The Book of Aleph (Volume 6)

aleph //'a:lif/

n 1. an independent Indian publisher of fine writing. 2. a magical entity that contains the world and everything in it, as imagined by Jorge Luis Borges in his short story ‘The Aleph’.

3. the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician Aleph , Syriac '¯ Alaph, Hebrew Aleph , and Arabic ’Alif ‫ ;ا‬the letter from which the Greek Alpha A is derived. 4. used as a symbol in set theory to denote aleph numbers, which represent the cardinality of infinite sets.

5. a psychedelic drug.

The Book of Aleph

Aleph Book Company is an independent Indian literary publisher based in New Delhi. In the pages of The Book of Aleph: Volume Six readers will find some of the finest new writing to appear in 2017 out of (and about) India.

Amitava Kumar

Pravin Sawhney

Amrita Narayanan

Raghu Rai

Arun Kumar

Ramin Jahanbegloo

B. R. Shetty

Rudrangshu Mukherjee

(with Pranay Gupte) Bidisha Banerjee Devdutt Pattanaik G. N. Devy Ghazala Wahab Ira Mukhoty Irwin Allan Sealy Jayanthi Natarajan Jeet Thayil Keerthik Sasidharan M. J. Akbar

volume

Not for sale

www.alephbookcompany.com

Book design by Bena Sareen

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

An independent publishing firm promoted by Rupa Publications India

6

2017

N. Ram Nasreen Rehman Omar Abdullah Paul Zacharia Prasenjit K. Basu Pravin Anand (with Dhruv Anand and Tanvi Misra)

Ruskin Bond S. Theodore Baskaran S. V. Sujatha Salman Rashid Sanam Maher Sanjoy Hazarika Shashi Tharoor Shiv Kunal Verma Sudeep Chakravarti Sumana Roy Tripti Lahiri Valay Singh Valmik Thapar Veena Das Yashica Dutt

The Book of Aleph {Volume 6}

The Book of Aleph January to December 2017

. . . … . . … .

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY An independent publishing firm promoted by Rupa Publications India Published in India in 2017

by Aleph Book Company 7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj New Delhi 110 002 Copyright © Aleph Book Company 2017 All rights reserved.

Copyright in individual excerpts vests in the authors or proprietors. Copyright in this selection vests in Aleph Book Company. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from Aleph Book Company.

In the works of fiction in this selection characters, places, names and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

In the works of non-fiction in this selection the views and opinions expressed are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by him/her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

ISBN: 978-93-86021-06-9 Printed and bound in India by All prices, publication dates, and other specifications in this volume are liable to change without notice.

Contents P R E V I O U S LY P U BLISHE D IN 2016 WINTER

21

| SP RIN G

AU T U M N / W I N TE R INDEX

87

37

SU M M E R

131

47

| M O N SO O N

P RIZE WIN N E RS & F IN A LISTS

119

BAC K L I S T

7

| A BO U T U S

1 59

61 111

p

re v i o u s ly published in 2016

an era of darkness the british empire in india

shashi tharoor

In 1930, the American historian and philosopher Will Durant wrote that Britain’s ‘conscious and deliberate bleeding of India...[was the] greatest crime in all history’. He was not the only one to denounce the rapacity and cruelty of British rule, and his assessment was not exaggerated.

Almost thirty-five million Indians died because of acts of commission and omission by the British—in famines, epidemics, communal riots and wholesale slaughter like the reprisal killings after the 1857 War of Independence and the Amritsar massacre of 1919. Besides the deaths of Indians, British rule impoverished India in a manner that beggars belief.

When the East India Company took control of the country, in the chaos that ensued after the collapse of the Mughal empire, India’s share of world GDP was 23 per cent. When the British left it was just above 3 per cent.

The British empire in India began with the East India Company, incorporated in 1600, by royal charter of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, to trade in 8

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silk, spices and other profitable Indian commodities. Within a century and a half, the Company had become a power to reckon with in India. In 1757, under the command of Robert Clive, Company forces defeated the ruling Nawab Siraj-udDaula of Bengal at Plassey, through a combination of superior artillery and even more superior chicanery. A few years later, the young and weakened Mughal emperor, Shah Alam II, was browbeaten into issuing an edict that replaced his own revenue officials with the Company’s representatives. Over the next several decades, the East India Company, backed by the British government, extended its control over most of India, ruling with a combination of extortion, doubledealing, and outright corruption backed by violence and superior force. This state of affairs continued until 1857, when large numbers of the Company’s Indian soldiers spearheaded the first major rebellion against colonial rule. After the rebels were defeated, the British Crown took over power and ruled the country ostensibly more benignly until 1947, when India won independence.

In this explosive book, bestselling author Shashi Tharoor reveals with acuity, impeccable research, and trademark wit just how disastrous British rule was for India. Besides examining the many ways in which the colonizers exploited India, ranging from the drain of national resources to Britain, the destruction of the Indian textile, steel-making, and shipping industries, and the negative transformation of agriculture, he demolishes the arguments of Western and Indian apologists for Empire on the supposed benefits of British rule, including democracy and political freedom, the rule of law, and the railways. The few unarguable benefits—the English language, tea, and cricket—were never actually intended for the benefit of the colonized but introduced to serve the interests of the colonizers. Brilliantly narrated and passionately argued, An Era of Darkness will serve to correct many misconceptions about one of the most contested periods of Indian history.

For a note about the author, please turn to page 72.

Previously published in 2016

9

1991

how p. v. narasimha rao made history

sanjaya baru

P. V. Narasimha Rao (or PV as he was popularly known) has been widely praised for enabling the economic reforms that transformed the country in 1991. From the vantage point of his long personal and professional association with the former prime minister, bestselling author Sanjaya Baru shows how PV’s impact on the nation’s fortunes went way beyond the economy.

This book is an insider’s account of the politics, economics and geopolitics that combined to make 1991 a turning point for the country. The period preceding that year was a difficult one for India: economically, due to the balance of payments crisis; politically, with Rajiv Gandhi’s politics of opportunism and cynicism taking the country to the brink; and globally, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, its ally. It was in this period that the unheralded PV assumed leadership of the Indian National Congress, took charge of the central government, restored political stability, pushed 10

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through significant economic reforms and steered India through the uncharted waters of a post-Cold War world. He also revolutionized national politics, and his own Congress party, by charting a new political course, thereby proving that there could be life beyond the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

1991 marked the end of an era and the beginning of another. It was the year that made PV. And it was the year PV made history.

Sanjaya Baru is Consulting Fellow for India, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London and Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He was Media Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2004-08). He has been Chief Editor, the Financial Express and Business Standard; Editor (Delhi), the Economic Times; and Editorial Page Editor, the Times of India. He has taught at the University of Hyderabad and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. His publications include The Political Economy of Indian Sugar, Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic Performance and The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh.

Previously published in 2016

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{ aleph

spotlight }

on nationalism

romila thapar, a. g. noorani and sadanand menon

What is nationalism? What is pseudonationalism? Who is an anti-national?

What is patriotism? Is the shouting of nationalist slogans important to prove one’s patriotism? Why is ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ so important to the right wing?

Why does the law of sedition continue to exist on the statute book of an independent country? Who should the sedition law be used against?

Why is cultural freedom important to a nation? What sort of India do we want? What sort of Indians do we want to be? What sort of country do we want to leave behind for future generations? These questions all involve one of the most fundamental ideas of India—the nationalism we inherited at birth. It is also one of the most hotly contested ideas of the twenty-first century. In this book some of our finest thinkers and writers provide calm, measured insights into the origins, nature, practice and future of Indian nationalism.

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Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2008, Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as History that are not covered by the Nobel Prize.

A. G. Noorani is an Indian lawyer, historian and author. He has practised as an advocate in the Supreme Court of India and in the Bombay High Court. His columns have appeared in the Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Frontline, Economic and Political Weekly and Dainik Bhaskar. He is the author of a number of books, among them The Kashmir Question, The Trial of Bhagat Singh, Constitutional Questions in India and The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour.

Sadanand Menon explores the charged space linking politics and culture through his work in media, pedagogy, and the arts. He is Adjunct Faculty, Asian College of Journalism, Chennai and at IIT, Madras. He has been an arts editor, columnist and photographer. He was a long-time collaborator of the late dancer/ choreographer Chandralekha. He is also a leading stage-lights designer. He has been on the Advisory Committees of the National Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi, National School of Drama and the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is currently managing trustee of the Arts Foundation, SPACES, Chennai.

Previously published in 2016

13

m. s. subbulakshmi the definitive biography

t. j. s. george

WINNER OF THE R. K. NARAYAN AWARD FOR BEST AUTHOR IN ENGLISH (2005)

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M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004), who was popularly known as MS, was one of India’s greatest classical musicians. Born into a humble devadasi home, her talent and dedication to her art made her one of India’s most critically acclaimed classical singers. She was the first Indian musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, the country’s highest civilian honour, in addition to numerous other awards. Jawaharlal Nehru called her ‘a Queen of Music’ and Sarojini Naidu dubbed her ‘the Nightingale of India’. Her fellow musicians were no less generous in their praise. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan said she was Suswaralakshmi (the Goddess of the Perfect Note) while Kishori Amonkar said she was Aathuvansur or music’s ‘Eighth Note’ (there are only seven notes that are basic to all musical forms). MS’s genius had principally to do with her exquisite voice, her extraordinary range and her unequalled command of all the material she worked with, whether it was Carnatic music, Hindustani

The Book of Aleph

music or devotional music such as bhajans.

In this, the definitive biography of the musician (previously published as MS: A Life in Music), award-winning biographer T. J. S. George traces her journey from her beginnings as a singer in Madurai, through her breakthrough performance at the prestigious Madras Music Academy in 1932, to her carving out a place for herself as a cultural icon. Besides exploring MS’s genius, the author describes the musical and social milieu that she was part of, and the various barriers she was instrumental in breaking in the course of her journey to superstardom. He covers her stint as an actress and looks at how her career was helped by various mentors and sponsors, including C. Rajagopalachari, India’s last governor general. He pays particular attention to the role of her husband, T. Sadavisam, in the creation and burnishing of MS’s reputation. He examines the various controversies that surrounded her origins, and also underlines her essential humility and generosity. Told with a music connoisseur’s passion and understanding, M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography is an enthralling portrait of a musical legend.

T. J. S. George is a journalist who began his career at the Free Press Journal in 1950, and was the founding editor of Asiaweek. He established himself as a serious political author and biographer with a series of major books, including Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, The Life and Times of Nargis and Krishna Menon: A Biography. His latest book is Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore. He is editorial adviser to the New Indian Express and lives in Bangalore with his wife, Ammu.

Previously published in 2016

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the dashing ladies of shiv sena political matronage in urbanizing india

tarini bedi

Rich in detail, this eye-opening book explores the activities and political strategies of women political workers and leaders of Shiv Sena.

Based on more than ten years of indepth ethnographic fieldwork with dozens of women Sena workers in urban Maharashtra, the work shows how they conjure political authority through the inventive, dangerous, and transgressive political personas known as dashing ladies. Through the narratives of these women, Tarini Bedi develops a feminist theory of brokerage politics, and what can be termed ‘political matronage’.

Excerpt Political dhang is absolutely vital to women’s rise in the party and to their visibility within Shiv Sena and in their local neighborhoods. Ragini Munde, a fifty-five-year-old Shiv Sena branch leader in Mumbai, was a force to be reckoned with in her area. She lived in a lower-middle-class housing colony in the Goregaon area called Lilia Nagar. Until the late 1980s this area 16

The Book of Aleph

was a satellite industrial area for the central hubs of Mumbai. When Ragini first moved here there was almost no residential property or any public services to speak of. Now of course there are posh high-rise towers everywhere; a fancy country club has opened just around the corner from Ragini. But she and her family continue to live in the same low-rise building in a one-room flat they bought with a loan from her husband’s employer in the early 1980s. Ragini saw herself as central to the establishment of many of the amenities that go with residential life in this area (water, roads leading to the buildings) through her ‘social work’. She began her political career by working with the veteran socialist activist and later Member of Parliament, Mrinal Gore. Gore and many of the other progressive activists who worked with her succeeded in bringing the drinking water supply to Goregaon. Gore’s hard work and success earned her the nickname by which she was affectionately referred to across the area until her death in July 2012: paniwali bai (water aunt). Ragini said that she left Gore’s progressive party, the Janata Dal (People’s Movement), to join Shiv Sena because she did not see the Janata Dal providing her with any opportunities for political recognition and not enough hungama (trouble-making). Also, she said, that she felt that the Janata Dal was not staunchly Hindu enough. She also said that her membership in Shiv Sena has changed her ‘nature’.

‘I have got another kind of nature now, what do you call it? I have an image now.

People will see me and say see there is Munde bai. Whoever will see me, they will say they know me, they recognize me. Wherever I walk around in the ward people will say to me that they recognize me. So people have started to recognize me because I do all these things like andolans, like haldi-kumkum programs, like social work programs. In my ward they all recognize me. I go to all the programs, I do all the work all over. Really other ladies do not do this that much. It is not that I am too proud, but I will tell you, my dhang (style) of working is different.’

Tarini Bedi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Previously published in 2016

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magic for the soul

an adult colouring book of postcards featuring gond art

venkat raman singh shyam

The story of the Gond artists, and the illusory world they create through their marvellous art, originated in the Patangarh, a land they knew as their own. It was situated on top of a hill in the Dindori Valley in Mandla.

Patangarh was a tranquil place with slopes and valleys richly clothed in green, yellow and brown. It offered its inhabitants a peaceful existence and a serene view of the universe and life about them. All this would change, and the Adivasis would be called upon to fight to save what was precious to them, but that is not a part of their lives that we will delve into in this book.

What I would like to draw your attention to is their art, that has captured the imagination of people everywhere. My story begins with a young dreamer by the name of Jangadh who came to the attention of the elders and others in the village when he began painting in a frenzy.

He painted on walls, floors, on virtually every surface he came across.

He seemed to be a man possessed as he 18

The Book of Aleph

energetically painted his magnificent murals of gods and men, beasts, birds and trees. It was clear that he was dismissive of the existing traditions because his own style was inventive and original.

Jangadh was the uncle of the artist whose dazzling works comprise this colouring book. When you look at Venkat Raman Singh Shyam’s work you can see the influence of his uncle and the other senior artists whose work he observed closely in his formative years. It was only natural for Venkat as a young boy to pick up the brush and paint his own pictures, as he had seen others in the community do.

Chachan birds, the katheli tree, snakes, animals, plants were early subjects of Venkat before he began to develop his own unique vernacular, confidently narrating his own parables of deities and how they navigated their way around the rapidly changing modern world. In Venkat’s world, as reflected in his art, even the palash and katheli trees join in the singing and revelry when festivals are celebrated. ‘Our gods need us to drink, eat and be merry,’ Venkat says. On his canvas, mythological tales he has heard from his mother and other elders come alive, painted in radiant reds, blues, yellows and oranges. What is unique to Venkat’s distinct style is how he melds the different influences in his work by allowing them to flow into each other. And how adroitly both ancient and modern civilizations find a place in this magical world! While the pages in this colouring book have paintings that will challenge and draw out the artist in you, we hope that this book will lead you to further explore the extraordinary world of Adivasi art.

— From the foreword by Ina Puri.

Venkat Raman Singh Shyam is a renowned Pardhan Gond artist. Nephew of the legendary Jangadh Singh Shyam, he creates murals, paintings, etchings, mixed media and animation and has exhibited widely across the world. Venkat Raman Singh Shyam’s art is radiant and full of enchantment.

Previously published in 2016

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previously published in 2015

21

saint teresa of calcutta a celebration of her life & legacy

raghu rai

Raghu Rai, India’s greatest living photographer, met Mother Teresa (as she was then called) for the first time in 1970. Over the next twenty-seven years, until her death in 1997, he photographed her, almost without pause, producing an unparalleled pictorial record of her life and work. In September 2016, Rai was present at the Vatican to photograph the canonization of Mother Teresa who would henceforth be known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Says Rai of Saint Teresa: ‘She is my mother, my guru and mentor.’

Raghu Rai has won many national and international awards and accolades including being nominated in 1971 by Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum Photos. His solo exhibition has travelled to London, Paris, New York, Hamburg, Prague, Tokyo, Zurich and Sydney. His photo essays have appeared in Time, Life, Newsweek, The Independent, GEO, the New York Times, Sunday Times, and New Yorker.

He received the Padma Shri in 1971. Raghu Rai currently lives and works in New Delhi.

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Winter

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dragon on our doorstep

managing china through military power

pravin sawhney and ghazala wahab

India might not admit it, but should it find itself involved in a border war with China it will lose. Apart from superior military power, close coordination between the political leadership and the military, and the ability to take quick decisions, China has potent anti-satellite and cyber warfare capabilities. Even more shockingly, regardless of popular opinion, India today is not even in a position to win a war against Pakistan. This has nothing to do with Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. It is because while India has been focused on building military force (troops and materiel needed to wage war) Pakistan has built military power (learning how to optimally utilize its military force). In this lies the difference between losing and winning. Far from being the strong Asian power of its perception, India could find itself extremely vulnerable to the hostility of its powerful neighbours. In Dragon On Our Doorstep, Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab analyse the geopolitics of the region and the military strategies of the three Asian countries to tell us exactly why India is in this precarious position and how it can transform itself through deft strategy into a leading power.

Pravin Sawhney has been editor of FORCE (a magazine on national security and defence) since 2003. The author of two books—The Defence Makeover: 10 Myths That Shape India’s Image and Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished— he has been visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, United Kingdom, and visiting scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Center, United States.

Ghazala Wahab is executive editor, FORCE, where she writes on homeland security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, left-wing extremism and religious extremism, and contributes a column, First Person.

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small towns, big stories new & selected fiction

ruskin bond

Small Towns, Big Stories showcases twenty-one stories of small-town life by the country’s greatest living chronicler of the Indian heartland. Ruskin Bond has been writing evocative stories about the dusty towns and settlements in the hinterland for decades but this is the first time his finest stories on the theme have been brought together in a single volume. Timeless classics like ‘Time Stops at Shamli’, ‘Bus Stop, Pipalnagar’, and ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ rub shoulders with brilliant new stories that have never been published before like ‘Strychnine in the Cognac’, ‘The Horseshoe’ and ‘When the Clock Strikes Thirteen’.

Vibrant, poignant, beautiful and tragic, these stories show a master storyteller at the height of his powers.

Excerpt Dawn crept quietly over the sleeping town. Only a cock was aware of it, and crowed. Koki heard a soft tapping on the windowpane, and immediately sat up in bed. She was ten years old. Her hair fell about her shoulders in a disorderly fashion and there were slight shadows under her dark eyes, but she was wide awake and listening. The tapping was repeated.

Koki got out of bed and tiptoed across to the window and unlatched it. Ranji was standing outside, looking somewhat disgruntled.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly time.’

Koki put her finger to her lips, for she did not want her parents and grandmother to wake up.

‘You go and tell Bhim,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll meet you at the maidan.’

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Ranji hurried off in the direction of Bhim’s house, and Koki turned from the window and went to the dressing table. She combed her hair carelessly and tied it roughly with a ribbon. She was excited and in a hurry, and had slept in her dress, which was very crushed. Now she was ready to leave.

Very quietly, she pulled open a dressing table drawer and brought out a cardboard box in which were punctured little holes. She opened the lid of the box to see if Rajkumari was all right.

Rajkumari, a dumpy rhino beetle, was asleep on the core of an apple. Koki did not disturb her. She closed the box and barefoot crept out of the house through the back door.

As soon as she was outside, Koki broke into a run. She did not stop running until she reached the maidan.

Ruskin Bond is the author of several bestselling novels and collections of short stories, essays and poems. These include The Room on the Roof (winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra (winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award), Angry River, The Blue Umbrella, Delhi Is Not Far, Rain in the Mountains, Roads to Mussoorie, A Little Night Music, Tigers for Dinner, Tales of Fosterganj, A Gathering of Friends and Upon An Old Wall Dreaming.

Ruskin Bond was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi government in 2012 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

{ now

in

tiger fire

paperback }

500 years of the tiger in india

valmik thapar

The tiger has captured the imagination of human beings from the beginning of recorded history. It has been feared, worshipped, admired, hunted, studied, photographed, written about, immortalized in art and poetry, and has enthralled king and commoner alike. Tiger Fire celebrates this magnificent predator by bringing together the very best non-fiction writing, photography and art on the Indian tiger from the first written description of a real-life encounter with the animal by the Mughal Emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to photographs and studies of the last of the species surviving in the wild today.

Conceived and edited by the world’s foremost authority on the Indian tiger, Valmik Thapar (who has also contributed many pieces to this volume), the book’s contributors are drawn from an array of renowned naturalists, writers, photographers, and tiger enthusiasts down the centuries including Babur, Akbar, François Bernier, Thomas Roe, R. G. Burton, Walter Campbell, Thomas Williamson, F. W. Champion, Kesri Singh, Jim Corbett, Hugh Allen, Richard Perry, Arjan Singh, George Schaller, Kenneth Anderson, M. Krishnan, Peter Jackson, Fateh Singh Rathore, Kim Sullivan, Tejbir Singh, Jaisal and Anjali Singh, Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh, K. Ullas Karanth, Dharmendra Khandal, and Dhritiman Mukherjee. Culled from over a million words (both published and unpublished) on the animal, the accounts and pictures assembled in this book show us the tiger in extraordinary and compelling detail.

Valmik Thapar has spent four decades serving the cause of wild India. During this time, he has authored, co-authored and edited more than twenty-five books and made or presented nearly a dozen films for the BBC and several other television networks on the tiger and Indian flora and fauna.

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heroines

powerful indian women of myth and history

ira mukhoty

The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women’s heroism has tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women in this book—Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal—share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which they are willing to fight to the death if need be.

There is the lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan, who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth; Raziya, the battle-scarred warrior, who proudly claimed the title of Sultan, refusing its fragile feminine corollary, Sultana; the courageous Meerabai who repudiated her patriarchal destiny as cloistered daughter-in-law of a Rajput clan; gentle Mughal princess Jahanara, who claims the blessings of both Allah and the Prophet Muhammad and wishes ‘never to be forgotten’; Laxmibai, widow, patriot, and martyr, who rides into legend and immortality fighting for her adopted son’s birthright; and Hazrat Mahal, courtesan, begum, and rebel queen, resolute till the very end in defying British attempts to seize her ex-husband’s kingdom.

Ira Mukhoty was educated in Delhi and Cambridge, where she studied Natural Sciences. After a peripatetic youth, she returned to Delhi to raise her two daughters. Living in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, she developed an interest in the evolution of mythology and history and its relevance to the status of women in India.

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{ aleph

understanding the black economy & black money in india

spotlight }

causes, consequences and remedies

arun kumar

His areas of specialization are Development Economics, Public Finance and Public Policy and Macroeconomics, and he has published widely in these areas, both in academic journals and the popular press.

The Modi government’s sudden demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in November 2016, besides causing untold hardship to hundreds of millions of Indians, did not do much to destroy the black economy which has crippled the country for decades now. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country’s leading authority on the problem, tells us exactly why Modi’s gambit failed. He shows us the only way in which the black economy can be rooted out, provided the ruling government has the political will and determination to achieve its objective.

Today, the black economy is estimated to be 56 per cent of GDP—or about Rs 65 lakh crore ($1 trillion). A triad of corrupt businessmen, corrupt politicians, and corrupt members of the executive (bureaucrats, police and the judiciary) are responsible for controlling and growing the black economy. If the black economy were to be dismantled and merged with the ‘white’ economy, the country’s rate of growth would be 12 per cent, its per capita income would be approximately Rs 7 lakh per annum ( $10,000) and India would become the second largest economy in the world. If the black economy was taxed at current rates, it would generate Rs 26 lakh crore in additional taxes and the union budget would show a surplus of Rs 10 lakh crore instead of a deficit as is the case at present. The failure of successive governments to tackle the problem effectively is the single biggest obstacle to eradicating poverty and corruption in the country.

Arun Kumar is the country’s leading authority on the black economy and has studied, written about and lectured extensively on the phenomenon for nearly four decades. He was educated at Delhi University, Princeton University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He taught Economics at JNU from 1984 to 2015.

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how i became a tree a memoir

sumana roy In this remarkable and often unsettling book, Sumana Roy gives us a new vision of what it means to be human in the natural world. Increasingly disturbed by the violence, hate, insincerity, greed and selfishness of her kind, the author is drawn to the idea of becoming a tree. ‘I was tired of speed’, she writes, ‘I wanted to live to tree time.’ Besides wanting to emulate the spacious, relaxed rhythm of trees, she is drawn to their non-violent ways of being, how they tread lightly upon the earth, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, the unselfishness with which they give freely of themselves and much more. She gives us new readings of the works of writers, painters, photographers and poets (Rabindranath Tagore and D. H. Lawrence among them) to show how trees and plants have always fascinated us. She studies the work of remarkable scientists like Jagadish Chandra Bose and key spiritual figures like the Buddha to gain even deeper insights into the world of trees. She writes of those who have wondered what it would be like to have sex with a tree, looks into why people marry trees, explores the death and rebirth of trees, and tells us why a tree was thought by forest-dwellers to be equal to ten sons.

Mixing memoir, literary history, nature studies, spiritual philosophies, and botanical research, How I Became a Tree is a book that will prompt readers to think of themselves, and the natural world that they are an intrinsic part of, in fresh ways. It is that rarest of things—a truly original work of art.

Sumana Roy writes from Siliguri, a small town in sub-Himalayan Bengal.

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winter

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maid in india

stories of opportunity and inequality inside our homes

tripti lahiri

In many countries, the richest citizens and the poorest ones know little about each other. In India, we rub shoulders every day, under the same roof. There’s sir, madam, and their children. Often, the parents of sir or madam are around too. And then there’s the help: the boon—or bane—of life for affluent Indians, depending on whom you talk to. In the not-so-distant past, everyone’s place— whether maid, ayah or cook, sahib or memsahib—was well understood. There were clear rules for negotiating (and maintaining) the vast chasm between the two sides. Today, it’s a little different. There are housekeepers who are part of the middle class who ensure their children join white-collar India. There are teenage girls brought to the city by ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ to serve as ‘24-hour’ help, who find themselves virtually caged. There are employers who wrestle with the guilt of spending more on an Italian meal in a fancy hotel than on those who clean their homes—and other employers who insist ‘these people’ are all thieves. With in-depth reporting in the villages from where women make their way to upperclass homes in Delhi and Gurgaon, in courtrooms where the worst allegations of abuse get an airing, and in homes up and down the class ladder, Maid in India is an intimate account of the complex and troubling relations between the help and those they serve.

Hong-Kong-based journalist Tripti Lahiri was the founding editor of the Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time blog. In 2013, she was part of an award-winning WSJ team that reported in-depth on the law enforcement and judicial response to crimes against women in India. She is also a winner of the Ramnath Goenka Award for civic journalism. Maid in India is her first book.

Excerpt For much of India’s independence, only a very tiny share of people could afford to have servants. But in the last two decades, Indians who are experiencing, at long last, a new level of prosperity are now able to hire people to aid in carrying out the astonishing amount of housework that life in India seems to entail at any income level. Particularly for the growing numbers of women who work in urban India, ‘work-life balance’ depends increasingly on having help. In the decade after liberalization in 1991, the number of maids, drivers and nannies in India doubled. Their ranks doubled again in the decade that followed.

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{ aleph

spotlight }

the decline of civilization why we need to return to gandhi and tagore

ramin jahanbegloo foreword by romila thapar

This new book by the Iranian-Canadian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo examines the concept of civilization and its decline into a decivilizing process.

The big question that the author grapples with is: what does it mean to talk about a decivilized society? Can it mean that our time is barbaric? Or does it mean that our century is submerged in a new Dark Age? The basic challenge is, therefore, to understand and analyse this gradual absence of the concept of civilization in our everyday lives. Through a profound and argumentative analysis of Gandhi’s concept of civilization in Hind Swaraj and Tagore’s intercivilizational dialogue, the author tries to find alternative modes of redefining civilization in terms of ethical empathy and cultural hospitality. This book invites readers to rethink the concept of civilization as a ‘shared human horizon’ of empathy which avoids moral anarchy and relativism while acknowledging the plurality of modes of being human. This is a rare and much needed book for its commitment to concepts and ideas which remind us of how civilization is also a way of questioning the world in which we live.

Excerpt Let it be understood that the ongoing globalization of the high-tech capitalist culture has created cultural uniformity throughout the world without leaving any ontological space for cultural diversities. However, in the era of present globalization of techno-capitalist culture, the great lack is the idea of civilization.

The basic challenge is, therefore, to understand and analyse this gradual absence of the concept of civilization in our everyday lives. Thus it is noteworthy that the decline of the idea of ‘civilization’, as it was known to humanity for over 5,000 years, is intimately connected with the irresponsible and un-empathic nature of techno-capitalist rationality. Apart from this, what has contributed most to the erosion of the concept of civilization in our present world is the erosion of political 40

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consciousness itself. The global melting pot of capitalism and new technologies has thereby deteriorated and diminished the culture of politics around the world.

Even if the world can still avoid the bureaucratization of politics at every level, the notion of politics itself, linked to the idea of civilization, has no more a sense of being forward looking, especially in regard to human destiny. Like civilization itself, politics has become aimless and meaningless. Though politics is about linking the present life of humans to the realm of future, today’s political culture is totally incapable of foreseeing the road ahead. The fact that contemporary politics is no more future oriented is the underlying reason why the fundamental problem of humanity is not solely political but mainly civilizational.

Hence, in trying to take into account the crucial issues of our time in relation with the dynamic of decivilization in the world today, we hope to be in a position to advance a correct diagnosis of where humanity stands at this present historical crossroad but also where it seems to be heading without a clear concept of civilization. It is with this requirement in mind that we present this study as a political and philosophical analysis of the concept of civilization without following the path of a conventional study of the history of civilization.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is a political philosopher and the author of twenty-seven books. He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University, Delhi.

He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic work in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy of non-violence. More recently, he won the Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay Prize (2012).

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asia reborn

a continent rises from the ravages of colonialism & war to a new dynamism

prasenjit k. basu

This book is an Asian telling of the continent’s twentieth-century story. It weaves together the stirring tales of how Asia’s nations overcame European domination—and its legacies of war and famine—and began the long climb to economic dynamism. Japan, having resisted colonial conquest through its conservative revolution in 1868, played a vital role as leader of Asia’s rebirth.

The tide turned when Japan triumphed in its decade-long tussle with Russia over Manchuria, the homeland of the non-Chinese dynasty that then ruled China. Britain’s Curzon, seeking to nip nascent nationalism in the bud, quickly partitioned India’s largest province—the first gambit in Britain’s long game of divide et impera. The book examines why the most prosperous parts of Asia in the second half of the twentieth century were precisely those that had been ruled

by Japan (even fleetingly), while those parts of Asia that were ruled longest by the British were its poorest.

Prasenjit K. Basu lives and works in East Asia (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur) with his wife, Aarti, and three children. He has spent the past quarter century analysing Asia’s economies for various clients of Wharton Econometrics, UBS, Credit Suisse First Boston, Khazanah Nasional, Daiwa Securities and Macquarie.

Apart from copious reports for his employers, Prasenjit has been a regular commentator for the BBC, CNBC-Asia, Channel News Asia, NDTV Profit and Zee Business, and has written op-eds for the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Business Times (Singapore), The Statesman (India), India Today, The Edge, The Star (Malaysia) and BBC Online, and co-authored a little book called India as a New Global Leader (Foreign Policy Centre, 2005).

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the book of indian dogs s. theodore baskaran The Book of Indian Dogs is the first comprehensive book on Indian dog breeds in over fifty years. It features the twenty-five breeds that most breeders and dog fanciers agree constitute the country’s canine heritage. Divided into three groupings—working dogs, companion dogs and hounds—the book provides detailed background notes to each breed, along with information on its physical characteristics, behaviour, uses, origins and history. Along with popular breeds like caravan hounds (or Karuvanis), Chippiparais, Mudhol hounds, Pashmis, Rajapalayams and Rampur hounds the book also features lesser known breeds such as the Alaknoori and the Jonangi. The fruit of several years of travel and research into India’s dog breeds, as well as S. Theodore Baskaran’s hands-on experience of raising various dogs, this celebration of our dogs is a book that no dog lover can do without.

Baskaran’s other scholarly interests include film studies and art history, areas in which he has published books and articles. His book, The Eye of the Serpent, won the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, 1997. He was awarded the Iyal Virudhu for Lifetime Achievement in Tamil Writing by the Canada-based Tamil Literary Garden.

He is a graduate of the National Defence College. He retired as Chief Postmaster General of Tamil Nadu. He lives with his wife in Bangalore.

A lifelong dog lover, S. Theodore Baskaran has raised many dogs, including two Indian breeds. He has been associated with the Kennel Club of India, Chennai, and was a member of the show committee. He was instrumental in bringing out a set of four postage stamps on indigenous breeds of dogs.

Baskaran is a well-known naturalist and conservationist. He served two terms as a trustee of WWF India and has been an honorary wildlife warden in Chennai.

His book The Dance of the Sarus: Essays of a Wandering Naturalist was published in 1999. He edited a book on Indian wildlife, Sprint of the Blackbuck. He writes frequently on conservation for The Hindu and Frontline. He has also contributed to important anthologies such as An Anthology of Indian Wildlife, Waterlines: Rivers of India and Voices in the Wilderness. He writes on conservation in Tamil in magazines like Uyirmmai and Kalachuvadu and also has three books on conservation in Tamil to his credit. He believes that to make conservation a people’s movement the discourse has to be in local languages.

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god in hinduism devdutt pattanaik

© Prashant Sareen

The bestselling author of books on mythology, spirituality and religion, Devdutt Pattanaik follows up his number one bestseller My Gita with this extraordinary encyclopaedia on the various manifestations of God in Hindu scriptures, temples and everyday worship. This book is designed to appeal to anyone looking for concise descriptions, explanations and insights into God, gods and goddesses in Hinduism from one of the world’s greatest authorities on the subject. In the author’s own words:

God in Hinduism has many definitions.

God is God, Goddess, and gods.

God is an idea and entity.

God is one and many.

God is man, woman, and everything in between.

God is element, plant, animal and human.

God is space, time and star.

God is within and without.

God is source and destination.

God is container and contained.

God is hermit and householder.

God is imagination and consciousness.

God is form and formless.

God is meaning and manifestation.

God is flesh and soul.

Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned author, mythologist and leadership consultant. He has written over thirty bestselling books (among them Business 48

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zelaldinus

Sutra, The Success Sutra, The Leadership Sutra and The Talent Sutra), published several hundred articles and given numerous talks and presentations on Indian mythology, religion, culture, business and management. He was formerly the Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group.

He is currently a much sought-after speaker, leadership coach, management adviser and consultant on Indian mythology, religion and culture. To know more about him please visit www.devdutt.com.

a masque

irwin allan sealy While Zelaldinus [Jalal al-Din, Akbar, the Great Mogul] was residing at Agara, he decided to remove his court to siquirinum [Sikri].

—Father Antonio Monserrate, Jesuit, reporting from Akbar’s court to Rome, 1579.

In the inner court of Emperor Akbar’s palace at Fatehpur Sikri is a broad stone terrace with a chequered pattern that resembles a game board. Here, contemporary accounts say, the emperor played a kind of chess using pieces drawn from his harem of three hundred. Costumed in various guises, the women would have presented many a lively masque for the king.

Zelaldinus mounts such a pageant, glittering and fantastical, where past and present, nobles and commoners, history and fiction, rub shoulders. The emperor himself, a man of limitless enthusiasms, is both chief participant and magus. The emperor, and one other, the tourist and narrator Irv. i got in late at night and took the only bed hotel trishul—a fright in six colours at the foot of the red city. pink-tiled bathroom a joke encrypted kitchen headon, its furnace blast insinuating smoke.

Smoke and glare merely spike Irv’s crackling tale of romantic love across the

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Pakistan border, while through it all strides the nimble ghost of Akbar himself.

the parrots of desire 3,000 years of indian erotica

edited by amrita narayanan Irwin Allan Sealy was born in Allahabad in 1951 and educated in Lucknow and Delhi. He is the author of The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, The Trotter-Nama, The Everest Hotel, The Brainfever Bird and other novels, and a travelogue, From Yukon to Yucatan. He lives in Dehradun.

Erotic writing (or writing that addresses the philosophical questions that arise in the erotic life), has unfolded in India in different cosmopolitan and spiritual hubs at different periods in history; yet Kama’s arrows are less well-known than Cupid’s despite pre-dating and most likely influencing them. In this anthology, divided into sections that speak to the burning emotions and questions of the erotic life, modern lovers and the erotically curious can find access and use for the breadth of erotic writing and thinking that has emerged from the subcontinent from antiquity to the present day.

The book covers a vast span of time and language and a stunning range of geographical locations. The readers will find questions on the nature of erotic life arising on the battlegrounds of Kurukshetra; erotic Tamil Sangam poems (many by women writers) in the hills, woods, plains, desert and seaside and in the form of complaints, laments, lust and rapture; sky and ether are the geography of the ecstatic verses of Andal, the Tamil wanderer poet of the Bhakti Movement; the stylized sexuality of courtly and courtesan life hovers in the backdrop of the intensely sensual lovemaking in Mudduppalani’s text, translated from the Telugu; the gritty sexuality of brothels in pre-Partition Lahore penetrates Manto’s short story ‘Smell’; global metaphors suffuse and elevate desire in ‘Infinite’, the translated Malayalam poem of K. Satchidanand; in the excerpt from Tarun Tejpal’s Alchemy of Desire, an extraordinarily sexual tale of urban love threatens to rip asunder a quiet home in the hills in north India.

Organized according to the different moods of the erotic, from the rawly sexual to the elevated ecstatic, the anthology covers the problems and pleasures of a favourite human—and clearly Indian—pastime.

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{ aleph Amrita Narayanan is a clinical psychologist and writer based in Goa. She is the author of A Pleasant Kind of Heavy and Other Erotic Stories (a finalist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award) and of numerous essays on psychoanalysis, women and sexuality that have been published in India, the UK and US.

spotlight }

political corruption in india how should it be combated?

n. ram

Political corruption in India is something that everyone talks about, feels strongly about, and imagines he or she knows a lot about. In a land where myths and fantastical notions abound, it is not surprising that in the public mind this beast, which is constantly in the news, can assume fantastic forms and proportions.

The ‘folklore of corruption’ (a term coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Gunnar Myrdal) that has developed over time is itself socially and politically significant, almost on a par with anti-corruption arrangements and movements and the facts of corruption.

Political Corruption in India will focus on the Indian variant of ‘grand corruption’, an idea and category that harks back to Hegel’s famous differentiation between ordinary corruption or ‘a great and general corruption’. Today, grand corruption in India denotes the systemic abuse of power on a massive and ever-increasing scale for personal gain or other illegitimate ends. It takes place in the higher reaches of the political system, subverts the rule of law, and is deeply embedded in the country’s socio-economic and political systems. Despite the existence of anticorruption laws, the periodic surfacing of anti-corruption movements, and some notable prosecutions and convictions of the corrupt, it is widely acknowledged that an immunity from independent investigation and prosecution operates in most cases for the politically powerful.

Drawing on his experience of investigating Bofors—modern India’s defining corruption scandal—and analysing more recent investigations of grand corruption, the author throws a spotlight on what independent and publicspirited journalism can do, in tandem with other democratic institutions, to combat corruption across the land. The book ends with a forecast on whether India will be able to root out corruption from its polity in the conceivable future.

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{ aleph N. Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons and former editor-in-chief and publisher of The Hindu and Frontline magazine, is a political journalist with literary interests. He has written on a range of socio-political subjects and specialized in investigative journalism. Along with Susan Ram, he is the biographer of the great Indian writer, R. K. Narayan, whom he knew well. Ram was elected president of the Contemporary India Section of the 72nd Session of the Indian History Congress (2011). He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for Journalism (1990).

He also received the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the Press Foundation of Asia (1990); the B. D. Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism (1989); and a Columbia J-School Alumni Award (2003).

spotlight }

knowledge and education in india g. n. devy

Over the last two centuries, thinkers of every hue have debated the nature of ‘knowledge’ relevant for India. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the debate was focused on the need to choose between Western forms of knowledge and traditional Indian forms of knowledge, between the ‘puratan’ and the ‘nutan’. Subsequently, various social reformers and thinkers attempted to bring about an eclectic synthesis of these two essentially divergent modes of learning and knowledge generation, without much success.

Since Independence, repeated attempts have been made to shape regulatory institutions and educational processes so as to be able to train educated minds, which in turn are expected to contribute to the progress and growth of India.

However, there has been a pervasive dissatisfaction about education and the capability of educational institutions, especially in regard to the research they undertake and the knowledge they shape.

This book briefly describes the historical context and the general nature of dissatisfaction about education in India, and goes on to offer an analysis of the historical context of various forms of social exclusion. The main focus of the book is a discussion of the nature of the central component in education, namely ‘knowledge’. It outlines the development of ideas surrounding the notions of ‘knowledge’ in Western societies over the last four centuries, dwelling at some length on the role of ‘memory’ in the rise of different disciplines of learning; the book then comments on trajectories of ‘memory’ in Indian tradition(s). Having presented these two distinct overviews of ‘memory’, it seeks to explain why the forms of knowledge in India took divergent paths distributed between the ‘classical’ and the ‘folk’, and why many of the indigenous fields of knowledge did not culminate in unified fields of knowledge with a universal value. The book argues that the conceptual uncertainty about what ‘knowledge’ is, or should do,

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to and within a society is a likely reason why attempts made to impart the right sort of knowledge (and education) in India haven’t been satisfactory.

Another central strand in the book is an examination of the general ignorance about the communities at the margins—Adivasis and nomads—and its adverse impact on the quality of knowledge circulated in formal education. It then proposes that ‘not knowing India sufficiently well’ produces a ‘not knowing India’.

Formerly Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, G. N. Devy writes in English, Marathi and Gujarati. He is the founder of the Bhasha Research Centre, Baroda, and Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, and has worked extensively with Adivasis and nomadic communities in India. He led the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), a comprehensive documentation of all living Indian languages, forming a fifty-volume PLSI Series (Orient BlackSwan). He has received several awards for his writing as well as for his community work, including the Padma Shri, Prince Claus Award and Linguapax Award. Among his better known works are After Amnesia (1992), Of Many Heroes (1997), Painted Words (2003) and Nomad Called Thief (2003) (in English), Vanaprastha (in Marathi), and Adivasi Jaane Chhe (in Gujarati). He has co-edited a series of six volumes on indigenous cultures and knowledge. As an activist, he played a leading role in the movement for the rights of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, and more recently has initiated the Dakshinayan Movement of writers and artists.

the demon-hunter of chottanikkara a novel

s. v. sujatha The rhythm of the days in Chottanikkara is languid. Surrounded by lush forest and sprawling sea, this village in Malabar is idyllic, its winds warm and scented with salt, its air tasting of jackfruit and spices, its inhabitants immersed in simple routines of farming and trading and fishing. The nights, however, are not as calm. For, when darkness falls, the demons come out of hiding, consumed with an insatiable bloodlust and hunger, ready to prey on the living. It is then up to Devi to stop them, to hunt them down and expel them from the land of the living.

This blazingly original work of fiction is based on the mythology and folklore of Goddess Devi, the protector, exorcist and native deity of Chottanikkara, where her temple still stands at the nerve-centre of the village. The story reimagines the goddess as a young warrior and sets her story in a time when the demons weren’t simply in our heads but roamed free and had to be slain.

Excerpt At the eastern corner of the temple, a little away from the doors, was the mahavedi, the main altar. It was alive now, the pyre burning bright within the robust red-brick frame, stoked by the pots of ghee poured onto the wood, the smoke rising thick, the tongues of flame leaping up fiercely. The priests were already seated around the altar, prepared and eager, and beside them were the baskets of offerings the villagers had brought along to the temple. Devi took her place beside these men of God, lowering herself onto the thick wooden platform set at the head of the altar. The melsanthi had placed her turban beside her seat, so it would be blessed too.

‘Let us begin,’ she said to the priests.

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The head priest began softly uttering verses and incantations, invoking and praying, his voice cutting through the air in staccato bursts. Then all the priests joined in. Their voices moved in seamless rhythms, coming together, soaring towards the pyre. Devi sat there soaking up the prayers, her lips moving along with their chants, speaking the words from memory. They made their offerings to Agni, poured in pots of freshly churned butter, ghee, rice, barley, lentils, herbs, roots, tree barks, milk, and water. Smoke rose from the altar, profuse and fragrant. Devi let the chants spill onto her like sacred rain. They flowed over her—first a soothing river, then becoming a swelling sea. The chanting slowly crescendoed around her, the smoke thickened, wrapping her in waves of rapture.

Suddenly, Devi sprang to her feet and raised her trisoolam, her breath coming in quick bursts, her pupils dilating big and black. She held the spear tight, turning it so its prongs faced downwards, and she stretched her other hand before her: the veins on her arms and legs writhed under the skin. In one swift motion, and aiming at the three dark scars that still remained on her wrist from the last sacrifice, she plunged the trident into herself: blood spurted out, bubbling, burning crimson. She placed her open wound over the mouth of the altar. As her blood poured into the sacrificial pyre, she watched impassively, patiently.

‘I offer Agni, the fierce god of fire, my blood, my life-force,’ Devi cried, ‘and I ask in return for strength to protect my people from evil. To cure them from disease.

To save them from demons.’

S. V. Sujatha was born in Madras, the land of filter coffee and elaborate meals and wonderful temples. She is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme where she eventually found her calling as writer and storyteller. However, it took her five years of working as an editor and helping others write their books to finally work up the courage to author her own. She currently lives in the United States of America and is a full-time writer. This is her debut novel, born out of her love for the Mother Goddess and passion for Indian mythology.

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prescriptions for success the autobiography of dr b. r. shetty

with pranay gupte

The story of Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, known as Dr B. R. Shetty—the man with a net worth of over $1.1 billion—is a classic rags-to-riches one. Dr Shetty was born in Udupi in 1942 and served in a number of leadership roles including being the vice chairman of the Udupi Municipal Council. He moved from India to the UAE in 1973 in search of greener pastures and went on to become the pioneer of the private healthcare sector with NMC. When Dr Shetty first landed on Arab soil, he was a young, aspiring entrepreneur with a degree in clinical pharmacy and a few dollars in his pocket. He saw tremendous potential for growth in the UAE and, using his entrepreneurial spirit and skills, he became one of the biggest players in the healthcare sector. Beginning with NMC, which was established in 1975, he built an enormous business empire in less than three decades. Under his leadership an array of service-oriented businesses have flourished in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, financial services, hospitality and education.

Besides his core business interests, Dr B. R. Shetty has an abiding interest in education. He is the honorary chairman of the Abu Dhabi Indian School. He runs a number of schools in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, including the Bright Riders School and Deira Private School.

A humanitarian to the core, Dr Shetty has provided aid to countries ravaged by natural calamities or acts of violence including Bangladesh, Japan, Indonesia, India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Palestine. He supports the Special Care Centre in Abu Dhabi.

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the collected stories of saadat hasan manto (volume one)

translated by nasreen rehman Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) needs no introduction. One of the greatest stars of Urdu literature, in a literary career spanning no more than two decades, Manto published over twenty collections of short stories. Several of these have been adapted into films and plays that have won a multitude of awards. His stories about the 1947 Partition are some of the best accounts ever written on the catastrophic event.

In The Collected Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, award-winning writer and translator Nasreen Rehman will translate and collect all of Manto’s stories (over two hundred in all) into English (this is the first time that such an effort has been made). Authorized by the Manto family, and to be published in three volumes over three years, this comprehensive collection will include well-known stories like ‘My Name is Radha’, ‘Toba Tek Singh’, ‘True Love’, ‘The Psychoanalyst’ and ‘Open’, as well as several that have never been translated into English before.

Nasreen Rehman was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She divides her time between England and South Asia. A lapsed economist, she was lured to history by the work of the late professor Sir C. A. Bayly (1945-2015). As a very mature student, she went to the University of Cambridge where, supervised by him, she completed her PhD dissertation on A History of the Cinema in Lahore c. 19191947. It will be published by OUP Pakistan in 2017.

Nasreen is an award-winning screenwriter who has worked with directors such as Yash Chopra, Deepa Mehta and Mehreen Jabbar. Kaifi and I (2010), her translation of Shaukat Kaifi’s memoir, was a bestseller.

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superhuman river a biography of the ganga

bidisha banerjee Worshipped as a living goddess for centuries, the Ganga is one of the most significant rivers in India, if not the world. From its icy origins in the Gangotri glacier in the Himalaya, the river wends its way for 2,525 kilometres through five major northern states before ending its journey in the east at the Bay of Bengal through the Sundarbans delta, the largest mangrove system in the world.

The Ganga’s significance transcends the spiritual and mythological as it sustains millions of people who live by its banks or eke out a living by tilling lands that the river fertilizes. Its waters have spawned hundreds of towns and cities, foremost amongst them Varanasi, or Kashi, the city favoured by Lord Shiva himself—one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

the Danube, the Amazon and the Mississippi, curiously there has been no major biography of the Ganga. There are nearly a dozen travelogues, of varying quality, of journeys on or alongside the river, but this is the first substantial account of a river that supports over 400 million people and is worshipped and venerated by millions more.

Bidisha Banerjee has been obsessed with the Ganga ever since she pretended, as a child, that ordinary shower water was Ganga water. She lives in Oakland, California, the obvious midpoint between her two homes, Kolkata and Kansas.

She has written for Slate, the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media, Triple Canopy, and the Stanford Journal of Law, Science, and Policy. She is an ethical leadership curriculum designer for the Dalai Lama Fellows. This is her first book.

For tens of millions of people, the Ganga is the living threshold between the human and the superhuman. This is the river that supposedly originates in the Milky Way and extends all the way to the underworld. It is the river that medieval Europeans considered one of the four rivers of Eden. The same river that drove Alexander and Columbus mad. Famous for its gold, its muslins, its malabathrum and spikenard, today, apart from being one of the most venerated, it is also one of the most polluted rivers in the world. The amount of sewage dumped into its waters is 2.9 billion litres, roughly the amount of water that would pump out of the Niagara Falls if you were to stare at it for an hour.

The Gangetic river dolphin, an emblem of its waters and once present in the thousands, is now a severely endangered species and nearly impossible to see. In September 2014, the Modi government pledged 510 billion rupees over the next five years to stop the discharge of untreated sewage into the river. Will Modi’s ambitious plan do for the Ganga what billions of dollars and the collective effort of five European nations did for the Rhine?

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a time of madness a memoir of partition

salman rashid Nearly seventy years ago, in the city of Jalandhar in Punjab, something dreadful happened during the chaos of Partition. The author, whose family fled Jalandhar for Pakistan, lived in the shadow of that tragedy for decades, until, in 2008, he made the journey back to his village to uncover the truth about the horror of 1947. A Time of Madness tells the story of what he discovered with great poignancy and grace. It is a tale of unspeakable brutality but it is also a testament to the uniquely human traits of forgiveness, redemption and the resilience of the human spirit.

Excerpt On the twentieth day of March 2008, I headed home for the first time in my life. On that day I was fifty-six years and a month old. Walking east across the border gates at Wagah I was on my way to the fulfilment of a family pietas of very long standing. I was going home to a home I had never known; a home in a foreign land, a land that state propaganda wanted me to believe was enemy land.

But I knew it as a country where my ancestors had lived and died over countless generations. That was the home where the hearth kept the warmth of a fire first kindled by a matriarch many hundred years, nay, a few thousand years, ago and which had of a sudden been extinguished in a cataclysm in 1947.

who had homes thousands of years old, west of this line in the land that became Pakistan.

Born five years and six months after the dreadful event, I had grown up in a home where we only knew in an amorphous, indirect sort of way that the family had suffered terribly in what the elders referred to as Partition. Even though the lost ones were referred to from time to time, no one ever spoke explicitly of the loss of loved ones and how it may have occurred. The inhumanity of man turned against fellow man, of neighbours slaughtering those with whom they shared the same wall, was never spoken of. Never was it mentioned that some might have survived and, forced to convert to another faith, could still be living in India.

This last thought was simply too much for staunchly Muslim minds.

Salman Rashid is Pakistan’s leading travel writer. The author of nine travel books, this is his first memoir.

In that great upheaval, in a singular moment in time, that home ceased to be home. One part of the family made it across to become one bit of a huge databank—they were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their homes. Another part of the family also became a statistic—a grim and ghastly one: they were part of the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid with their blood for the division of India and foundation of the new country of Pakistan for Muslims. They who died were not just Muslims who lived east of the new line drawn by Cyril Radcliffe. They were Sikhs, Hindus and even Jains 68

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indians

a portrait of a people

shashi tharoor Who are we and why are we the way we are? Bestselling author Shashi Tharoor sets out to discover the truth about us Indians on the seventieth anniversary of our existence as an independent nation. He examines our habits, food, languages, customs, religions, attitudes towards one another and foreigners, culture, history, gods, celebrities, pet peeves, obsessions and a whole lot more.

Among the questions he addresses: • If we pride ourselves on being the inheritors of a culture that is several millennia old why are we so uncultured in our public behaviour?

• If the supreme deity the majority of our people worship is Devi, why do Indian men treat women so badly?

• For a country that moves on Indian Standard Time, where nobody is ever punctual, why are we always in such a hurry, jumping queues, red lights and so on?

• For a country that invented non-violence why are we so violent towards one another?

• If we are so proud of our role in cutting-edge technology why are we so reliant on astrologers?

• For a country that is so prudish about sex how do we reproduce so much?

Monumental, wise, hilarious and entertaining, Indians is an extraordinarily insightful study of a country and its people.

Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of sixteen previous books, both fiction and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include the path-breaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989), the classic India: From Midnight to the Millennium (1997), and, most recently, An Era of Darkness: 70

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The British Empire in India (2016). He was a former Under Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of India. He is a two-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram and chairs Parliament’s External Affairs Committee. He has won numerous literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was honoured as New Age Politician of the Year (2010) by NDTV. He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, India’s highest honour for overseas Indians. (For more on Shashi Tharoor, please see www.shashitharoor.in. Follow him on Twitter@ ShashiTharoor and Facebook at www.facebook.com/ShashiTharoor.)

the book of chocolate saints a novel

jeet thayil In incandescent prose, award-winning novelist Jeet Thayil tells the story of Newton Francis Xavier, blocked poet, serial seducer of young women, reformed alcoholic (but only just), philosopher, recluse, all-round wild man and India’s greatest living painter. At the age of sixty-six, Xavier, who has been living in New York, is getting ready to return to the land of his birth to stage one final show of his work (accompanied by a mad bacchanal). As we accompany Xavier and his partner and muse ‘Goody’ on their unsteady and frequently sidetracked journey from New York to New Delhi, the venue of the final show, we meet a host of memorable characters—journalists, conmen, alcoholics, addicts, artists, poets, whores, society ladies, thugs—and are also given unforgettable (and sometimes unbearable) insights into love, madness, poetry, sex, painting, saints, death, God and the savagery that fuels all great art.

Excerpt Born in the small village of Forgottem, Xavier was its only famous son. He shared a birthday with Goa’s patron saint, Francis Xavier, and named himself after the saint: Newton Francis Xavier. He was expelled from school for drawing on the wall of the boys’ toilet, in black marker, a precisely enhanced female figure with a soul- or penis-shaped cavity in the inexact region of her belly. The drawing was captioned with a quotation from Francis of Assisi, ‘Wherever we go we bring our cell with us. Our body is the cell and our soul the hermit living in it.’ He signed it, X. And even then the boy Xavier had thought of documentation: he had persuaded a friend to photograph the picture.

‘Why,’ said Dismas, ‘did you name yourself after Saint Xavier?’

Xavier examined his nails, which were chipped though not dirty.

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‘I rather would like to offer coffee but the truth of the matter is there’s no one here to make it.’

‘I’m good.’

‘Quite. Do you want the long version or the short?’

‘The long.’

Jeet Thayil was born in Mamalasserie, Kerala, and educated in Bombay, Hong Kong and New York. His first novel, Narcopolis, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012 and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Man Asian Prize and the Commonwealth Prize. His five poetry collections include Collected Poems, English, and These Errors Are Correct, which won the 2013 Sahitya Akademi Award for poetry. He is the editor of 60 Indian Poets and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Jeet Thayil wrote the libretto for Babur in London, which toured Switzerland and the United Kingdom in 2012.

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© Sanskrita Bharadwaj

‘Francis Xavier achieved sainthood by unstinting, aimless motion. His great wish was to be never at home. Never at Home—good title, don’t you think, for a memoir about professional exiles such as us? I can see by your terrifying stare that you don’t think so. The point about saints is they understand the futility and the beauty of movement for its own sake. And since the self-denying artist is a kind of saint, I allied myself to one I felt some kind of affinity with.’

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the lovers a novel

amitava kumar The Lovers: A Novel is about a man in search of a love story. This man, our narrator, is Kailash. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov, and sometimes AK-47, even AK. Through a recounting of his years in a college in Delhi and university in New York, AK takes us through the bittersweet arc of youth and love. There is discovery and disappointment. There are the brilliant women, Jennifer and Nina and Cai Yan. There is the political texture of campus life and the charismatic professor overseeing these young men and women, Ehsaan Ali (modelled on the real-life Eqbal Ahmad). A supremely modern novel that melds story and reportage, anecdote and annotation, picture and text, fragment and essay, The Lovers reminds us of the works of John Berger and Teju Cole; at heart, an investigation of love, the novel also explores feelings of discomfort about cultural misunderstandings and the lack of clarity between men and women. Always the feeling, has something happened? Funny, meditative, and shot through with waves of longing, this is a novel that makes us think of fiction as something that we practise every day in the way we narrate our lives not just to others but also ourselves.

Amitava Kumar is the author of A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna, published by Aleph in 2013. His first novel, Home Products (2007), was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize, and his non-fiction report, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb (2010), which the New York Times described as a ‘perceptive and soulful…meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural and human repercussions’, was given the Page Turner Award. Kumar’s writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, The Guardian, Caravan, Vanity Fair and New York Times. His essay ‘Pyre’, first published in Granta, was selected by Jonathan Franzen for Best American Essays 2016. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2016. Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.

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{ aleph

spotlight }

what it means to be indian veena das

What does it mean to be Indian? In this seminal book, renowned social anthropologist Veena Das tries to answer the question by exploring a plethora of experiences that are quintessentially Indian. She discusses individual and group identity and deals with the concepts of nationhood, patriotism and Indianness.

What it Means to be Indian is a timely discussion of ideas that are constantly being questioned and redefined.

Š Prashant Sareen

Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Before joining Johns Hopkins University in 2000, she taught at the Delhi School of Economics for more than thirty years. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of Scientists from Developing Countries. She has been awarded the Nessim Habif Prize by the University of Geneva (2014), the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2009), Anders Retzius Award of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography (1997) and Ghurye Award (1977).

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a life in politics a memoir

jayanthi natarajan Jayanthi Natarajan became one of India’s youngest MPs at the age of thirty.

Thereafter, she quickly made her mark on Indian politics and went on to hold a number of important ministerial positions. Her extraordinarily distinguished political lineage stretches back to her great-grandfather who was the Congress president of Tamil Nadu, and a member of India’s constituent assembly, and her grandfather who was the last Congress chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

In this candid memoir, Jayanthi talks about her storied political heritage, as well as her own remarkable political journey this far.

Excerpt I grew up in a high-octane political household. My maternal grandfather was the chief minister of the state and my paternal grandfather the leader of the Opposition. The atmosphere at family functions was interesting, to say the least.

When I was born, although my maternal grandfather was not yet chief minister, the political barometer in our home was so volatile that my grandmother had to exercise considerable ingenuity to ensure my paternal grandfather’s visits to see his granddaughter at the home of his political opponent went off without a hitch.

Throughout school and college I used to do battle to defend the fair name of the Congress Party from teasing classmates, especially after the party’s defeat in 1967. It was thus perhaps natural for me to move into political work after practising as a lawyer for a few years in the Madras High Court. The arrival of Rajiv Gandhi into politics was a seismic event in my life, and that of many young Indians at the time. Although already an active member of the Congress Party, I was genuinely inspired by his idealism and vision for a modern, dynamic twenty-first-century India, and threw myself into full-time political work.

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One day, while arguing a case, I was called to my chambers, and told that Rajiv Gandhi, who was then prime minister of India, wanted to speak with me. I thought it was a prank call and ignored it. Minutes later I received an official summons to Delhi to meet the prime minister. When I reached Delhi the same evening, all I was happily looking forward to was the chance to meet with the prime minister.

I had no other expectations of the meeting and was therefore dumbstruck when Rajiv Gandhi cheerfully informed me that I had been selected as an official candidate for election to the Rajya Sabha. It was in this fashion that I became one of the youngest MPs in Parliament.

Jayanthi Natarajan is one of the country’s most distinguished political leaders.

the indian copyright handbook pravin anand (with dhruv anand & tanvi misra) The Indian Copyright Handbook is a comprehensive, up-to-date book on copyright and copyright law in general, and how it works in India in particular.

Written by one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, it should prove indispensable for writers, journalists, editors, publishers, bloggers and others who create, work on or are custodians of the written, spoken or printed word. It covers the use of copyright as it applies to all kinds of material including books, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, song lyrics, photographs, scripts, fine art, e-books, motion pictures, quotations and multimedia work. The book explains, in jargon-free language, what copyright is, what rights are granted under it, how it can be protected, how it can be infringed, how long it lasts and so on. In addition, the book provides a concise history of Indian copyright law from the time it was framed to the present day. The book contains examples of ideal author contracts, permissions forms, assignment letters and the like.

It provides a clear understanding of libel and defamation, and how creators of copyrighted material can avoid committing these infringements of the law.

Pravin Anand is one of the country’s leading intellectual property lawyers. In a career that spans almost four decades, he has been counsel in several landmark IP cases, including the first Anton Piller order (HMV case), the first Mareva Injunction Order (Philips case), and the first order under the Hague Convention (Astra Zeneca case). He has won several prestigious awards for his work, the most recent being an award given by the FT Asia-Pacific for Most Innovative Lawyer 2015. Pravin Anand is Managing Partner of Anand and Anand Advocates, one of India’s leading Intellectual Property Law firms. The Indian Copyright Handbook is his first book.

Dhruv Anand is a partner at Anand and Anand. He has been involved in many significant IP cases. His clients include Louis Vuitton Malletier, Yahoo! Inc., Tata 82

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Group, Hamdard, Merck and Qualcomm. He has been a regular contributor to various legal journals such as Copyright Throughout the World, Managing the IP Lifecycle, Chambers and Partners—Global Practice Guide—Patent Litigation, India Business Law Journal and Asia IP. Tanvi Misra is a former employee of Anand and Anand and currently works for the firm on assignments related to copyright, lawsuits and opinions. She has extensively researched the evolution of copyright law in India. S​ he has been responsible for researching and drafting several petitions and opinions that have to do with Indian copyright law and IP matters. She has published articles in legal journals like Asia IP and World Trademark Review and contributed chapters to books on IP matters such as Copyright Litigation: Jurisdictional Comparisons, Getting The Deal Through​and Cross Border Copyright Licensing (forthcoming from Edward Elgar Publishing).

strangers no more?

conflict and reconciliation in india’s northeast

sanjoy hazarika

In 1994, Sanjoy Hazarika’s first book on the Northeast, Strangers of the Mist, was published and immediately acclaimed as a path-breaking, powerful narrative on the state of the country’s Northeast region. It has been used as course material in governments and colleges, and has been cited widely in studies of the region.

Twenty years later, with more travel, stories, interviews and research under his belt, Hazarika asks in Strangers No More? whether the region and its people are still ‘different’ to the rest of India and to each other and destined to remain so.

Alternatively, he wonders whether reconciliation is possible and is taking place.

While lingering hatreds, divisions and differences may not be overcome by brute power or economic might or cultural assimilation, there are other ways forward.

These include the process of engagement: by accepting, if not embracing, the ‘Idea of India’ and working on forging connections between disparate cultures to overcome the mutual mistrust that has existed for decades. The new book looks at little-known stories, drawn from personal experience and knowledge, of the way in which insurgents operate, of the reality of border towns in the region, the pain of victims, the courage of fighters on either side of the battlefield, in the jungles, in lands awash with rain and swamped by mist. Hazarika walks across borders and mountains, listening to the people of the region and those who live in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Tibet and Myanmar. He critiques the categorization of the ‘Bangladeshi’, challenges the standard stereotype of the ‘Northeasterner’, deals with issues of ‘race and discrimination’, and looks at best practices that could be used to deal with intractable issues and combatants.

Most importantly, he tries to present a clear picture of how new generations are grappling with old and current issues with an eye to the future.

Sanjoy Hazarika is director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Earlier he was director of the Centre for Northeast Studies and Policy Research 84

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at Jamia Millia Islamia. He is an award-winning journalist, formerly with the New York Times. His books include Bhopal: The Lessons of a Tragedy; Strangers of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast; Rites of Passage: Border Crossings, Imagined Homelands, India’s East and Bangladesh; and Writing on the Wall, a collection of essays. He has written and published extensively on draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Eastern Himalaya, and freedom fighters from the Northeast. He is founder and managing trustee of C-nes (www.c-nes.org) which has pioneered the work of boat clinics on the Brahmaputra River; these provide hundreds of thousands of poor people with regular healthcare. Hazarika has made over a dozen documentary films on a number of subjects including the Brahmaputra, the endangered Gangetic river dolphin, and the danger that women face in conflict situations. These have been screened across India, in Bangladesh, at national and international film festivals and also at the Nehru Centre in London, Rubin Museum in New York, at Göttingen University and the University of Vienna.

winter

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pilgrim nation journeys of the spirit

devdutt pattanaik

In its essence, India was not created by emperors, rajas or politicians; its sacred geography was established by pilgrims who saw the face and spirit of God in its holy mountains and mystic waters. Devdutt Pattanaik explores the idea of pilgrimage and uses various sacred spots of India—Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Islamic, even ones inspired by Bollywood—to understand the glue that binds this land.

© Prashant Sareen

Excerpt There are two gates in the temple of Dwarkadhish in Dwarka that stands in the Jamnagar district of Gujarat: the main northern one is called the Moksha Dwara, or liberation gateway, and the southern one is called Swarga Dwara, the paradise gateway. Why are they located in opposite directions? Is it a code of Hindu wisdom?

In the Puranas, north indicates permanence as it is the direction of the Pole Star, and south indicates the opposite, impermanence or mortality, the realm of Yama. The two gates direct pilgrims to the two goals of human life: liberation from all hungers (moksha) and indulgence of all hungers in paradise (swarga).

The former is permanent while the latter impermanent. Rishi Mugdala draws attention to this choice, for the first time in the history of Hinduism, in the epic Mahabharata.

The Mahabharata describes a war traditionally believed to have taken place 5,000 years ago. The text that we have, however, is only 2,000 years old. Here the Vedic idea of paradise attained through ritual (swarga) and the Upanishadic idea of liberation through wisdom (moksha) are brought together.

The Mahabharata also introduces us to Krishna, the maternal cousin of the 88

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Pandavas who resides in Dwarka. But isn’t Krishna associated with Mathura, in the Gangetic plains, in the region known as Vraja? How does his residence move to the western coast of India, in the region once known as Anarta? For this, we have to revisit a little known chapter in the life of Krishna that is revealed first in the Harivamsa, considered an appendix of the Mahabharata, and later elaborated in the Bhagvata Purana.

When Krishna kills his maternal uncle, Kansa, the residents of Mathura rejoice.

News of this reaches the king of Magadha, Jarasandha, who is also Kansa’s fatherin-law. He attacks Mathura and burns it to the ground, forcing Krishna to take his kinsmen faraway across the desert to an island now known as Bet Dwarka.

Here, there once stood the city of Kushasthali ruled by King Revata but the city was now in ruins as the king had gone to meet Brahma for a day seeking a suitable groom for his daughter, not realizing that one day in Brahma’s abode is a thousand years on earth. When the king returned, he found his city had now been occupied by Krishna and his Yadavas. The king was unhappy but realized this was the result of his own foolishness. All ended well when Krishna suggested that his elder brother, Balarama, marry the king’s daughter, Revati, thus making him the son-in-law of the former king hence legitimizing the Yadava claim over the island.

Krishna of Dwarka is called Dwarkadhish, which is wrongly translated as ‘king of Dwarka’ for Krishna is never king (unlike Ram). He is simply ‘guardian of Dwarka’.

For a note about the author, please turn to page 49.

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coming out as dalit a memoir

yashica dutt Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide in January 2016 started many charged conversations around caste-based discrimination in universities in India. For Yashica Dutt, a journalist living in New York, this was the moment to stop living a lie, and admit something that she had hidden from friends and colleagues for over a decade—that she was Dalit.

In Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt recounts the exhausting burden of living with the secret, terrified of being found out, and dealing with the crushing guilt of denying her history. In this personal memoir that is also a narrative of the Dalits, she writes about the journey of coming to terms with her identity and takes us through the history of the Dalit movement; the consequences of the lack of access to education and culture; the paucity of Dalit voices in mainstream media; and attempts to answer crucial questions about caste and privilege. Woven from personal narratives from her life as well as that of other Dalits, this book forces us to confront the injustices of caste and also serves as a call to action.

Excerpt What does it mean to be Dalit in 2016? Like any other group comprising more than 200 million people, it cannot mean the same thing for everyone. There are common experiences of systemic oppression, discrimination and often humiliation that symbolize us. But their individual manifestations hinge on where we live and how fortunate our families have been in breaking free of the tight fabric of inequity. Some of the lucky ones (myself included) locate in it a perforation just wide enough to force our way through the asphyxiating layer of our ‘lower’ castes. But that transformation comes at a cost—the cost of our confidence, the cost of our identities, the cost of our personhood, and often the cost of our existence (just ask young Dalit men who dare to challenge the caste structure by marrying ‘upper’ caste women or young Dalit women who were A ut u m n / W i n t e r

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the malayalis

raped and murdered as ‘penance’ for asserting themselves).

Some of us never identify our oppression; we claim we were never discriminated against and that we only experienced kindness from the upper castes. Undeniably, some upper caste people are kind… When we speak of oppression we are not speaking of them. But even the most open-minded people are controlled by the caste system in insidious ways. Perhaps in their pride and identification with their last name, their casual usage of ‘lower’ caste identities as abuse or their mild obsession with ‘purity and pollution’ and unquestioning acceptance of only Brahmins as Hindu temple priests and only Dalits as manual scavengers, sweepers and garbage collectors. And in their refusal to acknowledge the reality of caste. Our silence is what we trade for their sanction of our existence as nearly one of them.

This status quo needs to be challenged. And that challenge can only come from within. It’s only the Ambedkars, the Phules, the Periyars, the Birsas and the Rohiths who can and who will question the validity of a system that we all acknowledge as an essential ingredient of ‘Indian culture’. Not every Dalit person needs to ‘come out’, attend protests, tackle trolls on social media or even read Ambedkar. They don’t even have to be grateful for reservation and the subsequent opportunities that allowed them to live with dignity. But they should read Ambedkar. Reading his work and recognizing our systemic oppression as opposed to the systemic privilege of the ‘upper castes’ is the first step towards reconciling the struggle and shame so many of us wrestle with. Nothing can change the fact that we were born as Dalits. Any effort towards erasing that necessary detail will only confine us in inferiority. Ultimately it is about discovering pride in our history and the identity that makes us Dalit.

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a portrait of a community

paul zacharia

The book is an informal introduction to Malayalis—the occupants, so to say, of Kerala—by a writer who is one of them and has much fun being one. It looks at the way Malayalis conduct their struggle for a place under the Indian sun, how their politics dupes them, how the media fools them, and yet how they keep surfacing and surviving. It is an account of how an ingenious, resilient and creative people fight to keep their dreams alive by putting their everything into education, by scrupulously maintaining communal harmony, by turning themselves into unrelenting immigrants—even working as hired killers on occasion. Incorrigibly argumentative and contrary, brilliant in unpredictable ways, blessed with uncanny wit, devastatingly addicted to the media, leftist for all to see but feudal and patriarchal to the core, bathing in the glitter of expatriate money, here is an Indian people whose saga of survival is both comic and heroic.

Excerpt Cross the border into Kerala—the Malayali motherland—and you meet a different India. Like you would, of course, in all the cultures that make up the Indian nation.

Nature and geography make Kerala special. On the west, the Arabian Sea fringes it end to end for 580 kilometres and in the east the mountains and dense forests of the Western Ghats present a natural border along the boundaries of the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Yashica Dutt is a New York-based journalist who writes on gender, identity and culture. She was previously a principal correspondent with Brunch and the Hindustan Times and is the founder of dalitdiscrimination.tumblr.com

This narrow strip of land at the southern tip of India is, arguably, one of the most beautiful places of India. Monsoon-and-sun-drenched, mega green, hot and humid in the plains and cool in the hills, Kerala is the much loved and much hated motherland of Malayalis.

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It is doubtful, though, if Malayalis realize how lucky they are to be the children of this little paradise smartly marketed across the world as God’s Own Country.

They, in general, sidestep the uncomfortable fact that Kerala is a fragile, vulnerable, special world, which demands intimate care. Instead, sitting in Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram or Kasaragod, or in Cape Town, Seattle, Dubai or Copenhagen, they engage in escapist outpourings about a phantom Kerala.

The real Kerala is dealt with quite ruthlessly.

my kashmir omar abdullah Omar Abdullah’s first book, part memoir, part history and part analysis of the various problems that have beset Jammu and Kashmir in the decades since Independence, will be one of the most important books to be published about

The word ‘Malayali’ derives from Malayalam, the language of Kerala. There is general consensus that Malayalam’s roots are in ancient Tamil. It was Sanskritized and moulded over centuries by a variety of influences ranging from Arab, Jew and Syrian to Portuguese and English. There are around thirty-five million Malayalis speaking the tongue which, as we shall see, they reject with one hand and embrace with the other.

Once you leave the safe zone of standardized print-Malayalam, you plunge into a bewildering arena of accents, intonations and coinages that change startlingly from district to district—even within the district—becoming an unrecognizable potpourri around Kerala’s northern borders. So, too, the Malayali changes.

Whole attitudinal chasms divide, say, the Malayali of Thiruvananthapuram from, say, the Malayali of Kozhikode. The Malayali—popularly Mallu—label is deceptive. S/he has a thousand faces.

Paul Zacharia writes in Malayalam and English. He has published over fifty books and has received several awards, including the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award. He lives in Thiruvananthapuram.

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the beautiful and troubled state that was born in fire and blood. My Kashmir will not only offer the reader unprecedented clarity about the situation in Kashmir today, it will also offer rare insights into Kashmiri politics and the Abdullah family that has played a prominent part in shaping the discourse on Kashmir.

Omar Abdullah is one of India’s most remarkable political leaders. Belonging to the National Conference (NC) political party in Jammu&Kashmir, he was the youngest ever chief minister of the state. He has also been twice president of the National Conference. A three-time MP, he has served as Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry as well as Union Minister of State for External Affairs. He is presently a member of the J&K Legislative Assembly.

Omar Abdullah belongs to one of India’s most distinguished political families.

His grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, also known as Sher-e-Kashmir, formed the first ever political party in Kashmir which later evolved into the National Conference. Sheikh Abdullah led the state, first as prime minister from 1948 to 1953, and later as chief minister for two terms. Omar’s father, Dr Farooq Abdullah, was a three-time chief minister of Jammu&Kashmir.

Omar Abdullah divides his time between Srinagar and New Delhi. His interests include reading, travelling, swimming and skiing. My Kashmir is his first book.

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the bengalis

a portrait of a community

sudeep chakravarti A community of a quarter of a billion should count for something. Certainly the Bengalis do. They occupy some of the most fertile, bountiful and densely populated spaces on the planet. The homeland of the Bengali, spread across two countries—India and Bangladesh—is a teeming, heaving, raucous place where empires have been won and lost, civilization celebrated and ground to the dust, a place of wealth, of grand and lucid intellects and terrible illiteracy and poverty, of great reformation and great wretchedness, where emotion seems to be as much a cachet as education.

Sudeep Chakravarti is an award-winning author of ground-breaking and bestselling works of narrative non-fiction (Red Sun, Highway 39, Clear. Hold.

Build), novels (Tin Fish, The Avenue of Kings) and short stories. His essays and short fiction have appeared in collections in India and overseas, and, along with his books, have been translated into several Indian and Western languages.

He is among India’s leading commentators on matters of conflict, democracy, development, economic policy, foreign affairs, culture, society and the convergence of business and human rights. An extensively published columnist, he has over three decades of experience in media, and has worked with major global and Indian media organizations including the Asian Wall Street Journal, the India Today Group and HT Media.

The Bengali community comprises Nobel laureates and scientific geniuses, free thinkers and philosophers, literary minds and cinematic icons, revolutionaries and sages. Within it, an animated discussion on the future of mankind can be as commonplace as an animated discussion on the best way to cook fish. An argument over politics—and even sports—can lead to death. It is also one of the most economically weak and socio-politically fragile communities to be found in the world.

In this fascinating book, Sudeep Chakravarti, Bengali by birth and cosmopolitan by practice, interprets what it means to be Bengali. His exploration of one of the most prominent communities on the planet embraces history, politics, conflict, culture, Kolkata (and Calcutta), and the eastern part of Bengal—once East Bengal, then violently East Pakistan and, since the horrific war in 1971, Bangladesh, the country that was born because it wanted to be Bengali, as much as speak it. Deeply personal yet wide-ranging, The Bengalis is a freewheeling, searching, emotional, empathetic, and yet unswervingly critical biography of a people that have, for better and worse, helped shape a subcontinent.

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the nehru reader

edited by rudrangshu mukherjee Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s charismatic first prime minister, was a prolific and perceptive writer. He was the author of two major books—his autobiography, and The Discovery of India—and he wrote continuously on a variety of themes, in letters, prison diaries and for newspapers and journals. As prime minister, and before that as a leader of the nationalist movement, he also delivered innumerable speeches. This volume brings together a representative selection of Nehru’s writings and speeches so that readers can get a glimpse of the style and the mind of one of India’s most outstanding public intellectuals.

Included in this reader are some of Pandit Nehru’s best-known (as well as relatively unfamiliar) and most interesting works on history, culture, the national movement, the Congress party, India, the world, his family and himself.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee is Vice Chancellor and Professor of History at Ashoka University. He was educated at Calcutta Boys’ School, Presidency College, JNU, and St Edmund Hall. He was awarded a DPhil in Modern History by the University of Oxford. He has taught in the department of history, Calcutta University, and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, Manchester University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 1993 to 2014 he was the editor, Editorial Pages, The Telegraph. He is the author of many books— these include Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance; Spectre of Violence: The Massacres in Kanpur in 1857; The Year of Blood: An Essay on 1857.

He is the editor of Great Speeches of Modern India and of The Penguin Gandhi Reader. His latest publication is Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives.

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ayodhya

1965

the definitive biography

valay singh

shiv kunal verma

On 6 December 2017, twenty-five years would have passed since a frenzied mob of Hindus demolished a sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya. The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was followed by large-scale riots that killed thousands of people and permanently communalized the polity of the country.

In 1964, while India was still licking its wounds from the fiasco against the Chinese in 1962, the belligerent Pakistanis decided to test the Indian armed forces in the Western Sector. The first probes were launched in the Rann of Kutch and India came out of the initial skirmishes with egg on its face. Its success in the Rann of Kutch (Operation Desert Hawk I, II and III) made the Pakistani Army extremely cocky, which led to the launching of the covert Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir in August. Confident that they had better armour (Patton tanks), better fighters (F-86 Sabres and F-104 Starfighters) and better submarines (Daphnes) than India, the Pakistanis expected that in the event of an armed clash, the Indians would collapse just as they had against China in NEFA.

In the years leading up to the demolition and in its aftermath, the right-wing gained decisive ground in electoral politics and deepened its hold on Hindu society leading to the pronounced othering of minorities by the majority community. The demolition was a climax of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement that has been at the heart of Indian politics for a quarter century since the BJP first campaigned on the promise of building a Ram Temple at the site of the mosque. Do the people of Ayodhya still dream of a Ram Temple and will the issue be reinvigorated by the party in power?

Ayodhya: The Definitive Biography is an unprecedented portrait of the sleepy town in northern India, which has been a place of reverence for many faiths for millennia, but has also been a place of violence, bloodshed and ill-will.

Through numerous interviews, exhaustive research, and rare insights from being embedded in Ayodhya, the author presents a comprehensive account of one of the most fiercely contested places in the country.

Valay Singh is a journalist and photographer based in New Delhi. Originally from Bhopal, Valay started his career in journalism with NDTV 24x7. He has produced documentary films for Indian and French media and has written for the Economic Times, Himal Southasian and DailyO, among other publications.

This is his first book.

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a western sunrise

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The civil disturbance in Kashmir due to the alleged theft of the Moe-e-Muqaddas (Hair of the Prophet) from the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar provided the perfect backdrop for the covert war. Six thousand trained mujahids were deployed by the Pakistan Army, operating in four distinct forces. 1965: A Western Sunrise details the sector-by-sector response of Indian troops, the initial fighting in Kargil, and the eventual capture of the Haji Pir Pass.

Operation Gibraltar fizzled out and India gave in to the UN and stood down troops it had mobilized in the Punjab. Pakistan then launched Operation Grand Slam in September 1965. The resultant Indian counter-attack saw the focus shift to various sectors all across the international border. The conflict became a fullblown war.

Starting with the wounds of Partition and the disagreements over Kashmir, the book gives a complete account of the war—from the initial skirmishes to all-out war along various sectors. It also shows the resurgence of the Indian army and air force as fighting forces.

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Writer and filmmaker Shiv Kunal Verma has produced many critically acclaimed films for the Indian armed forces that include Salt of the Earth and Aakash Yodha on the air force; The Naval Dimension for the Indian Navy; The Standard Bearers (NDA), The Making of a Warrior (IMA) and The Kargil War for the Indian Army. He has also authoredThe Long Road to Siachen: The Question Why and the highly acclaimed Northeast Trilogy, a seminal work that covers the entire Northeastern region of India. His latest book is 1962: The War That Wasn’t.

the short life and tragic death of qandeel baloch sanam maher In February 2016, a journalist from the international news agency Agence France-Presse interviewed a twenty-five-year-old Pakistani woman for a story on how the country’s youth—an estimated 180 million people under the age of thirty—interacted with social media. ‘Young people can communicate online in relative freedom,’ the journalist Issam Ahmed reported, ‘and the country even has a Kim Kardashian type figure—Qandeel Baloch.’ The young woman caught the reporter’s attention after she posted a video on Facebook mocking a presidential ‘warning’ not to celebrate Valentine’s Day—a ‘Western’ holiday. In the video, made on a cell phone as she lies in bed, Baloch wears a low-cut red dress, and her full lips are painted scarlet. The sheets match her outfit, and her dress rides up her legs to reveal her thighs. ‘They can stop to people go out,’ she says in broken English, ‘but they can’t stop to people love.’ She says the same thing once more, this time in Urdu, with an exaggerated American accent, as though she is not used to speaking the language. ‘Woh logon ko pyaar karnay se nahin rok saktay. Kuch bhi kar lein. (No matter what they do, they can’t stop people from loving).’

The video shows us everything that Pakistanis loved—and loved to hate— about Qandeel: she played the coquette, dished out biting critiques of some of Pakistan’s most holy cows, and gave her heart away to politicians, actors, singers and cricketers. We snickered at the way she spoke and her accent, and marvelled at her gumption. She was the stuff of a hundred memes and the butt of our jokes. She was Pakistan’s first celebrity-by-social media.

At the time, the Valentine’s Day video had been seen 830,000 times. Five months later, Qandeel Baloch would be dead. Her brother would strangle her in their family home, in what would be described as an ‘honour killing’—a murder to

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indelible india

restore the respect and honour Qandeel’s behaviour online robbed him of.

In 2015, 933 women and men were killed for ‘honour’ in Pakistan, according to the country’s Federal Ministry of Law. Those are only the number of cases that are reported by friends and families. Only a handful of these victims are featured on the front pages of newspapers in Pakistan. In most cases, the murderers do not face charges as they are ‘forgiven’—as per a loophole in the existing legislation— by the surviving family members. In 2014, Senator Syeda Sughra Imam tabled the Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill in the Senate to address such loopholes. The bill was finally passed by the Senate in March 2015, but lapsed in parliament in October last year.

However, just six days after Qandeel was murdered, this bill was fast-tracked to be presented in parliament in two weeks. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s daughter, and not a party or government spokesperson, was chosen to make the announcement. What spurred the change? Who was Qandeel Baloch and how did she come to reveal a fundamental schism in our understanding of ourselves as Pakistanis and Muslims?

Sanam Maher is a Pakistani journalist. This is her first book.

a golden treasury of journalism

edited by m. j. akbar

Indelible India: A Golden Treasury of Journalism features some of the finest journalism produced in independent India by legendary editors and reporters who wrote powerful stories and opinion pieces on politics, war, diplomacy, economics, and that old staple, crime. This anthology will ensure that these pieces live beyond the time and space when they first appeared.

Selected from hundreds of pieces by M. J. Akbar, Indelible India features greats like Frank Moraes, N. J. Nanporia, S. Nihal Singh, Arun Shourie, Shekhar Gupta, Vinod Mehta, Romesh Thapar, Khushwant Singh, N. Ram, B. G. Verghese, Kuldip Nayar, Chitra Subramaniam, Surya Prakash, T. J. S. George and many others, in a tribute to the golden age of Indian journalism.

Excerpt How these puffed up bullies run at the slightest whiff of exposure! Just a few stray revelations and Antulay, the self-righteous Sultan of Bombay, is on the run.

He has just announced that he, who had so successfully made a commerce of the name ‘Indira Gandhi’, is dropping the name from the legend of his trust.

This, as we shall presently see, solves none of his problems. For the exploitation of Indira Gandhi’s name was just a matter between him and his czarina. Much more than the name is involved. For the man has made a commerce not just of Mrs Gandhi’s name but of everything else too.

His device? Trusteeship. The Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan, the trust that is being talked about, is only one of the trusts he has set up in his brief reign.

There are at least six others: the Konkan Unnati Mitra Mandal (Konkan being the region from which Antulay hails), the Raigarh Zila Pratishthan (Raigarh being the district from which Antulay hails), the Shriwardhan Matadar Sangh

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Pratishthan (Shriwardhan being the constituency from which Antulay hails), the Mehasala Taluk Trust (Mehasala being the taluk from which Antulay hails), the Ambet Pratishthan (Ambet being the village from which Antulay hails) and the Sethia Foundation.

Antulay lost little time in setting up the trusts and even less in devising ways to stuff them. When he assumed power, cement distribution was with the Civil Supplies Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his personal charge. Allotment of government plots to housing societies, etc., was in the charge of the revenue minister. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his personal charge. The question of how much one could build on a plot was in the charge of the Urban Development Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his personal charge. The granting of no objection certificates for building on land held in excess of the urban ceiling regulations was in the charge of the Revenue Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his personal charge. And so on, all along the lucrative line. The mode was simplicity itself and Antulay has himself described it: ‘When rich people come to see me,’ he told Congress (I) legislators recently, ‘I point out to them half a dozen trusts I have set up. I tell them that I am working for the poor. I request them to contribute to the trusts...’

—Arun Shourie

M. J. Akbar is one of India’s most distinguished editors and writers. Starting as a reporter for the Times of India, he has written exclusively for the Illustrated Weekly of India, Sunday, The Telegraph, India Today and the Deccan Chronicle. He is also the author of several internationally acclaimed books. During his long career in journalism he was editor of Sunday, a weekly newsmagazine, The Telegraph, Asian Age and India Today. He was also the editorial director of the Sunday Guardian, a weekly newspaper that he founded. He is a national spokesperson for the BJP and Minister of State for External Affairs.

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the kurukshetra war a reconstruction

keerthik sasidharan Lured away from the arms of his wife by voices that he hears, a hunter named Jara walks into a forest seeking quiet. In that enchanted grove, a voice urges him to shoot an elusive deer. His arrow pierces an ankle that belongs to a manyarmed, plum-tree-coloured, luminous being who is now slowly bleeding out.

The wounded man tells Jara that he is Krishna, the Lord of Dwarka, Devaki’s son and Arjuna’s friend. On this last night of his life as an avatar of Vishnu, he is still part human and part God. But, as Jara discovers, before his ascent into the heavens, Krishna must cede all that made him human: his triumphs, loves, and despairs. To relive them for the last time, Jara tells him nine stories during that fateful night. Stories of the nine emotions embodied by those who participated in the Great War on the killing fields of Kurukshetra. Stories of the experiences of those who were dearest to him on both sides of the bloody conflict. Bhishma’s wonder, Draupadi’s loves, Arjuna’s valour, Shakuni’s derision, Karna’s disgust, Bhima’s pathos, Duryodhana’s fear, Ashwathama’s rage and, finally, Krishna’s own tranquility—Krishna relives those eighteen days of a holocaust where humans revealed their worst and their best. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna self-reveals himself as God, this is Jara’s retelling of a human song of violence and tenderness, of times when fires of ambition and lust burnt down the forest of Dharma, so that it could be born anew.

Keerthik Sasidharan was born in Palakkad, Kerala. He was trained as an economist in Canada and works for an investment bank in New York. His writing has appeared in The Hindu, Caravan and other publications.

A ut u m n / W i n t e r

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a n d f inal ists

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Em and the Big Hoom Jerry Pinto

The King’s Harvest

in a village above the Rangeet river in Sikkim, a woman called Kamala hacks

The King’s Harvest

her husband, Police Constable Puran,

~

nearby police station and turns herself

two novellas

www.alephbookcompany.com

fiction

chetan raj shrestha

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for Best Novel in English 2015 Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014

Chronicle Of A Corpse Bearer Cyrus Mistry

Arctic Summer Damon Galgut

Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2014

Winner of the Tata Literature Live! Best Book Award for Fiction 2014

The Wildings Nilanjana Roy

Between Clay and Dust Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2013 Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013

Finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012

The King’s Harvest Chetan Raj Shrestha

City of Spies Sorayya Khan

into forty-seven pieces, then walks to the in. At first, the murder seems an openand-shut case to Dechen, the tough,

Winner of the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award 2012 Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013

foul-mouthed, prickly lady cop in charge

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delve into the lives of Kamala and Puran, she discovers a world of lies, deceit and

love gone wrong, where the past, including her own, constantly shadows the present, nothing is as it seems, and the guilt of murderers is difficult to establish.

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`350

Winner of the Hindu Literary Prize 2012 Winner of the Crossword Book Award for Fiction 2013 Winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction 2016 Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013

Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve,

chetan raj shrestha

The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar

harvest from his fields. Journeying across leech-infested forests and forbidding

valleys, he tells his children the story of his life—one that has been full of drama and magic. But the biggest miracle of all awaits him in Gangtok, where he will speak to the absent king.

~ These two novellas, united by their strong sense of place, showcase Chetan Raj Shrestha’s enormous gifts as a storyteller.

Magical, gritty, nerve-wracking and stylish in equal measure, this is an exceptional debut.

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P r i z e w i n n e r s a n d fi n a l i s t s

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A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces: Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present edited by David Davidar

Winner of the Publishing Next Printed Book of the Year Award 2015

Winner of the Tata Lit Live! First Book Award 2016 Finalist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2016 Longlisted for the Atta-Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize 2016

The Competent Authority Shovon Chowdhury

Being the Other: The Muslim in India saeed naqvi

Finalist for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award 2013 Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014 Finalist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2014 Finalist for the Crossword Book Award for Fiction 2015

Longlisted for the Atta-Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize 2016

Shadow Play Shashi Deshpande

The Success Sutra: An Indian Approach to Wealth Devdutt Pattanaik

Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014

The Patna Manual of Style Siddharth Chowdhury

Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2015

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Swimmer Among the Stars Kanishk Tharoor

The Book of Aleph

Finalist for the Crossword Book Award (Popular category: Business and Management) 2016

The Black Hill Mamang Dai

Finalist for the Crossword Book Award Fiction 2016

P r i z e w i n n e r s a n d fi n a l i s t s

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Butterflies on the Roof of the World Peter Smetacek

Finalist for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award 2013

Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to Management Devdutt Pattanaik

Winner of the Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for Himalayan Literature 2015

Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir Arun Ferreira

Winner of the DMA-NTPC Book Award 2013

Finalist for the Crossword Book Award for Non-fiction 2015

Wild Fire: The Splendours of India’s Animal Kingdom Valmik Thapar

Filomena’s Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family and a Culture Maria Aurora Couto

Winner of the Publishing Next Printed Book of the Year Awards2015

Finalist for the Crossword Book Award for Non-fiction 2015

Korma, Kheer & Kismet: Five Seasons in Old Delhi Pamela Timms

Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India Leila Seth

Winner of the Publishing Next Digital Book of the Year Award 2015

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Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime Stephen Alter

The Book of Aleph

Winner of the Oxford Book Cover Prize 2016

P r i z e w i n n e r s a n d fi n a l i s t s

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Picturing Time: The Greatest Photographs of Raghu Rai

Runner-up for the Publishing Next Printed Book of the Year Award 2016

index

previously published in 2016 P8

An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India Shashi Tharoor

Format: Demy HB Price: 699 ISBN: 978-93-83064-65-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P10

1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made History Sanjaya Baru

Format: Demy HB Price: 499 ISBN: 978-93-84067-68-7 Territory: World

P12

On Nationalism Romila Thapar, A. G. Noorani & Sadanand Menon

Format: A format HB Price: 399 ISBN: 978-93-83064-11-3 Territory: World

P14

M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography T. J. S. George

Format: Demy PB Price: 499 ISBN: 978-93-84067-60-1 Territory: World

Index

119

P16

The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India Tarini Bedi

P26

Magic for the Soul: An Adult Colouring Book of Postcards Featuring Gond Art Venkat Raman Singh Shyam

P30

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: January ISBN: 978-93-82277-54-5 Territory: World

Format: Demy HB Price: 699 ISBN: 978-93-83064-22-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P18

Small Towns, Big Stories: New & Selected Fiction Ruskin Bond

Format: Postcard Price: 399 ISBN: 978-93-83064-03-8 Territory: World

Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of Myth and History Ira Mukhoty

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: January ISBN: 978-93-84067-49-6 Territory: World

WINTER 2017 (january–february) P22

Saint Teresa of Calcutta: A Celebration of Her Life & Legacy Raghu Rai

P34

Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing China through Military Power Pravin Sawhney & Ghazala Wahab

P32

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: February ISBN: 978-93-82277-44-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Oversized Royal HB Price: 1,499 Publication date: January ISBN: 978-93-82277-61-3 Territory: World P24

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 799 Publication date: January ISBN: 978-93-82277-26-2 Territory: World

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How I Became a Tree Sumana Roy

Understanding the black economy & black money in india: Causes, Consequences and Remedies Arun Kumar

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: February ISBN: 978-93-86021-57-1 Territory: World Index

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P29

Tiger Fire: 500 Years of the Tiger in India Valmik Thapar

P44

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: February ISBN: 978-93-84067-24-3 Territory: World

Format: B format HB Price: 399 Publication date: April ISBN: 978-93-84067-57-1 Territory: World

SPRING 2017 (march-april) P38

SUMMER 2017 (may–june)

Maid in India: Stories of Opportunity and Inequality Inside our Homes Tripti Lahiri

P49

The Decline of Civilization: Why We Need to return to Gandhi and Tagore Ramin Jahanbegloo (Foreword by Romila

P51

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: April ISBN: 978-93-84067-26-7 Territory: World

Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 999 Publication date: April ISBN: 978-93-84067-19-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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Zelaldinus: A Masque Irwin Allan Sealy

Format: A format PB Price: Rs 299 Publication date: June ISBN: 978-93-86021-07-6 Territory: World

Thapar)

p42 Asia Reborn: A Continent Rises from the Ravages of Colonialism & War to a New Dynamism Prasenjit k. Basu

God in Hinduism Devdutt Pattanaik

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: May ISBN: 9789386021137 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: April ISBN: 978-93-84067-33-5 Territory: World p40

The Book of Indian Dogs S. Theodore Baskaran

P53

The Parrots of Desire: 3,000 Years of Indian Erotica edited by Amrita Narayanan

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: June ISBN: 978-93-83064-09-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent Index

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P55

Political Corruption in India: How Should It be Combated?

N. Ram

P64

Knowledge and Education in India G. N. Devy

P66

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: June ISBN: 978-93-84067-31-1 Territory: World

P57

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: July ISBN: 978-93-82277-53-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: June ISBN: 978-93-86021-15-1 Territory: World

P59

The Demon-hunter of Chottanikkara: A Novel S. V. Sujatha

The Collected Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto (Volume one) Translated by Nasreen Rehman

Superhuman River: A Biography of the Ganga Bidisha Banerjee

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: July ISBN: 978-93-84067-35-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P68

A Time of Madness: A Memoir of Partition Salman Rashid

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: July ISBN: 978-93-83064-07-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: June ISBN: 978-93-86021-09-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

MONSOON 2016 (july–september) P62

Prescriptions for Success: The Autobiography of Dr B. R. Shetty with Pranay Gupte

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 Publication date: July ISBN: 978-93-86021-08-3 Territory: World 124

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P70

Indians: A Portrait of a People Shashi Tharoor

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: August ISBN: 978-93-86021-10-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Index

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P73

The Book of Chocolate Saints: A Novel Jeet Thayil

P83

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 699 Publication date: August ISBN: 978-93-86021-03-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P78

What It Means to Be Indian Veena Das

The Indian Copyright Handbook Pravin Anand (with Dhruv Anand & Tanvi Misra)

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 699 Publication date: September ISBN: 978-93-86021-14-4 Territory: World

P85

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: August ISBN: 978-93-83064-73-1 Territory: World

Strangers No More? Conflict and Reconciliation in India’s Northeast Sanjoy Hazarika

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: September ISBN: 978-93-84067-48-9 Territory: World

AUTUMN/WINTER 2017 (october–december) P76

The Lovers: A Novel Amitava Kumar

P89

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: August ISBN: 978-93-86021-00-7 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P80

A Life in Politics: A Memoir Jayanthi Natarajan

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: September ISBN: 978-93-83064-71-7 Territory: World

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Pilgrim Nation: Journeys of the Spirit Devdutt Pattanaik

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: October ISBN: 978-93-84067-29-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P91

Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir Yashica Dutt

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 Publication date: October ISBN: 978-93-84067-32-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Index

127

P93

The Malayalis: A Portrait of a Community Paul Zacharia

P102 AYODHYA: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY VALAY SINGH

My Kashmir Omar Abdullah

P103 1965: A Western Sunrise Shiv Kunal Verma

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: October ISBN: 978-93-84067-69-4 Territory: World

P95

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: November ISBN: 978-93-86021-02-1 Territory: World

P98

The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community Sudeep Chakravarti

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 Publication date: November ISBN: 978-93-86021-04-5 Territory: World

P100 The Nehru Reader edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 799 Publication date: November ISBN: 978-93-83064-10-6 Territory: World

128

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Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: December ISBN: 978-93-82277-45-3 Territory: World

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 999 Publication date: December ISBN: 978-93-84067-23-6 Territory: World

P105 The Short Life and Tragic Death of Qandeel Baloch Sanam Maher

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: December ISBN: 978-93-86021-05-2 Territory: Indian subcontinent

P107 Indelible India: A Golden Treasury of Journalism edited by M. J. Akbar

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 Publication date: December ISBN: 978-93-84067-45-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent Index

129

backlist

P109 The Kurukshetra War: A Reconstruction Keerthik Sasidharan

Non-FICTION

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 999 Publication date: December ISBN: 978-93-86021-11-3 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Maps for a Mortal Moon: Essays and Entertainments ADIL JUSSAWALLA

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-67-5 Territory: World

The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of Nepal’s Maoist Revolution ADITYA ADHIKARI

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-83064-76-2 Territory: Indian subcontinent

unbound

(...continued from the front flap)

Mrinal Pande, Nayantara Sahgal, Pinki Virani, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan, Romila Thapar, Sarojini Naidu, Saudamini Devi, Shivani; and powerful new voices from our time like Arundhathi Subramaniam, Nilanjana Roy and Nivedita Menon.

Profound, exhilarating, haunting, angry and meditative, Unbound is a collection that will shatter stereotypes about women’s writing in India.

A collection of some of the most significant writing by Indian women over the past two thousand years.

2,000 years of indian women’s writing

Annie Zaidi

e d i te d by

Annie Zaidi is the author of Gulab,

Cover photograph © Goa Streets: News & Entertainment Weekly www.goastreets.com Cover design: Bena Sareen

`499 fiction / non - fiction

Love Stories # 1 to 14, and Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, which was shortlisted for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award. She is the coauthor of The Good Indian Girl and a book of illustrated poems, Crush. Her work has appeared in several anthologies like Eat the Sky; Drink the Ocean, Mumbai Noir, Dharavi, Women Changing India, and 21 Under 40.

un bound

2,000 years of indian women’s writing edited by

Annie Zaidi

Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing edited BY ANNIE ZAIDI

Unbound is a collection of some of the

most significant writing by Indian women over the past two thousand years. Divided into eleven sections, it encompasses writing on various aspects of life: spirituality, love, marriage, children, food, work, social and individual identity, battles, myths and fables, travel and death. While many of the pieces are commentaries on the struggle that women undertake to overcome obstacles— social and political—all of them showcase the remarkable creative ability of their creators.

The term ‘women’s writing’ has often been used to limit and stereotype the work of women writers. But it also has a larger and more constructive meaning, and that is the sense in which it has been used to inform and describe the context of the book. As Annie Zaidi explains in her introduction: ‘Women bring to their writing the truth of their bodies, and an enquiry into the different ways in which gender inequity shapes human experience.’

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-83064-16-8 Territory: World

Selected from hundreds of novels, memoirs, essays, short story collections and volumes of poetry that were either written in English or that have been translated into English, the pieces in this collection include the most distinctive and powerful voices from every era. There are verses from the Therigatha, written by Buddhist nuns (circa 300 bce), and writing by poet-saints like Andaal, Avvaiyar, Lal Ded, Mirabai; modern classics by writers like Ajeet Cour, Amrita Pritam, Arundhati Roy, Attia Hosian, Bama, Bulbul Sharma, Irawati Karve, Ismat Chughtai, Kamala Das, Krishna Sobti, Mahasweta Devi, Manju Kapur, Mannu Bhandari,

(continued on the back flap...)

Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir ARUN FERREIRA

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This Unquiet Land: Dispatches from India’s Fault Lines BARKHA DUTT

The Leadership Sutra: An Indian Approach to Power DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-82277-16-3 Territory: World

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-84067-46-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Grey Hornbills at Dusk BULBUL SHARMA

The Talent Sutra: An Indian Approach to Learning DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-65-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

‘Douglas Dewar’s brilliant observations and word pictures bring these birds and animals into your home.’

—Ruskin Bond

indian natural history sketches

Jungle Folk DOUGLAS DEWAR

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-84067-39-7 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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douglas dewar

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‘You will find no lack of superlatives among our Indian birds’ writes Douglas Dewar in this superb and idiosyncratic book about some of the most interesting birds to be found in the country. From the common crow, ‘splendid in sagacity, resource, adaptiveness, boldness, cunning and depravity; a Machiavelli; a Shakespeare among birds, a super-bird’ to the scavenger vulture, ‘the ugliest bird in the world’, wagtails ‘who dress most tastefully’, ‘mad babblers’, ‘upright cuckoos’, the night heron which ‘only sleeps when it has nothing better to do’, hawks ‘the bandits of the air’, the drongo, who ‘is the embodiment of pluck’, and dozens of other species, well-known and rare, Jungle Folk will make you see our birds in new and arresting ways. In his closely observed sketches, the legendary naturalist explores in detail every significant element of the bird in question including anatomy, physiology, behaviour, lifestyle and habitat.

Intended for the amateur naturalist as well as the serious ornithologist, this is an eye-opening, intriguing and original account of Indian birds.

Jungle Folk

Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to Management DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-83064-27-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The cover shows a Montagu’s harrier, a migratory raptor, in flight.

Photograph by Kiran Poonacha

The Success Sutra: An Indian Approach to Wealth DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-84067-41-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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Abolishing the Death Penalty: Why India Should Say No to Capital Punishment GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-82277-78-1 Territory: World

Backlist

133

Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of Kolkata INDRAJIT HAZRA

The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans, & Other Foreigners Who Became Indian JONATHAN GIL HARRIS

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-28-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-63-7 Territory: World

India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century IRA TRIVEDI

The Freethinker’s Prayer Book KHUSHWANT SINGH

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-81-923280-4-1 Territory: World

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-62-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The Small Wild Goose Pagoda IRWIN ALLAN SEALY

99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry & Humour KHUSHWANT SINGH

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-83064-48-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 699 ISBN: 978-93-83064-75-5 Territory: World

Portrait of a Serial Killer

Three-Quarters of a Footprint: Travels in South India JOE ROBERTS

Author photograph: Courtesy Mala Dayal Cover design: Bena Sareen

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------------------------------------------------------‘Early this summer a strange phenomenon was seen in some villages in the Himalyas. One night the people were disturbed in their sleep by a noise of hissing, and nightmares that their homes and fields were overrun with snakes. When they woke up, they discovered to their horror that the terrifying dreams of the night before had turned to reality. There were snakes everywhere: in the gutters, on the footpaths, around the wells, even hanging down from the trees.’

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khushwant singh

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Born in Punjab’s Hadali village (now in Pakistan) in 1915, KHUSHWANT SINGH was among India’s best-known and most widely read authors and journalists. He was founder-editor of Yojana, and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, National Herald and the Hindustan Times. He published six novels—Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale, Delhi: A Novel, The Company of Women, Burial at Sea and The Sunset Club as well as several books of short stories which were published together as The Portrait of a Lady. Among his other books are 99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry & Humour, The Freethinker’s Prayerbook, A History of the Sikhs; an autobiography, Truth, Love & a Little Malice; a biography, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the Punjab; and a book of non-fiction, The Return of Indira Gandhi. In addition, he published translations of Hindi and Urdu novels, short stories and poetry.

Khushwant Singh was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1974; he returned the award in 1984 to protest the siege of the Golden Temple by the Indian army. In 2007, he was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan.

Khushwant Singh died on 20 March 2014. He is survived by his son, Rahul Singh, daughter, Mala Dayal, and granddaughter, Naina Dayal.

Portrait of a Serial Killer and Other Uncollected Writings KHUSHWANT SINGH

Portrait of a Serial Killer is an unforgettable celebration of India and Indians by one of our most beloved writers. Published on the hundredth anniversary of Khushwant Singh’s birth, none of the essays in this collection has been published in book

u nc o l l e c t e d w r i t i ng s

form before. A chilling account of the serial killer Raman Raghav rubs

shoulders with an extraordinary portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru followed by an exuberant encounter with Dev Anand, as well as nearly twenty other profiles

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of saints, charlatans, writers, godmen, singers, politicians and other arresting characters. Another section of the book

contains vivid sketches of various parts of the country—an unspoilt tribal village in Bihar, the fire of a gulmohar forest in Bokaro, the strange goings-on in the expat community in Darjeeling, a small community in the hinterland that is

terrorized by a sudden invasion of snakes, and a bittersweet paean to Delhi, among others. There are also essays that provide insights into familiar characteristics of India—obnoxious VIPs, violence against women, corruption, amiable lunatics, idiot lawyers, stud bulls, Indian men and much else besides. Elegiac, witty and compelling, this is a book that will

delight Khushwant Singh’s numerous fans as well as anyone with an interest in contemporary India.

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135

Me, The Jokerman: Enthusiasms, Rants & Obsessions KHUSHWANT SINGH

Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi MALVIKA SINGH

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Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-84067-51-9 Territory: World

In June 2001, the king of Nepal and almost his entire family were massacred.

Unrest, simmering over the previous decade, boiled over, and pushed the nation into free fall. In 2005, the dead king’s brother reinstated monarchy, crushing any hope that parliamentary democracy would flourish in Nepal.

A period fraught with uncertainty and intense turmoil ensued: the Maoists waged a bloody People’s War; the monarchy mounted a bloodier counterinsurgency effort; political parties bickered and fought endlessly; and the citizens bore the brunt of it all.

Wide-ranging in scope—the book spans the beginning of the monarchy, through the early democratic movements, to the present—Forget Kathmandu is many things: history, memoir, reportage, travelogue, analysis. But, above all, it is an unflinching, clear-sighted attempt to make sense of the ‘bad politics’ that plagued—and continues to plague—the country. It remains as worryingly relevant to present-day Nepal as it was when first published in 2005. ‘[Forget Kathmandu is] reminiscent of the late great W. G. Sebald’s non-fiction as an engaging detective story.’—Hindustan Times Cover design and calligraphy by Nikheel Aphale

Manjushree Thapa

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-96-5 Territory: World

Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy MANJUSHREE THAPA

‘Forget Kathmandu combines passion with insight to describe a complex and troubled country. Written in clear, vigorous prose, it is one of the most important books on not just Nepal but also contemporary South Asia.’

—Pankaj Mishra

An Elegy for Democracy

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 325 ISBN: 978-93-82277-00-2 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern India LEILA SETH

Written with style and sophistication, also honesty and emotion…a must-read.—Outlook

M a n j u s h r e e T h a pa

Of Birds and Birdsong M. KRISHNAN

In late September 2006, Chandra Gurung organized an event in remote Ghunsa village in Eastern Nepal to celebrate a landmark in the country’s conservation history: the handing over of ownership of forest areas by the government to local inhabitants. The handover also marked the apex of Chandra’s career as an environmentalist. On the way back from Ghunsa, the helicopter ferrying Chandra and others crashed, killing everyone aboard.

A Boy from Siklis traces Chandra’s Gurung’s remarkable life—his birth in the tiny village of Siklis; his education in Nepal and abroad; his work, first with the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation and then as head of the World Wildlife Fund Nepal—and his meteoric rise as he became one of the keystones of natureconservation efforts in Nepal.

A compelling story of a life lived with verve and an honest desire to make lasting difference, A Boy from Siklis is also a valuable and illuminating history of nature conservation in Nepal, caught up in the country’s thorny politics.

Cover design and calligraphy by Nikheel Aphale

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Manjushree Thapa

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-64-4 Territory: World

A Boy From Siklis: The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung MANJUSHREE THAPA

‘Activities in Nepal, especially those that set a good example...do not often breach the international consciousness. [A Boy from Siklis] does just that, narrating Nepal’s revolutionary approach to protected areas in a fluent and personalized manner.’—Himal Southasian

The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 250 ISBN: 978-93-82277-50-7 Territory: Indian subcontinent

‘This is how heroes should be judged—not only by what they achieved in their own lifetimes, but also in their continuing influence.’—Nepali Times

M a n j u s h r e e T h a pa

Birds in my Indian Garden MALCOLM MACDONALD

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The Lives We have Lost: Essays and Opinions on Nepal MANJUSHREE THAPA

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137

Filomena’s Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture MARIA AURORA COUTO

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-04-0 Territory: World

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-14-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Subcontinental Drift: Four Decades Adrift in India and Beyond MURRAY LAURENCE

The Kingdom at the Centre of the World: Journeys into Bhutan OMAIR AHMAD

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Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-01-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay NARESH FERNANDES

Chanakya’s New Manifesto PAVAN K. VARMA

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Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-09-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Degree Coffee by the Yard: A Short Biography of Madras NIRMALA LAKSHMAN

Butterflies on the Roof of the World PETER SMETACEK

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-82277-15-6 Territory: World

138

Korma, Kheer & Kismet: Five Seasons in Old Delhi PAMELA TIMMS

The Book of Aleph

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139

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal PRASHANT JHA

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-99-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-83064-08-3 Territory: World

Unladylike: A Memoir RADHIKA VAZ

Prince of Gujarat: The Extraordinary Story of Prince Gopaldas Desai (1887-1951) RAJMOHAN GANDHI

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-83064-17-5 Territory: World

Picturing Time: The Greatest Photographs of Raghu Rai RAGHU RAI

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People: His Finest Portraits RAGHU RAI

Format: Oversized B HB Price: Rs 999 ISBN: 978-93-83064-13-7 Territory: World

140

Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten RAJMOHAN GANDHI

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Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 500 ISBN: 978-93-83064-06-9 Territory: World

Understanding the Founding Fathers: An Enquiry into the Indian Republic’s Beginnings RAJMOHAN GANDHI

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-83064-24-3 Territory: World

The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities through History ROMILA THAPAR

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-83064-01-4 Territory: World

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141

The Public Intellectual India in India ROMILA THAPAR

India Shastra: Reflections on the Nation in our Time SHASHI THAROOR

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Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 695 ISBN: 978-93-84067-28-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Being the Other: The Muslim in India SAEED NAQVI

1962: The War that Wasn’t SHIV KUNAL VERMA

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-84067-22-9 Territory: World

Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 995 ISBN: 978-93-82277-97-2 Territory: World

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy SALIL TRIPATHI

Subhas and Sarat: An Intimate Memoir of the Bose Brothers SISIR KUMAR BOSE

Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-82277-18-7 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-83064-14-4 Territory: World

Soumya Bhattacharya’s books about how cricket defines India, You Must Like Cricket? and All That You Can’t Leave Behind, were published to international acclaim. His novel, If I Could Tell You, was a finalist for the the Hindu’s Best Fiction Award 2010. He is also the author of the fatherhood memoir, Dad’s the Word. He was a Granta New Voice in 2008. His writing has been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, Wisden, ESPNcricinfo, and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is the editor of the Hindustan Times, Mumbai.

Front cover photograph: Kunal Patil/ Hindustan Times Back cover photograph: Vipin Kumar/ Hindustan Times Author photograph: Oishi Bhattacharya

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Soumya Bhattacharya

Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 695 ISBN: 978-81-92328-0-89 Territory: Indian subcontinent

After Tendulkar

Accidental India: A History of the Nation’s Passage through Crisis and Change SHANKKAR AIYAR

After Tendulkar THE NEW STARS OF INDIAN CRICKET

After Tendulkar: The New Stars of Indian Cricket SOUMYA BHATTACHARYA

Indian cricket has the most exciting batting line-up in the world today. Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane, led by their captain, M. S. Dhoni, have routinely destroyed international bowling attacks.

While the young bowlers in the team lack the burgeoning reputation of the batsmen, they have shone in flashes at home and abroad. The current and future brilliance of the members of this team is all the more remarkable when you consider their youth, relative inexperience and the fact that they are following in the footsteps of the golden generation—Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman and Anil Kumble.

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-83064-72-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

This book takes as its point of departure 14

November 2013, the date on which the last member of the golden generation—Sachin Tendulkar—retired from all forms of cricket.

It covers the highlights of Tendulkar’s last Test, as also the careers of the Fab Five before delving deep into the stories and exploits of the new stars of Indian cricket, as well as the one man who straddles both generations—Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the finest finisher in one day cricket today, and, statistically speaking, the most

Soumya Bhattacharya A writer whose work we will read for years to come.

successful Indian captain of all time. The first major account of the future of Indian cricket, After Tendulkar is written with a novelist’s eye and an eloquence that will be enjoyed by all those who love memorable writing about the game.

—Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games

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Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime STEPHEN ALTER

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-86021-56-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The Mystical World of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: A Relaxing Colouring Book for Adults SUJAYA BATRA

Format: A4 PB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-84067-58-8 Territory: World

Spell of the Tiger: The Man-eating Tigers of Sundarbans SY MONTGOMERY

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-22-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Exotic Aliens: The Lion and the Cheetah in India VALMIK THAPAR

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-82277-55-2 Territory: World

Wild Fire: The Splendours of India’s Animal Kingdom VALMIK THAPAR

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-82277-41-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Oversized Royal HB Price: Rs 2, 995 ISBN: 978-93-83064-68-7 Territory: World

Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore T. J. S. GEORGE

Winged Fire: A Celebration of Indian Birds VALMIK THAPAR

Format: A format HB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-84067-21-2 Territory: World

144

a matter of rats: a short biography of patna Amitava kumar

The Book of Aleph

Format: Oversized Royal HB Price: Rs 2, 995 ISBN: 978-93-83064-69-4 Territory: World

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145

FICTION

Saving Wild India: A Blueprint for Change VALMIK THAPAR

A Pleasant Kind of Heavy and Other Erotic Stories AMRITA NARAYANAN

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-84067-37-3 Territory: World

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-10-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Living with Tigers VALMIK THAPAR

The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told Edited by Arunava Sinha

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-84067-50-2 Territory: World

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-82277-74-3 Territory: World

chetan raj shrestha © S.T. Gyatso

Cover illustration by Kalyani Ganapathy Cover design by Bena Sareen

Chetan Raj Shrestha was born in 1978 in Gangtok, Sikkim. He is a trained architect, specializing in conservation architecture.

He has lived in Darjeeling, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Sydney, and is currently working in a collaborative architectural practice in Gangtok.

~

two novellas

Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, in a village above the Rangeet river in Sikkim, a woman called Kamala hacks her husband, Police Constable Puran, into forty-seven pieces, then walks to the nearby police station and turns herself in. At first, the murder seems an openand-shut case to Dechen, the tough, foul-mouthed, prickly lady cop in charge of the investigation. But as she begins to delve into the lives of Kamala and Puran, she discovers a world of lies, deceit and love gone wrong, where the past, including her own, constantly shadows the present, nothing is as it seems, and the guilt of murderers is difficult to establish.

~ On a day of endless rain, a man emerges from thirty-two years of isolation to meet

fiction

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his king, whom he owes a share of the

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

chetan raj shrestha

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-82277-57-6 Territory: World

The King’s Harvest The King’s Harvest

Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography GENERAL V. K. SINGH

harvest from his fields. Journeying across leech-infested forests and forbidding valleys, he tells his children the story of his life—one that has been full of drama and magic. But the biggest miracle of all awaits

The King’s Harvest CHETAN RAJ SHRESTHA

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-83064-05-2 Territory: World

him in Gangtok, where he will speak to the absent king.

~ These two novellas, united by their strong sense of place, showcase Chetan Raj Shrestha’s enormous gifts as a storyteller.

Magical, gritty, nerve-wracking and stylish in equal measure, this is an exceptional debut.

An independent publishing firm promoted by Rupa Publications India

On Hinduism WENDY DONIGER

Format: Royal HB Price: Rs 995 ISBN: 978-93-82277-0-71 Territory: Indian subcontinent

146

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Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer CYRUS MISTRY

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-35-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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147

‘Brings the art of grand narrative back to the Indian novel.’

—India Today ‘In the best sense, he knows how to tell a good story.’

—Independent on Sunday ‘Davidar’s writing is a joy.’

—Glamour

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‘David Davidar is one of the most remarkable people in publishing.’

—Scotland on Sunday

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY

An independent publishing firm promoted by Rupa Publications India

Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents, Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result of an article he writes about the increasing power of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist.

There he meets Rustom Sorabjee—the inspirational founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of religion and politics.

A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up in violent riots that rip through the city, a reflection of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well, specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of God, which is the object of political wrangling. He is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes Pessoa, Cavafy and Rimbaud but is ostracized by a local elite obsessed with little more than growing their prized fuchsias. As the discord surrounding the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert them to the dangers, but his intervention will have consequences which he could never have foreseen.

The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive novel about modern India, about what motivates fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone driven, bold or mad enough to make a stand.

Cover photograph ©Lalie Sorbet 2012 | Cover design by Bena Sareen

The Radiance of Ashes CYRUS MISTRY

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-83064-74-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Arctic Summer DAMON GALGUT

‘Davidar skilfully mixes the political with the personal to create an engrossing read.’

—Daily Mail

THE SOLITUDE OF EMPERORS DAVID DAVIDAR

The Solitude of Emperors DAVID DAVIDAR

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-95-8 Territory: Indian subcontinent

‘[An] ambitious disturbing novel…[As] this book hurtles towards its dramatic denouement, it offers us quite a white-knuckle ride…Davidar has a keen eye for detail, and an elegant turn of phrase. This is (a) daring novel that engages with Indian realities: it looks sectarian violence and intolerance in the eye, and does not turn away.’

—Independent

A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces: Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th Century to the Present Edited by David Davidar

Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-82277-29-3 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The Adventures of Amir Hamza GHALIB LAKHNAVI & ABDULLAH BILGRAMI

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-82277-25-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi Format: B format PB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-12-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The House of Blue Mangoes DAVID DAVIDAR

The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-94-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

148

‘A master storyteller.’—Time

DAVID DAVIDAR

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-82277-17-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

‘Unflinching. Unsentimental. Deeply moving. I loved it.’

—Kiran Desai

‘We do not know what to do with one of our most precious resources, solitude, and so we fill it up with noise and clutter...’

‘A novel of feeling as well as of ideas, and a delightful and thoroughly satisfying one.’

—Scotsman

THE SOLITUDE OF EMPERORS

Passion Flower: Seven Stories of Derangement CYRUS MISTRY

The Book of Aleph

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-32-3 Territory: World

Backlist

149

Shilappadikaram ILANGO ADIGAL

Translated by Alain Daniélou Format: B format PB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-83064-19-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-84067-34-2 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Collected Poems JEET THAYIL

A Town Like Ours KAVERY NAMBISAN

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 599 ISBN: 978-93-84067-43-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

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Em and The Big Hoom JERRY PINTO

The Black Hill MAMANG DAI

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Format: B format PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-23-1 Territory: World

Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader KALIDASA

Tilled Earth MANJUSHREE THAPA

Edited & translated by Mani Rao Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-82277-75-0 Territory: World

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Swimmer Among the Stars KANISHK THAROOR

The Book of Aleph

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151

Seasons of Flight MANJUSHREE THAPA

The Wildings NILANJANA ROY

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 250 ISBN: 978-93-82277-49-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-48-4 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-82277-02-6 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Nilanjana Roy spent most of her adult life writing about humans before realizing that animals were much more fun. Her first novel, The Wildings, was widely praised and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Her column on books and reading for the Business Standard has run for over fifteen years; she also writes for the International Herald Tribune on gender. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including The Caravan, Civil Lines 6, Guernica, The New York Times’ India blog, Outlook and Biblio.

Some of her stories for children have been published in Scholastic’s Spooky Stories, Science Fiction Stories and Be Witched. She is the editor of A Matter of Taste:The Penguin Book of Indian Food Writing. Nilanjana lives in Delhi with two cats and her husband, and on Twitter @nilanjanaroy.

In the sequel to her critically acclaimed, bestselling novel, The Wildings, Nilanjana Roy takes us back to the Delhi neighbourhood of Nizamuddin, and its unforgettable cats—Mara, Southpaw, Katar, Hulo and Beraal. As they recover slowly from their terrible battle with the feral cats, they find their beloved locality changing around them. Winter brings an army of predators—humans, vicious dogs, snakes, bandicoots—along with the cold and a scarcity of food... Unless Mara can help them find a safe haven, their small band will be wiped out forever.

With the assistance of a motley group of friends—Doginder, a friendly stray; Hatch, a cheel who is afraid of the sky; Thomas Mor, an affable peacock; Jethro Tail, the mouse who roared; and the legendary Senders of Delhi—Mara and her band set out on an epic journey to find a place where they can live free from danger.

With all the brilliance and originality of its predecessor, The Hundred Names of Darkness brings the story of Mara and the enormously appealing cats of Nizamuddin to a breathtaking conclusion.

All of Us in Our Own Lives MANJUSHREE THAPA

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Tagore for the 21st Century Reader RABINDRANATH TAGORE

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Edited & translated by Arunava Sinha Format: Demy PB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-82277-27-9 Territory: World

Between Clay and Dust MUSHARRAF ALI FAROOQI

Tales of Fosterganj RUSKIN BOND

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©Kavi Bhansali

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The Hundred Names of Darkness NILANJANA ROY

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The Tutor of History MANJUSHREE THAPA

The Book of Aleph

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153

A GATHERING of FRIENDS

T STORIES—SELECTED S MAJOR WORKS

periods of darkness, but now ch as an encounter with an old on a little longer. I hope you, renewing your bond with this as much as I have enjoyed

mily, these are my favourite ry writer’s dream) they will ife.’

Ruskin Bond

ntly simple and immensely a love and reverence for life’ Statesman

t writers.’

are the greatest pieces of fiction

written by Ruskin Bond. Chosen by the author himself, from a body of

Shadow Play SHASHI DESHPANDE

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Upon an Old Wall Dreaming: More of My Favourite Stories and Sketches RUSKIN BOND

The Competent Authority SHOVON CHOWDHURY

work built over fifty years (starting with his award-winning first novel, The Room on the Roof, and ending with Tales of Fosterganj), this collection includes well-known masterpieces like ‘The Night Train at Deoli’, ‘The Woman on Platform 8’, ‘Rusty Plays Holi’ (from The Room on the Roof), ‘Angry River’, ‘The Blue Umbrella’, ‘The Eyes Have It’, ‘Most Beautiful’ and ‘Panther’s Moon’, as well as newer stories like ‘An Evening at the Savoy with H. H. ’ (from Maharani) and ‘Dinner with Foster’ (from Tales of Fosterganj). Taken together, the stories in A Gathering of Friends show why Ruskin Bond has long been regarded as one of the pillars of Indian literature. ~

fiction

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A Gathering of Friends: My Favourite Stories RUSKIN BOND

The twenty-one stories in the book

ruskin bond

age-old; the scents, sights ne have rarely been captured …’—National Herald

‘One of the best storytellers of contemporary India.’ —The Tribune

Format: B format HB Price: Rs 399 ISBN: 978-93-84067-47-2 Territory: World

Escape from Baghdad!

SAAD Z. HOSSAIN

GOOD HOPE ROAD SARITA MANDANNA

the mantel hain of brass. ze marked it but was not ual feature. ary clear, silverace of the mirror dian black, like ain and pushed up the egg, perhaps, nt-winged bird... glass absorbed its opacity d images flatter, rees framed in of the barn just n—all as if diluted irror, sundered nd the depth of

‘mandanna is a gifted and evocative writer who can tell a story stirringly well.’—the hindu

‘mandanna has an easy style and a knack for making her characters come alive.’—hindustan times

`599

Murder with Bengali Characteristics SHOVON CHOWDHURY

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Good Hope Road SARITA MANDANNA

The Patna Manual of Style: Stories SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY

‘The clouds lift. The road glints, white as bone. Eyes forward, itchy finger, trigger happy. Shadow, mirror image world.’

Author of Tiger Hills

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At the outset of the Great War, James Stonebridge, a patrician New England Yankee and Obadaiah Nelson, gumbo ya-ya Louisiana native, volunteer with the French Foreign Legion in Paris. They are among the handful of Americans who did so at the time, young men filled with idealism and lured by romantic notions of adventure. Despite their different backgrounds, the two form a deep and unexpected friendship that helps them endure the brutal reality of the trenches, a bond that is tested to breaking point by the horrors of war.

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 595 ISBN: 978-93-84067-20-5 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Fourteen years after the war has ended, Major James Stonebridge is a haunted recluse. A black mirror, a souvenir from France, hangs on the wall of his Vermont farmhouse, his pale, leached reflection in it hinting at all that he has suffered. The impact of this unspoken burden is felt most of all by his son, Jim. It is only when privileged, spirited Madeleine enters their lives and encourages the Major to join the World War I veterans agitating for their unpaid bonuses in Washington that Jim finally begins to understand the man his father once was, and all that the war took from him. Meanwhile the 1930s are drawing to a close and another war looms...

Format: B Format HB Price: Rs 395 ISBN: 978-93-83064-77-9 Territory: Indian subcontinent

fiction

From pre-war Paris to the trenches of Europe and the apple orchards of Vermont, Good Hope Road is a powerful and mesmerizing story of the legacy of war, the search for redemption and the strength of the human spirit.

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155

City of Spies SORAYYA KHAN

e s c a p e a rt i s t s r i da l a s wa m i

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The Taliban Cricket Club TIMERI N. MURARI

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Escape Artist SRIDALA SWAMI

Taj: A Story of Mughal India TIMERI N. MURARI

Sridala Swami’s Escape Artist maps the dilemmas of the bodied self, and offers a diviner’s eloquent testimony to survival in a world of dissolving certitudes, precarious relationships, transcontinental mobility and political cataclysm. Poised, subtle, luminous, Swami’s poetry clothes the ephemera of everyday life in an intimate tangibility and secures them against the insistent attritions of history and nature. The finely gauged frame is Swami’s chosen instrument. Through it, she effects surprising juxtapositions of myth and contemporary experience, investigates whether the finality of extinction is preferable to the selfparody of repetition, revisits Paul Celan’s cryptic notations, Odilon Redon’s enigmatic images, Abbas Kiarostami’s deceptively quotidian cinema, and pays homage to that re-discoverer of lost myths, Giorgos Seferis. At the core of Escape Artist is a visceral awareness of what words can do: they can induce ‘temporary insanity’, voice ‘inaudible stories’, and remind us that ‘the measure of love is not loss but residue’.

Format: B Format PB Price: Rs 195 ISBN: 978-93-82277-98-9 Territory: World

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-82277-34-7 Territory: Indian subcontinent

In the Jungles of the Night: A Novel about Jim Corbett STEPHEN ALTER

Chanakya Returns TIMERI N. MURARI

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 495 ISBN: 978-93-83064-02-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Format: Demy HB Price: Rs 499 ISBN: 978-93-83064-67-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

The Tirukkural has been admired as literature, venerated as secular gospel, and translated times without number into the world’s different languages. This new version recreates the beauty of Tiruvalluvar’s masterpiece for the twenty-first-century reader.

Verse 1 As ‘A’ is of every alphabet the primordial letter So is god the world’s very fount and progenitor Verse 80 Life is life when lover and loved both live it together Loveless men are but—what shall I say— bones clad in leather

classics

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156

The Book of Aleph

GANDHI

Cover design by Bena Sareen

GOPALKRISHNA

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Verse 391 Learner, learn your learning full well and fault free And then make your learning with life’s living truths agree

tirukkural

GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI read English Literature at St Stephen’s College, Delhi. A former administrator and diplomat, he has authored a novel, Refuge, a play in English verse, Dara Shukoh, and has translated A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth into Hindustani. He is currently Distinguished Professor at Ashoka University.

the

Format: B format PB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-84067-56-4 Territory: World

tiruvalluvar

These Circuses that Sweep through the Landscape TEJASWINI APTE-RAHM

The Tirukkural TIRUVALLUVAR

A new English version of a beloved Tamil classic.

The Tirukkural (honoured Kural) is one of the world’s greatest literary and philosophical masterpieces.

Composed in Tamil by Tiruvalluvar sometime between 2 BCE and 5 CE, its succinct couplets seek to explain and guide the reader through life’s various situations: political, spiritual, domestic and social.

Not much is known about Tiruvalluvar—he is believed to have been one or more of the following: a weaver, an ascetic, a teacher, a minister, a seafarer or even a king. What is indisputable, as Gopalkrishna Gandhi says in the preface, is that he was ‘a clear thinker’, ‘a sharp observer of life’ and ‘a master of his language and…complex poetic forms’.

A new English version by Gopalkrishna Gandhi Format: B format HB Price: Rs 295 ISBN: 978-93-83064-70-0 Territory: World

‘Kural’, in Tamil, means ‘short’. Each of the Tirukkural’s 1,330 verses holds its meaning tightly, gives its message in something like telegraphese. Often called the universal book of principles, the work is organized into 133 chapters and three books. ‘Book I: Being Good’ is aimed at householders and sets out the principles of leading an ethical life. ‘Book II: Being Politic’ is a manual for rulers and statesmen on the qualities and duties of leaders, aspects of governance, military strategies, and methods to acquire wealth honestly. ‘Book III: Being in Love’ is a poetic exposition on love. It is presented from the points of view of both the man and the woman in different situations—from the moment of falling in love, through the pain of separation to the joy of reconciliation.

Talking about our classics, the philosopher and statesman Dr S. Radhakrishnan said as they ‘constitute the essential spirit of our culture, are a part of our very being, they should receive changing expression according to the needs and conditions of [a particular] time.’ Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s retelling of the Kural, in keeping with that philosophy, showcases the great beauty and wisdom of Tiruvalluvar’s masterpiece for the twenty-first-century reader.

Backlist

157

A Suitable Boy VIKRAM SETH

ABOUT US

Format: Royal PB Price: Rs 999 ISBN: 978-93-83064-12-0 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Aleph Book Company is an independent publishing company founded in May 2011 by David Davidar in partnership with R. K. Mehra and Kapish Mehra of Rupa Publications India.

Summer Requiem VIKRAM SETH

Aleph publishes approximately forty books a year—mainly in the following subject areas: literary fiction, history, biography, memoir, narrative non-fiction, reportage, travel, current events, music, art, science, politics, nature, religion, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and business. For further information on how to submit your manuscript and where to buy our books please visit our website www.alephbookcompany.com.

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The Bhagavad Gita VYASA

Translated by Winthrop Sargeant Format: B format PB Price: Rs 299 ISBN: 978-93-83064-15-1 Territory: Indian subcontinent

Everything we do owes much to the efforts of the team of professionals who make the firm what it is. The founders and directors of Aleph Book Company would like to gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the following colleagues who are instrumental in editing, designing, marketing, distributing, and providing administrative support to the books on the company’s list. In alphabetical order they are: A. K. Singh (and his team members and all the Rupa sales managers and executives), Aienla Ozukum, Amit Bhattacharya, Bena Sareen, Dibakar Ghosh, Melody Banee, Neeraj Gulati (and his team members, Amar Srivastava, Neha Vats and Rita Satyawali), P. K. Sharma, Pujitha Krishnan, Raj Kumari John, Sanskrita Bharadwaj, Simar Puneet, S. P. Singh Rawat (and his team), and Vasundhara Raj Baigra (and her team members, Geetu Martolia, Rizwan Khan, Rupsha Ghosh and Shorya Bhutani).

The Book of Aleph: Volume Six was designed by Bena Sareen.

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The Book of Aleph

© Prashant Sareen