मधुशाला में एक सौ पैंतीस रूबाइयाँ (यानी चार पंक्तियों वाली कविताएँ) हैं।
मधुशाला की हर रूबाई मधुशाला शब्द से समाप्त होती है। हरिवंश राय बच्चन ने मधु, मदिरा, हाला (शराब), साकी (शराब पड़ोसने वाली), प्याला (कप या ग्लास), मधुशाला और मदिरालय की मदद से जीवन की जटिलताओं के विश्लेषण का प्रयास किया है। मधुशाला जब पहली बार 1935 में प्रकाशित हुई तो शराब की प्रशंसा के लिए कई लोगों ने उनकी आलोचना की। लेकिन गांधी जी ने इसकी प्रशंसा की।
बाद के दिनों में मधुशाला इतनी मशहूर हो गई कि जगह-जगह इसे नृत्य-नाटिका के रूप में प्रस्तुत किया। मधुशाला की चुनिंदा रूबाइयों को मन्ना डे ने एल्बम के रूप में प्रस्तुत किया। इस एल्बम की पहली कविता स्वयं बच्चन ने गाई। हरिवंश राय बच्चन के पुत्र अमिताभ बच्चन ने न्यू यॉर्क के लिंकन सेंटर सहित कई जगहों पर मधुशाला की रूबाइयों का पाठ किया।
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
On the Brink of Belief
Djinns linger in homes, an Assamese grandmother says. Peculiar cousins haunt Kashmiri family trees. Redemption for Shaitan is found on a bathroom floor in Lahore. In Dhaka, questions hang heavy in a police cell. Farewell emails offer closure to a relationship set against the backdrop of the decriminalization bill in Sri Lanka. And in a quiet kitchen somewhere in Nepal, memories still glow like flames. In this collection, twenty-four LGBTQIA+ writers from South Asia and beyond, conjure worlds where the borders between myth and memory, flesh and spirit, fact and belief dissolve.
This collection is a first-of-its-kind portal into the charged space where queerness meets faith. Building on the cultural histories of South Asia, these stories are brought to you as flash fiction, memoir, poetry, fragments and conversations, gathering voices that are at once intimate, fiercely authentic and defiant. Together, they rewrite what it means to belong and believe, offering readers not answers but revelations.
Bougainvillea House
Clarice Aranxa has come to Bougainvillea House to die. But there will be no peace here, nor quiet surrender, as long-forgotten memories are brutally revived. And even as Clarice grows weaker by the day from the ravages of motor neuron disease, her violent past is mirrored in a series of unexplained deaths.
Fruits of the Barren Tree
Darjeeling, late 1980s. The demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland has taken a violent turn. The Green Party is at war with the Red Party-and with the state’s security forces. Murder, loot, terror and arson beset the Himalayan foothills.
Fruits of the Barren Tree is a story of that time, and of Relling, a small village near Darjeeling. In Relling there’s Basnet, the village shaman, and his wife; there’s Jhuppay, their son-incorrigible thief, truant and amateur drunk; and also Nimma, Jhuppay’s great love, whose only desire in life is that he take the path of virtue. There’s Chyaatar too, former army man, now a militia commander in the Green Party, who rules the village with an iron hand. Ever the miscreant, nothing Jhuppay does can win Nimma’s heart. But when the Red Party hires his loudspeaker for a meeting-the first innocent, honest job of his life-it sets Jhuppay, Nimma and Chyaatar on a murderous course that fate itself cannot derail.
Originally published in Nepali as Phoolange, this sharp, evocative novel is the story of a failed movement and a cautionary tale of how easily the contagion of violence can infect a community. Intensely visual and imbued with a strong sense of place, it is equally a compelling portrait of Darjeeling away from the brochures and the postcards.
Silent Journeys
What of the many travels undertaken through history by men and women, in war and peace, that have been unrecorded, invisible, and forgotten?
In Benyamin’s Silent Journeys, we trace the voyage of Mariamma, a young nurse from Kerala who travelled from her hometown in Manthalir all the way across the world. Nothing was known of her journey until many decades later, when a curious great grandson began his investigations only to stumble across a tale of great adventure, hardship, resilience, and love.
The novel reflects upon terrific stories of unaccompanied and courageous journeys that many valiant women, primarily nurses, have made through history, reaching the coldest places in the Arctic, Canada, remote tribal locations in the desert, the interiors of the dark continent, and almost everywhere in Europe
Ten Incarnations of Rebellion
Kalki Divekar grows up a daughter of Kingston—a city the British built on the ashes of Bombay. The older generation, including her father, have been lost to the brutal hunt for rebels. Young men are drafted to fight wars they will never return from. And the people of her city are more interested in fighting each other than facing their true oppressors.
When tragedy strikes close to home, Kalki and her group of friends begin to play a dangerous game, obtaining jobs working for the British while secretly planning to destroy the empire from the inside out. They found Kingston’s new independence movement, knowing one wrong move means certain death. Facing threats from all quarters, Kalki must decide whether it’s more important to be a hero or to survive.
Told as ten moments from Kalki’s life that mirror the Dashavatara, the ten avatars of Vishnu, Ten Incarnations of Rebellion is a sweeping, deeply felt speculative novel of empowerment, friendship, self-determination, and the true meaning of freedom.
The Cheating Husband
Emma finally has a fresh start—a new boyfriend, a place of her own, and a little distance from her overprotective sister. Sure, she’s struggling to find a job, and her apartment isn’t in the best part of town, but it’s hers. And for the first time in a while, she’s happy.
Until she uncovers a devastating lie.
Her perfect boyfriend? He’s already married.
Emma knows she should walk away, but something keeps pulling her back. There’s more to his secrets than just a hidden wife. He is not who he claims to be.
And when Emma finally learns the truth about his wife, everything takes a terrifying turn.
They are not a normal couple.
- A Gripping Psychological Thriller
- A Deceptive Love Story
- A Mystery That Unfolds with Shocking Twists
- A Final Twist You Won’t See Coming
- Perfect for Fans of Freida McFadden & Kiersten Modglin
The First Connect
The past crashes into Kareena’s present as her first love resurfaces after eighteen years, awakening desires she thought were long buried. As she struggles between two worlds, two men, and two versions of herself, her inner turmoil deepens when a stranger enters her life, further blurring the lines between loyalty and longing.
Meanwhile, Mouni, a teenager, witnesses two contrasting expressions of love—one driven by persistent pursuit, the other by selfless, serendipitous surrender.
Will the intense implications of love weigh upon the fragile heart of a woman and a girl on the cusp of understanding love? The First Connect explores love’s unpredictability, unravelling the complexities of lost love, being lost in love, and love lost in translation. Through delicate moments of magic and fleeting waves of whisper, it asks: does love thrive through conscious effort, or does it find its way through fate alone? And most importantly, what makes a First Connect truly flourish and feel real?
The White Lotus
‘I can hardly imagine it, but everything will be different tomorrow. I’ve looked forward to it for years. I’ll truly be Sundaram’s wife, together in body as in spirit . . .’
But that tomorrow never comes, and at just fourteen, Aru is left a widow. Worse, the village whispers name Sundaram a drunkard and a thief—the thief who called down the wrath of the local goddess by stealing the most precious jewel from her temple. The future Aru once envisioned vanishes, leaving only bleak and endless days ahead. So when a ray of hope appears in the form of the landlord’s children offering her a job as their grandmother’s companion, Aru seizes the opportunity.
In the landlord’s house, Aru gains an education, finds that her charge is an unexpected ally, and dreams impossibly of having a profession of her own one day. But she also learns uncomfortable truths. Soon, her very life is in danger . . .
The White Lotus is a gripping murder mystery and a rich social portrait of the plight of widows in rural Tamil Nadu at the very start of the twentieth century.
Songs Our Bodies Sing
A heartbroken father in London turns to the Beatles to make sense of what he has lost. An antique dealer in Bombay rejects jingoism in favour of racism. Two immigrants in Toronto look for ways of belonging with a local rock band. And, in Paris, a tourist rejects long-held ideas about trust.
The East and West have clashed in innumerable ways since each first acknowledged the existence of the other. The stories of Songs Our Bodies Sing are set at these points of intersection. What they reveal are commonalities rather than differences, with protagonists on opposite sides of an imaginary divide, trapped in boxes of their own making.
This collection pulls back a curtain ever so slightly, in ways that are strange yet tender, to show how our struggles to understand the human condition are the same, wherever we are.