Twenty-two extraordinary stories from the lives of women we have always known
What happens when women decide to shed their inhibitions and speak out about their deepest feelings? What stories lie behind their closed doors in the slums and pols of Ahmedabad?
This sparkling collection tells us about the dreams and aspirations, the victories and defeats of women we have met every day—on the streets, at home, in our neighbourhoods. In simple unadorned prose Esther David recounts the stories of Maya Desai, tormented by the knowledge of her beauty and driven to suicide by a world which refuses to recognize her true self; of Vesti, who meets an unlikely saviour after being branded as a witch; of Amina, who never steps beyond the threshold of her house, but when her family begins to fall apart, proves to be a tower of strength; and of Vidya, the wife of an itinerant performer, who comes across a strange apparition in the course of a somnolent afternoon.
There are young women and old, struggling against disappointment, failed love and the death of near ones. At times funny, at times disturbing, these stories are a testament to their heroic and moving endeavour to rise above their limitations.
An exciting new novel from the best-selling author of The Scent of Pepper
Shari’s life has always been controlled by others—a domineering mother, a too-perfect sister and a kind but passive father have seen to it that her choices are shaped
more by the demands of social propriety than by her own will. Inevitably, she finds herself agreeing to marry the man of their choice. But tormented by the ghosts of the past and increasingly uncertain about her decision to marry, she flees to her brother’s house in Vrindaban a few weeks before the wedding—much to the shock and dismay of her mother.
Even as she gets drawn into the busy and entirely unpredictable lives of her brother and sister-in-law, both doctors, Shari grapples with her memories: her relationship
with Naren, her blind friend, and the traumatic discovery of the truth about Uncle and Aunt Paru whom she had always considered her surrogate parents. And as she makes peace with her past, she finds in herself the strength to confront her own future.
Richly textured and boldly perceptive, Mango-coloured Fish is the heartwarming story of a young woman’s attempt to strike out on her own.
An absorbing new novel from the author of ‘That Long Silence’ and ‘Roots and Shadows’
When Gopal walks out on her for reasons even he cannot articulate, Sumi returns with their three daughters, Aru, Charu, and Seema, to the shelter of the Big House, where her parents, Kalyani and Shripati, live in a strangely oppressive silence; they have not spoken to each other in the last thirty-five years. As the mystery of this long silence is unraveled, a horrifying story of loss and agony is laid bare, a story that seems to be repeating itself in Sumi’s life…
Set in present-day Karnataka, ‘A Matter of Time’ explores the intricate relationships within an extended family, encompassing three generations of men and women. At the heart of the novel is eighteen-year-old Aru, struggling to understand her father’s ‘desertion’ and her mother’s ‘indifference’, and in the course of a few turbulent months, forging entirely unexpected relationships that are destined to change the course of her life…
Deeply unsettling, yet with moments of warmth and laughter, this is Shasi Deshpande at her poignant best.
From Kannada’s first Jnanpith award winner, a landmark of modern fiction that documents a vanishing world. When Hoovayya and Ramayya return from their studies in the city to their ancestral home, much has changed, throwing the even tenor of village life out of joint. The entry of Subbamma, the young wife of much-married Chandrayya Gowda into the House of Kanooru, sets in motion an irrevocable chain of events which signify the coming of age of a resolutely traditional society. Acutely conscious of the burden of their education amidst the torpor of manorial life, the brothers are forced to witness the descent into cruelty of Chandrayya Gowda, who breaks old familial ties, and demands an impossible fealty. The petty meanness of the Gowda s old age and the idealistic vitality of youth confront each other when Hoovayya and Ramayya both fall in love with Seethe, their childhood playmate, with disastrous consequences for the manor house of Kanooru. The epic conflicts of a decaying feudal order are seen through a multiplicity of characters, and voices that refuse to be silenced. The first stirrings of change in the lives of the Belas, the highland plantation workers and their labouring women, the proud Shudra landowners, the secretive and predatory Agrahara of the Brahmins, are dramatized by a humane eye sensitive to the slightest nuance. The House of Kanooru is ultimately a moving tribute by one of Kannada s greatest writers to the spirit of modernity. Translated from the Kannada by B.C. Ramachandra Sharma and Padma Ramachandra Sharma.
Jalauddin and his men are back in India, and within the next few weeks they will shake you and Kashmir like nothing before.’ With barely three months to go for the American President’s visit to India, Major Vijay Kaul learns of an incredible plot hatched by a rogue faction of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the world’s most lethal terrorist organizations. Afghanistan-trained militant Jalauddin has entered India with only one aim—to destroy any hope of lasting peace in Kashmir. The security forces race against time, trying frantically to foil the plot. But even as they employ their best men and resources to track down Jalauddin, there is something far more sinister brewing—a meticulously planned operation to unleash chaos and bring India to her knees. Highly charged and brilliantly plotted, The Srinagar Conspiracy is the first thriller to be set against the backdrop of the insurgency in Kashmir. Expertly blending fact with fiction, the book describes the rise of militancy in Kashmir over the past decade and a half, and tells the human story of those whose lives were shaped by events beyond their control and whose actions could now decide the fate of the subcontinent.
A hard-boiled, fast-paced narrative about sexual and political corruption in contemporary India Ajit Vajpayee is a drifter. A confused Marxist and a voyeur, his is a life of little action and desperate thoughts—about political ideology, violence and sex. One empty afternoon in Lucknow, a mysterious man who knows his darkest secrets and shares his disillusionment with women offers him an opportunity for adventure: he must spy on a minister’s wife, a woman, he is told, with a genius for deception. The unlikely mission takes Ajit to Bombay and Bihar, and he finds himself hopelessly caught up in a murky world of low politics, high crime and twisted carnality. An erotic thriller set against the backdrop of caste conflicts, mafia intrigue and the amorality of a modern world driven purely by ambition and wealth, The Minister’s Wife is a racy and rewarding read.
A haunting collection of stories from the master of suspense and intrigue, this book showcases some of Satyajit Ray’s memorable explorations into the twilight territories of the peculiar and supernatural.
Classic tales of crime detection featuring Byomkesh Bakshi, the master inquisitor. Written long before Satyajit Ray’s Feluda series, Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries heralded a new era in Bengali popular fiction . Set in the old-world Kolkata, three stories featuring the astute investigator and his chronicler friend Ajit are still as gripping and delightful as when they first appeared.
Byomkesh’s world, peopled with wonderfully delineated characters and framed by a brilliantly captured pre-Independence urban milieu, is fascinating because of its cotemporary flavour, In the first story, Byomkesh works undercover to expose an organized crime ring trafficking in drugs. In the ‘Gramophone Pin Mystery’, he must put his razor-sharp intellect to good used to unearth the pattern behind a series of bizarre roadside murders. In ‘Clalamity Strikes’, the ace detective is called upon to investigate the strange and sudden death of a girl in a neighbour’s kitchen, In the next story, he has to lock horns with an old enemy who has vowed to kill him with an innocuous but deadly weapon. And, in ‘ Picture Imperfect’, Byomkesh unravels a complex mystery involving a stolen group photograph, an amorous couple, and an apparently unnecessary murder.
A ribald, good-natured story of love in Delhi.
Jaishree Mishra’s second novel is an unexpected romp through the universal dilemmas of love and marriage. It is a compelling tale of icompatible relationships and their astonishing success rated. The Sachdevs, Memoms and Singhs are urban Indians, normal folk with everyday converns, instantly recognizable, in fact, just a little bit like youji and me. But when a foppish Delhiwalla falls for a loverly, smart keralite and his brother finds remance abroad, passion and comedy take control of their destinaies. Why are any of these couples married to each other? Why are the unmarried wanting to marry each other? And why are some of them friends? For wouldn’t you have throught that friends, at the very least, had to be vaguely compatible, even if husbands and wives weren’t?
This hilarious tale of imcompatiblities explores why we do the things we do or, indeed, why we let them happen to us.
Meet Chris Stark—six-feet-four, weighing a healthy 300 pounds—a former player of American football who, as he himself is the first to accept, ‘think pretty good but don’t talk that great on account of playing too much football’. Following the pportunities created by Liberalisation, his family’s c orporation h as e ntered in to a business
collaboration with an Indian company, and this has brought the sportive young man to Delhi. While in India he becomes enmeshed i n i ndustrial d isputes, p olitical
machinations, weird intelligence webs and an unfortunate love
affair, besides various other oddities.
The solution to the entire Gordian knot of problems lies in making
the Minister smile. What happens?
