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And The Ocean was Our Sky – the Birth of the Idea

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With lush and atmospheric art of Rovina Cai woven in throughout, “And The Ocean Was Our Sky” by Patrick Ness turns the familiar tale of “Moby Dick” upside down and tells a story all its own with epic triumph and devastating fate.
But where did the idea for And The Ocean Was Our Sky come from? Here is an excerpt from the introduction of the book by Patrick Ness, where he tells us just that. Take a look!

And The Ocean Was Our Sky started with a simple question, and then got weirder from there. I was thinking one day, “What if Moby Dick was told by the whale?” I’m always fascinated by who tells a story and how that changes it. A good example is a story like Wicked, where the Wicked Witch of the West has an entirely different take on Oz. I love that. Imagine if cats got to write all the books about what dogs are like.
But then the idea kept growing. What if whales hunted men like men hunted whales? What if there was a world where they both did that at the same time? What legends would arise? Most interestingly, how strange and compelling to look through the eyes of a main character who, at the start at least, views us as little more than prey.
Which spawned the character of Bathsheba, our narrator. Young, but tough. Moreover, a strikingly different kind of intellect and emotions than a human might have. I’m Scandinavian, and the stereotype about us is our stoicism. I’ve argued for years that stoicism doesn’t mean unemotional; it means privately emotional. And that’s what a whale felt like to me. There are deep, deep feelings in her, as deep as the sea. What happens when they get close to the surface?
And then the illustrations! Good God. I can barely draw a stick figure, and the beauty and breadth and drama that Rovina Cai has brought to this book – in much the same way the genius Jim Kay did on A Monster Calls – are astonishing to me as things I could never have thought of. She took the story to a whole new level. Bathsheba is alive and on the page. Facing her demons.
Because to my surprise, this became in the end a story of the devils we chase, the devils we hunt, the devils we perhaps create. And our need for constant vigilance over those very devils who would seek power over all of us. It became a very contemporary story of the power of rumour, the power that words have to change and sometimes even make reality. And not always in a good way.
And so here are the first couple of chapters of the story of my brave and powerful Bathsheba, coming to understand the scope of the world, hoping that she’s not too late…
All best,
Patrick Ness
March 2018

Kabul under the Taliban Regime – an Eyewitness Account from Chasing the Monk's Shadow

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In 627 AD, the Chinese monk Xuanzang set off on an epic journey along the Silk Road to India to study Buddhist philosophy with the Indian masters. Records of his journey remain a valuable historical source. Fourteen hundred years later, Mishi Saran follows in Xuanzang’s footsteps to the fabled oasis cities of China and Central Asia, now vanished kingdoms in Pakistan and Afghanistan and India’s Buddhist centres. She chronicles her journey in the book Chasing the Monk’s Shadow.
This path breaking travelogue includes an extraordinary eyewitness account of Kabul under the Taliban regime, just one month before 9/11.
Here is an excerpt about this from the book:

Ashraf gave me a few survival tips. ‘At around 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., the ministry to fight vice and promote virtue patrols the city,’ he said. ‘That’s the time to be careful.’’
That was what kept Kabulis cowed, their eyes filled with fear, men and women. This old and gracious city stank of fear.
‘My barber trimmed my beard, but too much. I told him, you idiot, I’m too scared to go out now.’ Men as much as women felt the pressure of strictures imposed by the Taliban.
Tolibohn.
A semblance of calm drifted back into my head, but in thin layers. The Taliban brought peace, Ashraf said. Kabul was so divided among the fighters, divided by ethnic rule. We sipped our tea and chatted, but soon I wanted to take his leave and lie in my bed with the sheets over my head. It was a lot to digest.
‘Come,’ Ashraf said kindly. ‘Let me drop you back, I will show you around Kabul. We’ll say I’m a taxi driver. Actually, I did used to drive a taxi. You sit in the back so they don’t stop us, because men and women don’t sit together.’
As the afternoon faded into evening, we drove around Kabul. Ashraf pointed out from the front seat of his battered yellow car the old Indian embassy, the fortified Iranian one, the Turkish—all gone, all emptied out, locked up behind high walls. We drove by the Kabul Hotel where a bomb had, two weeks ago, smashed a wall in, so that a pile of rubble descended onto the pavement. Was it the opposition? A discontented Taliban faction? Nobody knew. The front line was once again just forty kilometers north of Kabul.
Ashraf harked back to 1994–5, when the two sides fought over Kabul, when shells rang across the city and the inhabitants crumpled in their homes.
‘Here is the office of the justice minister, he’s a hardliner,’ Ashraf lowered his voice. ‘Here’s the office of the finance minister, he’s also a hardliner.’
As we drew up at the Ariana Hotel gate, he pointed to the traffic circle ahead: ‘That’s where Najibullah was hanged from.’ My stomach lurched. There was so much I did not know, but I did know that in 1996 the world saw images of a mutilated President Najibullah hanging from a traffic post, that Najibullah’s widow had fled to New Delhi and still lived there. I tried not to look at the traffic circle, though it was empty and perfectly innocuous. It’s as though places where violence happened bore their traces. Nothing much, only that at dusk that spot was a darker shade of grey. The weekend trickled by. Ensconced in the Ariana, one afternoon, I simply decided not to be afraid. It was crippling me. I had come to Kabul pulling a truckload of inherited fear up the mountains with me. I had come in full mental armour, my mind clogged with walls of it. It was as though, expecting the worst, I had found a few butterflies, a rose garden and some bird droppings.
‘I need to telephone,’ I said to the man in the lobby, mimicking a phone, holding a fist to my ear with thumb and pinkie held out. In Urdu, we made arrangements to go to the public phone booth in the market. One of the Afghans from the hotel would escort me.
I phoned S. in Hong Kong. His voice quickened with worry.
‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I’m in Kabul. I’m staying at the Ariana Hotel.’ I got used to broken-down, beaten-up Kabul. I could banish the fear, but not the sadness. I felt wretched all the time, for this country, for the Afghan children who came up, fair, with pointed chins and clear eyes, to beg. They were tiny, their hair mussed and caked. The children, old men and women and sometimes a woman in a burkha lurched towards me, hands held out, whispering. I couldn’t see their eyes, dark behind the lilac net. But I could sense the desperation.
Unlike the Indians, who imbue their begging with a certain professionalism, even humour, these were not people used to supplication. An old woman hobbled up to me, palm held out. I handed her a bag of apples I had bought. She gestured, no.
‘What is she saying?’ I asked the driver.
‘She has no teeth, she says she can’t eat the apples.’
‘Oh.’ I took the apples back and gave her the peaches instead.

With its riveting mix of lively reportage, high adventure, historical inquiry and personal memoir, Chasing The Monk’s Shadow is a path-breaking travelogue. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!

Your Puffin Reads this Autumn

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This autumn, we have a list of books full of adventure for your little ones! You can send them to solve a mystery with Feluda and Topshe or to meet the ghosts from Ruskin Bond’s world. They can hang with the two most popular avatars of Lord Vishnu or read Sonia Mehta’s fun series on how to deal with feelings!
Here is the list of Puffin Reads to choose from:

Feluda Omnibus by Satyajit Ray


Including three unputdownable mysteries by master storyteller Satyajit Ray, this omnibus edition is the perfect introduction to the greatest exploits of Feluda and his sidekick, Topshe. Traversing fascinating landscapes and electrifying escapades, this collection is an absolute classic and a must-have for fans of detective fiction.

The Upside-down King by Sudha Murty


The tales in this collection surround the two most popular avatars of Lord Vishnu-Rama and Krishna-and their lineage. Countless stories about the two abound, yet most are simply disappearing from the hearts and minds of the present generation. Bestselling author Sudha Murty takes you on an arresting tour, all the while telling you of the days when demons and gods walked alongside humans, animals could talk and gods granted the most glorious boons to common people.

Wind on the Haunted Hill by Ruskin Bond


A gritty, hair-raising story about friendship, courage and survival from India’s favourite teller of tales, this stunning edition is an absolute must-have to introduce young readers to the magic of Ruskin Bond’s craft.
 

Dealing with Feelings Series by Sonia Mehta


Sonia Mehta is a children’s writer who believes that sparking off a child’s imagination opens up a world of adventure. Here is a list of books by her, that your little one will enjoy (and learn from)!

  1. Being Happy Is Fun
  2. It’s not nice to be jealous
  3. It’s okay to be confused
  4. Being Sad isn’t any fun
  5. Being Bored isn’t fun
  6. Being Silly is Silly

 

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Like the biological heart, the metaphorical heart has both size and shape

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The spark of life, fount of emotion, house of the soul – the heart lies at the centre of every facet of our existence. It’s so bound up in our deepest feelings that it can physically change shape when we experience emotional trauma.
Here is an excerpt from Sandeep Jauhar’s book, Heart: A History that talks about the metaphorical heart.

If the heart bestows life and death, it also instigates metaphor: it is a vessel that fills with meaning. The fact that my mother associated my lack of courage with a small heart is no surprise; the heart has always been linked to bravery. During the Re naissance, the heart on a coat of arms was a symbol of faithfulness and courage. Even the word “courage” derives from the Latin cor, which means “heart.” A person with a small heart is easily frightened. Discouragement or fear is expressed as a loss of heart.
This metaphor exists across cultures. After my grandfather died, my father, only fourteen, enrolled at Kanpur Agricultural College, the first in his family to pursue higher education. Every morning he would walk six kilometers to the academy because the family could not afford a bicycle. On the way home, lugging his bag of borrowed books, he would meet my grandmother at an appointed spot on the dusty road. When he would complain of feeling tired or overwhelmed, she would admonish her grieving boy to show strength. “Dil himmauth kar,” she’d say. Take heart.
Shakespeare explored this motif in his tragedies. In Antony and Cleopatra, Dercetas describes the warrior Antony’s suicide by the hand that “with the courage which the heart did lend it, splitted the heart.” Antony was distraught over what he believed to be Cleopatra’s treachery, and in describing Antony’s heartbreak, Shakespeare refers to another conception of the heart: as the locus of romantic love. “I made these wars for Egypt and the Queen,” Antony declares, “whose heart I thought I had, for she had mine.” As the critic Joan Lord Hall writes, Antony is conflicted over two very different conceptions of the metaphorical heart. In the end, his craving for battlefield glory overwhelms his desire for passionate fulfillment and leads to his self- destruction.
The richness and breadth of human emotions are perhaps what distinguish us most from other animals, and throughout history and across many cultures, the heart has been thought of as the place where those emotions reside. The word “emotion” derives from the French verb émouvoir, meaning “to stir up,” and perhaps it is only logical that emotions would be linked to an organ characterized by its agitated movement. The idea that the heart is the locus of emotions has a history spanning from the ancient world. But this symbolism has endured.
If we ask people which image they most associate with love, there is no doubt that the valentine heart would top the list. The ♥ shape, called a cardioid, is common in nature. It appears in the leaves, flowers, and seeds of many plants, including silphium, which was used for birth control in the early Middle Ages and may be the reason why the heart became associated with sex and romantic love (though the heart’s resemblance to the vulva probably also has something to do with it). Whatever the reason, hearts began to appear in paintings of lovers in the thirteenth century. ( These depictions at first were restricted to aristocrats and members of the court— hence the term “courtship.”) Over time the pictures came to be colored red, the color of blood, a symbol of passion. Later, heart-shaped ivy, reputed for its longevity and grown on tombstones, became an emblem of eternal love. In the Roman Catholic Church, the ♥ shape became known as the Sacred Heart of Jesus; adorned with thorns and emitting ethereal light, it was an insignia of monastic love. Devotion to the Sacred Heart reached peak intensity in Eu rope in the Middle Ages. In the early fourteenth century, for instance, Heinrich Seuse, a Dominican monk, in a fit of pious fervor (and gruesome self-mutilation), took a stylus to his own chest to engrave the name of Jesus onto his heart. “Almighty God,” Seuse wrote, “give me strength this day to carry out my desire, for thou must be chiseled into the core of my heart.” The bliss of having a visible pledge of oneness with his true love, he added, made the very pain seem like a “sweet delight.” When his wounds healed in the spongy tissue, the sacred name was written in letters “the width of a cornstalk and the length of the joint of [a] little finger.” This association between the heart and different types of love has withstood modernity. When Barney Clark, a retired dentist with end- stage heart failure, received the first permanent artificial heart in Salt Lake City, Utah, on December 1, 1982, his wife of thirty- nine years asked the doctors, “ Will he still be able to love me?”
Today we know that emotions do not reside in the heart per se, but we nevertheless continue to subscribe to the heart’s symbolic connotations. Heart metaphors abound in everyday life and language. To “take heart” is to have courage. To “speak from the heart” conveys sincerity. We say we “learned by heart” what we have understood thoroughly or committed to memory. To “take something to heart” reflects worry or sadness. If your “heart goes out to someone,” you sympathize with his or her problems. Reconciliation or repentance requires a “change of heart.”
Like the biological heart, the metaphorical heart has both size and shape. A bighearted person is generous; a small- hearted person is selfish (though when my mother said I had a small heart, I believe she meant I had a surfeit of compassion). The metaphorical heart is also a material entity. It can be made of gold, stone, even liquid (for example, being poured when we confess something). The metaphorical heart also possesses temperature— warm, cold, hot—as well as a characteristic geography. The center of a place is its heart. Your “heart of heart,” as Hamlet tells Horatio, is the place of your most sacred feelings. To “get to the heart” of something is to find out what is truly important, and just as the statue or monument at the heart of a city often has something to do with love, bravery, or courage, so too it is with the human heart.

Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!

Things You Didn’t Know About R.K. Narayan

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‘R.K. Narayan’s novels are like a box of Indian sweets. Each novel is a delectable treat, different in subtle ways,’ says Alexander McCall Smith. Being one of the leading authors who wrote Indian literature in English, Narayan received many honours including the Padma Bhushan. His most famous works include The Guide, Swami and Friends and Malgudi Days, which explore ordinary life with humour and compassion.
Here are a few things you didn’t know about R.K. Narayan:

A sweeping tale of abduction, battle, and courtship played out in a universe of deities and demons, The Ramayana is familiar to virtually every Indian. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!

The Penguin October Bookshelf: What to Read this Fall

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This fall, we have a number of books, across various genres, for you to enjoy. You can choose by author or by subject, or pick something you’d never see yourself reading!

The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections – Anand Teltumbde and Suraj Yengde (Eds)


This landmark volume, edited and introduced by Anand Teltumbde and Suraj Yengde, establishes B.R. Ambedkar as the most powerful advocate of equality and fraternity in modern India. An extraordinary collection of immense breadth and scholarship that challenges the popular understanding of Ambedkar, The Radical in Ambedkar is essential reading for all those who wish to imagine a new future.

The Best Couple Ever – Novoneel Chakraborty


Do you flaunt your happy moments in the form of filtered photographs on Facebook, Instagram, etc.?
Do you and your partner set relationship goals for others on social media?
Do you make people jealous of the perfect life you are living?
If no, then chill. If yes, then congrats! You are their next target.

Open Embrace: India-US Ties in the Age of Modi and Trump – Varghese K. George


Varghese K. George, in Open Embrace, provides an overview of the changes occurring in America’s relations with the world under the Trump presidency and what it means for India. While Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush emphasized that the US’s relations with India would shape the twenty-first century, Trump’s ‘America First’ politics is a repudiation of the nation’s strategic culture.

Invisible Men: Inside India’s Transmasculine Network – Nandini Krishnan


In this remarkable, intimate book, Nandini Krishnan burrows deep into the prejudices encountered by India’s transmen, the complexities of hormonal transitions and sex reassignment surgery, issues of social and family estrangement, and whether socioeconomic privilege makes a difference. With frank, poignant, often idiosyncratic interviews that braid the personal with the political, the informative with the offhand, she makes a powerful case for inclusivity and a non-binary approach to gender.

The Great Smog of India – Siddharth Singh


With clarity and compelling arguments, and with a dash of irony, Siddharth Singh demystifies the issue of air pollution: where we are, how we got here, and what we can do now. He discusses not only developments in sectors like transport, industry and energy production that silently contribute to air pollution, but also the ‘agricultural shock’ to air quality triggered by crop burning in northern India every winter. He places the air pollution crisis in the context of India’s meteorological conditions and also climate change. Above all, and most alarmingly, he makes clear what the repercussions will be if we remain apathetic.

What China and India Once Were: The Pasts That May Shape the Global Future – Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Elman


In the early years of the 21st century, China and India have emerged as world powers. In many respects, this is a return to the historical norm for both countries. For much of the early modern period, China and India were global leaders in a variety of ways. In this book, prominent scholars seek to understand modern China and India through an unprecedented comparative analysis of their long histories.

Sikkim: Dawn of Democracy – G.B.S. Sidhu


It was in 1973 that G.B.S. Sidhu, a young official with the newly set-up Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), took charge of the field office in Gangtok in 1973. With an insider’s view of the events that led to the Chogyal’s ouster, he presents a first-hand account of the fledgling democracy movement and the struggle for reforms led by Kazi Lhendup Dorji in a society that was struggling to come to terms with the modern world.

Doab Dil – Sarnath Banerjee


Why was the appreciation of gardens considered a symbol of Victorian aristocracy? Why do the Japanese find it easy to power-nap in public spaces? Why did Charles Baudelaire ascribe Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s restless nocturnal wanderings to a pathological dread of returning home? And what do any of these mean for the average person immersed in the ‘daily decathlon’ of life?

The Runaways – Fatima Bhutto


Anita Rose lives in a concrete block in one of Karachi’s biggest slums, languishing in poverty with her mother and older brother. On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, whose father owns half the city. And far away in Portsmouth, Sunny fits in nowhere. These three disparate lives will cross paths in the middle of a desert, a place where life and death walk hand-in-hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Rape – Sohaila Abdulali


Writing from the viewpoint of a survivor, writer, counsellor and activist, and drawing on three decades of grappling with the issue personally and professionally and her work with hundreds of survivors, Sohaila Abdulali looks at what we-women, men, politicians, teachers, writers, sex workers, feminists, sages, mansplainers, victims and families-think about rape and what we say…and also what we don’t.

House of Screams – Andaleeb Wajid


When Muneera finds out she’s inherited her uncle’s old house on Myrtle Lane, she decides to move in with her husband, Zain, and their three-year-old son, Adnan. But they soon realize there’s more to the house than its old-world charm. As the terrors threaten to tear their little family apart, they discover the shocking extent of the house’s gory history. And unless they manage to leave, they’re going to become a part of it.

The Best Mistakes of My Life – Sanjay Khan


Once deemed the most handsome man in Bollywood, Sanjay Khan’s tryst with fame and stardom led him to many adventures across the world. Honest, engaging and revelatory, The Best Mistakes of My Life is the story of a star and a survivor who has resurrected himself with a vengeance each time life has thrown a curveball at him.

Skin Rules: Six Weeks to Glowing Skin – Dr Jaishree Sharad


In Skin Rules, Dr Jaishree Sharad, one of India’s top cosmetic dermatologists, gives you a revolutionary six-week plan to healthy, blemish-free skin. From the basics-identifying your skin type, acquainting yourself with the fine print on labels-to home remedies, choosing the right make-up and the latest advancements in skincare treatments, this book has the answers to all your skin woes.

Tryst with Prosperity: Indian Business and the Bombay Plan of 1944 – Medha Malik Kudaisya


The Tryst with Prosperity is the story of the Bombay Plan which was initiated in 1944. Eight remarkable individuals from the world of industry, like J.R.D. Tata, Lala Shri Ram and G.D. Birla, came together and drafted this plan. Seventy-five years later, the Bombay Plan’s legacy continues to be unmistakable in the economic life of contemporary India. Rivetingly told, business historian Medha M. Kudaisya, narrates an important chapter from the story of Indian business.

The Tata Saga: Timeless Stories from India’s Most Iconic Group


The Tata Saga is a collection of handpicked stories published on India’s most iconic business group. The anthology features snippets from the lives of various business leaders of the company: Ratan Tata, J.R.D. Tata, Jamsetji Tata, Xerxes Desai, Sumant Moolgaokar, F.C. Kohli, among others. There are tales of outstanding successes, crushing failures and extraordinary challenges that faced the Tata Group.

The English Maharani: Queen Victoria and India – Miles Taylor


In this new and original account, Miles Taylor charts the remarkable effects India had on Queen Victoria as well as the pivotal role she played in India. Drawing on official papers and an abundance of poems, songs, diaries and photographs, Taylor challenges the notion that Victoria enjoyed only ceremonial power and that India’s loyalty to her was without popular support. On the contrary, the rule of the queen-empress penetrated deep into Indian life and contributed significantly to the country’s modernisation, both political and economic.

Changemakers: Twenty Women Transforming Bollywood from Behind the Scenes – Gayatri Rangachari Shah, Mallika Kapur


This book tells the story of twenty incredible women, many with no prior connections in the Bollywood industry, who have carved successful careers despite significant challenges. They often work away from the public gaze-as studio heads, producers, directors, make-up artists, stylists, script writers, lyricists,editors, choreographers, stunt artists, set designers, and in the many other jobs that support the making of a movie.

The Non Violent Struggle for Freedom 1905-1919 – David Hardiman


It was Gandhi, first in South Africa and then in India, who both evolved a technique that he called ‘satyagraha’ that he characterised in terms of its ‘non-violence’. In this, ‘non-violence’ was forged as both a new word in the English language, and as a new political concept.
The Non-violent Struggle for Freedom brings out in graphic detail exactly what this entailed, and the formidable difficulties that the pioneers of such resistance encountered in the years 1905-19.

Red Card by Kautuk Srivastava


Set in the suburban Thane of 2006, here is a coming-of-age story that runs unique as it does familiar. Hopscotching from distracted classrooms and tired tutorials to the triumphs and tragedies on the muddy grounds, this is the journey of Rishabh and his friends from peak puberty to the cusp of manhood.
 

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Rich Dad Poor Dad: The Difference between the Two

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Robert T. Kiyosaki grew up with two dads: a rich one, and a poor one. He believes that had he only had one dad, he would have had to simply accept or reject his advice. Having two dads offered him the choice of contrasting points of view: one of a rich man and one of a poor man.
Neither of the two men gave the same advice, and here we see four examples of the contrasting advice he got, from his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.



The Best Couple Ever – an Excerpt

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Do you flaunt your happy moments on Facebook, Instagram etc?
Do you make people jealous of the perfect life you are living?
Do you portray yourself as a forever-happy person to your social media followers?
Do you think you are a cyber-world aspiration?
If no, then chill. If yes, then congrats! You are their next target.
What will happen next? Here is an excerpt from the prologue of the book, to give you a glimpse of what’s in store!

October 2018
The Present
She splashed some water on her face, paused, took a breath and then splashed some more. She lifted her head and
looked into the small mirror above the basin. She smiled. Her make-up was spoilt. But that wasn’t the only thing. She had been stubborn enough to be a bad girl.
She still couldn’t believe it. She was in Goa with a man she had met three months ago on Instagram. And now they were here, as he’d randomly planned. For her husband, she was at work. But in reality, she had driven to the airport
to join the man at the T3 terminal of Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. The plan was to fly to Goa, spend the entire day together at a small resort on the beach and take the late evening flight back to New Delhi. It had sounded like a forbidden fantasy. And now it was a scandalous reality. What had happened in the resort room for the last three hours was both dark and funny. It was dark because she had tried some raunchy positions that were a first for her, along with the realization that she had a thing for them. It was funny because they were role playing as Batman and Catwoman. Her partner had bought the costumes in Delhi. Till then, she had thought it was a joke. She had burst out laughing on seeing the costumes. Hers even had a tail. But, surprising herself, she enjoyed it.
She removed her make-up and sat on the commode to relieve herself. Then she took a few selfies. The post-coital bliss was evident on her face. Next, she started scrolling through her WhatsApp messages. There was a barrage of texts in her girls’ group but none from her husband. She didn’t read any of them. She minimized WhatsApp and tapped on the Instagram app instead. There were a few notifications. One of them was a tag. She clicked on it and was shocked out of her wits. Her partner had posted a picture of her in the Catwoman costume—she was on all fours. She didn’t know when the photo had been taken. Although she was unrecognizable in the costume, this wasn’t a part of the ‘deal’. They had never talked about it, but some things are understood, right? It was a clandestine fling! She was getting angrier with every passing second. She hid the picture from her timeline and untagged herself. She stood up and flushed. She wanted an explanation.
But she froze the moment she stepped inside the room. Her partner was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, still
wearing the Batman mask. He was naked and his throat was slit. Her blood turned cold; she tried screaming but no
sound came out. She wanted to call for help but she didn’t. She looked around. There was nobody. In fact, there were no signs of a struggle at all. The main door was also locked from inside. As the reality of the matter sank in, she walked clumsily towards the body. What should she do? She couldn’t call the police. She couldn’t even call the people who ran the resort. Anything she did would expose her . . . and the fact that she was having an affair. Her whole world would crumble down, just like that. There was nothing that she could do, except . . . pack and run.
With her heart in her mouth, she quickly wore her dress, stuffed everything, including the Catwoman costume, in her bag and dashed out of the room. Thankfully, they had booked their respective tickets and only he had checked into the resort. The plan was to tell the owners that she was his local guest.
She had a lump in her throat. She had covered her face with a scarf and worn big sunglasses when she had arrived. She did the same while leaving. Identifying her wouldn’t be that easy, she hoped. Then she wondered as to whom she was kidding. Tracking her down would be easy if someone wanted to. If someone knew. Tears pricked her eyes as she walked towards a rent-a-car shop to hire a cab to the airport.
A few minutes after she left, the man in the room sat up and wiped off the fake blood from his throat. He removed his mask and picked up a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from a nearby table. All’s well that ends well, he thought as he blew rings of smoke in rapid succession.

Know More About Satyajit Ray: the Author of Feluda Omnibus

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The eminent filmmaker and author Satyajit Ray’s Feluda Omnibus consists of a set of three short stories featuring Feluda and his sidekick, Topshe. These stories contain the many exploits of the famous private investigator and his reliable partner, making for an absolute must-read for the young readers.
In The Emperor’s Ring, Feluda and Topshe happen to be in Lucknow for vacation when a priceless ring belonging to a Mughal emperor is stolen. Feluda finds himself in the midst of danger and the target of a vicious criminal. In The Golden Fortress, Feluda and his sidekick set course for Rajasthan in search for Dr. Hajra and a boy who claims to recall his previous life. On reaching Mukul’s Golden Fortress, they are surprised by the unfolding of one of their most beguiling cases. Their numerous fascinating adventures continue in the third story – Bandits of Bombay. Feluda and his companions find themselves in a treacherous state the exciting climax to which occurs  aboard a train during a film-shoot.
These thrilling short stories by Satyajit Ray make for an incredible read! But first, here are a few facts about the author:

Traversing fascinating landscapes and electrifying escapades, this collection is an absolute classic and a must-have for fans of detective fiction.
 

Meet the characters from Aftertaste

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Aftertaste follows the Todarmal family during the early Eighties. Mummyji, the matriarch of a mithai business family, lies comatose in a hospital in Bombay. Surrounding her are her four children. Each of them is different but has something in common . . .
Read on to find out more about this baniya family.
Mummyji
Bimla Kulbhushan Todarmal a.k.a Mummyji is the matriarch of the family. She runs the family business and believes money and food can solve all problems.

Rajan Papa
Weak and ineffectual, the eldest son is not the smartest tool in the shed and is in desperate need of cash. While originally he was in charge of the family mithai shop, his younger brother replaces him.

Samir
The youngest son, Samir or Sunny always wanted to be in the limelight. He is the dynamic business head who helps expand the family business. He is a business whizz but his personal life is a mess. 

Suman
The spoilt beauty of the family who is obsessed with getting her hands on her mother’s best jewels. Suman’s cushy life changes dramatically because of her marriage.

Saroj
The ugly duckling of the family, Saroj is ever compliant and gentle but extremely unlucky.

Each of them wants Mummyji to die…Find out why in Aftertaste.

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