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Infographic Timeline on Premchand’s Work

Posted on by Penguin India

Regarded as one of the greatest writers in Urdu and Hindi, Premchand’s writing career spans nearly three decades from 1903 till his death in 1936. He has written what are now reckoned to be close to 300 short stories and published thirteen novels.
After experimenting early in his career with a few short stories set in the historical past he wrote as a rule on contemporary themes of immediate social and political relevance. He marched with the times, responding to successive waves of public events and movements with a creative openness that wasn’t bound by blind allegiance to any ideology.
The atmosphere of dastaan and historical romances hangs heavy on Premchand’s early stories. But he soon grew out of that phase and made his work more socially relevant by giving it the hard, gritty texture of realism. His art of storytelling became a vehicle for his socially engaged agenda of social reform and ameliorating the condition of the deprived and oppressed sections of society.
Here is an infographic timeline of some of Premchand’s more popular work.
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Premchand was summoned to appear before the district magistrate and told to burn all the copies and never to write anything like that again. The stories included were:

  1. Ishq Duniya aur Hubb-e Watan (Love for the World and Patriotism)
  2. Duniya ka Sab Se Anmol Ratan (The Rarest Pearl in the World)
  3. Sheikh Makhmoor
  4. Sila-e Maatam (Sorrow’s Reward)
  5. Yehi Mera Watan Hai (This is my Homeland)


Premchand depicts the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘pillars of society’, who can sacrifice their orthodox principles behind closed doors, yet do not shirk from mouthing moral platitudes in public. He portrays the reality of the interest groups which cut across the newly emerging Hindu-Muslim divide, but also conceives of an ideal community that gives new direction to the life of a fallen woman and allows her to lead a meaningful existence. The stream of idealism that runs through Premchand’s works has often been criticized by scholars, but it is the counterpart of a relentless psychological and social realism, which remains unmatched to this day.

They have had enough wealth, so they do not need to earn. Since early age they have developed the hobby of playing chess. They challenge each other to a game of chess while neglecting their duties towards their families and society and even summons from the Nawab himself. They both remain mute spectators of the fall of their kingdom.

Weaving together themes such as industrialization, atrocities committed by princely states, the role of women in India’s independence movement, and caste and class hierarchies, Rangbhumi’s concerns remain shockingly relevant. Capturing Premchand’s masterful handling of a variety of linguistic registers, Manju Jain’s evocative translation shows us the deep humanism of one of India’s greatest writers.

‘Poos Ki Raat’ tells us the story of how Halku managed to survive through the chilling winds, with just an old tattered blanket and his loyal dog by his side.


He adopts a village of untouchables and teaches their children and proves to be of great help to the villagers in getting rebate against the land tax.

The story begins on Eid morning, as Hamid sets out for the Idgah  with other boys from the village. Hamid is notably impoverished next to his friends, poorly dressed and famished-looking, and has only three paise as Idi for the festival. While his friends are enjoying themselves playing on rides and eating sweets, he overcomes his temptation and goes to a hardware shop to buy a pair of tongs, remembering how his grandmother burns her fingers while cooking rotis.

The son’s wife is pregnant and in pain but there is no money to buy medicine for her. The father and son sit complaining while the wife cries out in agony and eventually dies. The two go around the village begging for money to buy a shroud for the poor woman, so that they can perform the last rites. The father-son duo end up spending that money on alcohol, instead.

This was Premchand’s last novel before his death in 1936. In it, the characters represent different sections of an Indian community. The book is themed around the exploit and financial hardship of the village poor.

Meet the Characters of Andaleeb Wajid’s latest, Twenty-nine Going on Thirty!

Posted on by Penguin India

Andaleeb Wajid has published fifteen novels of which three are e-books. Andaleeb’s young adult novel When She Went Away was shortlisted for The Hindu Young World-GoodBooks Award 2017.
In her latest offering, Twenty-nine Going on Thirty, Priya is turning thirty and feeling overwhelmed by it. Living in Bengaluru with her best friend, Farida, and working as the social media head of a software firm, she’s feeling the weight of becoming a responsible thirty-year-old. Thankfully, Priya finds moral support in the fact that her friends Farida, Mini and Namrata are approaching the three-O milestone too.
Come, let’s meet these enigmatic characters.



8 Quotes From 'Will You Still Love Me' That Will Break Your Heart

Posted on by Penguin India

Ravinder Singh is the bestselling author of several books such as I Too Had A Love Story, Can Love Happen Twice, Your Dreams Are Mine Now and This Love That Feels Right.
Singh’s latest novel, Will You Still Love Me is about Lavanya Gogoi, from the scenic hills of Shillong and Rajveer Saini who belongs to the shahi city of Patiala. Worlds apart from one another, the two land up next to each other on a flight from Mumbai to Chandigarh. It’s love at first flight, at least for one of them. It is a deeply moving story showcasing love at its worst and its best.
Here are eight quotes from the book- Will You Still Love Me that will break your heart:






Writing We That Are Young by Preti Taneja

Posted on by Penguin India

Preti Taneja was born and grew up in the UK. She teaches writing in prisons and universities, and has worked with youth charities and in conflict and post conflict zones on minority and cultural rights.  She is the co-founder of ERA Films, and of Visual Verse, the anthology of art and words. We That Are Young is her debut novel. It has been longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and the Jhalak Prize, and shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize.

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I arrived in New Delhi in January 2012, carrying my battered copy of Shakespeare’s King Lear and 300 A4 pages of double spaced text: the first drafts of Jivan and Gargi, and half of the Radha sections of something called We That Are Young. The writing wasn’t wonderful, I remember feeling that. It was hard to capture the different voices of my characters from London. I worked a lot in my local library. I felt like a ‘writer’ there, or at least, one in training. But I wasn’t really convincing myself on the page. Shakespeare’s language and plot were a magnetic puzzle – I wanted to work with them but not give in to them. The book had to stand on its own terms.
We That Are Young was never going to be a realist novel if it was to cleave to an epic play that is set in a no-place, a no-time. I wanted the book to be a dark carnival, hyper-real, with a polyphonic structure and modernist sensibility in the lines. India as a setting can handle elements of the real and the mythological, the psychoanalytical tradition of the West and a circular sense of time in ways other settings can’t. Yes, I had high hopes – but working from books and memory in England, it read like the first draft it clearly was.
The stakes were high: I had lost my mother to cancer when I was 28. I cared for her, for almost eight years with my family, till she died. What should I do with the inheritance she left me? It included courage, an example of sacrifice and risk-taking, as well as the security she had worked all her life to leave me. Two years after, I had got a job I loved, reporting on minority rights abuses for an NGO. I had the chance to travel and met people who trusted me with their stories. All of us sharply aware of the gulf between those who have freedom of movement, freedom of speech and those who do not, and the responsibilities that brings. I had a regular sandwich and coffee order in a nearby café. I commuted against the tide of city bankers streaming out of Liverpool Street station. Then I turned 30, and I still wasn’t doing the thing I had said I wanted to do all my life. Write fiction. I knew something had to change.
I enrolled on a night-class on the far side of the city, reached via the stopping Circle Line, East to West. I got a portfolio of stories together, and applied for a part-time Master’s in Creative Writing, which I could study for around my job. Two years later, I got my degree. I knew I wanted to carry on teaching and writing. I handed in my notice at work. The next day the email came: I had won full funding for a PhD. To work on We That Are Young.
Four months in, and that same instinct to jump made me pack up my life. I found a place to rent in Delhi via endless online searches, and paid the deposit without actually seeing it first. Then I told my Delhi family and friends that I was coming to write a book based on Shakespeare, set in India and was going to live in a rental for as long as I could afford it. ‘Whatever,’ they said. ‘Just come.’
I rediscovered my second city, the place I’ve been coming to since I was a child, on new terms. There was a fermenting energy; there was creativity; there was so much rage. There were important books I could not get in the UK about Indian politics, men’s fashion, women’s rights. I kept notebooks – there ended up being 15 in total – and made daily cuttings from national newspapers and magazines. Journalistic training learned crossing borders and working in different parts of the world and (in an early, misguided incarnation) as a very junior financial reporter now got me into the back kitchens of hotels, expensive parties, the outskirts of the city. Everyone wanted to tell me about what was wrong with India. Corruption, inequality, misogyny, ‘tradition,’ pollution, caste, expansion, city planning, waste, child abuse, the building of the metro, politics, safety. There was also a forward momentum among certain classes and in the media: long held injustices were being highlighted; new possibilities for equality were being claimed. So many people I met were working, had been working for years for this.
I would write every day. The rest of Radha, all of Jeet and most of Sita was drafted as the heat became brighter. Against family advice I travelled to Goa in April. I got sick from the humidity and had to come back early. And then, finally I went to Srinagar. A person I will never be able to thank enough, took me, silent and wrapped in shawls, into parts of the city he said that even most Srinagar people don’t go to. He introduced me to artisans, traders, chefs who talked to me about their work, and their daily routines, their hopes for their children. I stopped writing and just listened. I celebrated my 35th birthday with my partner on a houseboat overlooking the Dal: the stay was a gift from my godmother, my mother’s dearest friend.
I don’t believe writers think about their own process – how, when, what with – until they are asked to. For me, there were some simple imperatives. I was 35. I had taken a pay cut and tried to make a career change. I had to finish the book, get it published, and from that, apply for teaching jobs, perhaps write the next thing – that was the plan. Finishing became a kind of obsession, driven by the PhD submission deadline, funding running out, the need to sell the novel and seek paid work. With the 15 notebooks, press cuttings and a stack of other people’s novels and non-fiction from across India and the diaspora, I returned to my childhood home in June 2012. One more house move, and I finished the first full draft of my manuscript by December. Then my agent sent it out and I submitted my PhD.
I got the PhD. But, We That Are Young found no favour with London or Delhi publishing. The editors said, ‘ambitious,’ ‘clever,’ ‘brilliant idea’ and ‘powerful.’ There was, ‘too close to the bone’ and variations on, ‘Shakespeare? Really?’ Everyone, I mean, everyone said, ‘no.’
I could still research and teach, I thought. I could try for an academic career, if fiction was not to be. I began to focus on that. But writing We That Are Young was like being possessed by five crazy characters: they would not leave me alone. I had to keep working on the book. I believed that the India I had seen, and the way people told me it was changing, the way the world was changing, had to be expressed in fiction, now, and I still wanted to try to do it. When I started the novel, there was no Trump, no Brexit. It was the dog days of Congress in India. It was before a brutal rape on a Delhi bus became world news. But anyone really looking could see what was coming. The rise of the right-wing in different parts of the world. Wave after wave of protests against corruption, war, and for social justice were taking place. There was Rhodes Must Fall, and calls for the decolonisation of public spaces and curricula. People were documenting it via film and non-fiction. Some fiction writers were also getting through.
When I finally sold the fourth complete draft of my manuscript to the UK independent publisher Galley Beggar Press, it was January 2016.
There’s a lot more to this story, including the people close to me, who wouldn’t let me give up on my endless editing. One round of which was done on a rainy holiday in Wales, where I sat in my Tshirt, with my laptop in the hotel bath, pulling an all-nighter while my long-suffering partner slept next door. That was the version before Galley Beggar said yes. Then there was even more editing, intricate line stuff – it was thrilling but exhausting for all of us, and it went to the wire – it was finished just 10 days before the book actually became a real object in a warehouse, waiting to go out.
Writing is hard, editing is hard. It all feels less like creation, more like excavation. I often read as I write – returning to find segments of non-fiction that feed my stories, or fragments of poetry and other peoples’ writing – the kind that makes me work even harder at my own. We That Are Young is now in the bookshops and online, on people’s shelves and TBR piles, maybe in their bathrooms or beach bags. In India, its beautiful Penguin Random House hand-painted cover suggests water, hair, mehndi, bloodlines. My five crazy characters are partying without me – I saw them in the airport bookshop in Kolkata, in Delhi, Jaipur, in Bangalore; people send me pictures of them in Glasgow, Oxford, Norwich and Mumbai. They are talked about on YouTube and in blogs, just as they are in the world of the book. It’s meta. As Radha might say.
We That Are Young ends with a beginning, placing whatever might come next in the reader’s hands. Since I finished it, real world events, some positive – the #metoo and #TimesUp campaigns, the steps towards decriminalising gay sex (again), ongoing protests against child rape; some horrific – including those headline cases of sexual violence, water running out in cities, toxic smog, the rise of the religious right and its fascist ideology, go on:  ‘machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders…’ as Gloucester puts it, in King Lear.
Meanwhile, I am meant to be working on the next thing. I don’t know much about that, but I know the process won’t change. It will start with reading. It always has.
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Author Portrait: Rory O’Bryen
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How To Go About Dealing with Feelings? Here are Lessons You Shouldn’t Miss!

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A unique series focusing on the well-being of young readers, Dealing with Feelings by Sonia Mehta feature Foggy Forest, a tiny forest inhabited by many fun little animals. These quirky creatures are always there for one another – helping each other overcome fear, anxiety, shyness and anger, together dealing with all the different feelings one goes through every day.
Here are some lessons we learnt from the books.
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In Conversation with Kim Wagner – The Author of The Skull of Alum Bheg

Posted on by Penguin India

In his latest book, The Skull of Alum Bheg, author Kim Wagner explores the mutiny of 1857 and the shadows of colonial rule in India. Spurred by an intriguing find, Wagner’s elegant narrative uses the story of one man’s death and skull to excavate the underbelly of Britain’s nineteenth century empire.
 
Here’s an exclusive interview with Kim A. Wagner, where the author shares his opinion on British Imperialism and what inspired him to write the book – The Skull of Alum Bheg.
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1. What was your inspiration behind writing The Skull of Alum Bheg?
My starting point was obviously the story of the skull itself, as outlined in the brief note that had been found inside of it back in 1963. But in trying to write about the events of the Indian Uprising from the perspective of a single – and in many ways an insignificant – individual, I was very much inspired by the classics of micro-history and especially the work of the likes of Carlo Ginzburg and Natalie Zemon Davis. The challenge I was facing was the fact that while I had the remains of Alum Bheg, I never ‘found’ him in the historical records, and so I had to write the book by tracing an outline of this individual, trying to reconstruct the world he inhabited and the people who surrounded him. The subtitle is obviously a nod to Gautam Bhadra’s classic essay, ‘Four Rebels of 1857’, first published in Subaltern Studies IV in 1985.
2. Tell us something about your writing process. 
For this book, I wrote what I thought of as different ‘layers’ or different ‘voices’, in sequence, and only at the end did I put them together into one complete text. So I wrote the narrative of the Scottish and American missionaries first, then that of Alum Bheg and the sepoys, and finally the background and analysis. It was a very different way of writing from what I am used to, and you only know whether the plan you have in your head actually works once you put it all together right at the end. I am also not very economic with words – for every 10.000 words that I write, I will have produced three times that in the form of notes and drafts of paragraphs in varying stages. It is a time-consuming and cumbersome process, which leaves my computer littered with orphan files, but it works for me.

3. What was the most intriguing facet of colonial India you came across while researching for your book?
When you take a micro-historical approach, the grand narratives come apart at the seams and you begin seeing new and intriguing details. It was interesting to look at the Indian Uprising in a place like Punjab, where the sepoys of the Bengal Army were invaders as much as the British were. When the outbreak eventually did happen at Sialkot, where Alum Bheg’s regiment was stationed, it was accordingly a very different type of mutiny, compared to, for instance, Meerut or Delhi, where most of the local population joined the sepoys. It was also fascinating to see how local dynamics shaped the violence, and personal grievances and relationships played a large role during the chaos of the outbreak. I’ve never been able to adequately explain why some Indian servants would lay down their lives for the sahibs and memsahibs, while others readily stabbed them in the back. Sometimes new insights also mean new questions to be answered.
4. Victorians’ had a fetish for collecting and exhibiting body parts. Are there some other such instances you can share with us?
I have previously worked on the collecting of skulls of so-called ‘Thugs’ by phrenologists in the 1830s, but that was just the beginning of a veritable obsession with skulls. In the final chapter of the book, I describe some of the later examples from the British Empire: Following the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, for instance, General Kitchener had the body of the Mahdi disinterred and the skull was kept, which later caused a scandal. The same happened in South Africa where the heads of tribal leaders, such as Luka Jantje or Bambhata, were cut off and either used for identification or kept as private souvenirs. It is often assumed that there was a clear-cut distinction between the ‘rational’ collection of scientific specimens and the ‘irrational’ taking of war-trophies – in practice, however, such distinctions are often unsustainable
5. Finally, if in a line you had to summarize British imperialism in India, how would you do that? 
Despite the conventional narrative of cultural expertise and liberal governance, British rule in India was defined by a lack of comprehension concerning local grievances and anti-colonial sentiments, and as a result prone to panic and the use of exemplary violence.

Fifty Shades Darker, An Excerpt

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Determined to win Anastasia back, he tries to suppress his darkest desires and his need for complete control, and to love Ana on her own terms. Read E L James book, Fifty Shades Darker to dive deeper and darker on their love story,

Here’s an excerpt.

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Get a grip, Grey.
I damp down my fear and make a plea. “You look like you’ve lost at least five pounds, possibly more since then. Please eat, Anastasia.” I’m helpless. What else can I say?
She sits still, lost in her own thoughts, staring straight ahead, and I have time to study her profile. She’s as elfin and sweet and as beautiful as I remember. I want to reach out and stroke her cheek. Feel how soft her skin is…check that she’s real. I turn my body toward her, itching to touch her.
“How are you?” I ask, because I want to hear her voice.
“If I told you I was fine, I’d be lying.”
Damn. I’m right. She’s been suffering—and it’s all my fault. But her words give me a modicum of hope. Perhaps she’s missed me. Maybe? Encouraged, I cling to that thought. “Me, too. I miss you.” I reach for her hand because I can’t live another minute without touching her. Her hand feels small and ice-cold engulfed in the warmth of mine.
“Christian. I—” She stops, her voice cracking, but she doesn’t pull her hand from mine.
“Ana, please. We need to talk.”
“Christian. I…please. I’ve cried so much,” she whispers, and her words, and the sight of her fighting back tears, pierce what’s left of my heart.
“Oh, baby, no.” I tug her hand and before she can protest I lift her into my lap, circling her with my arms.
Oh, the feel of her.
“I’ve missed you so much, Anastasia.” She’s too light, too fragile, and I want to shout in frustration, but instead I bury my nose in her hair, overwhelmed by her intoxicating scent. It’s reminiscent of happier times: An orchard in the fall. Laughter at home. Bright eyes, full of humor and mischief…and desire. My sweet, sweet Ana.
Mine.
At first, she’s stiff with resistance, but after a beat she relaxes against me, her head resting on my shoulder. Emboldened, I take a risk and, closing my eyes, I kiss her hair. She doesn’t struggle out of my hold, and it’s a relief. I’ve yearned for this woman. But I must be careful. I don’t want her to bolt again. I hold her, enjoying the feel of her in my arms and this simple moment of tranquility.
But it’s a brief interlude—Taylor reaches the Seattle downtown helipad in record time.
“Come.” With reluctance, I lift her off my lap. “We’re here.”
Perplexed eyes search mine.
“Helipad—on the top of this building.” How did she think we were getting to Portland? It would take at least three hours to drive. Taylor opens her door and I climb out on my side.
“I should give you back your handkerchief,” she says to Taylor with a coy smile.
“Keep it, Miss Steele, with my best wishes.”
What the hell is going on between them?


Dangerous Minds by Hussain Zaidi and Brijesh Singh – An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Dangerous Minds delves into the complex and intricate lives of some of the most talked-about terrorists of the country. What drove them to such violent designs? What were their compulsions? Can a human being be so ruthless and heartless, and why?
Hussain Zaidi and Brijesh Singh explore the lives, early beginnings, careers and sudden transformations of such persons into merchants of death in this book.
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The police had managed to arrest the accused, but the mastermind Nasir was still at large. The entire city police force was hunting for the absconding Nasir. On 12 September, a police team received a tip-off that he was likely to visit Dadar with an aide. The unverifiable story that was later narrated was that Nasir came in a blue Maruti 800 along with an aide. The police officers claim they asked him to surrender and, like all criminals who are destined to be killed in an encounter, Nasir refused to pay heed to the warnings. According to a press release, the police were left with no choice and opened fire on the accused. Nasir and his aide were fatally injured. At KEM Hospital, both were declared dead on arrival.
That left Zahid Patni. Savdhe had been making the rounds of his Mira Road residence, asking the family to persuade the son to return and cooperate in the investigation. It was not clear whether it were the police’s threats of implicating the entire family in the case or Zahid’s own conscience, but he did return to the city. Evidence recorded in the Mumbai POTA court stated that Zahid began to feel guilty after he saw the massacre at Gateway and Zaveri Bazaar. He had not anticipated so much bloodshed. Restless, he went to the local Masjid in Dubai and confessed his crime to a priest by the name of Mufti Jaafar Sahab. The priest told him it was a sin to kill innocent people. An apparently remorseful Zahid then decided to surrender to the Mumbai Police. He returned on 1 October.
Zahid decided to turn into an approver and testify against the others.
The Mumbai Police’s investigation of the twin blasts failed to answer some important questions. For instance, how could Nasir procure such a massive quantity of explosives so easily? How, despite working in Dubai along with Hanif and Zahid, was he an expert bomb-maker? If Nasir was based in Mumbai and his family was in Hyderabad, why have they remained untraceable? In fact Nasir was too much of a conundrum for the investigators. Ultimately, Zahid’s interrogation and subsequent investigations threw light on hitherto fuzzy details.
Nasir was actually a top confidant of the notorious terrorist Riyaz Bhatkal. Together, they had formed a large network of terrorists and volunteers in the country. It was secretly called the ‘R-N Gang’, R for Riyaz and N for Nasir. The duo had formulated the preposterous formula of committing robberies to fund bombings. They justified the act of robbery, considered a cardinal sin necessitating the amputation of hands according to sharia law, by terming it Maal-e-Ghanimat (the spoils of war), thus making robbery booty eligible for utilization in jihad. Nasir’s actual name was Abdur Rehman and he had told Zahid that he had been to Pakistan frequently, where he was trained in making bombs and explosives. Nasir had also shown him a credit card from Citibank Pakistan and also his various covers that he used for his multiple identities.
It was through Dubai-based Pakistanis that Zahid was exhorted to join the Lashkar-e-Taiba in August 2000 after which he was introduced to Nasir. The conspiracy meetings were held among Pakistanis and Indians like Nasir, Hanif and Zahid. The Pakistanis who were members of Lashkar urged them not to live in Dubai but to move back to India and spread terror through bomb blasts.
Judge M.R. Puranik, who presided over the trials for over six years, finally passed a judgement in the case on 6 August 2009. He observed: ‘. . . not awarding death penalty to accused no 1, 2 and 3 will be mockery of justice . . . they did not do the acts out of emotional outburst but their act was well-planned and pre-designed  . . . they have shown total disregard for human lives by enjoying the act of killing innocent persons.’
About Fahmida, Judge Puranik noted, ‘.  . . participation of accused no. 3 [Fahmida] in causing the bomb blast was not the result of her helplessness on account of dominance of her husband but it was her well-designed action with free will. Since the accused persons are bloodthirsty, therefore there is no scope for their reformation and rehabilitation.’
‘They shall be hanged by the neck till they are dead.’
As required by law, the trial court referred the matter to the Bombay High Court for confirmation of the death penalty. Three years after the conviction by the trial court, on 10 February 2012, the Bombay High Court upheld the verdict on all counts.

Mother Earth, Sister Seed: 5 Facts De-mystifying the Old Ways

Posted on by Penguin India

Lathika George is a writer, landscape designer, environmentalist and organic gardener. She has published articles on food, design, travel, gardening and the environment in InsideOutside, Architectural Digest, Food 52, Condé Nast Traveler, The Hindu’s BLink. In Mother Earth, Sister Seed, she looks at India’s traditional agricultural communities and the changes-some good, some not-that good, modernization and urbanization have wrought.
Here are a few facts from the book de-mystifying the old ways.
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