Page 74 – Penguin Random House India

Poetry in the times of things falling apart

Posted on December 29, 2020 by ashmita

Perhaps one of the most cited lines from Theodore Adorno’s Cultural Criticism and Society is “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”. Often decontextualized, it is misunderstood as a call to silence poets and artists after the events of the Holocaust. In actuality, Adorno’s reference was in fact to the very opposite – that to write poetry after the Holocaust without addressing the event, without trying to grapple with the unthinkable, was barbaric. His contestation was that art should be able (and arguably has a responsibility) to respond to its times. Poetry, before and after Auschwitz, has continued to change and save lives. Whether through the works of poets like W.H. Auden and Paul Celan who created unsettling and indelible imagery of the horrors of Nazi Germany, or Amiri Baraka and Langston Hughes’s rousing work about black identity and culture, poetry has often addressed the very impossibility of addressing some experiences. Poets have, time and again, through joys and disasters, immortalised events and the subjective experience of being alive in times of unprecedented grief or disaster.

Poetry has the tremendous capacity to shed light on the ineffable experiences to the reader. The collection Singing in The Dark is one such vehicle of experience, a composite body that speaks to and about a time that perhaps nobody anticipated. The pandemic crept upon us, unexpected, and it has altered irreversibly the dynamics of human interaction, and the relationships we share with each other, and most importantly, with nature. Over the past few years, we have seen various environmental and engineered crises, from the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Amazon fire to the cyclone Amphan and the Australian bushfires among several others. The planet seems to have become a battle zone between indigenous people who seek to preserve the lands they live on and corporations who believe anything can be bought on the clout of money.

Front cover singing in the dark — Singing in the Dark||K. Satchidanandan, Nishi Chawla

Editors Nishi Chawla and K. Satchidanandan write, ‘The anthology will well serve the purpose of capturing the anguish and the trauma, the anger and the befuddlement, as well as the hope for returning to the certainty of the world order that the pandemic has destroyed or the movement towards a more just and egalitarian world.’ As an array of poets from across the world find their works together in this anthology, perhaps the only common thread is the experience of living through a global disaster. Tragedy unites, and the pandemic has been tragic in an unimaginable number of ways. The impact of the coronavirus has been different for the privileged and non-privileged, and it has denuded the fault lines of our social fabric more starkly than ever. It remains up to us of course, to acknowledge the fact that there needs to be a radical change in the structures of the world, and that systems needs to be cleaned from the inside. Any fight for an egalitarian world will remain only theoretical unless the mantle of responsibility is picked up, and things are unstitched and restitched.

Singing in The Dark is an amalgamation of vulnerability and hope, of the dream of a world that can be better, and people who can do better, despite overwhelming evidence of the contrary. There is anger and befuddlement, and anguish and trauma. These will remain for some time, possibly even indefinitely. But poetry and art give us the opportunity to reflect on these, and on our own location within the grander scheme of the world. It pushes us to reconsider the experiential boundaries of our lives, and to reorient our understanding of how the world treats different lives differently. The pandemic forced us to confront the fact that human lives are entangled, that one person’s actions affect others in incomputable ways. Singing in The Dark too, is evidence that despite differences, human beings are not separated from each other, and cannot live insulated and isolated lives. In our experiences, in our fears, hopes, vulnerabilities, frailties and anger, there is an unbreachable commonality; maybe the idea of community is much more far-reaching than commonly believed, surpassing geopolitical boundaries, going into the heart of the very fact of being human and being alive at a time when everything seems to be falling apart.

Cloudy with a chance of fruitfall

Posted on December 24, 2020January 4, 2021 by ashmita

Poondy’s weather reports feature fruits. They fall from the skies. But there’s a lot more happening in this quaint town. Get a glimpse into the magic with this excerpt from Arjun Talwar’s delightful new book, Bim and The Town of Falling Fruit:

Most of Miss Chitty’s passengers were people who’d just arrived to Poondy. This meant that she had to carry their suitcases and put them on top of her car before taking them to town. If the passengers discovered they were in the wrong Poondy, Miss Chitty had to take these down and say sorry, as if it was all her fault. So she had a habit of telling these newcomers where they were before she touched their bags.

‘This is the Poondy where fruit always falls,’ she would say.

Because if there’s anything special about Poondy, it’s the jackfruit, coconut and toddy trees that are always threatening to drop their fruit on everyone’s heads. Most of these trees lean away from their roots at an angle, so fruit floats above the whole town. There are skinny trees, fat trees, trees you could climb and trees you couldn’t, but the sound of fruit falling is always the same: thrrrump.

…There are two approaches to the problem of falling fruit in Poondy. One is simply to always look up. You see when a jackfruit or coconut breaks off its branch. You move away, your head is saved. On the other hand, two up-lookers might bump into each other. But there are ways to avoid this (for example, by whistling). Even then, an up-looker can easily step into a pile of cow poo. Can you imagine scraping poo off your sandals while looking up?

For a long time, this was the only strategy they had in Poondy. Then Falwala came up with the idea of a fruit-helmet.

A fruit-helmet is a piece of headgear, with or without chinstrap, intended to save the skull from the force of falling fruit. What makes a fruit-helmet special is the gap between the top of the helmet and the head below it. Because of the gap, the head is safe, even when a jackfruit lands on it. A statue of Falwala in a prototype fruit-helmet stands in the middle of the Big Square (Falwala didn’t enjoy his success for long; he was pummelled by a coconut while washing the prototype in a pond).

The helmets look silly. But you can walk freely, whistle or not whistle, have clean feet and, in general, lead a normal life, while living in a world of falling fruit. For these reasons, fruit-helmets are popular with Poondizens. They’re traded in various forms—brightly coloured or unpainted, steel or wooden—and can be ready-made or made to order. You can find pointy ones that split the fruit open, so it can be eaten. You can have a hole in the back to put your ponytail through. But the essence of a fruit- helmet is the same as it was in Falwala’s day. It boils down to that invisible ingredient: the gap.

front cover Bim and The Town of Falling fruit — Bim and The Town of Falling Fruit||Arjun Talwar

Our fruit helmets are ready. How about you?

Can economics explain daily events in the lives of ordinary Indians?

Posted on December 23, 2020 by vanyajaiswal

Why are all the good mangoes exported from India? Why should we pay our house help more? Why do we hesitate to reach out for that last piece of cake in a gathering? Are more choices really better? Why do many of us offer a prayer but are reluctant to wear a seatbelt while driving? Are Indians hardwired to get grumpy at a peer’s success? What’s common between a box of cereal and your résumé?

Can economics answer all these questions and more? According to Dr Sudipta Sarangi, the answer is yes. In The Economics of Small Things, Sarangi using a range of everyday objects and common experiences like bringing about lasting societal change through Facebook to historically momentous episodes like the shutting down of telegram services in India offers crisp, easy-to-understand lessons in economics. Giving us more insight into his new book, Sudipta Sarangi tell us how economics can answer all our curious questions. Read on!

The Economics of Small Things approaches economics, and in particular economic theory by identifying it in the little things around us, in the quotidian as well as the quirky aspects of everyday life. This book promises to be different – it sets itself apart right from the Introduction which begins with a timeline of events like a in Fredric Forsythe thriller. Instead these are daily events in the life of ordinary Indians – like having the morning cup of tea, and the office commute to what happens at lunch. Believe me there is economics in all of that!

Unlike other popular books on economics, The Economics of Small Things has a distinctly Indian flavor. Take Chapter 1 for instance – it explores the unholy trinity of asymmetric information: adverse selection, moral hazard and costly auditing but in the context of the Grameen Bank and joint liability lending. Then the book explains why the village Md Yunus, the village Sahukar and Munimji (aka Jeevan) all succeeded while the formal banking sector did not. The book delves into many other such Indian themes like chappal chori at temples, T20 and ODI, and what is the best strategy for shoe shopping. It has 25 chapters but covers the entire gamut from A to Z!

Generally, depending on your level of exposure, economics is either considered expansive and somewhat stodgy, or filled with indecipherable Greek letters and numbers. The Economics of Small Things provides a surprising departure from this – it is written in an easy style with a dash of humor that almost seems counterintuitive to economic theory. It will appeal not only to high school students and their teachers but also to corporate executives; actually anyone who is curious. The refreshing, lighthearted style makes it an easy read. The chapters are big on ideas, short in size – to be enjoyed just like a delicious petit four.

front cover of The Economics of Small Things — The Economics of Small Things || Sudipta Sarangi

The concluding Coda provides a set of six takeaways. For example, it says that cognitive costs matter – which is why people use heuristics. It is also one reason why we stereotype people. Another take away is that heterogeneity matters – a idea that is not strange to Indians given our wide diversity. But the point really is that since people like different prefer levels of comfort in their airplane or train seats, like different flavours of masala oats, or like a professor and her student have a different values for time, it gives firms an opportunity to sell different products at different prices, thereby making higher profits. Summing it all up The Economics of Small Things says “…economics matters, and it matters not only in the abstract, but it matters in the little things in our personal lives and for a great many of our social interactions.”

A delicate balance – India’s tiger crisis

Posted on December 22, 2020December 22, 2020 by vidhi

‘When the stars threw down their spears

And water’d heaven with their tears:

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’

In one of the most famous dedications to the animal kingdom, English poet William Blake registers his awe and stunned disbelief at the fact that a meek animal like the lamb was made by the same creative source that made the tiger, a ferocious predator that commands fear and respect, that rules the jungles, determining the fates of all the other animals. Somehow, over the years, we no longer appear to share his wonder at the animal. The tiger in India is once again on the brink of extinction. The usual suspects like destruction of forest cover and poaching are also at play, but a new threat faces the tiger now.

Traditional Chinese medicine uses the bones of tigers for production. The bones are believed to have medicinal properties that can heal a variety of disorders. Previously, materials for these medicines were obtained and sourced from the tiger population of southern China. But the South China tiger is almost extinct now, and the Indian tigers suddenly find themselves under the predatory gaze of these manufacturers. At least one wild tiger is killed every day only for its bones, and this is an estimate at its lower end. The bones of the animal have become the attraction of illegal markets which receive huge sums of money simply for this purpose. This also works as incentive to kill more tigers.

Front Cover of Ranthambore Adventure — Ranthambore Adventure || Deepak Dalal

India’s wildlife ecosystem is fragile, and the depleting numbers of tiger is not improving the situation. Being at the top of the food chain, tigers determine and maintain the wildlife and oxygen balance to a great degree. In a forest without tigers, deer and other grass eating animals proliferate without any check. Soon their grazing erodes the land cover because the grass is depleted. When this happens, all animals, regardless of what they eat, will die. This is why tigers are said to belong to an ‘indicator species’. Their number determines the health of a forest.

While the institution Wilderness Conservation India is working tirelessly in this field, a larger change is unlikely to happen anytime soon unless we realise the repercussions of destroying wildlife for our own gains. Even as consumers, we can help stall poaching by steering clear of animal products. The planet wasn’t built to sustain human beings alone, and it definitely will not survive a scenario where all wildlife is either dead or eroded beyond repair.

The science of sugar that will transform your cooking

Posted on December 21, 2020 by vanyajaiswal

Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd’s exploration of Indian cooking with the ultimate aim of making the reader a better cook and turning the kitchen into a joyful, creative playground for culinary experimentation. Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a sub-optimal way of learning how to cook.

Here’s an excerpt from the book that divulges the science of sugar, a common ingredient in our kitchen but one that can magically transform any dish. Read on to take your cooking game to the next level with us!

Science of Sugar

Sugar is among the most misunderstood things in the Indian culinary landscape. This is surprising because we produce, sell and add more sugar to our food than any other people on the planet. This is also despite the fact that the very idea of extracting sucrose from the sugarcane plant was originally Indian. The word ‘sugar’ and its equivalents in every language, from Persian to Arabic to European languages, follow the path that sugar itself took from its origins in what is today Bengal. It is derived from sharkara in Sanskrit. Fun fact: Even the word ‘jaggery’ comes from the Portuguese jagara that comes from the Malayalam sakkara, which again goes back to the Sanskrit sharkara.

Originally used to make bitter medicine palatable, sugar is, chemically speaking, a family of molecules that are water-soluble carbohydrates. Incidentally, not all sugars taste sweet. Sucrose is the one that is most familiar because it makes up the crystalline sugar we use every single day. Sucrose by itself is made up of two other sugars—glucose and fructose—that got together, shook hands, agreed to lose a water molecule and bonded together.

Glucose and fructose taste sweet individually too. The former is important because it is the single most important source of energy for all living things on the planet. All carbohydrates are ultimately broken down to glucose, the simplest possible sugar. This is why when your body is not functioning normally, and your digestive system is not able to take complex foods and turn them into glucose, hospitals stick a needle into your arm and pump glucose straight into your blood, bypassing the state-of-the-art organic factory that is your digestive tract. The other sugar, fructose, is largely found in fruits, which is why they taste sweet. Milk has lactose, which does not taste sweet and is a tricky sugar because most adult humans lose the ability to digest it (meaning, convert it into glucose). This is why adults mostly cannot consume large amounts of milk beyond the tiny amount in their coffees and teas, and the occasional kheer or payasam.

All starches, which are basically large complex molecules made up of simpler sugar molecules, are ultimately turned into glucose by the body. This is why when you chew on potatoes for long enough, the enzymes in your saliva will turn the starches into glucose, making it taste sweet.

So, that’s about as much useful sugar chemistry theory one needs to know before jumping into the kitchen. The most common sweeteners in the Indian kitchen, in order, are:

1. Plain, crystalline white (or brown) sugar: White sugar is near 100 per cent sucrose. Brown sugar is white sugar with some molasses added back (the syrupy stuff that is left behind when refining sugarcane into refined sugar). This is the sweetest-tasting sugar.

2. Jaggery (gur): Jaggery is the unrefined mix of molasses (which is mostly glucose and fructose) and sucrose. It tends to be about 50 per cent sucrose, while the rest is mostly glucose, fructose and moisture. It has a slightly less sweet taste than sucrose but more depth of flavour.

3. Honey: This is mostly fructose and glucose, and has a very complex depth of flavour compared to plain sugar, or even jaggery. But the complex flavours are heat-sensitive, so avoid adding honey earlier in the cooking process.

front cover of Krish Ashok — Masala Lab || Krish Ashok

Sugar needs to be at least 0.75 per cent by weight in your dish for it to register as sweet. But like salt, sugar can magically improve your dish even without being perceptibly sweet. In general, a pinch of sugar will improve any dish.

Here are some simple rules for sweetness as a taste:

1. Sweet mutes saltiness up to a point, and also mutes sourness and bitterness. You can use it to balance these flavours.

2. Sweetness adds depth to other flavours, such as spices. When you bite into a cardamom, you will smell it, but it will taste bitter. When you bite into cardamom with a pinch of sugar, the aroma and taste of cardamom will seem stronger.

Exhaustively tested and researched, and with a curious and engaging approach to food, Krish Ashok puts together the one book the Indian kitchen definitely needs, proving along the way that your grandmother was right all along.

Seven tips on raising funds like a seasoned entrepreneur

Posted on December 20, 2020December 21, 2020 by sanjeeta

The world is definitely buzzing with intrepid entrepreneurship and most of us are starting-up and striking out!

Amidst this thrilling zeitgeist though, the problem of funding remains, especially in the post-COVID-19 world, where money is scarce.

Dhruv Nath and Sushanto Mitra come to the rescue with Funding Your Startup And Other Nightmares It taking you through stories of early-stage start-ups, and their hits and misses in the journey to raise funding.

Funding Your Startup And Other Nightmares || Dhruv Nath, Sushanto Mitra

The authors also interview some of the most accomplished founders in the world of business, such as Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip, Yashish Dahiya of PolicyBazaar, Dinesh Agarwal of IndiaMART and Sairee Chahal of SHEROES. Their stories all come together in a useful ‘PERSISTENT’ framework, which helps make a start-up investment-ready.

Read on for seven invaluable tips about the basics of funding that will help you launch straight onto entrepreneurial superstardom.

Treat your customers with the same awe you do investors, because it’s their money that is crucial for a business in the long run

Always remember, the customer’s money is much better than the investor’s money—as long as it is

coming in regularly, and is higher than your costs. Because you then have a viable business. This is especially important in the post COVID-19 world. And if you are getting the customer’s money,

you will almost certainly get the investor’s money.

While entrepreneurs are understandably concerned about giving too much of their stake away, you need to focus on what’s best for growing your business.

Well, first of all, if you need funding to grow rapidly, you need it. Do not worry too much about the valuation and the stake you are letting go. Obviously you must try and get the best deal you can, but get the funding. It’ll help you grow rapidly, and your next round can then be at a significantly higher valuation. So while you may have parted with a significant stake in the first round, you can actually get far more for a proportionately lower stake in the next round

Crises can turn investors risk-averse and more likely to insist on a lower valuation. Here is a great option to handle this

There is another interesting option. Raise the money right now, without fixing the valuation at the moment. Instead, link it to the subsequent round of funding. How does this work? Well, let’s call

this Funding Round 1. And at some stage you will be raising Funding Round 2. You could then set the valuation in Round 1 at a 20 per cent discount (or any percentage that both sides can agree to) to the

valuation arrived at in Round 2.

To create maximum impact in the least time, brevity is the name of the game! WYKM (what’s your key message- and deliver it!

One simple, key idea. Which is easy to understand, absorb and, therefore, remember. Nothing huge, not hundreds of words, or tens of ideas. One simple message—that’s it. And therefore, ladies and gentlemen, the recipient gets the message and remembers it!

Multi-tranche or staggered investments, released as you continue to meet milestones are great for start-ups looking to prove traction.

In other words, we’ll give you the money in two tranches. Based on the first tranche, let’s set a milestone. Once you meet that, we’ll release the second tranche. By the way, the second tranche could even be at a higher valuation.’ Incidentally, this is not an informal arrangement. It actually becomes part of the term sheet and ultimately the shareholder agreement.

While you’re on tenterhooks waiting for your investors to choose you, make sure you choose your investors wisely and well

More than just the money, it’s important to get it from the right investor. Someone whose thinking is aligned with yours and who is ideally passionate about the business as well. Someone who can add

value and not keep breathing down your neck asking for a quick exit.

Angel networks, gathering investments from a large number of investors are one of the best bets for start-ups and much more accessible than venture capitalists at first.

Who provides this support? Very simply, the angel network. So the network evaluates each start-up and then shortlists the ones that seem the most promising. The founders are then asked to make a presentation or pitch. After the pitch session, start-ups that investors are interested in are evaluated in further detail (unfortunately, the others go home with coffee and cookies). Finally, those that are ripe for investment are given a term sheet. Which is rather like an MoU.

Ruttie Jinnah’s influence and redaction from history

Posted on December 20, 2020 by sanjeeta

Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s wife, Ruttie Jinnah was a fierce nationalise in her own right, and a proactive political companion to her husband. According to Jinnah’s contemporary political leader Sarojini Naidu, Ruttie was the only one with whom he could truly be himself. Despite her undisputed influence on him, she remains an understudied figure in history.

Here is an excerpt from the introduction of Saad S. Khan’s biography, Ruttie Jinnah, titled The Enigma of Mrs Jinnah.

Eqbal Ahmad, a great South Asian intellectual, once described Jinnah as an ‘enigma’ of modern history. Jinnah’s aristocratic Victorian manners, English lifestyle and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of Indian Muslims to have led the people to separate statehood.8 However, any keen observer of South Asian history and the politics of Pakistan may find Mrs Jinnah a greater ‘enigma’ than her husband. Sharing the same manners, the same lifestyle and the same outlook that Ahmad uses to describe Jinnah, she was the unlikeliest of candidates to have had a revolutionary, anti-British spirit, the intrepidity to face her family and community upon conversion to Islam, and her rising to become the first lady of the Indian Muslim community in such a conservative era when most Muslim women were wearing face veils.

As the historians study and explore Jinnah’s personality in the thousands of books and titles on him, we come to know him so well that he hardly remains an enigma any longer. Mrs Jinnah, however, has remained one—first, owing to her behind-the-curtains role in the rise of Jinnah and factors that led to the genesis of Pakistan. This should have made her one of the most studied historical figures by and within Pakistan, at least. To the contrary, however—and this brings us to the second reason she is an enigma—she suffered (to borrow the term from the scholar Akbar S. Ahmed) a complete ‘blackout’ from history.

Here, we look at both these conundrums: her influence on Pakistan and her redaction from history.

Influence on Jinnah and Thereby on the Creation of Pakistan

The first mystery about Mrs Jinnah is around her role in moulding her husband from a staunch all-India nationalist to a believer in the two-nation theory. It is well known that their courtship blossomed from 1916, when she proposed to him in Darjeeling. It was the same year that Jinnah got catapulted to national centre stage by becoming the architect and the author of the Lucknow Pact (also known as the Jinnah–Tilak Pact). It prompted Sarojini Naidu to label him as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. Despite strong opposition from her father, Ruttie came to Lucknow to see Jinnah bask in glory on the Indian political skyline.

The couple got married in 1918. After that there was hardly any major political or legislative engagement of Jinnah for which Ruttie was not by his side, till she left for Europe during her terminal illness in 1928. She died the following year. It was precisely that year, in 1929, that Jinnah propounded his Fourteen Points, effectively laying claim to a separate nation for the Muslims. These demands were to coalesce into one—for separate statehood—within a decade. Though Mrs Jinnah cannot be considered the sole reason for this metamorphosis, the exact coincidence of years, which is hard to miss, cannot be purely incidental. Living together and discussing politics for hours every day, it is hard to believe that Ruttie’s influence on Jinnah’s sea change in outlook was nil.

The argument that Mrs Jinnah was one of the factors that led to Jinnah’s becoming a bi-nationalist instead of the nationalist that he was, is subscribed by more or less all serious studies of Jinnah’s early political life. Akbar S. Ahmed,10 M.C. Chagla,11 Kanji Dwarkadas,12 Sheela Reddy13 and Ian Bryant Wells14 among others count Mrs Jinnah’s life—or death—as one of the factors that contributed to the change in Jinnah’s political philosophy, which led to the creation of Pakistan.

They disagree, however, on the extent of this influence, on what exactly caused it (for instance, Mrs Jinnah’s life or her death) and how. The present volume will uncover this backstage role of Mrs Jinnah, which will also help us grasp various hitherto underappreciated angles of Jinnah’s personality and decisions.

Her Blackout from History

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, better known in Pakistan as Quaid-e-Azam, was the founding father of Pakistan and is highly venerated in the country. Countless roads, towns, streets, institutions and projects are named after him. Those who profess their love for him show him a discourtesy by forgetting his first and last love, Rattanbai Maryam Jinnah. It is indeed a pity that the lady went missing from history and Pakistan’s collective memory. Both her role as comrade-in-arms of Jinnah, and her contribution to the freedom struggle in her own right are equally underexplored areas in the historiography of Pakistan.

Akbar S. Ahmed notes that Ruttie (and Dina) have ‘both been blacked out from history [in Pakistan]’. He argues, ‘Nonetheless, it is through a study of his family that we see the man [Jinnah] and understand him more than at any other point in his life because that is when he exposes his inner feelings to us.’15 Who caused this blackout and why? Who were the figures or what were the factors that led to the obliteration of Mrs Jinnah from collective memory?

Apparently, her direct descendants in post-Partition India and her in-laws in post-Independence Pakistan, for reasons that might not mirror each other, may have developed an interest in keeping Mrs Jinnah’s persona concealed from history. These include her parental family’s revulsion to her conversion, personal dislikes and jealousies by some on her in-laws’ side and simple lust for the Jinnahs’ inheritance in property from yet others living on both sides of the Radcliffe Line. The litigation for Jinnah’s property still continues a century down the road.

Saad S. Khan’s vivid biography, Ruttie Jinnah, provides an incisive look into Ruttie’s life and legacy, bringing forth a novel and fresh understanding of Jinnah and the freedom movement.

One life, two chance encounters

Posted on December 20, 2020December 21, 2020 by sanjeeta

When Dhelabai, the most popular tawaif of Muzaffarpur, slights Babu Haliwant Sahay, a powerful zamindar from Chappra, he resolves to build a cage that would trap her forever. Thus, the elusive phoolsunghi is trapped within the four walls of the Red Mansion.

Forgetting the past, Dhelabai begins a new life of luxury, comfort, and respect. One day, she hears the soulful voice of Mahendra Misir and loses her heart to him. Mahendra too, feels for her deeply, but the lovers must bear the brunt of circumstances and their own actions which repeatedly pull them apart.

In this excerpt, we are introduced to Dhelabai from Pandey Kapil’s Phoolsunghi, translated from the Bhojpuri text by Gautam Choubey.

Dhela!
Dhela or ‘stone’ was what she had come to be called.

Once, her nautch triggered a violent street fight amongst her fanatic admirers, and in the ensuing mayhem, stones were hurled. That same day, she ceased to be known by her real name and became famous as Dhela.

She was a queen among beauties and an unchallenged sovereign in the realm of music and dance. When the fingers of the accompanist moved briskly over the taut head of the tabla, her skirt swirled like a whirlpool in an ocean. And when mellifluous songs flowed from her lips, it seemed as if her throat was a flute upon which the wind was playing resonant tunes. One could liken her to Menaka, or perhaps to Urvashi, the celestial nymphs. This tawaif from Muzaffarpur, once the foremost city in the ancient republic of Vaishali, was as majestic as Amrapali—the fabled royal courtesan of that province.

Once upon a time, a famous tawaif called Janakibai lived in Prayagraj. It is said that a devoted admirer of Janakibai was so completely besotted with her songs that he lavished all his wealth on her. However, he had never seen her face, not even a fleeting glimpse, for she always wore a veil. One day, as she absentmindedly lifted her veil and he caught sight of her dark and pockmarked face, he was shocked beyond belief. Could a sound so sweet emerge from a source so repulsive? As his world came crashing down, he exploded with rage and in a fit of uncontrolled fury, stabbed her over and over again. Janakibai miraculously survived the fifty-six stabs and got a colourful new moniker—Chappan Churi or fifty-six knives.

Like Chappan Churi, Dhela, too, once had a real name. She was Gulzaribai. True to her name, she was a gulzar, a blooming garden of flowers. She was blessed with moonlike radiance and the beauty of a heavenly nymph. But, the deeds of a few fanatics, who clashed over her and engaged in a vicious stone-fight, got her forever renamed to Dhela, alias Dhelabai.

Dhelabai’s fame spread-out in all directions just like the rays of the rising sun. When it reached Babu Haliwant Sahay, a powerful zamindar from Chhapra, he rushed to Muzaffarpur to marvel at her splendour. However, when he returned home after meeting her, he was lovelorn and crestfallen. Haliwant Sahay’s middle-aged body was home to the soul of a young rasik—a devourer of pleasure. Dhelabai’s luscious body and her seductive fragrance had filled his heart with unbearable longings and weakened his scruples. Yet, for him, she remained painfully unattainable.

The words that Dhelabai uttered to repulse his advances were steadfast and sacred, like a church bell. But he felt as if they were a dagger plunged into his heart; they had inflicted a wound whose pain pulsated through his veins. She had said, ‘Babu Sahib! You must have heard of a phoolsunghi—the flowerpecker—yes? It can never be held captive in a cage. It sucks nectar from a flower and then flies on to the next. I come from the community of tawaifs. Members of my community are like a phoolsunghi. Having After sucking money from one pocket, we quickly set out looking for another. Go back home. Spare a thought for your advanced age and spend the remainder of your days saying prayers and chanting the holy name of Lord Ram.’

However, as he descended the steps of her nautch- house, Sahay did not forget to warn her, ‘Dhela, my pocket is a limitless fountain of riches. I have no doubt that any phoolsunghi will gladly agree to a life as a captive in my golden cage. Her beak isn’t big enough to suck all the nectar from my pocket. And, as to my age, let it be heard that Haliwant Sahay earns his money believing he’ll never die. And he lives his life as if he were forever young, like the Ashwinis, the ever-youthful twins of the sun god. It’s all right for now. When the time comes, you’ll know the hollowness of your own sermon. I am returning home to build a palace for you; a golden-cage for a phoolsunghi. Trapped inside that cage, the flowerpecker will remain perfectly satisfied with a single flower and chirp merrily around it.’

Upon hearing these words, Dhela burst into laughter—a laughter so resonant that it sounded like the harmonized tinkling of a thousand golden bells, all arranged in a long single row. Sweltering under the blaze of that withering laughter, a gloomy Haliwant Sahay retreated to Chhapra.

The first ever translation of a Bhojpuri novel into English, Phoolsunghi transports readers to a forgotten world filled with mujras and mehfils, court cases and counterfeit currency, and the crashing waves of the River Saryu.

Festive reads for you and your family

Posted on December 20, 2020December 20, 2020 by sumangala

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and we bet you’re looking forward to the festivities! Spread the joy with some of our handpicked selection of books to choose from. Here is a list of books from Penguin and Puffin, perfect for your little one, yourself, or as a gift for friends and family!

The Thursday Murder Club

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

Front cover — The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse || Charlie Mackesy

Enter the world of Charlie’s four unlikely friends, discover their story and their most important life lessons. The conversations of the boy, the mole, the fox and the horse have been shared thousands of times online, recreated in school art classes, hung on hospital walls and turned into tattoos.

Uparwali Chai: The Indian Art of High Tea

front cover of Uparwali Chai — Uparwali Chai || Pamela Timms

From Saffron and Chocolate Macarons to Apricot and Jaggery Upside Down Cake to a Rooh Afza Layer Cake, Uparwali Chai is an original mix of classic and contemporary desserts and savouries, reinvented and infused throughout with an utterly Indian flavour. A beautifully curated set of recipes full of nostalgic flavours and stories, this is a book every home cook will be referring to for generations to come.

An Extreme Love of Coffee

When they drink a cup of ‘magic’ coffee, Rahul and Neha are entrusted with a quest that promises to lead to great treasure. As they race from the plantations of Coorg to Japanese graveyards, they are trailed by the Yamamoto brothers-bearing grudges and carrying swords.
But will they manage to evade their Japanese assailants and find the treasure they first set out for?

Wish I Could Tell You

A disillusioned and heartbroken Anusha finds herself in the small world of WeDonate.com. Struggling to cope with her feelings and the job of raising money for charity, she reluctantly searches for a worthwhile cause to support. For Ananth, who has been on the opposite side, no life is less worthy, no cause too small to support.

They can’t escape each other. In this world of complicated relationships, should love be such a difficult ride?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End

Greg Heffley and his family hit the road for a cross-country camping trip, ready for the adventure of a lifetime. But things take an unexpected turn, and they find themselves stranded at a campsite that’s not exactly a summertime paradise. When the skies open up and the water starts to rise, the Heffleys wonder if they can save their vacation – or if they’re already in too deep.

The Puffin Mahabharata

Like a modern-day suta or storyteller, Namita Gokhale brings alive India’s richest literary treasure with disarming ease and simplicity. She retells this timeless tale of mortals and immortals and stories within stories, of valour, deceit, glory, and despair, for today’s young reader in a clear, contemporary style.

A brilliant series of evocative and thoughtful illustrations by painter and animator Suddhasattwa Basu brings the epic to life in a vibrant visual feast.

A Girl Like That

Sixteen-year-old Zarin Wadia is the kind of girl that parents warn their kids to stay away from. You don’t want to get involved with a girl like that, they say. After a tragic encounter her story is pieced together, told through multiple perspectives, and it becomes clear that she was far more than just a girl like that. This beautifully written debut novel from Tanaz Bhathena reveals a rich and wonderful new world to readers; tackles complicated issues of race, identity, class and religion; and paints a portrait of teenage ambition, angst and alienation that feels both inventive and universal.

Tharoorosaurus

Shashi Tharoor is the wizard of words. In Tharoorosaurus, he shares fifty-three examples from his vocabulary: unusual words from every letter of the alphabet. You don’t have to be a linguaphile to enjoy the fun facts and interesting anecdotes behind the words! Be ready to impress-and say goodbye to your hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia!

Prem Prakash watched history unfold, time and again

Posted on December 18, 2020 by ashmita

Having worked as a journalist for several years, Prem Prakash was witness to the turning tides of history. Read an excerpt from the account of his outstanding career and the historic moments he was a part of:

The twelfth of June 1975 was like any other summer day in Delhi— hot and humid with frequent power failures adding to the discomfort. Then there was a bolt from the blue. Suddenly, teleprinters in the newsrooms of media offices began clattering out a news alert from Allahabad. The verdict had been delivered on a lawsuit filed by the opposition’s defeated candidate, Raj Narain, against Mrs Gandhi’s election to Parliament in 1971. It was announced by Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s victory from Raebareli had been set aside by the Allahabad High Court following an election petition alleging malpractices and corruption.

Congress was stunned. Journalists rushed to the prime minister’s house. I was there too, along with Surinder, my colleague. Large crowds had gathered to support Mrs Gandhi, while senior Congress leaders went in and out of the house. Mrs Gandhi did not come out. The court barred Mrs Gandhi from holding elected office for six years, but it stayed the execution of the verdict to give her time to appeal against the judgment, if she chose. The media was as stunned as the government. Several were of the opinion that she should resign. By now, however, it was clear that she would put up a fight and go into appeal at the Supreme Court.

front cover Reporting India — Reporting India||Prem Prakash

After Indira Gandhi’s comprehensive victory in the 1971 Lok Sabha election, her rival, Raj Narain, had challenged the election result in the Allahabad High Court. The case had dragged on. Raj Narain insisted there were corrupt practices, but in fact there were none, except that one of Mrs Gandhi’s confidants, Yashpal Kapoor, whom I had known from Panditji’s time, was just as powerful as he used to be. This indicated that the bureaucracy believed that she hadn’t given up as yet. Raj Narain—the ‘joker in the pack’, as he was known—was elated at the verdict and demanded her resignation.

Yashpal Kapoor’s resignation came a few hours after the election was called, and he had already begun participating in the election campaign while employed by the foreign office of the government, something that the law does not permit. This was at best a technical or bureaucratic irregularity.

The case had already been argued and judgment was due towards the end of May. But the judge delayed it for some unknown reason. It was alleged that some Congressmen approached him to try and influence him in Indira Gandhi’s favour, making things worse for her. The judge was clearly peeved at this approach by the people whom he considered Mrs Gandhi’s agents.

Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha had been avoiding public appearances for quite some time. He stayed home and called his stenographer to dictate his judgment. To guard against leakage, the judge insisted that his stenographer stay in his house. The day the dictation was completed, he asked the stenographer to disappear. That was 11 June 1975.

These are all known facts. The judgment was to be announced the next day, 12 June. Everybody across the nation was waiting. The judge arrived in court at 10 a.m., and within five minutes he allowed the petition.

The news spread like wildfire all over India and beyond. A news flash said that the court had allowed Raj Narain’s petition and found Mrs Gandhi guilty of corrupt practices. The judge then read out the judgment pronouncing Mrs Gandhi guilty on the basis of a simple technical error. It was like pronouncing a death sentence on someone for jaywalking.

Mrs Gandhi brushed aside all hints at possible corrupt practices by officials around her. At some point, when confronted with a question at a press conference as to why she was not taking steps against corruption, she had replied that corruption was a universal phenomenon. That sent a message down the line to the corrupt bureaucracy that it was okay to indulge in such practices so long as you did not get caught with your hands in the till.

After the Allahabad judgment, Mrs Gandhi was expected to resign. But she stood firm and said she would not do so, not till she went to appeal to the Supreme Court. The opposition took to the streets to protest at her challenging the judgment. This, to my mind, was totally unfair. You cannot prevent a person from exercising all their legal options. Demonstrations by the opposition, primarily led by the Jana Sangh, were not that big. These also did not resonate with the people, as by and large everyone felt that Mrs Gandhi had every right to go in for appeal.

…The Supreme Court, in its judgment on 24 June 1975, upheld the Allahabad High Court judgment, adding that Mrs Gandhi could continue as prime minister for six months and attend Parliament but not vote there. Subsequently, on 7 November 1975 (during the Emergency), the Supreme Court overturned Mrs Gandhi’s conviction in the Allahabad judgment.

Obviously, during those six months, following the Supreme Court’s conditional stay order, the prime minister’s office would be occupied by a person who was not really authorized to be there because of the Allahabad High Court order. At least this was the sensible way of looking at it—if the prime minister was disqualified she ought to resign, as the opposition insisted while holding their demonstrations.

The unrest was beginning to affect the country’s stability. The government had come to a virtual standstill, and many bureaucrats felt they were carrying out the orders of an illegal government.

–

Reporting India is an invaluable work, showing an intimate understanding of events we have only read about, from someone who was a part of those times.

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