Category: Recommendations

There’s no better time than right now to sit down and curl up with a few good books and a steaming cup of tea by your side. Why not take a look at these versatile new reads coming up this July?

Bad Man

Growing up on the fringes of our capital city, Gulshan Grover moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting in the 1970s. At a time when most wannabe actors held out for the lead, he made a conscious choice to opt for villainous roles. He went on to portray many memorable characters, with a career-defining role in the 1989 blockbuster, Ram Lakhan, that established him firmly as the ‘Bad Man’ of Bollywood.

Many a mainstream potboiler of the era rode to success on his trademark one-liners and grotesque get-ups that have become part of Bollywood folklore. He subsequently moved on to the international arena, among the first actors from Mumbai to do so, in the process becoming one of India’s more recognizable faces in international cinema.

In this autobiography, Grover tells his story-the films, the journey, the psychological and personal toll of sustaining the ‘bad man’ image, the competition among Bollywood’s villains, the move to playing more rounded characters, and the challenge of doing international films.

The Rise of Goliath

What can best illustrate India’s journey in the last seven decades? Disruptions.

Almost every decade of India’s history since Independence has been marked by major disruptions.

India became independent through an act of disruption-Partition-that killed millions in communal violence and turned many more into refugees. The turn towards a model of state-led economic development delivered as big a shock to the economy as did the food crisis or the spike in crude oil price. If the Emergency in 1975 shook the foundations of India’s democracy, the unprecedented balance-of-payments crisis of 1990 turned India towards a path of economic reforms. Just as the reservation of jobs for backward castes changed the idiom of India’s politics, the movement for building a temple for Ram drove India closer to becoming a majoritarian state. No less disruptive have been the telecom revolution, the banking crisis, demonetization and the launch of the goods and services tax.

How did these disruptions impact India? How did they influence the rise of this Goliath?

This is the story of twelve disruptions that changed India. The book also provides a peek into the kind of disruptions India could face in the coming years.

September 6, 2019 marks the first anniversary of historic judgement of the Supreme Court of India, decriminalizing homosexuality.  As we celebrate this day of love, we leave you with a bookshelf that will keep you celebrating pride throughout the year

The Carpet Weaver by Nemat Sadat

Described as ‘The Kite Runner’ meets ‘Brokeback Mountain’, Nemat Sadat’s debut novel The Carpet Weaver is published by Penguin in June 2019. Set against Afghanistan in the 70s, Kanishka Nurzada is the son of a carpet seller. He is in love with Maihan, his very first kiss, but he struggles to negotiate his faith with his sexual identity, for the death penalty is meted out to anyone who is kuni. When war breaks, Kanishka and Maihan are in more danger than before.

Shikhandi: And Other Queer Tales They Don’t Tell You by Devdutt Pattanaik

Patriarchy asserts men are superior to women, Feminism clarifies women and men are equal, Queerness questions what constitutes male and female.

Queerness isn’t only modern, Western or sexual, says mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik. Take a close look at the vast written and oral traditions in Hinduism, some over two thousand years old and you will find many overlooked tales, such as those of Shikhandi, who became a man to satisfy her wife; Mahadeva, who became a woman to deliver his devotee’s child; Chudala, who became a man to enlighten her husband; Samavan, who became the wife of his male friend; and many more.

Playful and touching and sometimes disturbing-these stories when compared with their Mesopotamian, Greek, Chinese and Biblical counterparts, reveal the unique Indian way of making sense of queerness.

The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik

‘I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’

Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story.

It is also the story of his mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; of young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; of Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; of Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; of Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and of Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others.

Building on Hinduism’s rich and complex mythology-but driven by a very contemporary sensibility-Devdutt Pattanaik creates a lush and fecund work of fiction in which the lines are continually blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Confronted with such fluidity the reader is drawn into Yuvanashva’s struggle to be fair to all-those here, those there and all those in between.

The Hungry Ghosts by Shyam Selvadurai

In The Hungry Ghosts the sly and selfish ways of a Sri Lankan matriarch parallels with the political clashes in her country. Much to his grandmother’s disappointment, Shivan Rassiah is gay. He is preparing to return to his Colombo home but the night before his departure, Shivan finds himself contemplating upon ghosts which have not left him yet. Shyam Sevadurai writes a novel about race, migration, sexuality and family.

Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar; Translated by Jerry Pinto

Translated by Jerry Pinto, Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue is about a brother and sister who fall in love with a man who is living with them as a paying guest. The comfort and familiarity of the house is broken by this surprising turn of events. The author called the book a “feminine and masculine monologue”.

The Boyfriend by R. Raj Rao

The Boyfriend by R.Raj Rao is one of the first gay novels to come from India.  Yudi is a 40-something gay journalist has a brief sexual encounter with a 19 year-old-boy and leaves him, afraid that the young man might be a hustler. When riots break out, Yudi finds himself worrying about the boy and reunites with him by chance. A story about masculinity, gay subculture, religion and class in India.

A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart spans over a vast period of time. From the 1900s of Raj Bengal, to the 70s and 80s in Calcutta to the 90s in England, this novel is about Ritwik, a twenty-two year old orphaned gay man who flees Calcutta and leaves behind a childhood of abuse for the freedom of England. Ritwik forms a special bond with the 86 year old Anne Cameron and wanders the streets and public toilets of London. Mukherjee’s debut novel won the Writer’s Guild of Great Britain Award.

Eleven Ways to Love: Essays by Various Authors

People have been telling their love stories for thousands of years. It is the greatest common human experience. And yet, love stories coach us to believe that love is selective, somehow, that it can be boxed in and easily defined. This is a collection of eleven remarkable essays that widen the frame of reference: transgender romance; body image issues; race relations; disability; polyamory; class differences; queer love; long distance; caste; loneliness; the single life; the bad boy syndrome . . . and so much more.

Pieced together with a dash of poetry and a whole lot of love, featuring a multiplicity of voices and a cast of unlikely heroes and heroines, this is a book of essays that show us, with empathy, humour and wisdom, that there is no such thing as the love that dare not speak its name.

My Brother’s Name is Jessica by John Boyn

Sam waver has always idolized his big brother, Jason. Unlike Sam, Jason, seems to have life sorted – he’s kind, popular, amazing at football and girls are falling over themselves to date him. But then one evening Jason calls his family together to tell them that he’s been struggling with a secret for a long time. A secret which quickly threatens to tear them all apart. His parents don’t want to know and Sam simply doesn’t understand. Because what do you do when your brother says he’s not your brother at all? That he thinks he’s actually… Your sister?.

Besharam by Priya Alika Elias

Besharam is a book on young Indian women and how to be one, written from the author’s personal experience in several countries. It dissects the many things that were never explained to us and the immense expectations placed on us. It breaks down the taboos around sex and love and dating in a world that’s changing with extraordinary rapidity. It tackles everything, from identity questions like what should our culture mean to us? to who are we supposed to be on social media? Are we entitled to loiter in public spaces like men do? Why do we have so many euphemisms for menstruation? Like an encyclopedia, or a really good big sister, Besharam teaches young Indian women something that they almost never hear: it’s okay to put ourselves first and not feel guilty for it.

Part memoir, part manual, Besharam serves up ambitious feminism for the modern Indian woman.

Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India edited by Ashwini Sukthankar

For decades, most lesbians in India did not know the extent of their presence in the country: networks barely existed and the love they had for other women was a shameful secret to be buried deep within the heart. In Facing the Mirror, Ashwini Sukthankar collected hidden, forgotten, distorted, triumphant stories from across India, revealing the richness and diversity of the lesbian experience for the first time. Going back as far as the 1960s and through the forms of fiction and poetry, essays and personal history, this rare collection mapped a hitherto unknown trajectory.

In celebration of the Supreme Court’s reading down of the draconian Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, this twentieth-anniversary edition, with a foreword by author and activist Shals Mahajan, brings to readers a remarkable history that illuminates the blood and the tears, the beauty and the magic of the queer movement in India. The raw anger and passion in them still alive, the writings in Facing the Mirrorproudly proclaim the courage, the sensuality, the humour and the vulnerability of being lesbian.

Looking for something to read this World Environment Day? We bring you a carefully curated list that would help you become more conscientious about the environment and celebrate nature!

Take a look below:

The Vanishing

The Vanishing takes an unflinching look at the unacknowledged crisis that India’s wildlife faces, bringing to fore the ecocide that the country’s growth story is leaving in its wake—laying to waste its forests, endangering its wildlife, even tigers whose increasing numbers shield the real story of how development projects are tearing their habitat to shreds. It tells us why extinction matters, linking the fate of wildlife to ours. The end of the gharial, an ancient crocodilian, signifies that the clear, fast-flowing rivers that are our lifelines are stilled and poisoned. The author deconstructs the raging human–wildlife conflict to show wild elephants as peaceable creatures and weaves a beautiful tale of their bond with their protectors.

The Hidden Life of Trees

In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific mechanisms behind these wonders, of which we are blissfully unaware.

The Great Derangement

Amitav Ghosh, argues that future generations may well think so. How else can we explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In this groundbreaking return to non-fiction, Ghosh examines our inability-at the level of literature, history and politics-to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence-a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all forms. The Great Derangement serves as a brilliant writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time.

Rage of the River

NDTV journalist Hridayesh Joshi covered the floods in 2013, exposing the government’s apathy and inefficiency. He was the first journalist to reach Kedarnath after the disaster and brought to light the stories from the most remote parts of the state: areas cut off from the rest of the world. Woven into this haunting narrative is also the remarkable history of the ordinary people’s struggle to save the state’s ecology. Rage of the River is a riveting commentary on the socio-environmental landscape of Uttarakhand and is filled with vivid imagery of the calamity.

Cities and Canopies

Native and imported, sacred and ordinary, culinary and floral, favourites of various kings and commoners over the centuries, trees are the most visible signs of nature in cities, fundamentally shaping their identities. Trees are storehouses of the complex origins and histories of city growth, coming as they do from different parts of the world, brought in by various local and colonial rulers. Drawing on extensive research, Cities and Canopies is a book about both the specific and the general aspects of these gentle life-giving creatures.

Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent

Did you know that the exquisite caves of Ellora were hewn from rock formed in the greatest lava floods the world has known-eruptions so enormous that they may well have obliterated dinosaurs? Many such amazing facts and discoveries-from 70-million-year-old crocodile eggs in Mumbai to the nesting ground of dinosaurs near Ahmedabad-are a part of Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent.

Researching across wide-ranging scientific disciplines and travelling with scientists all over the country, biochemist Pranay Lal has woven together the first compelling narrative of India’s deep natural history filled with fierce reptiles, fantastic dinosaurs, gargantuan mammals and amazing plants.

Sacred Plants of India

Before temples were constructed, trees were open-air shrines sheltering the deity, and many were symbolic of the Buddha himself. Sacred Plants of India systematically lays out the sociocultural roots of the various plants found in the Indian subcontinent, while also asserting their ecological importance to our survival. Informative, thought-provoking and meticulously researched, this book draws on mythology and botany and the ancient religious traditions of India to assemble a detailed and fascinating account of India’s flora.

Jungle Trees of Central India: A Field Guide for Tree Spotters

Covering an area larger than France, and including five of India’s mostvisited tiger reserves, the forests of Central India are one of the country’s most iconic wildscapes. Jungle Trees of Central India is a lavishly illustrated and user-friendly field guide to every wild tree you are will see in this entire region. A culmination of four years of research, the book has over 2000 photographs with thumbnail keys to all the bark, flowers, fruit and leaves. An ideal companion for your travels in the region, this book will turn you into an expert tree spotter and take your enjoyment of wild places to another level.

Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide

Pradip Krishen is a nature-lover and in his book Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide, he has made a list of more than 250 species of trees found in Delhi. This book is not only for botanists, because of its simple language can be understood by anyone who is fond of trees. The book gives specific details about each tree like its leaves, flowers and fruits and also tells you the places in Delhi where you can find those trees.On reading Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide you will possess knowledge about each tree you see.

Environmentalism: A Global History

Environmentalism: A Global History documents the flow of ideas across cultures, the ways in which the environmental movement in one country has been invigorated or transformed by infusions from outside. It interprets the different directions taken by different national traditions, and also explains why in certain contexts (such as the former Socialist Bloc) the green movement is marked only by its absence. Massive in scope but pointed in analysis, written with passion and verve, this book presents a comprehensive account of a significant social movement of our times, and will be of wide interest both within and outside the academy.

A Village Awaits Doomsday

In A Village Awaits Doomsday, Jaideep Hardikar brings us the personal stories of ordinary people from across the country displaced and made destitute by innumerable government and private initiatives. Apart from providing vivid accounts of individual experiences, he analyses the reasons why people protest, the laws that governments use to displace them, the existing rehabilitation and resettlement policies, and the latest debates over the land acquisition process. Hardikar’s writing is evocative, the stories haunting and his book timely and important.

The Great Smog of India

Air pollution kills over a million Indians every year, albeit silently. Families are thrown into a spiralling cycle of hospital visits, critically poor health and financial trouble impacting their productivity and ability to participate in the economy.
With clarity and compelling arguments, and with a dash of irony, Siddharth Singh demystifies the issue: where we are, how we got here, and what we can do now. He discusses not only developments in sectors like transport, industry and energy production that silently contribute to air pollution, but also the ‘agricultural shock’ to air quality triggered by crop burning in northern India every winter.

Animal Intimacies

Built on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the mountain villages of India’s Central Himalayas, Radhika Govindrajan’s book explores the number of ways that human and animal interact to cultivate relationships as interconnected, related beings. Whether it is through the study of the affect and ethics of ritual animal sacrifice, analysis of the right-wing political project of cow protection, or examination of villagers’ talk about bears who abduct women and have sex with them, Govindrajan illustrates that multispecies relatedness relies on both difference and ineffable affinity between animals.

 The Shooting Star

Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador.

With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.

Ritusamharam

Perhaps the most lively and exuberant of Kalidasa’s extant works, Ritusamharam is a glorious ode to nature’s bounty and the enduring emotional response it evokes in mankind as a whole.