Taslima Nasrin is an eminent writer and secular humanist who has been subjected to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. She has been living in exile since 1994. For her powerful writing on women’s rights and uncompromising criticism of religious fundamentalism, the Bengali original of this book, Split: A Life, was banned by the Left Front in West Bengal as well as the Government of Bangladesh. Bold and evocative, Split: A Life opens a window to the experiences and works of one of the bravest writers of our times.

Here’s an excerpt from this powerful book.

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I asked for forgiveness because I had dared to accept such an exalted award despite being such an insignificant entity, for having shown the audacity even though I was utterly undeserving. Who knew if anyone forgave me in the end! After the event many writers and artists came up to congratulate me and I spoke to people I had never imagined I would have the opportunity to speak to. The day after, the news of the award ceremony was published on the front page of Anandabazar Patrika along with the headline ‘Taslima and Bhimsen steal the show’. Celebrations were being held all around me. Soumitra Mitra was very happy with how things had turned out and he was taking me to various places to meet various people. He surprised me with a visit to Rabindrasangeet exponent Kanika Bandyopadhyay. I was an ardent admirer of Kanika and standing in front of her was like a wave of euphoria had swept over my entire world. Ashesh and Mona, my companions during the Basanta Utsab trip, came to see me and took a bunch of photographs. I was suddenly an important person who no longer had to walk hunched along the corridors of Anandabazar and everyone knew who I was. Sagarmoy Ghosh offered me a chance to write a serialized novel for Desh. Floored by the offer I confessed I did not know how to write a novel. He smiled but did not rescind his offer. Nikhil Sarkar invited me to his Salt Lake residence and gave me a bunch of letters with which to go and meet a number of well-known people. Dutifully, the small writer with the big award took the letters with her and hesitantly went to pay a visit to the big guns. Mahasweta Devi, Meera Mukhopadhyay and many others—stars one was meant to show respect to when reaching for the sky. Whether I was even near the sky or I was where I had always been, I could scarcely tell for sure; I stood in front of the celebrities with all my insecurities and remonstrations intact. There was a trend in Calcutta to touch the feet of senior writers and artists to pay them one’s respects. Unused to the custom, I could not help but stand stiffly in front of most people I met. I had never managed to grasp the Bengali Muslim version of the same ritual either, the kadambushi. Though my heart was full of respect, I refrained from touching people’s feet and this must have irked many a senior, made them think of me as an upstart. But there was hardly anything I could do about it. If I was suddenly asked to till the field was I not supposed to stand there dumbstruck? It was impossible for me to abruptly start doing something I had never done before.

Despite not being one for formalities, I loved giving the small gifts I had brought from Bangladesh to my friends and well-wishers in Calcutta. Aveek Sarkar had handed the Ananda Puraskar to me and it was only right that I gift him a small token in return. So I took the multi-coloured jamdani sari I had worn for the award function, got its ornate border cut and had it framed in the best golden frame from a renowned framing shop on Park Street. When I reached the Anandabazar offices with my gift, Nikhil Sarkar was astounded by my daring. What I had failed to grasp was that for an art connoisseur and a man of such refined tastes as Aveek Sarkar, the limits of what he preferred among Indian art objects was probably defined by the Maqbool Fida Husain I saw adorning the walls. Otherwise, everything else was surely works by famous Western artists and painters. A jamdani sari border, no matter how beautiful, was not something that could possibly hope to be displayed in his room. I could not help but think to myself that the women behind such exquisite work were no less great artists, but the tasteful and the rich hardly considered them worthy of their attention. It was fortuitous that I had not turned up at Aveek Sarkar’s office directly with the framed piece of jamdani. Nikhil Sarkar advised that if I was bent on giving the gift to someone I should give it to Aveek Sarkar’s wife. Swallowing my discomfiture I did exactly that and managed to save Sarkar, the giant of Anandabazar, from any further embarrassment. A leading bureaucrat of the Bangladeshi consulate invited me and some authors to his place, primarily in my honour. As soon as I arrived the poets and writers of Calcutta surrounded me and inundated me with questions. So many questions of so many kinds— renaissance, revolution, feminism, backlash, modernism, postmodernism, my literary ideology, political beliefs, class struggle and so on. They waited for me to reply with startling answers while all I could do was stare at them in wide-eyed wonder. The questions appeared incomprehensible to me and seeing my bafflement they too began glancing at each other in surprise. Embarrassed, I wanted to curl up like a snail and disappear from the star-studded gathering, simply vanish without a trace. I did not want to answer any questions because I had no answers to give.

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Mark Tully worked for the BBC in South Asia for 25 years and now works as a journalist in New Delhi. His books include No Full Stops In India, The Heart of India and Lives of Jesus. In India in Slow Motion, Mark Tully covers subjects as diverse as Hindu extremism, bonded child labour, Sufi mysticism, the crisis in agriculture, the persistence of political corruption and the problem of Kashmir.  
Let’s read an excerpt from this book.
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On the last Sunday we met another priest who had not found change easy. When we were sitting in a pew waiting for mass to start in Old Goa’s Se Cathedral, a small, elderly but remarkably spry priest came up to us wearing not the usual white cassock but an old fashioned, tight-fitting black one with a traditional high dog-collar. He asked whether I was a Portuguese speaker and when I told him I didn’t know a word of the language he said, ‘I usually ask foreigners that because I love speaking Portuguese but I don’t get much chance nowadays.’
I asked why the exterior of his cathedral was now yellow instead of the traditional Goan white and this provoked a diatribe against the Archaeological Survey of India which had taken over responsibility from the church for the monuments of Old Goa. ‘We can’t do anything to our own cathedral now,’ he fumed, hopping from one foot to the other in his anger. ‘We even have to get permission to put up a new collection box, and what do they do to preserve the church? Nothing.’ As evidence he took me to the west end and showed me piles of rubble where the plaster was peeling from the pillars.
I had noticed that his cassock had purple piping and purple buttons so I asked, ‘Does the purple mean you are a monsignor?’
‘No. But I am Father Adolpho Joviano Castro Viegas, a canon of the cathedral and the parish priest and that is just as senior.’
Having been put straight about that, I went on to ask, ‘In the cathedral, do you keep up the old traditions of worship?’
‘Of course I try to, but what can we do? We don’t have money to pay for the choirs and all that you need for proper ritual, and the bishop doesn’t care either. The Portuguese bishop used to come here regularly with full pomp and devotion. The present one only comes about four times a year. I love the full ritual and singing, it lifts your heart.’

The peppery priest then left me to robe for the chapter mass. The vast cathedral was far from full when Father Adolpho and six other equally elderly canons entered through the south aisle. Robed in splendid green copes they walked in a solemn procession, accompanied by just one server, to the altar at the top of the chancel steps. Six of the canons including Adolpho took their seats in high backed chairs behind the altar and one stood at the altar to celebrate the mass with dignity and solemnity. He was accompanied by a small choir in the organ loft.
Looking at the magnificent gilded reredos crowned by the figure of Christ on the cross just below the white-barrelled ceiling of the sanctuary, I couldn’t help but think of the Portuguese who had built this monument to impress Goans with the majesty of a God who lived on high. I knew that the church had to change, to bring God down to earth, if it was to survive in independent India, but I also acknowledged that I came from the old tradition, the tradition Father Adolpho was preserving. I found it easier to worship God in majesty, rather than God the social worker who battles for the poor, or God the personal pal of the charismatics.
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Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, has spent two decades working his way up the ladder of power in the amazingly exciting and adrenaline-pumping world of global banks in India. Four of Ravi’s eight bestselling titles have been award winners. His latest thriller, In the Name of God, revolves around the Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram that safeguards within its sacrosanct walls centuries of customs and rituals, unimaginable wealth and an unwavering calm. Until a dead body turns up in its holy pond. . . and then another.
Let’s read an excerpt from this gripping novel.
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Nirav Choksi, a name the who’s who of Mumbai had on their speed dial, designed and manufactured customized jewellery for the rich and famous all over the world. He was often referred to as the Indian Joel Arthur Rosenthal, one of the world’s most exclusive jewellers whose high-flying clientele included Elizabeth Taylor, Elle Macpherson, Kim Kardashian, Michelle Obama and even the Princess of Jordan. Nirav Choksi’s client list boasted the marquee names on the social circuit—politicians, wealthy Indian businessmen, film stars. Choksi wielded a fair bit of clout on the jewellery trade in the country. A man with both contacts and influence, he was an extremely sought-after guy in the political circuit for skills which went beyond jewellery design.
Like Rosenthal, he too made fifty to sixty pieces of jewellery a year. Connoisseurs recognized an NC piece the moment they saw it. From traditional to contemporary, he designed them all, never repeating a design. A man with a huge ego, Nirav crafted his own designs and would get very upset if a client tried to dictate to him. He was once overheard saying that he preferred international clients to Indians, not because they paid more, but because in India every woman thought she was the best designer in the world. There were times when he had refused to sell a piece of jewellery because he felt the ornament would not look good on the client—such was his pride in his craft. Every stone is a canvas and every item of jewellery is a piece of art, he would say. Advertisements and self-promotion were not Nirav’s style. According to him, ‘word of mouth’ was what helped him get and retain clients. Even his office in Zaveri Bazaar was a thousand square-foot pigeonhole in the basement of Pancharathna Complex.
Zaveri Bazaar was the nerve centre of the jewellery trade not only in Mumbai, but the whole of India. Roughly sixty per cent of India’s gold trade passed through the narrow overcrowded lanes of the bazaar. The shabby buildings lining the sides of the main road held crores of rupees worth of gold, diamonds and jewellery, all stored in lockers built into the walls of the small stores, said to be strong enough to withstand any kind of robbery attempt, earthquake or bomb blast. The Government of India’s attempts to move the diamond and jewellery trade to a snazzy new building in Bandra Kurla Complex, an upmarket suburb in Mumbai, had been met with resistance. Many jewellers, led by Nirav Choksi, were Zaveri Bazaar loyalists and unwilling to move to the government-sponsored yet privately owned BKC Diamond Bourse.
Nirav had one more office in the neighbourhood. Apart from the basement office in Pancharathna Complex, he also had a small workshop a few buildings away where his trusted and most skilled workers crafted the pieces that he so painstakingly designed.
That day, he had just stepped into his basement office when his phone rang.
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