Download or read book Suralakshmi Villa written by Aruna Chakravarti and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suralakshmi Choudhury, a gynaecologist based in Delhi, falls in love at the age of thirty-one, marries and has a son. Suddenly, five years after his birth, she abandons everything including the house gifted to her by her father and her flourishing medical career, to travel to an obscure village in Bengal and open a free clinic for women and children. She leaves her son behind but takes along a poor Muslim girl, she has adopted. What makes her take this strange decision? Suralakshmi’s actions confound her relatives and it is from their accounts of the incidents, letters, memoirs, and flashbacks – from a more distant past – that the story comes together and the layers and nuances in the enigmatic character of Suralakshmi are brought to light. In Suralakshmi Villa, Aruna Chakravarti blends the narrative of the novel with history, legend, music, religion, folklore, rituals and culinary practices of both Hindus and Muslims, and creates a fascinating tapestry which reveals the syncretic nature of Bengal and her people.

Download or read book Jorasanko written by Aruna Chakravarti and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sensitive portrayal ofthe hopes and fears,triumphs and defeatsexperienced by thewomen of the Tagorehousehold. in a sprawling novel that spans a unique phase in the history of Bengal and India, Aruna Chakravarti provides a fascinating Iaccount of how the Tagore women influenced and were in turn influenced by their illustrious male counterparts, the times they lived in and the family they belonged to. Jorasanko mirrors the hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats that the women of the Tagore household experienced in their intricate interpersonal relationships, as well as the adjustments they were continually called upon to make as daughters and daughters-in-law of one of the most eminent families of the land. 'In her meticulously researched novel, Aruna Chakravarti has successfully re-created for the reader the world inside the Tagore home, at once glittering and fascinating, but also dark and challenging. The women of the Tagore family who are at the heart of this novel are complex beings who will raise many questions in the modern reader regarding the role of women in today's society' - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Palace of Illusions and One Amazing Thing.

Download or read book Daughters of Jorasanko written by Aruna Chakravarti and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2016-10-10 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tagore household is falling apart. Rabindranath cannot shake off the disquiet in his heart. His daughters and daughter-in-law struggle hard to cope with incompatible marriages, ill health and the stigma of childlessness. The extended family of Jorasanko is steeped in debt. Even as Rabindranath copes with his problems, news reaches him that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Will this be a turning point for the man, his family and their much-celebrated home? Daughters of Jorasanko, the sequel to the bestselling Jorasanko, explores the histories of the Tagore women, even as it describes the twilight years in the life of one of the greatest luminaries of our time and the end of an epoch in the history of Bengal.

Download or read book The Inheritors written by Aruna Chakravarti and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2004-08-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ritual-bound household of an orthodox scholar in a small village in Bengal in 1897 to Germany and Mumbai at the turn of the new millennium, The Inheritors follows the shifting life patterns of a family through a melange of narratives, memories and characters. The unrelenting puritanism of Nyayaratna Bishnupada Deb sharma drives his daughter Radharani to insanity and throws into sharp relief his grandson Shibkali’s feeble attempt to break free. Giribala voices her resentment against her circumstances through a lifetime of silence, her destiny finding an echo in her daughter. Alo, tragic victim of her husband’s sexual perversions. And Pramatha’s depraved radicalism is set against Shashishekhar’s progressive outlook which symbolizes the most significant departure from the stifling constraints of his community. Even as it inherits the deadwood of the past, each generation strives to liberate itself, setting the stage for the eternal conflict between tradition and change, between a legacy and its inheritors. Aruna Chakravarti draws upon history and myth, religion and folklore, rituals and culinary practices to create a vivid portrait of a community of Vaidic Kulin Brahmins. The narrative, oscillating back and forth in time, weaves a vibrant tapestry of life – differing ideologies and sensibilities, suicides and desertions, marriages and infidelities, bigotry and liberalism – independence and a society caught on the cusp of conservatism and modernity.

Download or read book Being Gandhi written by Paro Anand and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many times are kids supposed to study Gandhi? Come September and out comes the bald head wig, round glasses, white dhoti, tall stick ... that's about the extent of how today's kids engage with the Mahatma. Chandrashekhar is one such teen. Bored by the annual Gandhi projects, he wonders if his teacher is being too unreasonable in asking them to "BE" Gandhi. And then, his world is shaken by events that rock him to the core, forcing him to dig deep and not just find his 'inner Gandhi', but become Gandhi. Not for a day or two. But, maybe even, for life. This is a novel that explores, not Gandhi the man or his life as a leader, but really the Gandhian way that must remain relevant to us. Especially today when the world is becoming increasingly steeped in violence and hate.

Download or read book A Bengali Lady in England by Krishnabhabini Das 1885 written by Somdatta Mandal and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2015-09-10 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a translation from Bengali to English of the first ever woman’s travel narrative written in the late nineteenth century when India was still under British imperial rule with Bengal as its capital. Krishnabhabini Das (1864–1919) was a middle-class Bengali lady who accompanied her husband on his second visit to England in 1882, where they lived for eight years. Krishnabhabini wrote her narrative in Bengali and the account was published in Calcutta in 1885 as England-e Bongomohila [A Bengali Lady in England]. This anonymous publication had the author’s name written simply as “A Bengali Lady”. It is not a travel narrative per se as Das was also trying to educate fellow Indians about different aspects of British life, such as the English race and their nature, the English lady, English marriage and domestic life, religion and celebration, British labour, and trade. Though Hindu women did not observe the purdah as Muslim women did, they had, until then, remained largely invisible, confined within their homes and away from the public gaze. Their rightful place was within the domestic sphere and it was quite uncommon for a middle-class Indian woman to expose herself to the outside world or participate in activities and debates in the public domain. This self-ordained mission of educating people back home with the ground realities in England is what makes Krishnabhabini’s narrative unique. The narrative offers a brilliant picture of the colonial interface between England and India and shows how women travellers from India to Europe worked to shape feminized personae characterized by conventionality, conservatism and domesticity, even as they imitated a male-dominated tradition of travel and travel writing.

Download or read book My Son s Father written by Dom Moraes and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Tattoo on My Breast written by Ravi Rai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year is 1942 and the province Sindh, where Sadhana, the childish granddaughter of a rich Sindhi grain merchant is getting married to Prakash, when Rehman, the meek, poor boy next door and Sadhana's childhood friend realizes his love for her. On the other hand, Jinnah and Nehru have started displaying their influence on the young and the restless of the yet undivided India, where the several Gurdwara's Sikh flags are replaced with the green flag of Islam and Prakash becomes a fatality in one such crossfire. Barely 15 days into her marriage and Sadhana is a widow. And Rehman is back in her life. But little does she know that her radical Hindu father has fixed her marriage to Sunil, a Sindhi millionaire running his looms in Dhakka, which is soon to become East Pakistan. Sadhana and Rehman plan an escape but destiny plays a cruel role with the breakout of riots and Rehman is once again late in claiming his love. The Radcliffe line has been drawn and has divided India. The lovers had parted painfully. Sadhana, now a nurse, is attending to the injured when she meets Sunil, the man she was slated to marry. His brother, Anil is a doctor at the hospital and has fallen in love with the young nurse. But Sadhana's heart only beats for Rehman. In this hour of difficulty, Sadhana's grandfather plans a sinister conspiracy and poisons Sadhana's mind against Rehman; causing her to marry Anil. And just when connubial happiness begins to set in and Sadhana gets pregnant, Rehman returns for her causing her heart to beat for him once again. What will Dr. Anil, who till now was unaware of their undying love, do when he comes to know of Rehman's presence? Will Sadhana follow her heart or will she bind herself in chains that have always distanced her from her true love? Will Rehman accept a pregnant Sadhana as his soulmate or leave her at the crossroads once again? To know more, read an epic tale of love, passion, emotion, drama and romance set in the times of partition through the eyes of our protagonist...Sadhana

Download or read book The Legend of Kuldhara written by Malathi Ramachandran and published by Niyogi Books. This book was released on 2017-10-06 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kuldhara, a village in the Rajasthan desert, perched at the edge of time. Abandoned, cursed, nearly two hundred years ago, to remain a heap of rubble and stone. It lies dreaming of its vibrant past when the streets echoed with laughter and the fields swayed green and gold. What happened one night that drove its inhabitants from their homes, never to return? Did they flee to preserve their honour, when the covetous gaze of a local lord fell on Pari, the headman’s daughter? Where did they go? How did they survive?

Download or read book SECRET OF THE HIMALAYAN TREASURE written by Mundra Divyansh and published by BecomeShakespeare.com. This book was released on 2019-01-24 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE OLDEST SECRET SOCIETY OF INDIA. THE GREATEST TREASURE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. THE MOST EPIC MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. When the richest man of India confesses to being part of a secret society in a live press conference; chaos ensues. His daughter Aanya Vashishtha takes the help of Aarav Kohrrathi, a brilliant but egoistic treasure hunter and his friend Rehann to solve the mystery of The Ring of the Seven, a society of influential men who are tasked to protect the greatest treasure in history. What starts off as a quest to uncover her father’s secret leads them to something bigger which they themselves couldn’t have fathomed. They take the help from her father’s associate, Shayna Maheshwari, a billionaire banker and someone herself involved with the secret, as they progress towards a treasure hidden somewhere in the Himalayas. They brave bullets, puzzles, deadly chases, cult of assassins, and betrayal as their quest takes them across the length and breadth of South Asia; from the bustling metropolises of Mumbai and Delhi to the ancient temples of Nepal; from the serene beaches of Sri Lanka to the towering mountains of the Himalayas. They try to uncover a set of secret books of lost arts, which are believed to reveal the map of the treasure, and strive to discover the identities of the masters of the Ring of the Seven to solve the penultimate mystery. In a tale of love and loss, logic and emotions, religion and history, action and adventure, and the trial of a few good men against the most powerful organization in the history of mankind. Will they find the secret of the Himalayan treasure?

Download or read book The Deoliwallahs written by Joy Ma and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanly compelling, beautifully told ... brings to light a forgotten chapter of Indian history, one we need to remember in these troubled times' PRATAP BHANU MEHTA '[Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza] have seamlessly woven together historical facts with personal stories about how the Chinese- Indians lost the country of their birth' YIN MARSH The untold account of the internment of 3,000 Chinese-Indians after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Just after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-Indians were sent to languish in a disused World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, marking the beginning of a painful five-year-long internment without resolution. At a time of war with China, these ‘Chinese-looking’ people had fallen prey to government suspicion and paranoia which soon seeped into the public consciousness. This is a page of Indian history that comes wrapped in prejudice and fear, and is today largely forgotten. But over five decades on, survivors of the internment are finally starting to tell their stories. As several Indian communities are once again faced with discrimination, The Deoliwallahs records these untold stories through extensive interviews with seven survivors of the Deoli internment. Through these accounts, the book recovers a crucial chapter in our history, also documenting for the first time how the Chinese came to be in India, how they made this country their home and became a significant community, until the war of 1962 brought on a terrible incarceration, displacement and tragedy.

Download or read book Classic Sunil Gangopadhyay written by Sunil Gangopadhyay and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 2008 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This special omnibus edition brings together the three great historical novels Sunil Gangopadhyay wrote. The Bengal Renaissance forms the backdrop to the Sahitya Akademi Award-winning Those Days, in which a feudal aristocracy awakens to its social obligations. In its sequel First Light, a turn-of-the-century Bengal, led by Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda, awakens to a new, modern sensibility. And in The Lonely Emperor, the story of India’s greatest professional stage actor Sisir Bhaduri, the past gives way to the present as the country gains independence. Those Days (Sei Somoy), First Light (Prothom Alo), The Lonely Emperor (Nisshongo Samrat) Translated by Aruna Chakravarti and Sreejata Guha

Download or read book First Light written by Sunil Gangopadhyay and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2000-12-01 with total page 995 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sequel to the award-winning and critically-acclaimed Those Days, First Light is a magnificent novel set at the turn of the twentieth century in a Bengal where the old and young India are jostling for space. Prominent among its many characters are Rabindranath Tagore or Robi, the young, dreamy poet, torn between his art and the love for his beautiful, ethereal sister-in-law, Kadambari Devi, and the handsome, dynamic Naren Datta, later to become Swami Vivekananda, who abandons his Brahmo Samaj leanings and surrenders himself completely to his Guru, Sri Ramakrishna. The story also touches upon the lives of the men and women rising to the call of nationalism; the doctors and scientists determined to pull their land out of the morass of superstition and blind beliefs, and the growing theatre movement of Bengal, with its brilliant actors and actresses who leave behind the squalor of their lives every night to deliver lines breathtaking in their beauty. Through all this runs the story of Bharat and Bhumisuta - one an illegitimate prince, the other a slave who rises to become the finest actress of her age - who cling to their self-respect and love in a society which has little time for people like them. Grand in its scale and crackling with the energy of its prose, First Light is a rich and comprehensive portrait of Bengal, from its sleepy, slow-changing villages to the bustling city of Calcutta where the genteel and the grotesque live together. Equally, it is a chronicle of a whole nation waking up to a new, modern sensibility.

Download or read book Primal Woman Stories written by Sunil Gangopadhyay and published by HarperPerennial. This book was released on 2014-10-17 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the East India Company sells one of its village bungalows to a Bengali aristocrat, the erstwhile manager, Hamilton sahib, finds himself homeless in his adopted country. A mother leaves her house and her notions of chastity in order to feed her children. A Muslim woman fights for her right to be identified as herself - not by her caste, religion or husband's name. One of the most powerful writers of his time, Sunil Gangopadhyay traces the dreams of a generation of men and women, through the forgotten bylanes of Calcutta, past the canal that flows next to the newly built VIP Road, across the broken bridge to the village of Chitalmari, and further back in time, to the mysterious cave where the Buddha's shadow still appears, and to the Primal Woman, who preceded Eve as Adam's lover but had to pay a huge price for asking to be treated as Adam's equal. Within these pages, you will read about the desperation that drives human actions, the struggle to cull one's sense of self and the unending search for faith. Translated with rare feeling and felicity by Aruna Chakravarti, one of India's finest translators, these fifteen stories explore a startling range of ideas that showcase the master storyteller at his finest.

Download or read book Ruth Prawer Jhabvala written by Aruna Chakravarti and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cuckold written by Kiran Nagarkar and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The time is early 16th century. The Rajput kingdom of Mewar is at the height of its power. It is locked in war with the Sultanates of Delhi, Gujarat and Malwa. But there is another deadly battle being waged within Mewar itself. who will inherit the throne after the death of the Maharana? The course of history, not just of Mewar but of the whole of India, is about to be changed forever.At the centre of Cuckold is the narrator, heir apparent of Mewar, who questions the codes, conventions and underlying assumptions of the feudal world of which he is a part, a world in which political and personal conduct are dictated by values of courage, valour and courtesy; and death is preferable to dishonour.A quintessentially Indian story, Cuckold has an immediacy and appeal that are truely universal.

Download or read book A God at the Door written by Tishani Doshi and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We are homesick everywhere,” writes Tishani Doshi, “even when we’re home.” With aching empathy, righteous anger, and rebellious humor, A God at the Door calls on the extraordinary minutiae of nature and humanity to redefine belonging and unveil injustice. In an era of pandemic lockdown and brutal politics, these poems make vital space for what must come next—the return of wonder and free movement, and a profound sense of connection to what matters most. From a microscopic cell to flightless birds, to a sumo wrestler and the tree of life, Doshi interrupts the news cycle to pause in grief or delight, to restore power to language. A God at the Doorinvites the reader on a pilgrimage—one that leads us back to the sacred temple of ourselves. This is an exquisite, generous collection from a poet at the peak of her powers.