Download or read book Vitrashna written by Anurag Saxena and published by FROG BOOKS. This book was released on 2012-12 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Girl Like Me written by Swati Kaushal and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2008 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Find Out More About: A Girl Like Me Here Recently Transplanted From The Quiet, Green Suburbs Of Minnesota To The Bustling Concrete Jungle That Is Gurgaon, Sixteen-Year-Old Anisha Rai Is Determined Not To Take To The New Place She Must Call Home. While Her Irrepressible Mom, Isha, Thrives On The Crazy Juggling Between A Hotshot Job And Their New Home, Annie&Mdash;Desperately Clutching On To Memories Of Her Father Whom She Lost Three Years Ago&Mdash;Plods Through Each Day With As Little Enthusiasm As She Can. But It&Rsquo;S Not Going To Work, Is It? Not When She&Rsquo;S Discovered That Her Goofy Childhood Friend Keds Has Transformed Into Quite A Dude And Still Remembers Their First Kiss; That She&Rsquo;S Been Severely Infected By Her Quirky Classmates&Rsquo; Zest For Everything Fun Despite Utmost Resistance; That The H-O-T-T College-Going Theatre Enthusiast Kunal Wants To Teach Her A Lot More Than Drama . . . And When Her Deceptively Unassuming Neighbours Reveal Hidden Agendas, Annie&Rsquo;S Life Suddenly Becomes Hotter To Handle Than She Could Ever Have Imagined. Deftly Weaving Through Home And School And The Secret Places In Annie&Rsquo;S World, A Girl Like Me Is An Unforgettable Story, Crackling At Every Turn With The Heartbreak And Promise&Mdash;And The Breathless Exuberance&Mdash;Of Teenage Life. &Lsquo;Read The Opening Chapter Of A Girl Like Me Below&Rsquo; New Delhi. It Has Changed Since I Saw It Last, It Has Thickened, Blackened, Erupted Like A Pollinating Pod. The Straight, Sparse Lines That Used To Make Up The Contours In The Distance Are Gone. They Are Shattered Into Fragments, Twisted Into Flyovers, Contorted Into High-Rises, Billboards, Pounding Masses Of People. The Buildings Are Taller And Leaner, The Slums Have Gained Weight, The Colours Are Vivid Whirls And Splatters, Grimier And Shinier All At Once. It Comes At Me With A New Snarl And An Old Odour, This Old New City, It Pelts Me With Its Heat, It Lashes Across My Face; It Makes Me Dizzy. I Close My Eyes Against The Burning Yellows And Blinding Reds Outside My Taxi Window, Settle Back Against The Burning Vinyl Seat. My Mind Pulls Up The Soothing Greys And Whites Of The Winter Backyard. It Used To Be Bald, The Winter Backyard. A Birch, A Pine, A Few Skinny Ashes; A Single Dutch Elm That Spread Its Filigreed Wings Over The Peeling Deck, The Sunlight Shards Of Silver Pierced Through Its Bony Branches. When The Breeze Blew You Saw Stars Dance. And On The Ground, The Endless Snow. It Covered Everything; It Looked Soft And Fluffy As A Comforter Filled With Down, Like You Could Lie Right Down And Pull It Over Yourself And Disappear Underneath Its Soft White Folds And Dream Soft White Dreams. And All Around The Shrunken Skeletons Of Bushes That Promised To Keep A Quiet Vigil; The Icicles Hanging From Their Arms That Promised To Keep The Soft White Cold Pinned Down Around You. It Had Been Quiet, The Backyard In Winter. So Quiet That If You Looked Straight Up You Could Hear The Sounds Of The Universe. The Explosions On Jupiter And The Storms On Saturn And The Thin Slivers Of Mythical Ice That You Imagined Froze Ever Harder On Mars. You Could Hear The Crash Of Meteors And The Flares On The Sun And The Birthing Pains Of Planets In Galaxies Far, Far Away. Time Was A Tease On The Backyard In Winter. At Night, If You Were Alone, It Would Run Amok. You&Rsquo;D Be Staring Out At The Quiet Nothingness And Suddenly, Like A Drunken Diva, It Would Step Right Out Of Its Clothes And Go Skinny-Dipping In The Cold Night Air. It Would Fling Out Its Arms And Turn Cartwheels On The Snow, It Would Dance Backwards And Forwards And Round And Round And Take You Spinning Along With It. And Then, Just As Suddenly, It Would Spit You Out And Leave You Cold. Oh, The Backyard Had Been Cold. So Cold. A Sweet Chill Descended From The North Pole Every Winter And Froze In Ice Every Ache, Every Lingering Pain. Frosty-Faced, Fur-Hooded, Shovelling And Salting Your Driveway You Didn&Rsquo;T Notice For A While&Mdash;Not Till The Mountains Of Snow Ran Runny, Not Till The New Squirrels And Goslings And Chipmunks Took Over The Yard, The Loons The Lake&Mdash;That Some Essential Part Of You Was Missing. That Spring Paw Prints Could Spring Tears In Your Eyes. I Open My Eyes Against The Smart Of Fresh Ones. Before Me Is The Frayed Collar Of The Taxi Driver. It Is Crumpled, Sagging, Ringed With Sweat. Above It A Brown Neck Rises Dark And Lined, Like The Solid Trunk Of A Sturdy Tree. Like Dad&Rsquo;S Used To Be. He&Rsquo;D Been Tone Deaf And Loud-Voiced And Prone To Singing, My Dad. His Was The First Voice I Heard When I Woke Up Every Morning. Good Morning, Ani-Bunny . . . Annie, Dad! My Name&Rsquo;S Annie! Funny Ani, How You Kill Me, Aha, Sunny Ani! He&Rsquo;D Sing It To The Abba Song, Butchering Both Lyrics And Melody. I&Rsquo;D Launch My Pillow At Him. He&Rsquo;D Laugh. His Eyebrows&Mdash;So Thick I Could Have Braided Them&Mdash;Would Dance. His Cheeks, Freshly Shaved And Still Stubbly, Would Stretch Wide; His Enormous Elastic Nose Even Wider . . . Ani, Honey! He Used To Swing Me Around On His Wide Back Even When I Wasn&Rsquo;T So Small Any More. Rock-A-Bye-Ani . . .Daddy! Stop! On The Treetop . . . Daa-Ddy!!! We Stopped Missing Him Last Halloween, Ma And I. It Had Been A Whole Year. Ma Dressed Up As An Oompa Loompa In A Leafy Body Suit With A Sack Of Cacao Beans And Went To Her Office Party And Promised To Come Back Drunk. I Gelled My Hair Green And Attached A Ring To My Brow And Went Trick-Or-Treating With Jessica And Jaime. It Was A Hoot. Jessica Drove With The Top Down On The Mustang, Her Witch Hat Awry. Midway Through, It Started To Snow. It Fell In Our Hair And Our Faces And Our Eyes And We Stopped At The Edge Of The Lake To Catch Our Breath And Watched The Chill Rise In Smoky Wisps From Our Lips. We Made Breath Rings In The Frosty Night And Jaime Played With Her Orange Hair And Described The Many Ways In Which Brad Anderson Was A Jerk. There Were Millions. And Then Jessica Spotted A Deer. It Was At The Far Side Of The Lake, Slatted Between The Trees. Its Neck Froze The Instant It Saw Us. For A Moment Its Eyes Flashed Bright In Its Face, Like Embers In Gold. We Stared At It And Held Our Breath. And Then It Ran Away. Oh, It Was A Good, Hard Winter Last Year; The Kind Where The Mercury Drops To Twenty-Two Below And The Hairs In Your Nostrils Stick Together And Everyone Walks Around With A Furry Nordic Halo And It&Rsquo;S Okay If You Never Smile. There Had Been Such Comfort In That Bitter Cold. Everything Had Been, For A Short While, Bearable. And Then In April The Snow Melted And The Layers Came Off. I Missed Him. I Missed His Hands. There Was A Pair Of Hands At The Grocery Store&Mdash;Dark, Broad, Square, With Dried Raisins For Knuckles&Mdash;The New Pakistani Gentleman At The Counter Ringing Up Our Purchases. There Were Dark Whiskers Of Hair On The Backs Of His Fingers, Wiry And Tough And Bristling; Those Hands Came Home With Me Stuck Like Splinters In My Skin. I Looked In The Mirror And Saw Thick Brows, Dad&Rsquo;S Brows, Wide, Knotted, Ropy. I Went At Them With Ma&Rsquo;S Tweezers Till They Were Shreds Of Shoelace Ringed In Smarting Flesh, Above Stinging Eyes. They&Rsquo;D Been So Dark, His Eyes. Black And Shiny, Patent Leather. They Looked At You With A Fierce Love, You Saw Yourself Shine In Them. Even Through The Glasses; When He Had His Glasses. I&Rsquo;D Found Them In The Freezer Once, Stuck To The Frozen Enchiladas. He Loved Those Soggy Enchiladas. He&Rsquo;D Left Them Too Long In The Microwave One Summer And A Wormlike Squiggle Of Sauce Had Squirted On To His Forearm Right Above The Thin Strip Of Pale Skin That Lived Under Hi

Download or read book The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk written by Sudha Murthy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indians believe that you must serve your guests well, for they come to your house in the form of god. This is the exact mentality Sudha Murty’s hosts have when she goes to volunteer in a small village in Odisha. Because of the heavy rain, Murty decides to take shelter in one of the villagers’ hut—already low on supplies, what are the hosts ready to give up in order to serve their guest? Murty delves into the great extent hosts are willing to go to in order to please their guests. Read more to see what Sudha learns about the Indian values.

Download or read book A Free Man A True Story of Life and Death in Delhi written by Aman Sethi and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-10-22 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A deeply moving, funny, and brilliantly written account from one of India’s most original new voices." —Katherine Boo Like Dave Eggers’s Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’s Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage. Mohammed Ashraf studied biology, became a butcher, a tailor, and an electrician’s apprentice; now he is a homeless day laborer in the heart of old Delhi. How did he end up this way? In an astonishing debut, Aman Sethi brings him and his indelible group of friends to life through their adventures and misfortunes in the Old Delhi Railway Station, the harrowing wards of a tuberculosis hospital, an illegal bar made of cardboard and plywood, and into Beggars Court and back onto the streets. In a time of global economic strain, this is an unforgettable evocation of persistence in the face of poverty in one of the world’s largest cities. Sethi recounts Ashraf’s surprising life story with wit, candor, and verve, and A Free Man becomes a moving story of the many ways a man can be free.

Download or read book Theorising Resistance written by Jasbir Jain and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theorising Resistance: Narratives in History and Politics is a collection of essays thematically and logically connected by their focus on the discourse of resistance. Working across disciplines, these essays seek to interpret and trace the subterranean connections between individual behaviour and national histories, between past and present and the abstract ideals of freedom and harmony. Resistance, in itself, is both a moral and an intellectual pursuit, integral alike to the evolution of ideas and to the essence of art; it also happens to be a stance constantly challenged by authoritarian and hegemonic structures, often resulting in censorship, exile, persecution and even silence. Vesting its faith in its own courage of conviction and a sense of integrity, intellectual dissent sets itself the task of awakening the conscience of a community. Some of the questions it sets itself the task of addressing are the ways a writer, both a witness and an interrogator, works with myth and langua

Download or read book The City of Death written by Sarwat Chadda and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A fabulous, action-packed modern take on Indian mythology. I can't wait to read more!" -- Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, on The Savage Fortress Perfect for fans of Roshani Chokshi and Rick Riordan!"A fabulous, action-packed modern take on Indian mythology. I can't wait to read more!" -- Rick Riordan on The Savage FortressMeet Ash Mistry: eighth grader, pretty good video gamer, guy with a massive crush on the beautiful Gemma . . . Oh, and the Eternal Warrior of the death goddess Kali. Just when Ash has settled back into his everyday London life, his friend Parvati arrives with a mission: The evil Lord Savage is plotting to steal the Koh-I-Noor diamond. Ash and Parvati manage to intercept it, but at a terrible price-Gemma's death.Outcast and heartbroken, Ash returns with Parvati to India, where he meets up with old friends and develops new powers. But he's haunted by Gemma and thoughts of revenge. As he hunts Savage all the way to a long-hidden kingdom, Ash must face the prospect that he may no longer be entirely human . . . and his warrior side may lie beyond his control.

Download or read book Dance of Death written by Manna Bahadur and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three stories—one of a demi-god, a Swamiji on trial for murdering his followers, the other, of a young law graduate, racked by nightmares and Fits, and that of a judge whose entire family is threatened because he is presiding on the Swami’s case—come together in strange ways... ...and raise a few questions: Where is the Swami’s wife, the only witness to the case? Why does the young man not respond to treatment? Why does every judge die or leave soon after he takes up the Swamiji’s case? The mystery slowly begins to unravel as the story progresses and out tumbles a shocking tale of horror, black magic and hypnotism...

Download or read book The Wildings written by Nilanjana Roy and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrillingly original story of the adventures of a small band of feral cats in Delhi who communicate by whisker mind-link, and face an unprecedented threat to their tribe's survival; for readers of Life of Pi and Philip Pullman. In the labyrinthine alleys and ruins of Nizamuddin, an old neighbourhood in Delhi, India, lives a small band of cats. Miao, the clan elder, a wise, grave Siamese; Katar, loved by his followers and feared by his enemies; Hulo, the great warrior tom; Beraal, the beautiful queen, swift and deadly when challenged; Southpaw, the kitten whose curiosity can always be counted on to get him into trouble... Unfettered and wild, these and the other members of the tribe fear no one, go where they will, and do as they please. Until one day, a terrified orange-coloured kitten with monsoon green eyes and remarkable powers lands in their midst--the first in a series of extraordinary events that threatens to annihilate them and everything they hold dear. The Wildings is a gorgeous evocation of Delhi, a love paean to cats and a rich, often savage tale of survival and conquering one's fears.

Download or read book Do You Remember written by Sudha Murthy and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Extraordinary stories about ordinary people’s lives Over the years, Sudha Murty has come across some fascinating people whose lives make for interesting stories and have astonishing lessons to reveal. Take Vishnu, who achieves every material success but never knows happiness; or Venkat, who talks so much that he has no time to listen. In other stories, a young girl goes on a train journey that changes her life forever; an impoverished village woman provides bathing water to hundreds of people in a drought-stricken area; a do-gooder ghost decides to teach a disconsolate young man Sanskrit; and in the title story, a woman in a flooded village in Odisha teaches the author a life lesson she will never forget. From the bestselling author of Wise and Otherwise and The Old Man and His God, this is another heart-warming collection of real-life stories that will delight readers of all ages.

Download or read book Scenes from a Writer s Life written by Ruskin Bond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The making of a writer Ruskin Bond's first full-fledged autobiographical book covers his -formative years,' till the age of twenty-one. The world of Anglo-India, with all its conflicting pulls, comes alive as he tells his story. His earliest memoirs are bitter-sweet, and relate to Jamnager where he lives till he is six. The happy hours spent in exploring the Ram Vilas Palace grounds and playing with his younger sister Ellen and the palace children are overshadowed by the acrimonious relation between his parents. Their estrangement while he is still a child leaves him with a life-long sense of insecurity. His unhappiness is exacerbated by the untimely death of his father " his emotional anchor when the author is just ten. Forced to stay with his mother and his stepfather, both of whom are absorbed in their own worlds, he tries to fend off his loneliness through books and the company of a few friends. Left for the most part to himself, the gentle dreamer realizes very early as -a pimply adolescent' his calling as a writer. His first book, The Room on the Roof, materializes in England, the land of his forefathers, where he is sent to make a career for himself. Despite the unexpected success of his novel, which wins a major British literary prize, the author's yearning for India is too powerful to let him remain abroad for long. He returns and begins a writing career which has spanned four decades, and earned him a place in the pantheon of great Indian writers.

Download or read book Street on the Hill written by Anjum Hasan and published by Sahitya Akademi. This book was released on 2006 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Street On The Hill Is A Closely Observed And Highly Textured Narrative About Middle-Class Lives In A Small Town. The Book Starts By Exploring A Childhood That Is Both Starkly Revealed And Yet Persistently Enigmatic. The Later Poems Are About Flight And The Significance Of The ýMuseum Of The Pastý. Inverting The Rootedness Depicted Earlier In The Book, These Poems Celebrate Travel, Love And The Life Of The Senses.

Download or read book The Lamp Is Lit written by Ruskin Bond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autobiographical sketches and stories from India's best-loved writer in English. For over four decades now, by way of innumerable short stories, essays, poems and novels, Ruskin Bond has championed simplicity and quietude in life and in art. This collection of essays and episodes from his journals is, in his own words, "a celebration of my survival as a freelance'. The author's early forays into the literary magazines of the 1950s and '60s are described in the first part of the book, along with some examples of his work at the time. The sections that follow contain extracts from an unpublished travel journal he kept during the '60s, episodes from the highways on which he was a frequent traveller, and vignettes of life in Mussoorie, past and present. With understated humour and compassion, Ruskin Bond records the charming eccentricities of friends and acquaintances (a former princess cheerfully obsessed with death and disaster); the silent miracles of nature ("New moon in a purple sky'); life's little joys (the smell of onions frying) and its fleeting regrets. Nostalgic and heart-warming, full of wisdom and charm, The Lamp is Lit provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of "our very own resident Wordsworth in prose.

Download or read book Mumbai Noir written by Altaf Tyrewala and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the Bombay Communal Riots of 1992 which saw neighbour pitched against neighbour in fierce bouts of internecine violence, came the retaliatory bomb blasts of 1993 and the name change to Mumbai in 1995. Mumbai Noir captures the essence of a city dominated by wealth and the lack of it, where the shadowy aspects of life are never far from the ordinary person. Psychopath Romeos stalk ordinary women, men flirt with death in dance bars and families fall through the cracks of communal living in this phenomenal collection of noir literature.

Download or read book Classic Ruskin Bond written by Ruskin Bond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Ruskin Bond's six novels evoking nostalgia for time gone by This collection of six novels sparkles with the quiet charm and humanity that are the hallmarks of Ruskin Bond's writing. Evoking nostalgia for a time gone by, these poignant chronicles of life in India's hills and small towns describe the hopes and passions that capture young minds and hearts, highlighting the uneasy reconciliation of dreams and destiny. The six novels included in the collection are: The Room on the Roof, Vagrants in the Valley, Delhi Is Not Far, A Flight of Pigeons, The Sensualist, A Handful of Nuts.

Download or read book The King In Exile written by Sudha Shah and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-06-14 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An absorbing read. Exhaustively researched and gracefully written, The King in Exile tells a story of compelling human interest, filled with drama, pathos and tragedy... [It] heralds the arrival of a writer of non-fiction who is both uncommonly talented and exceptionally diligent...One of the great merits of [the book] is that it is completely free of jargon and theorizing. It is in essence a family story, centred on five women whose lives were waylaid by history' - Amitav Ghosh in his blog 'The captivity of Burma's last king and the fall of the Konbaung dynasty: a compelling new account' In 1879, as the king of Burma lay dying, one of his queens schemed for his forty-first son, Thibaw, to supersede his half brothers to the throne. For seven years, King Thibaw and Queen Supayalat ruled from the resplendent, intrigue-infused Golden Palace in Mandalay, where they were treated as demi-gods. After a war against Britain in 1885, their kingdom was lost, and the family exiled to the secluded town of Ratnagiri in British-occupied India. Here they lived, closely guarded, for over thirty-one years. The king's four daughters received almost no education, and their social interaction was restricted mainly to their staff. As the princesses grew, so did their hopes and frustrations. Two of them fell in love with 'highly inappropriate' men. In 1916, the heartbroken king died. Queen Supayalat and her daughters were permitted to return to Rangoon in 1919. In Burma, the old queen regained some of her feisty spirit as visitors came by daily to pay their respects. All the princesses, however, had to make numerous adjustments in a world they had no knowledge of. The impact of the deposition and exile echoed forever in each of their lives, as it did in the lives of their children. Written after years of meticulous research, and richly supplemented with photographs and illustrations, The King in Exile is an engrossing human-interest story of this forgotten but fascinating family.

Download or read book English Heart Hindi Heartland written by Rashmi Sadana and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English Heart, Hindi Heartland examines Delhi’s postcolonial literary world—its institutions, prizes, publishers, writers, and translators, and the cultural geographies of key neighborhoods—in light of colonial histories and the globalization of English. Rashmi Sadana places internationally recognized authors such as Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, and Aravind Adiga in the context of debates within India about the politics of language and alongside other writers, including K. Satchidanandan, Shashi Deshpande, and Geetanjali Shree. Sadana undertakes an ethnographic study of literary culture that probes the connections between place, language, and text in order to show what language comes to stand for in people’s lives. In so doing, she unmasks a social discourse rife with questions of authenticity and cultural politics of inclusion and exclusion. English Heart, Hindi Heartland illustrates how the notion of what is considered to be culturally and linguistically authentic not only obscures larger questions relating to caste, religious, and gender identities, but that the authenticity discourse itself is continually in flux. In order to mediate and extract cultural capital from India’s complex linguistic hierarchies, literary practitioners strategically deploy a fluid set of cultural and political distinctions that Sadana calls "literary nationality." Sadana argues that English, and the way it is positioned among the other Indian languages, does not represent a fixed pole, but rather serves to change political and literary alliances among classes and castes, often in surprising ways.

Download or read book Everything Begins Elsewhere written by Tishani Doshi and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2013-07-08 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Free of the habitual lyricism of Indian writers, [Doshi's] work is austere and beautiful. Her refreshing muscularity gives her a distinct voice, both as a woman and an Indian."—The London Times "A work of a striking, emerging talent, who is prepared to take risks in pursuit of sensual, emotionally engaged and passionate poetry."—Judge's citation, Forward Prize In her second book of poetry—and her American debut—Tishani Doshi returns to the body as a central theme, while extending beyond the corporeal to challenge the more metaphysical borders of space and time. These new poems are powerful meditations born on the joineries of life and death, union and separation, memory and dream, where lovers speak to each other across the centuries and daughters wander into their mothers' childhoods. "After the Rains" After the rains the temple flowers lie like fallen soldiers— dirtied and bloodied pink. I want to get down on bended knee, gather each broken petal to my chest. Out there— where the river meets the ocean's mouth, it would be called the kiss of life, a resuscitation. But here with the world washed clean, it is nothing but a trampling. Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet, journalist, and dancer. She has written for newspapers such as the Guardian, International Herald Tribune, The Hindu Times, and the Financial Times. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury, 2010), has been translated into several languages. She lives in Chennai (Madras), India.