The Chandimangal of Kavikankan Mukundaram Chakravarti is an exemplary work of epic scale that recounts the story of the Goddess Chandi’s constant battle to establish her cult among humans. Through the three books of the kavya-The Book of the Gods, The Book of the Hunter and The Book of the Merchant-we are introduced to Chandi in all her manifestations, from the benevolent to the wrathful, from Abhaya to Chamunda.
Mukundaram’s captivating tales and vivid imagery bring together the enchanting world of the gods with the more challenging world of the mortals while critiquing sixteenth-century Bengali society. In his exquisite rendering of the Chandimangal, Edward Yazijian manages to capture not only the performative and humorous but also the reverent aspects of the text.
Archives: Books
My Sainted Aunts
The day Mayadevi turned sixty-eight, seventy or seventy-five years old (her date of birth was an ever-changing fact linked to her moods), she decided to go to London.’
Thus begins Bulbul Sharma’s delightful collection of stories about her aunts, young and old, tetchy and unpredictable, brave and exasperating. One aunt thinks nothing of leaving her village to walk up high mountains in search of peace and shelter, another ends up with a husband who cannnot cope with the daily humiliation of having to look up a his tall wife, and a third enters service in a palace that every day sinks a little deeper into the pond beneath its foundation.
Illuminated by a vast compassion for the travails of women struggling to cope with changing lifestyles and traditions, My Sainted Aunts is as much an insight into the lif of a lost generation as it is a rollicking read.
Murder at the Happy Home for the Aged
The tranquillity at the Happy Home for the Aged is shattered when a body is found hanging in the garden. The inhabitants of the home are first perplexed, then decide to come together to solve the murder that has suddenly brought the violence of the world into their Goan arcadia. Each of them – reflective Rosie, sharp-tongued Prema, analytical Devan, action-man Cyrilo and artistic Yuri – bring different skills to the task of unravelling the crime. Their investigation is watched over by gentle, pretty Maria, the owner of the home, and Leela, their observant housekeeper.
Set in the lush landscape of Goa, where tourists flock from all over the world, where the rich set come to play, bringing in their wake fortune-hunters and other predators, the cast of possible murderers is infinite. But patiently, and with flashes of inspiration, the unlikely detectives follow the clues and in doing so emerge from the isolated and separate worlds they had inhabited for so long.
Jonahwhale
‘Ambitious, sophisticated and charged . . . an astonishing achievement’ Ruth Padel
Jonahwhale, in three beautiful movements, takes on very current themes in its playful, mostly aquatic scope, moving from the ocean to the river Ganga to Bombay’s Marine Drive waterfront. It invokes the narratives of Biblical prophet Jonah, who escapes death by spending three nights in the belly of a whale, and Melville’s Moby Dick, whose obsessive Captain Ahab chases the eponymous whale who bit off his leg. These poems resurrect the diverse figures who ran ships along the global trade routes of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hoskote reflects on the city at war with itself, and a planet embattled by ecological and political crisis.
At the heart of the rich, wide-ranging canvas, Hoskote puts into play the idea of cultural confluence. A sophisticated project in anamnesia, Jonahwhale retrieves fragments and episodes from the multiple pasts that we inherit; it makes an inquiry into the unregarded legacies of the colonial encounter at sea rather than on land. Ambitious, accessible and rejoicing in the language and beauty of the many stunning connections it makes, this new book establishes Hoskote as one of our most gifted contemporary poets.
The Little Book of Comfort (collection of comforting thoughts and words of wisdom with illustrations for motivation positivity peace and happiness by Ruskin Bond)
So, do you wish to go out into the night, walke up the hill, discover new things about the night and yourself, and come home refreshed? For just as the night has the moon and the stars, so the darkness of the soul can be lit up by small fireflies – such as these calm and comforting thoughts that Ruskin Bond has jotted down for you in The Little Book of Comfort. This book will give you an opportunity to discover yourself in this post-pandemic world to become more thoughtful and to discover the art of slowing down.
The Book of Avatars and Divinities
In the Hindu universe, gods and goddesses play freely among human beings to help them, nudge them towards the right action and mete out justice. They may appear to us as avatars in human form or manifest themselves as forces of nature. The many myths of Hinduism become colourful and entertaining when Shiva, Vishnu and Devi take different forms to enact their rivalries, destroy demons and teach devotees with superpowers a lesson in humility.
This first-of-its-kind book brings together the major deities of the Hindu pantheon, describing the different manifestations by which they are recognized, celebrated and worshipped-from Durga to Sita to Kali, and from Narasimha to Parashurama to Krishna. The contributions by Bulbul Sharma, Namita Gokhale, Nanditha Krishna, Parvez Dewan, Royina Grewal and Seema Mohanty offer enchanting stories about our favourite divinities.
The Beauty of All My Days
So here I am, delving into the past like Monsieur Poirot, not to solve a mystery, but to try to understand some of the events that have helped define the sort of person I have become. Some of it, naturally, is in the genes; but much of it is in the environment, in the circumstances in which we grow up, in the people who come into our lives, even in the air we breathe.
Had I grown up in London or Timbuktu, I would have been a different sort of person, I’m sure. My parents (and those before them) made me. But India made me too. The soil, the air, the wind, the rain, the trees, the grass, the proximity of people-all these things made me . . .
Different things at different times helped to make the individual that is me, just as different things at different times helped to make you, just as they went into making your brothers and sisters, who are very different from you.
‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself,’ said Walt Whitman.
Each chapter of this memoir is a remembrance of times past, an attempt to resurrect a person or a period or an episode, a reflection on the unpredictability of life. Some paths lead nowhere; others lead to a spring of pure water. Take any path and hope for the best. At least it will lead you out of the shadows.
The Strangers Of The Mist
A classic on the festering issues in the North-east
In this insightful book, Hazarika systematically presents the developments in Assam and the neighbouring regions, from post-Independence onwards to the present day. He sheds light on possible causes and factors behind ethnic clashes, separatist outbreaks and political unrest, that this region has come to be known for. He candidly discusses the issue of migrating refugees from nearby countries to the north-eastern states, which has caused tension between the many ethnicities in these states. With a balanced and clear-eyed view, Hazarika urges the reader to take heed of the urgent situation in the region. Strangers of the Mist is considered a classic on the issues facing the North-east.
Love And Longing In Bombay
In these five haunting stories Vikram Chandra paints a remarkable picture of Bombay—its ghosts, its passions, its feuds, its mysteries—while exploring timeless questions of the human spirit.
The stories are linked by a single narrator, an elusive civil servant, who, on each of five evenings, recounts an extraordinary tale to those seated around him in a smoky Bombay bar. In ‘Shakti’, two feuding business families are united by a forbidden passion; in ‘Dharma’, a soldier forced to save his life through a terrible act of self-mutilation returns to his home in Bombay to find it haunted by the spirit of a small boy; in ‘Karma’, a police inspector takes on a murder case and finds himself drawn further into spiralling layers of corruption and deceit.
Tightly controlled and luminously written, this outstanding collection confirms Vikram Chandra as one of today’s most exciting writers.
Rites Of Passage
This book is a serious study of the situation in the Northeast- and that includes Bangladesh. And no better man could have been found to write about the area and its people than Sanjoy Hazarika. What sets the book apart is its focus on migrants not as just numbers but people for whom border crossing is an inevitable necessity.