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.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
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.
Eighteen And Wiser (Not Quite)
Join Rinki and the wolf pack in the most exciting year of their lives. She has dreamed of it, longed for it, cried for it. And now, she’s it. Rinki Tripathi is finally eighteen! But, as she realizes, being eighteen comes with its own set of troubles: parental expectations (they seem to be obsessed with the ‘F’ word: Future), romantic complications (in the form of the so gorgeous- it-isn’t-fair Tejas), professional tribulations (don’t even ask).
Rinki can’t understand why her male friends prefer her female friends to her. Her college teachers can’t understand why her attendance is so poor. And her parents, poor folks, don’t understand her at all! Rinki has hit the magic number but her life is far from magical. Will the eighteenth year of her life make her feel any wiser? Read the last instalment in the Rinki series and find out.
The Sculptor In Exile
Bringing together the best of Vaid’s highly experimental short stories, The Sculptor in Exile makes for exhilarating reading. Rigour and wit inform these complex and transgressive meditations on time, love, death, marriage, ageing, selfhood and creativity. While they vary widely in form, tone and length, recurring through the collection are stories that reflect on the figure of the artist in self-imposed exile. In his explorations of interior darkness, Vaid often pushes his experiments to the edge but never loses his footing.
The City Of Palaces
An orphaned girl.
A cruel twist of fate.
A spectacular adventure.
Bengal, 1930. Young Pom’s life changes forever when her family is wiped out in a devastating flood. She becomes a maidservant in a British boarding school where she discovers her gift for languages. Amidst the drudgery of her duties, she finds unexpected friendship and experiences the stirrings of first love. However, tragedy strikes and she is forced into hiding.
Alone and desperate, she is recruited into a brothel for English officers. She hopes this secretive, decadent world will shield her from the demons of her past. But fate intervenes, and our heroine is on the run again—to Calcutta, the city of palaces, where she finds herself caught up in the rising tide of Indian nationalism. Changing her name to Kamala, she creates a new life for herself, one that holds the promise of happiness and true love . . . until her past returns haunt her.
Filled with romance, danger, intrigue and betrayal, The City of Palaces is a lush, sprawling saga about a feisty young heroine and her struggle for survival.
‘Sujata masterfully weaves her heroine’s life with India’s struggle and fight for freedom and gives us an elegant piece of Indian history wrapped beautifully in Pom’s story’—Amulya Malladi, author of The Mango Season