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Category: Specials

When Destiny Rolls Her Dice and Flips Fortunes

Posted on by Penguin India

When the Kingdom of Aum falls under the spell of corrupt forces, all its past glory turns to dust and the land, once lush and fertile, becomes a barren wasteland. It falls upon Saahas, the courageous young General and heir to the throne, to fight the darkness that had shrouded his beloved Aum. But victory eludes Saahas as the play of destiny takes him on a journey both arduous and treacherous.  General Saahas becomes a hunted man and Aum plunges into chaos, submitting meekly to the tyranny of the self-appointed Raja Shunen and the wily Queen Manmaani.

What was this web that Saahas had become entangled in?

Submerged under wave upon wave of dilemmas, Saahas is bewildered by the power of the Saade Saati–the dreaded seven and a half years- yet is determined to find his way towards his destiny.

Gitanjali Murari’s The Crown of the Seven Stars begins with a letter from Destiny which hints at a revelation- ‘And I promise you an enthralling story of one man who dared to fight me, catching me quite unawares, so revealing the truth about these accursed seven and a half years.’

Read on to find out what the period of Saade Saati brings –

The fear of failure

Saade Saati, the dreaded seven and a half years that befall each person at least once in their lifetime, brings with it crushing failure-

‘You fear it, for it results in nothing but failure; failure that eats you from the inside, corroding you, until you wish you were dead. And when you emerge on the other side of it, you weep, not with relief, but because you are quite broken.’

*

There is light at the end of the tunnel

Saade Saati may make the sufferer feel helpless and fearful but it is a finite period which does come to an end and the wheels of fortune turn again. The astrologer Arigotra leaves Saahas with hope for the future but also a reminder of the futility of his battle against Saade Saati –

‘Eight months of it have already passed. Less than seven years remain. Go away, my lord, and only return when the time turns auspicious.’ The dying man’s words smote Saahas with the finality of a hammer. They laid bare his helplessness, making him acutely conscious that the hopes he had cherished on his journey back to Aham were laughably puerile.’

*

The right attitude is key to getting past this play of destiny

Acceptance and patience may help sufferers find value even in a bleak situation. The old priest of Yadoba offers some perspective to Saahas who is consumed with the idea that the period of Saade Saati is ‘fruitless’-

‘But if the soldier were to take a deep breath, calm down and contain his vital energy instead of wasting it by running from pillar to post, he will realize that the Saade Saati, far from being a curse, is a boon. It is the gods telling us to stop and reflect, to know ourselves, learn a new trade perhaps, spend time with the family, study the scriptures. Anything—read, play, evolve.’

*

The learning is in the experience, not in despair

Whatever destiny may have in store for you, the period of Saade Saati can be a learning experience. As Destiny reveals the motive behind this game, a ray of sunshine pierces through clouds of bewilderment-

 ‘You see, I had always planned for Saahas to be king. The Saade Saati, the trials, the tribulations, I had gone to so much trouble to create obstacles for him. Just so he would become the king Aum deserved.’

With destiny rolling her dice at every turn, will Saahas emerge wise and fearless from the maze of the Saade Saati? Would the throne find its rightful heir?

Read Gitanjali Murari’s The Crown of the Seven Stars to find out!

When fundamental rights became a roadblock for Nehru’s Congress

Posted on by Penguin India

The year was 1950. A feeling of euphoria was palpable as, after three years of deliberation, the Constitution of a newly independent India had come into effect. The Nehru-led Congress was ready to hit the ground running till their grand plans came to a screeching halt in the face of an expansively liberal Constitution that stood in the way of nearly every major socio-economic plan in the Congress party’s manifesto. With a judiciary vigorously upholding civil liberties and a press fiercely resisting his attempt to control public discourse, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru created the constitutional architecture for repression and coercion in the form of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

‘Four months after the Constitution’s inauguration, it was becoming increasingly clear that the champions of personal freedom had feet of clay, that beneath the surface of an ostensibly democratic leadership lurked deeply authoritarian instincts.’  writes Tripurdaman Singh as he revisits the Sixteen Stormy Days in 1951 when fundamental rights—the heart and soul of the Constitution- become lacunae in the same Constitution.

Read on to find out how fundamental rights caused grave difficulties for the government in power-

 

                             The right to fight indefinite detention

On 6 February 1950, 28 detainees filed a petition before the Bombay High Court challenging the validity of the Bombay Public Safety Measures Act on the basis of the new Constitution which, under Article 22, made indefinite and open-ended preventive detention, without an advisory board to approve detentions beyond a period of three months, unconstitutional. The unprepared government took the first hit.

‘The detainees were no longer subjects seeking the government’s leniency and clemency; they were free, rights-bearing citizens, newly empowered by the Constitution written in their name, with the ability to knock on the doors of the highest court of the land to demand the liberties guaranteed to them.’  

Front cover of Sixteen Stormy Days
Sixteen Stormy Days || Tripurdaman Singh
                               The furore over right to free speech

Barely three days after the twenty-eight communist detainees were freed by Bombay High Court another battle for Constitutional rights erupted in the Madras province when over 200 communist prisoners, demanding the status of political detainees rather than common criminals, went on strike. The violence that followed accelerated the downward spiral of the government and led to more strikes by other prisoners.

‘The enraged policemen retaliated by locking the 200-odd offenders in a hall with no means of escape and opening fire on them, killing twenty-two people in cold blood and injuring 107 others in a gruesome demonstration of the new republic’s lack of respect for the life and liberty of its citizens.’   

                                The blurred promise of land reform

Land reform had been a major part Congress agenda and Zamindari abolition and land redistribution promised to herald a new phase of equality for a new India. However, even before the constitution came into effect a legal battle began to erode the promise made by Congress. Suits filed by pre-eminent zamindars led the courts to examine the constitutional validity of the entire Management of Estates and Tenures Act.

‘Observing that the drastic and far-reaching restrictions placed on the power of the proprietors to deal with their property with no corresponding compensation left them practically without any rights over their own property, the court held the law to be void ab initio—both before and after the creation of the Constitution.

 The decision came as a bombshell, leaving the Bihar government and its Congress leaders shocked and rattled. The judgment reiterated the judiciary’s commitment to fundamental rights…’

                      The first legal challenge to the idea of reservation

Petitions filed against the discriminatory practice of reservation led courts to examine the issue of admissions being strictly regulated according to set communal proportions, instead of merit, which infringed upon fundamental rights. The violation of both Article 15 (1) of the Constitution of India, which protects citizens from discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth and Article 29 (2) formed the basis of the case. Noted lawyer Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyyar laid bare the glaring issues in the ‘Communal Government Order’ in court-

‘Aiyyar argued that the right granted by Article 29 (2) of the Constitution, which in unequivocal terms prevented any discrimination in the matter of admissions to state or state-aided institutions, was an individual right personally granted to each citizen. It could not be sidestepped by granting restricted community-based opportunities, it was not a right granted to people as members of a particular caste or religion.’

The essential foundations of the Constitution, which Sardar Patel called its ‘idealistic exuberance’, had now become a real, multifold problem for Nehru who, irked by constitutional restraints obstructing his political goals, eventually wrote to his chief ministers-

‘Recent judgments of some High Courts have made us think about our Constitution. Is it adequate in its present form to meet the situation we have to face? We must accept fully the judgments of our superior courts, but if they find that there is a lacuna in the Constitution, then we have to remedy that.’  

Thus began the story of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

 

Did you know these facts about Guru Nanak?

Posted on by Penguin India

The continuing reality of the First Sikh hinges on his historical memory, and though memories return to the past, they are vital to the making of the future. The Sikh community continues to be shaped and strengthened by Guru Nanak’s memories.

We are celebrating some of them by revisiting these facts from his life that you may not have known:

His mother, Tripta, was a pious woman, and his father, Kalyan Chand, worked as an accountant for the local Muslim landlord.

~

He was married to Sulakhni, and they had two sons, Sri Chand (b. 1494) and Lakhmi Das (b. 1497).

~

In his own lifetime, he appointed a successor, who was followed by eight more, culminating with the Tenth Guru, Gobind Singh (1666–1708)

~

The First Sikh’s compositions reveal his familiarity with the idioms and practices of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Yogis and Naths; importantly, they also relay his intention to reach out to a wide audience and relate closely with his diverse contemporaries.

~

His parents named him after their older daughter, Nanaki. When he grew up he went to live with his sister, Nanaki, and her husband, Jairam, in Sultanpur Lodi, to work for a Muslim employer.

Front Cover of The First Sikh
The First Sikh || Nikky Guninder Kaur Singh

In The First Sikh, Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh weaves together the various sources of the story of Guru Nanak with true interdisciplinary finesse—reading the earliest sources with aesthetic, philosophical, historical and textual sensitivity and skill. But important as this work is to the history of Indian spiritual traditions, do not mistake The First Sikh for a mere historical reassessment.

Happy Valentines Day from Your First Love, Books!

Posted on by Penguin India

This Valentine’s Day, love thy neighbour, love thy friend, love this world, because love knows no end.

The day to celebrate love is here, and what better way than to combine your love for books and reading with lines of love from the best writers on the subject?

Here, we bring to you some of the best-loved quotes from some of our best-loved authors. Featuring quotes from new releases – such as The World Between Us by Sara Naveed, Calligraphies of Love by Hassan Massoudy, Dearest George by Alicia Souza, With Love as well as The Little Book of Everything by Ruskin Bond – as well as older books, we’re sure you’ll feel the magic of the day.

The World Between Us by Sara Naveed

‘I was madly, passionately and irrevocably in love with her, and I was ready to do anything to stay close to her.’

Calligraphies of Love by Hassan Massoudy

‘Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would
it be possessed;

For love is sufficient unto love.’

Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) 

Dearest George by Alicia Souza

With Love: A Collection of Letters by Terribly Tiny Tales

‘You sent me a rose for every year we had been together, then asked me to marry you again. It’s annoying how you always one-up me every Valentine’s.’ – To Whoever Reads This by Shruti

The Little Book of Everything by Ruskin Bond

‘No words heal better than the silent company of a friend.’

Love Like That and Other Stories

‘That kiss changed everything for me; it brought about some sort of a chemical, biological change, and I knew I could never be the same person again. The gentle winter breeze changed me, making me forget the girl that I had been, and the kinship that I felt for Rahul, borne out of a constant companionship, had transformed in a matter of mere seconds into love.’ – Thirty Days to Live by Ira Trivedi

Can Love Happen Twice by Ravinder Singh

‘Love, like life, is so insecure. It moves in our lives and occupies its sweet space in our hearts so easily. But it never guarantees that it will stay there forever. Probably that’s why it is so precious.’

I Too Had a Love Story by Ravinder Singh

‘On my computer screen

Gazing at her picture

I found myself falling with the rising heights

Falling in Love with her

Couldn’t resist saying—I love you

The madness added

When the picture said it too’

Love Among the Bookshelves by Ruskin Bond

‘I hereby confess that I am in love with books, and bookshelves are good places to keep them, if not hide them.’

World’s Best Boyfriend by Durjoy Datta

‘That’s the cliché about love. You don’t choose it. It chooses you.’

The Boy Who Loved by Durjoy Datta

‘Unlike then, now we know time’s running out so we don’t hold back on words. We tell each other we love each other more freely, without feeling shy, we hold each other’s hand more tightly, we clutch each other with more authority, exercise more control over each other.’

The Boy with a Broken Heart by Durjoy Datta

‘”You have what no one else did in the family,” I heard Manish Chachu say. “You had the courage to love and be with the person you loved. We are all cowards but not you.”‘

Will You Still Love Me by Ravinder Singh

‘Love will happen again. You have to be open to it. In our times, love followed arranged marriages.’

Love Will Find a Way by Anurag Garg

‘There was confidence in her voice. “I love appreciation. It helps me connect to the source of a person, sometimes even their heart. Like they say, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, so I love to connect with the beholder’s eyes, not the beauty—the source rather than the observation.”‘

The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Vikrant Khanna

‘I always thought love was a game. You got to win it. But love is not a game. Love is sacrifice. Love is letting go. And above all, love is dreaming the impossible, like bringing back a dead man.’

Ninety-Seven Poems

‘And that’s when I learnt that we have types of love.

There’s an
I love pink, I love dogs, I love fries type of love.

An I love books, I love coffee,
I love smiles type of love.

There’s an ‘I love this song’ type of love.
There’s an ‘I’d really love to kill you’ type of love.

And then . . . there’s the different type of love.’

-a different type of love by Jenai Dalal

Half-torn Hearts by Novoneel Chakraborty

‘Rare men give the rarest kind of pain and the rarest kind of pleasure. When you love a rare man like that you are proud to be a woman in a way that is also rare.’

Wish I Could Tell You by Durjoy Datta

‘Karishma said, “I really loved him at one point. I really, really loved him. Sometimes when I look back and think how devoted I was to him, I feel surprised. We are capable of so much more love when we are younger.“‘

She Friend-Zoned My Love by Sudeep Nagarkar

‘Sometimes we expect a lot from others because we are willing to do that much for them.’

The Secrets We Kept by Sudeep Nagarkar

‘Love can make a person do things he would never have contemplated doing before. A boy who couldn’t write an essay for an English examination was writing an apology letter to woo his beloved.’

Love Knows no LOC by Arpit Vageria

‘You showed me that there’s beauty even in the darkness as long as there’s someone who truly loves me. I’m glad to have you in my life. Mere words cannot express how much I love you.’

Something I Never Told You by Shravya Bhinder

‘All I can say to you is that just because of something which happened in the past, do not stop believing in love, do not stop looking for love, do not stop loving . . .’

House of Stars by Keya Ghosh

‘My father keeps telling me that I am too young to even understand what love is. I keep telling him that Romeo was sixteen and Juliet was fourteen. I think grown- ups forget what they were like at our age. They don’t remember that they knew love.’

In My Heart by Nandana Dev Sen

‘“After I came out of your hearts,
did your hearts become small again?”

“No,” said Papa. “When you come out of someone’s heart, a part of you always stays in it, making it even bigger.”‘

Across the Line by Nayanika Mahtani

‘A dull ache throbbed in her heart. A yearning for something that should have been hers to hold and love but which she now knew was not to be. All she felt was an emptiness. A clawing, hollow emptiness. And then, everything went dark.’

Which one will you be picking up this Valentines Day?

Words Do Matter- A History of the Preamble from Conception to Completion

Posted on by Penguin India

Universally regarded as the chief architect of the Constitution, Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s specific role as chairman of the Drafting Committee and his undeniable authorship of the Preamble became blurred in the haze of conflicting theories about how the Preamble came into being. Formally adopted on 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India has been a subject of interest to many but in Ambedkar’s Preamble, Aakash Singh Rathore establishes the presence of Dr. Ambedkar’s thoughts and beliefs in the intellectual origins of the Preamble and its most central concepts.

Rathore writes ‘Stated succinctly, the Preamble trumpets our collective aspirations as a republic; indeed, it articulates the principles that precondition the possibility for our unity as a nation.’

Read on for a peek into the history of how the Preamble acquired its meaning –

 

                   When securing justice implied removal of injustice

Throughout the writings and speeches of Dr. Ambedkar there has been an emphasis on the urgent implementation of policies to instate social justice even more than economic and political justice. When the Preamble was in its nascent stages, many voices raised the need to flesh out the justice clause and debated the inclusion of Nehru’s tripartite formulation of ‘Justice- social, economic and political’, which finally appeared in the Preamble as it was. However, there were no amendments suggested by Dr. Ambedkar to the justice clause even though there was an important underlying difference in his understanding of the concept-

 

‘In an effort to frame the Objectives Resolution, Dr Ambedkar had put forth his own ‘Proposed Preamble’, which although following Nehru in the tripartite division of social, economic and political, gave substantive meaning to the term ‘justice’ by speaking of the removal of inequalities. That is, where Nehru’s text spoke of securing justice, social, economic and political, Dr Ambedkar’s text interpreted ‘securing justice’ to mean removing social, political and economic inequalities.’

 

       When political liberties nudged social freedoms out of the Preamble

While debates swirled around the subject of freedom and liberty, there was a battle for terms to occupy place of pride in the Preamble. Positive freedoms such as thought, expression, belief, faith, worship which featured on Nehru’s list were pitched against other terms of value on Dr. Ambedkar’s list such as speech, religion and the freedom from want and fear. The final list that made its way into the Preamble established the distinction between fundamental rights and Directive Principles of State Policy.

 

‘The main components of economic justice, and many of social justice, were relegated to the Directive Principles as they were considered too controversial for inclusion into other binding sections of the Constitution. Similarly, the more robust, labour related freedoms were dropped from their privileged place in the Preamble. Thankfully, however, most of the terms found a place within the body of the Constitution itself, with some eventually being included as fundamental rights.’

 

                          When the inequality clause was flipped over

The rather concise equality clause remains unchanged from the way it was drafted and added to the Preamble. However, the clause ‘EQUALITY of status and of opportunity…’ is the briefer version of what was proposed in Nehru’s Objectives Resolution. Another turn in the history of this clause was that Dr. Ambedkar had, in fact, proposed an ‘inequality’ clause!

 

‘It may come as some surprise, however, that in Dr Ambedkar’s ‘Proposed Preamble’ from States and Minorities (March 1947), there was not really an ‘equality’ clause at all, at least not a positive one. Instead, there was an ‘inequality’ clause:

(iii) To remove social, political and economic inequality by providing better opportunities to the submerged classes.’

 

When the term ‘fraternity’ brought Gandhian ideas into the constitutional draft

One of the main pillars on which our Preamble stands upright is the ‘fraternity clause’. However, this clause did not feature in any of the preliminary drafts to the Preamble and Constitution of India. Added by Dr. Ambedkar, this clause went on to become the only universally applauded clause in the Constituent Assembly for its inclusion of an aspect of morality amongst mostly legal and constitutional principles.

 

‘On 6 February 1948, the clause first read: Fraternity, assuring the dignity of every individual without distinction of caste or creed.

This is purely the Ambedkarian formulation of fraternity, quite in line with the history of Dr Ambedkar’s articulation of the concept in his own writings, dating back to the 1930s… It drew upon fraternity as a resource for upholding individual dignity, which remains perpetually degraded due to the distinctions of caste.’

The terms ‘JUSTICE, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY, Dignity and Nation’ contain layers of meaning and form the basis of the progressive and liberal values espoused by the Preamble.

‘It is these six words that allow us to hack into the DNA of Dr Ambedkar’s preamble, gaining access to many of its secrets.’  establishes Rathore as he takes us back into the intense debates and discussions within the Constituent Assembly and the Drafting Committee that decided the final inclusions in the Preamble.

To know more about the journey of the soul of India’s Constitution, read Ambedkar’s Preamble!

 

Writing a Superhero(ine) Novel

Posted on by Penguin India
By Rajorshi Chakraborti

About two years ago, I found I wanted to write a superhero novel!

I was no doubt influenced by the wave of superhero movies and shows that has been such a dominant trend this past decade. I’m susceptible to influences of that sort: my wife points out that if a character picks up a glass of whisky in a show we’re watching, I often pause it and announce I feel like one too.

 

But then I encountered resistance, from within! The (mostly) realist writer inside me, who had been looking at the world in certain ways over the past six books, couldn’t so easily make the switch to all-conquering superheroes. So, with some regret, I realised my heroes wouldn’t be all-conquering, that the structures and systems they would battle would be enormously powerful, more entrenched and multifarious than any individual baddie. I also understood, without any regret, that this book – like several others of mine – would take place in locations I knew well rather than anywhere fantastical, beginning with my home city of Calcutta, and in a time period that I genuinely wanted to explore – the present political moment in India.

This is how Shakti was conceived – as a coming together of a part of me that wanted to experience for the first time the boundlessness of unleashing magic and superpowers in a story, and the part held down by gravity, by the boundaries of the plausible and the ‘real’. So, my challenge became – could the book be both? Could Shakti be read and experienced as a gripping ‘supernatural’ mystery thriller, and also work (hopefully) as a complex evocation of what it feels like for a range of different characters to be living in India now – in the India being remade at all levels by the many stunning transformations of the past few years?

 

Of course, I had models, the most incredible, inspiring models. From the great fables, fairy tales and myths that I most adored, to the Ramayana, the Arabian Nights and the Mahabharata, to modern works such as Midnight’s Children, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, The Handmaid’s Tale, and One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as sci-fi, horror, ghost stories and some of the more memorable superhero narratives, magical, non-realist elements have been used throughout literary history to shed new, unique light upon the real. In these unsurpassable works, and this was my hope as well on a far humbler scale, a few fantastic ingredients act as keys that allow the writer, and readers, access to richer, deeper, more breath-taking and soul-stirring apprehensions of the actual. How do certain extraordinary experiences feel to people in their impact and their unreality? How might any of us respond if one or other impossible-seeming thing became true tomorrow? What if you found yourself trapped in a body or a society that rendered you completely powerless (as in The Metamorphosis and The Handmaid’s Tale respectively, or perhaps under the regulations of the NRC)? What if all the forests around your town were burning and the sky was an unremitting red (which is true of several places in Victoria, Australia as I write)? What if you were granted powers that ​promised to​ realise your deepest longings, but they came at a terrible, soul-destroying price (the premise of Shakti)?

 

At the very start, I knew my principal protagonists would be women. It was an instinctive decision that only felt more right when I reflected upon it. First, I hadn’t written a novel before that was entirely narrated by and centred on women protagonists, which seemed like something imaginatively overdue to attempt. But also, when I thought about the most challenging circumstances into which I could plunge my would-be superheroes – to see what would remain, or emerge, of their humanity and heroism – the journeys of several women characters from different backgrounds in an Indian setting offered an incredible range of possibilities. Speaking as a male writer, I await eagerly reactions from readers to this crucial aspect of the book, to the experiences and histories of Arati, Jaya, Malti and Shivani, my principal characters, and whether they feel true and moving to you.

 

Before concluding, I’ll confess something I’ve felt ever since I completed Shakti, that – proud as I remain of all my other books and the things each one tries to do – it is this novel I have been building up my entire career to write. The one in which I’ve tried to do the most; the one packed with the ingredients I most love. ​The one whose title I was pleased to an embarrassing extent to notice one day had been hidden in my name all along – RAJORSHI CHAKRABORTI – as if waiting for me to arrive at it. ​

 

There’s always the temptation when using magic in a narrative to make wishes come true – the writer’s as much as a reader’s – of happy endings and fulfilled dreams. I love many such tales myself​; note my showing off how Shakti is ​’concealed’ in my ​​name! I wish one existed that we could all believe in about our present age. For its protagonists too, Shakti dangles precisely such a vision of the future, before reveal​ing​ itself ​to​ ​be ​the other kind of magic story – that involves wicked masters,​ binding conditions, crimes and servitude, and offers no way back. The kind that throws up moral crises no superhero cannot overcome by their powers alone. Collective crises, in the case of Shakti, which no hero can overcome alone.

 

Here’s what I hope for my book, beyond the wish that people will really enjoy it. That, in a very small way, it’ll offer ​a recognisable reflection of some of the crises millions of ordinary citizens in India – and in other countries around the world that are experiencing comparable political moments – are currently heroically fighting.

 

Who are the Janamsakhis?

Posted on by Penguin India

History is telling and re-telling of stories by one generation to the next in the form of illustrations, written texts and verbal narrations. Janamsakhis are the birth (janam) and life stories (sakhis) of First Sikh – Guru Nanak. While the earliest of the existing Janamsakhi – Bala, (dated 1658) is a compilation of 29 illustrations, the B-40 Janamsakhi (dated 1733) is considered to be the most significant for its nuanced and detailed depiction through 56 illustrations.

The narratives in all Janamsakhis are linearly portrayed from birth till death but vary across time, region, and artist. Through detailed study of Janamsakhis, the author of The First Sikh attempts to convey the central meaning of these stories, that is that, “the First Sikh reaching out to people across religions, cultures, professions and societal hegemonies, and embracing them in his profound spirituality”.

Here are the most important lessons that we gain to learn five and a half centuries hence.

*
Greatness lies in our deeds

The portrayal of the First Sikh in the form of an ordinary human being, without a halo, validates his temporal and historical presence in our world. The Janamsakhis present a natural progression of the First Guru as a baby boy to a bearded middle-aged man into a grey bearded old man.

“Rather than any exaggeration of external features and spacing, what spectacularly emerges is the Guru’s inner power and spirituality. In the early illustrations he is not depicted with even a halo. Yet, the First Sikh’s simple pose, whether standing, sitting or lying down, and his gentle gestures addressing people from various strata of society and personal orientation spell out his greatness.”

*
Imbibing a pluralist approach

Various illustrations in Janamsakhis indicate the First Guru’s acceptance of beliefs and practices of different culture, both in his gestures and physical appearance.

“The illustrator of the early B-40 Janamsakhi accomplishes it by utilizing disparate motifs of the tilak and the seli: Guru Nanak almost always has a vertical red tilak mark on his forehead, just as he has a woollen cord, seli, slung across his left shoulder coming down to his right waist.” … “Evidently, the bright red line between the Guru’s dark eyes or the dark semicircle sinuously clinging his yellow robe go beyond art for art’s sake attractiveness: the tilak is saturated with the holiness of the Vaishnava Hindus; the seli with the devotion of the Muslim Sufis.”

“In almost all of his adult images Guru Nanak in the B-40 has in his hand a simple circle of beads on a string, ending in a tassel…” “Thought to have originated in Hindu practice, the ‘rosary’ is a widespread and enduring article used for meditation and prayer by Buddhists, Muslims and Christians alike.”

*
Rejecting divisive cultural and political beliefs

The Janamsakhis elucidate the First Guru’s firm belief in equality and dismantling cultural practices that divide the community on the basis of caste, religion, and profession. A sharp and effective rendition of one those incidents is when young Nanak refuses to “participate in the upanyana ceremony, reserved for upper-caste Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya boys” and questions the priest who proceeds towards him with a sacred thread (janaeu). He retorts,

“‘Such a thread,’ continues Nanak, ‘will neither snap nor soil, neither get burnt nor lost.’ His biography and verse are thus blended together by the Janamsakhi authors to illustrate his rejection of an exclusive rite of passage antithetical to the natural growth of boys from all backgrounds alike. A young Nanak interrupts a smooth ceremony in front of a large gathering in his father’s house so that his contemporaries would envision a different type of ‘thread’, a different ritual, a whole different ideal than the rebirth of upper-caste Hindu boys into the patriarchal world of knowledge. That everyone treat one another equally every day is the subtext.”

*
Living a truthful life

The Janamsakhis vividly and repeatedly portray the quintessential message of taking responsibility of our actions and performing our worldly duties in the society.

“Coming across some Pandits offering waters to the rising sun, the Guru begins to sprinkle palmfuls of water in the westward direction. When asked about his contradictory act, he simply responds that he is watering his fields down the road. This tiny story raises a loaded question: Is taking care of crops and other honest work any less than feeding distant dead ancestors? He draws the attention of his contemporaries to matters of living a collective responsible moral life. Whatever the setting, he conveys the futility of rituals and highlights truthful living midst family and society on a daily basis.”

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Engaging in community service

After his spiritual transition, when Guru Nanak reappears in river Bein after 3 days of immersion, he travels far and wide with Bhai Bala and Bhai Mardana to disseminate the importance of community service.

“As he reincorporates into society, ‘antistructure’ becomes the mode of existence. The earliest Sikh community that developed with Guru Nanak at Kartarpur fits in with the cultural anthropologist Victor Turner’s description of ‘antistructure’ because the neat horizontal divisions and vertical hierarchies of society were broken down.” … “The three important socio-religious institutions of Sikhism: seva (voluntary service), langar (community meal) and sangat (congregation) evolve in which men and women formerly from different castes, classes and religions take equal part.”

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Nurturing our body and participating in the natural, social and cosmic process

The Janamsakhis depict the extensive dialogue between Guru Nanak and the various ascetics. It comprehensively displays the conflict between Nanak’s belief in accepting and nurturing our body and the Naths’ ideals of “smearing ash on their bodies as a symbol of their renunciation”. Artist Alam presents an incident in B-40 Janamsakhi where,

“We see Guru Nanak climbing up a mountain where a conclave of Nath yogis is sitting (#20 in the B-40). The artist paints them with their backs against the world. Some have smeared. Their shaved heads, lengthened earlobes and long earrings (kan-phat, ‘ear split’) signal their rigorous hatha yoga practices and ascetic ideals.” … “Guru Nanak’s pictures with the various ascetic groups resonate with scriptural verses: rather than ‘smear the bodies with ashes, renounce clothes and go naked—tani bhasam lagai bastar chodhi tani naganu bhaia’ (GGS: 1127), we must ‘wear the outfit of divine honour and never go naked—painana rakhi pati parmesur phir nage nahi thivana’ (GGS: 1019).”

Pick your copy of The First Sikh to learn how the Janamsakhis gather meaningful incidences that are essential for the unity and continuity of the Sikh community.

Heartbreaking Lines from Layla and Tanya’s Story

Posted on by Penguin India

A richly atmospheric, deeply claustrophobic story with a stunning denouement, of two women confronting the everyday realities of their city and country, So All is Peace by Vandana Singhal provides an unflinching insight into love, lust, fear, grief, and the decisions we make, through a cast of sharply drawn characters brought together by an unspoken wrong.

Here are some powerful but heartbreaking lines that stayed with us long after we had turned the last page:

‘…it made me have an epiphany that that is how my life was going to be; its beauty forever marred by ache, its moments of ecstasy shadowed by agony. I was wrong of course. My moments of happiness reached a point and snapped off. Just like that. Never presaged and never returned.’

*

‘That’s Tanya. She was always beautiful, always a better person, always by my side to make me stronger… But when I begin speaking again, the words stumble and lose direction and fall out as droplets of water. Ok. Perhaps I am not ready to speak yet. In time, but not quite just yet. Or perhaps never.’

*

‘All I feel is pain. Unmitigated, unending pain. Like a loud horrible keeeeeeeee of a faulty microphone inside my head. And cold. I am always so cold that I seem to be discovering new parts of my body that are developing little icicles inside them.’

*

‘His restlessness despite his otherwise structured life as a successful award-winning journalist probably comes from the complete lack of emotional support that he received from his parents throughout his life and although it feels a little juvenile and unfair as a thirty-seven year old man to still attribute his lack of emotional depth to his parents, what is undeniable is that they could be from another planet for how much he understood them or how much they have ever understood him.’

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‘It is difficult to feel unique when there is another person who looks exactly like you, mirroring your every expression, replicating your every action, even if the replicator is as good looking as Layla often is.’

*

‘The spaces for women have been systematically, methodically truncated. Not by any dictate. That would be too obvious…No, there no boards saying ‘Women not Allowed’. But open a map of Delhi and there they are. The many, many places where no woman can go and the many, many more places where no woman can go after sundown. A temporal and areal-shrinking of their boundaries.’

Full of memorable characters and poignant scenes So All is Peace is a crucial commentary on the emotional realities and heartbreaks faced by women in today’s cities.

The Evolution of the Hotel Industry in India

Posted on by Penguin India

India stands unmatched with its rich culture and tradition in hospitality, which millions of international and local travelers have experienced over the years.  Today’s travelers know what they want and are seekers of authentic, immersive experiences. Hotels are at the center of it all.

The Indian hotel industry, however, has shifted enormously over the years. Read on to know more about its tumultuous history and evolution.

Relying on Relatives

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Indian traveler did not have a decent room to stay in. The only hotels were either poky places with poor hygiene or grand five-stars run by the likes of the Taj or the Oberoi, which were unaffordable. So, there was nowhere decent and affordable for the large middle-class of this country. As a result, most travelers opted to stay with families and friends or in state-run tourist homes.

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What’s a Brand?

Till the early 1990s, the structure of India’s hotel industry was fairly straightforward. There was an owner, there was a manager and the brand. But in the majority of cases, the hotel owner simply ran the hotel without a brand.

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Post- Liberalisation

The Indian economy opened up in 1991, leading to high economic growth in the country all through the 1990s and the noughties. Breaking out of the shackles of socialism, India introduced policies that were market and services-oriented and this led to a boom of seeing good midmarket hotels that offered some of the frills of the five stars.

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Retaining the Throne

The badshahs of Indian hospitality, the Taj, the ITC and the Oberoi—often called the Big Three—have dominated the landscape for decades, with the over-100-year-old Taj having a significant market share in the branded-hotel segment. The Taj and Oberoi are iconic global brands, but their names no longer command the premium and undying loyalty they once did. Instead, post-2000, each of these players has had to work hard to stay relevant in a world where the customer has plenty of choice and is fickle.

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The Global Goliaths

They came, they saw, they failed to conquer—that was in the 1960s, and then again in the 1970s and 1980s. But if anything, international chains have been persistent in their attempts to occupy the Indian market. And eventually, most of them managed to crack the code. The entry of the international chains has been a really important turning point for Indian hospitality because while the complexity of the Indian market may have challenged them initially, once they got their bearings right, they brought in some important ingredients—discipline, efficiency, transparency and strong processes—to the sector.

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Lease, not Own

Today, there are five-and-a-half hotel models—OLMFD (Owned, Leased, Managed, Franchised or Distributed). Many hotels are actually not owned but leased for ninety-nine years or less. When they enter into these leases, people assume the lease will be extended for eternity but that’s not the case as seen with the Taj Mahal Hotel on Mansingh Road in New Delhi.

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The New Brigade

Entrepreneurs with no background in hospitality have jumped into the fray as they think there is a gap that the veteran players have not addressed. These include Ritesh Agarwal of OYO, Gaurav Jain of Aamod, Aditi Balbir of V Resorts, and Prashant Aroor of Intellistay. This new breed of hoteliers has the chutzpah and confidence to venture into this turf and the good news is that they have backing from venture capital and private equity players.

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The Digital Disrupters

Online travel agents such as Make My Trip, Clear Trip, Yatra and Booking.com that blazed into the digital landscape completely disrupted the hotel industry. They changed the way people chose hotels and booked and created a level playing field for unknown hotels that had no distribution muscle. Thanks to them, a small single-hotel company can now get 100 per cent occupancy while hotel chains with deep distribution networks may struggle to fill up rooms.

  • In From Oberoi to Oyo, Chitra Narayanan chronicles the origins of India’s hospitality industry and its transformation, and even crystal-gazes into what the future holds. Grab your copy of the book today to know more!

Novoneel Chakraborty on his Inspiration,Characters & More

Posted on by Penguin India

Novoneel Chakraborty is the bestselling author of fourteen bestselling thriller novels and one short story collection titled Cheaters. Known for his twists, dark plots and strong female protagonists, Novoneel Chakraborty is also called the Sidney Sheldon of India by his readers.

His latest book, Roses Are Blood Red is sure to excite his fans! Here Novoneel answers some of your burning questions:

What inspired you to write Roses Are Blood Red?

The story stemmed out from a very personal experience of mine which pushed me to dissect the concept of ‘love’ in my own manner.

How or Why did you choose these characters?

Unlike my other books, this time I wanted to focus on people from smaller cities and towns. Hence, I chose characters whose overall emotional make-up had the vibe of such a place. I find some earthiness in them and hence are always close to me as a creator.

What could be an alternate title for your book?

I have no idea. I don’t think I ever had an alternate title for this book[Roses Are Blood Red]. Maybe the readers who have read the book may answer this.

What are three reasons to read this book?
  1. It’s a page turner.
  2. It talks about a kind of love you may have not read before.
  3. It has an endearing heart and love story at its centre.
What are you working on next?

It’s too early to talk about it but it’s a one of a kind thriller.

Did the climax of the story change or did it remain the same from the start?

The climax never changed. In fact, this was one of those books whose climax occurred to me before the story. So I chose to stick to it.

Author of the hugely successful Forever series, Novoneel Chakraborty creates a spellbinding story of love, longing and loss in his latest book Roses Are Blood Red.

To find out whether destiny triumphs over a dangerous obsession, read Roses Are Blood Red!

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