The Shape of the Beast is our world laid bare by a mind that has consistently and unhesitatingly engaged with its changing realities and often anticipated the way things have moved in the last decade.
In the fourteen interviews collected here, conducted between January 2001 and March 2008, Arundhati Roy examines the nature of state and corporate power as it has emerged during this period, and the shape that resistance movements are taking. As she speaks about people displaced by dams and industry, the genocide in Gujarat, Maoist rebels, the war in Kashmir and the global War on Terror, she raises fundamental questions about democracy, justice and non-violent protest.
Unabashedly political, this is also a deeply personal collection that talks about the necessity of taking a stand and about the dilemma of guarding the private space necessary for writing in a world that demands urgent, unequivocal intervention.
Now with a new introduction by the author discussing the election of India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi.
In eleven powerful, and closely argued, linked essays, Arundhati Roy takes a hard look at the underbelly of the world’s largest democracy. Beginning with the state-backed killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, she writes about how ‘progress’ and genocide have historically gone hand in hand; about the murky investigations into the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament; about the dangers of an increasingly powerful and entirely unaccountable judiciary; and about the collusion between large corporations, the government and the mainstream media. The volume ends with an account of the August 2008 uprising in Kashmir and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai. ‘The Briefing’, included as an appendix, is a compelling fictional text that brings together many of the issues central to the collection.
It is the Second World War and Kamala and her brother are removed from their parents’ home in Calcutta to the safer environs of their village in northern Kerala. At once an outsider and an integral part of her ancestral home, Kamala struggles to fathom the intricacies of class, caste and language. But surrounded by people like her adoring Ammamma, the servant Sankaran who promises to teach her the crow-language, and Valli who tells her stories of yakshis whose breasts are as big as jackfruits, Kamala soon discovers the joys of growing up as the center of everyone’s universe. As Calcutta fades from her mind like an old dream, while the thudding of the drums at the Para festival, the roar of the velichappadu as he becomes possessed and the songs of the parayankaali dancers become absolute realities of life.
Dispatches from a valley under siege
Since 1989, Kashmir has rarely been out of the headlines, as local militants, foreign terrorists and PBI – Indian security forces battle it out in a region once known as `paradise on earth’. In all the propaganda, and news and statistics about terrorist strikes, counter insurgency operations and the foreign hand, the human stories, however, are often lost.
In this book, journalist Humra Quraishi draws upon her extensive travels in the Valley and interactions with ordinary Kashmiris over two decades to try and understand what the long strife has done to them. She brings us heartrending stories of mothers waiting for their young sons who disappeared years ago, picked up by the army or by militants; minds undone by the constant uncertainty and fear and almost daily humiliation; old harmonies tragically undermined by the atmosphere of suspicion; an entire generation of young Kashmiris who have grown up with no concept of security; and PBI – Individual families and a whole society falling apart under the strain of the seemingly endless turmoil
This second volume of Arundhati Roy’s collected non-fiction writing brings together fourteen essays written between June 2002 and November 2004. In these essays she draws the thread of empire through seemingly unconnected arenas, uncovering the links between America’s War on Terror, the growing threat of corporate power, the response of nation states to resistance movements, the role of NGOs, caste and communal politics in India, and the perverse machinery of an increasingly corporatized mass media. Meticulously researched and carefully argued, this is a necessary work for our times.
War has spread from India’s borders to the forests in the very heart of the country. Here are four essays by Arundhati Roy including the heatedly debated ‘Walking with the Comrades’ that combines a clear-eyed, analytical overview with extraordinary reportage from the ground of the Maoist guerrilla zone and her most recent essay, ‘Capitalism: A Ghost Story’. Broken Republic examines the nature of progress and development in the emerging global superpower, and asks some fundamental questions about the real meaning of civilization itself.
Portrait of India (1970) is a vivid account of 60s’ India and some of its most interesting figures – Indira Gandhi, Jaya Prakash Narayan and Satyajit Ray, among others. Travelling across the country from the Himalayas to Kerala, through its villages and cities, Ved Mehta’s observations of and insights into India remain relevant and thought provoking even today.
Ved Mehta’s book on Gandhi (1977) is one of the great portraits of the political leader. Travelling the world to talk to Gandhi’s family, friends and followers, drawing his daily life in exacting detail, Mehta gives us a nuanced and complex picture of the great man and brings him vividly alive.
The Essential Ved Mehta is the definitive collection of the author’s work, containing excerpts from nearly all his writings, many of which first appeared in William Shawn’s New Yorker. It begins with his first book, the classic autobiography highlighting his blindness, Face to Face and goes on to feature, among others, his iconic books about India and his great family saga Continents of Exile. Each entry comes with a reflection by Mehta. Authoritative and illuminating, The Essential Ved Mehta is not just an introduction to this seminal writer but also a passionate record of a writer looking back upon his own work.
While Ramakrishna Paramhamsa has been the subject of innumerable volumes devoted to his life and teachings over the past century and a half, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa: The Sadhaka of Dakshineswar illuminates this enigmatic religious figure and stands out amidst the multitude of voices that crowd his story. It traces the several contradictions of nineteenth-century Bengal that the man embodied: between his Vaishnav roots and Sakti worship; between bhakti and gyan; and between a guru and sadhaka (spiritual practitioner).
Amiya P. Sen situates Sri Ramakrishna within the emerging social and cultural anxieties of the time as also the larger Hindu-Brahminical world that he was born into. This book also carries a brief but critical introduction to the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Ramakrishna’s vibrant theology that will be of interest to lay readers as well as those especially interested in the cultural and religious history of modern Bengal.
See also Amiya Sen’s His Words: The Preaching and Parables of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
