaikuntha, heaven, abode of God.
The doorkeepers of Vaikuntha are the twins, Jaya and Vijaya, both whose names mean ‘victory’. One keeps you in Swarga; the other raises you into Vaikuntha. In Vaikuntha there is bliss forever, in Swarga there is pleasure for only as long as you deserve.
What is the difference between Jaya and Vijaya? Solve this puzzle and you will solve the mystery of the Mahabharata. In this enthralling retelling of India’s greatest epic, the Mahabharata, originally known as Jaya, Devdutt Pattanaik seamlessly weaves into a single narrative plots from the Sanskrit classic as well as its many folk and regional variants, including the Pandavani of Chattisgarh, Gondhal of Maharashtra, Terukkuttu of Tamil Nadu, and Yakshagana of Karnataka.
Richly illustrated with over 250 line drawings by the author, the 108 chapters abound with little-known details such as the names of the hundred Kauravas, the worship of Draupadi as a goddess in Tamil Nadu, the stories of Astika, Madhavi, Jaimini, Aravan and Barbareek, the Mahabharata version of the Shakuntalam and the Ramayana, and the dating of the war based on astronomical data. With clarity and simplicity, the tales in this elegant volume reveal the eternal relevance of the Mahabharata, the complex and disturbing meditation on the human condition that has shaped Indian thought for over 3000 years.
The Smoke Is Rising
THE FUTURE IS HERE. India has just sent its first spacecraft to the moon, and the placid city of Mysore is gearing up for its own global recognition with the construction of HeritageLand-Asia’s largest theme park. From behind the formidable gates of Mahalakshmi Gardens to the shanty houses on the edge of town, the people of Mysore are abuzz as they watch their city prepare for a complete transformation.
As government officials make plans for the expected tourism extravaganza, Mysore’s residents find themselves swept up in the ferment. Susheela, an elderly widow, is forced into a secretive new life. Uma, trying to escape her painful past, learns the lasting power of local gossip. And Mala must finally confront the reality of her husband’s troubling behaviour.
Savagely funny and deeply poignant, The Smoke Is Rising is a riveting portrait of a city hurtling towards an epic clash of modernity and tradition, and all the wandering souls-some hopeful, some broken, and a few somewhere in between-who find themselves caught in the middle.
For the Love of God
Between the third centuries BC and AD were written thousands of verses in Tamil that have collectively come to be known as Sangam literature. The expressions of love between a man and a woman in these love poems gave way to passionate expressions of devotional love, where the heroine became the devotee and the hero became God. Through the centuries of patriarchy, women negotiated varied levels of existence and largely went unnoticed until they found a path for self-expression through bhakti or devotion. While the dominant form of worship was to prostrate before God, women found innovative ways of personal expression, often seeing the lord as a lover, friend, husband, or even son. The individual outpourings and the unfettered voices of these women refused to be drowned in the din of patriarchy gathering momentum until this became a pan India movement.
In For the Love of God, Sandhya Mulchandani delves deep into historical accounts of these women who fell in love with God.
A State of Freedom
What happens when one attempts to exchange the life one is given for something better? Can we transform the possibilities we are born into?
A State of Freedom prises open the central, defining events of our century-displacement and migration-but not as you imagine them. Five characters, in very different circumstances from a domestic cook in Mumbai to a vagrant and his dancing bear, and a girl who escapes terror in her home village for a new life in the city-find out the meanings of dislocation, and the desire for more.
Moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives-formally daring, fierce but full of pity-delivers a devastating and haunting exploration of the unquenchable human urge to strive for a different life.
This Wide Night
The Maliks live a life of relative freedom in 1970s’ Karachi: four beautiful sisters, Maria, Ayesha, Leila and Bina, are warily watched over by an unconventional mother. Captain Malik is usually away, and so the women forge the rules of their own universe, taking in a few men: Amir, the professor who falls in love with Maria, and Jamal or Jimmy, the neighbour who tells this tale. The curious young man is drawn in by all four sisters, particularly rebellious Ayesha. But slowly, it becomes clear he will never completely penetrate their circle-just as they will never completely move with the tide that swirls so potently around them.
In the quietly seething world of This Wide Night, Virgin Suicides meets Little Women in Pakistan. Moving from Karachi to London and finally to the rain-drenched island of Manora, here is a compelling new novel from the subcontinent-and a powerful debut to watch.
The Golden Legend
When shots ring out on Grand Trunk Road, Nargis’s life begins to crumble around her. Her husband, Massud-a fellow architect-is caught in the crossfire and dies before she can confess to him her greatest secret. Under threat from a powerful military intelligence officer who demands that she pardon her husband’s American killer, Nargis fears that the truth about her past will soon be exposed. For weeks someone has been broadcasting people’s secrets from the minarets of the city’s mosques and, in a country where the accusation of blasphemy is a currency to be bartered, the mysterious broadcasts have struck fear in Christians and Muslims alike.
Against this background of violence and fear, two outsiders-the young Christian woman Helen and the mysterious Imran from Kashmir-try to find an island of calm in which their love can grow.
In his characteristically luminous prose, Nadeem Aslam reflects Pakistan’s past and present in a single mirror-a story of corruption, resilience, and the hope that only love and the human spirit can offer.