‘To say that, in fact, writing has been no more than a way of talking about the body and nothing but the body…’
Lost to the meaning of her life, a foreign writer arrives in Delhi seeking the wordless company of strangers. Delhi is an exploded sun, bleeding everywhere its untrammelled chaos: the feral dampness of bus fumes; the suicidal rush of scooters; the autorickshaw seats impregnated with thousands of odours—nauseous accretions of India’s muddy human tide. The men with their stinking bidis rule as masters and the women remain walled in by centuries of tradition. The author, infatuated by a quiet lady on the street, begins to seek the untamed and undiscovered country that lies below her sari, the delicate throbbing hidden beneath her silence. As she rediscovers her voice and the ability to write a story, and as monsoon arrives, low and heavy-bellied, washing away the concrete barricades of custom, a secret encounter in a music store opens up an ancient darwaza of forbidden pleasures.
Bursting with sharp irreverence, Indian Tango is a story of fleshly transgression and unlikely liberation in the patriachopolis of New Delhi.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
Mirror City
It is 1973. A newly independent Bangladesh is collapsing under the weight of impending famine, unemployment and political corruption. In the midst of this upheaval, Uma, a Bengali from Calcutta, moves to Dhaka with her husband Iqbal. As the young woman learns to make the new city her home, she faces upheavals of her own. Iqbal is a changed man; their mixed marriage raises too many eyebrows; and the charged atmosphere in Dhaka makes it impossible to trust anyone. Uma has never felt so utterly alone in her life, until she finds herself unexpectedly falling in love.
Mirror City brilliantly captures the turbulent early days of Bangladesh, the slow breakdown of a marriage, and a woman’s search to find herself. Nuanced, atmospheric and full of drama, this is an utterly compelling novel.
Kindled Lives
Will destiny bring them together? Maybe, with a little help…
Returning home after a decade in the United States, blue-blooded billionaire Aditya Maurya is baffled by his father’s wish that he marry Rhea. To him she is nothing more than an orphan of dubious parentage living off their generosity.
Rhea, self-confident and spirited, brought up under the care of the Maurya family, is still smarting from the handsome Jr Maurya’s humiliation of her five years ago.
The ailing patriarch of the family Vijayendra Maurya, however, feels that they are perfect for each other. Also, he has a promise to keep…
Forced into marriage by Sr Maurya’s ill-health, Aditya and Rhea call a truce. Soon, they discover each other’s true selves and passion ignites between them.
Will their love withstand the truth about Rhea’s birth, though?
Sangeet Kaksh
This is translated from English book The Music Room written by Namita Devidayal.
When Namita is ten, her mother takes her to Dhondutai, a respected Mumbai music teacher from the great Jaipur Gharana. Dhondutai has dedicated herself to music and her antecedents are rich. She is the only remaining student of the legendary Alladiya Khan, the founder of the gharana and of its most famous singer, the tempestuous songbird, Kesarbai Kerkar. Namita begins to learn singing from Dhondutai, at first reluctantly and then, as the years pass, with growing passion. Dhondutai sees in her a second Kesar, but does Namita have the dedication to give herself up completely to music—or will there always be too many late nights and cigarettes? Beautifully written, full of anecdotes, gossip and legend, The Music Room is perhaps the most intimate book to be written about Indian classical music yet.
Haroun Aur Sagar Kisson Ka
This is translated from English book Haroun and the Sea of Stories written by Salman Rushdie.
What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?
I asked that question and the Unthinkable Thing happened: my father can’t tell stories anymore. That means no more laughter in the city of Alifbay and now the place stinks of sadness. So it’s up to me to put things right. If the water genie Iff can take me on the Hoopoe bird Butt all the way to Gup City then maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to persuade the Grand Comptroller to give my father his Story Water supply back. Trouble is, that is strictly forbidden, one hundred percent banned, no way Jose territory…
Florence Ki Jadugarni
This is a translation from English book The Enchantress of Florence written by Salman Rushdie.
A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself ‘Mogor dell’Amore’, the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The Stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar’s grandfather Babar; Qara Koz, Lady Black Eyes’, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbeg warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerized by her presence, and much trouble ensues.
The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other – the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhumanm torture, where Argalia’s boyhood friend “il Machia” – Niccolo Machiavelli – is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to tbe uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both.
But is Mogor’s story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he’s a liar, must he die?
The Bad Boys Of Bokaro Jail
What happens when a business executive is thrown into a jail in small town Jharkhand? He ends up with an education of a lifetime…
When Chetan Mahajan is wrongfully sent to Bokaro jail, he encounters a world completely different from his corporate life in Delhi. From picking the best prison ward, befriending the people who can get him mobile phone access and upgraded food, and training for his upcoming marathon in the tiny prison yard, Chetan soon learns to work the prison system. In the process he makes unlikely friends, and discovers what India’s underbelly really looks like.
A true story, The Bad Boys of Bokaro Jail, is thought provoking, amusing and touching. It will show you the Indian prison as you have never seen it before.
Saltwater
Young, F*cked Up and Beautiful
Rish returns home to Bombay, halfway through his college in the US, unable to deal with the suicide of his friend Sahil—a manic depressive with an uncontrollable drug habit. He touches down in a world of careless money and no rules.
As he struggles to repair old friendships and rekindle old love, he’s quickly sucked into the same old pattern of magic pills, endless parties and random sex. Rish’s quest for redemption quickly degenerates into an unstoppable roller coaster into the nights of south Bombay, tearing through exclusive nightclubs and sea-facing penthouses.
When it crashes —no one will be left standing.
Saltwater is the raw, uncut footage of an entire generation losing it, together, one shiny party at a time.
On Sal Mal Lane
Sri Lanka, 1979. The Herath family has just moved to Sal Mal Lane, a quiet street disturbed only by the cries of the children whose triumphs and tragedies sustain the families that live there. As the neighbors adapt to the newcomers in different ways, the children fill their days with cricket matches, romantic crushes, and small rivalries. The innocence of the children—a beloved sister and her overprotective siblings, a rejected son and his twin sisters, two very different brothers—contrasts sharply with the petty prejudices of the adults charged with their care. But the tremors of civil war are mounting, and it is only a matter of time before the conflict engulfs them all and the sleepy neighborhood erupts in violence.
Tender and heartbreaking, On Sal Mal Lane is an evocative story of what was lost to a country and its people.
Their Language Of Love
A wife worries for her family’s survival during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. A mother is horrified when she learns that her daughter wants to marry her American boyfriend. An aged matriarch travels to the USA to discover she must confront a traumatic memory from her past.
Finely nuanced, and laced with Sidhwa’s sharply comic observations, this is a stellar collection of tales from one of the subcontinent’s most important and beloved writers.