Every May something extraordinary happens in the new cemetery of the sleepy little town – a laburnum tree, with buttery yellow blossoms, flowers over the spot where Lentina is buried. A brave hunter, Imchanok, totters when the ghost of his prey haunts him, till he offers it is a tuft of his hair as a prayer for forgiveness. Pokenmong, the servant boy, by dint of his wit, sells an airfield to unsuspecting villagers. A letter found on a dead insurgent blurs the boundaries between him and an innocent villager, both struggling to make ends meet. A woman’s terrible secret comes full circle, changing her daughter’s and granddaughter’s lives as well as her own. An illiterate village woman’s simple question rattles an army officer and forces him to set her husband free. A young girl loses her lover in his fight for the motherland, leaving her a frightful legacy. And a caterpillar finds wings.
From the mythical to the modern, Laburnum for My Head is a collection of short stories that embrace a gamut of emotions. Heart-rending, witty and riddled with irony, the stories depict a deep understanding of the human condition.
7 July 1924. Sultana Daku, notorious leader of a gang of bhantu dacoits that terrorized the towns and villages of the United Provinces, awaits Lt. Col. Samuel Pearce’s arrival in Haldwani jail.
It is Sultana’s last night. In the morning he will be hanged.
Wrapped in a haze of charas and nostalgia, the daku speaks all night as the Englishman listens. He recounts tales of incredible feats and narrow escapes, of the camaraderie he shared with his bhantu companions, of his love for the nautanki dancer Phulkanwar, and of the shocking betrayal that brought him to the gallows. But even as Pearce and the reader are drawn into Sultana’s confession, the contradictions that emerge reveal the daku’s own demons—his fears, superstitions and ruthless excesses—and an unshakeable belief in his criminal destiny that clashes all too often with his secret longings and hopes.
Combining swashbuckling adventure with a moving story of human frailty and fortitude, The Confession of Sultana Daku is a grand narrative that is as mesmerizing as it is unsettling. Told with remarkable flair, passion and a rare sensitivity, it seals Sujit Saraf’s reputation as a master storyteller.
Pranav Kumar is:
(a) An advertising executive
(b) An aspiring writer
(c) An anarchist
(d) A fugitive from the Mumbai Police
(e) All of the above
Pranav Kumar has had enough. He’s sick and tired of being a corporate drone convincing people that their lives are meaningless without the newest product he’s peddling. He hates that commercialism is the new mantra and people actually believe that you are what you own. Pranav Kumar wants to change the world.
But how does one man make a whole country question the way we are when no one is interested in listening?
Pranav and his friends decide to capture the eyeballs of the nation and shake up the system. Their methods are unorthodox; their message unique. They take over a TV station; expose an environmental scam; strike out at patrons of brothels; sabotage a glitzy fashion show; and paint-bomb a local train.
But as the Anarchists of Mumbai ignite sparks of a much larger movement; they realize that doing good comes at a price; that the means are as important as the ends and that being hunted by the Mumbai police is perhaps better than being hunted by contract-killers.
Bold; fresh and darkly comic; The Diary of an Unreasonable Man is an exceptional debut.
I had set up an agent. For want of a better name, let’s call it love agency, to provide a decent meeting place where men and women, lovers and friends, colud rendezvous without too much sweat… People only want to be alone together. They need time to meet and talk. They want to find themselves through a moment of love.’
Drawn to New Delhi from the hills of the North-East by hopes of adventure and the love of a married man, Anda opens a guest house for lovers and friends. In a small bungalow on a quiet lane, an unlikely assortment of couples and singles come together, for an afternoon, a day and sometimes for months. While in the big city death, like Cupid, stalks the streets and strikes at random.
This second novel by the acclaimed author of The Legends of Pensam is a graceful, quirky and ultimately moving story about relationships, complete with all their complications and joy.
‘Dai’s prose is beautiful, flowing as easily as the waters of the Siang’
The Telegraph
‘Absorbing, spare and often deeply moving.’-Ruskin Bond
‘Wild tales with a difference…Hazarika’s empathy with all creatures great and small comes through in these absorbing, spare and often deeply moving stories. Life in the forests and small towns of Assam is brought vividly to life by a gifted writer.’ -Ruskin Bond
A hunt goes brutally wrong in the jungles of Karbi Anglong. A young magistrate on a police raid is saved from inhumanity by the sight of a hen and her chicks. A solitary bachelor brings home a pigeon and learns the pain of loving a wild thing. An egret visits a man on a moonlit night. Three schoolboys chance upon a leopard and her kill in the hills outside Guwahati.
In lean, taut prose Dhruba Hazarika writes of moments when men encounter animals and the natural world-often, also the moments when they encounter themselves. These are poignant, memorable stories from a literary imagination of uncommon honesty and sophistication.
Like Dickens, Saratchandra had a bag of wonderful tales. The Final Question (Shesh Prashna) is one of Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s last novels and perhaps his most radically innovative. The novel caused a sensation when it was first published in 1931, drawing censure from conservative critics but enthusiastic support from general readers, especially women. The heroine, Kamal, is exceptional for her time. She lives and travels by herself, has relationships with various men, looks poverty and suffering in the face, and asserts the autonomy of the individual being. In the process, she tears apart the frame of the expatriate Bengali society of Agra, where she lives. Through Kamal, Saratchandra questions Indian tradition and the norms of nationhood and womanhood. The Final Question transcends time and will appeal to readers of all ages. Translated by Department of English, Jadavpur University.
‘So cadets; how’s the morale?’
‘High Sir!’ we boys and girls screamed in unison.
‘Should we tighten your training?’
‘Yes sir; give us more!’
‘Good!’ he said. Then whispered to the chief instructor; ‘Tighten their discipline.
Toughen their schedule. I’ve never seen such happy cadets. This is not a party!’
They entered the Officers’ Training Academy at Chennai; with a single desire—to be Officers in the army. Soon they discovered it was going to be an uphill task; literally! They fought; they bickered; they cried and they raised hell. But they also learnt. They learnt to take push-ups and punishments; front rolls and figures of eight; strict discipline and night marches in their stride.
Where Girls Dare is a hilarious and entertaining story of what happens when fifty-two lady cadets (LCs) train alongside four hundred Gentleman Cadets (GCs); some of whom believe that girls in the army is a bad idea.
For more info on new series Metro Reads; please visit www.metroreads.in
Bana is among the three most important prose writers in classical Sanskrit, all of whom lived in the late sixth and early seventh centuries AD. It is clear, from his writings, that his mind was amazingly modern, humane and sensitive, especially for the seventh-century India in which he lived. Bana had a healthy irreverence towards many of the established orthodoxies of his time and his strength lies in his skill as a storyteller and as a creator of characters vibrant with life and individuality.
Kadambari is a lyrical prose romance that narrates the love story of Kadambari, a Gandharva princess, and Chandrapida, a prince who is eventually revealed to be the moon god. Acclaimed as a great literary work, it is replete with eloquent descriptions of palaces, forests, mountains, gardens, sunrises and sunsets and love in separation and fulfillment. Featuring an intriguing parrot-narrator, the story progresses as a delightful romantic thriller played out in the magical realms between this world and the other, in which the earthly and the divine blend in idyllic splendour.
What do you suggest, then? How do we mitigate this tragedy? Three years of drought . . . three years of starvation!’ She realized it was his way of getting back at her. ‘There is an answer, Your Majesty. What if a large imambara were to be built, bigger and more magnificent than any constructed so far in Hindustan? Every Mussulman in Allah’s creation will remember Asaf-ud-daula with reverence for all time to come.’ 1784. Amid famine, poverty, a grand culture rises: Awadh. As Nawab Asaf-ud-daula tries to come to terms with new British masters, his awam seeks comfort in the vibrant poetry of Mir, the buzz of the Chowk, the thrill of the wrestling matches and the gossip of the zenankhana. In masterful prose, A.K. Srikumar tells the story of Asaf-ud-daula’s court and his people, of the uncertain fortunes of Begum Shams-un-nisa, Prince Wazir Ali, Nazir-i-Mahal Nuruddin, of the schemes of Naib Haider Baig Khan and Resident John Bristow and pretender Saadat Ali Khan, of the Bada Imambara and a culinary tradition that was born amidst the brick and mortar— dum pukht.
Set in Calcutta in the 1970s, There Was No One at the Bus Stop is a
powerful exploration of adultery and its overwhelming consequences.
Trina, a married woman, impulsively decides one day to stop living a lie
and walks out on her husband, daughter and son, in whose lives she no
longer plays a role. But will she be able to sever the bonds and join the
man she loves in his home? The man, Debashish, is haunted by his wife’s
recent suicide and is tormented by the possibility that his young son would
rather live away from him.
Through spare prose and searing dialogue, this novel unfolds over twelve
hours on a single day. It reveals the often complex reasons that hold
human relationships together and the motives that break them apart.
