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An Excerpt from the Prologue of The Tiger and the Ruby

In 1841, Nigel Halleck left Britain as a clerk in the East India Company. He served in the colonial administration for eight years before leaving his post, eventually disappearing in the mountain kingdom of Nepal, never to be heard from again. A century-and-a-half later, Kief Hillsbery, Nigel’s nephew many times removed, sets out to unravel the mystery. Tracing his ancestor’s journey across the subcontinent, his quest takes him from Lahore to Calcutta, and finally to the palaces of Kathmandu. What emerges is an unexpected personal chapter in the history of the British Empire in India.

Here’s an excerpt from the prologue of The Tiger and the Ruby!


Your loving Nigel

“Who was Nigel?” I asked my aunt.

That would be my uncle, she said, many times removed. He had gone out to India.

I asked why.

To help those poor people, she said. “Many men did in those days.” India, she explained, had figured in the lives of several of my ancestors.

A consulship in Burma was mentioned, and there had been a couple of vicars, and someone in railway administration — no, not an engineer, of either sort. Driving a train, she informed me, was common, and as for devising a railway’s route — grades and bridges, tunnels, beds for track — a head for such figures never sat on the shoulders of anyone who bled our blood, she was absolutely sure of that.

How long were they in India, I wondered, and what was it they did afterwards, back in England, and after she told me — two or three years for the consul and the clergymen, five she supposed for the railwayman, and more or less the same as what they did in India, practised their professions — I returned to Uncle Nigel: what did he do?

“Do?”

“In England. After India.”

Actually, she said, he never came back. He stayed in the East.

“His whole life?”

“Indeed he did.”

“He must have liked it.”

“I suppose he must.”

“Was he the only one ever? Who stayed?”

“Heavens, no. Many have. Why, Mother Teresa —”

“In our family.”

No others came to mind, she said. Not for India. There was my mother, of course, who married my American father after the war and decamped across the pond.

“Did Nigel get married? Was that why? To an Indian?”

“Certainly not. Of course not.”

“He never had a wife?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The brooch had been a gift to his mother, she said. Then she changed the subject, leaving me with both a clear sense
that she disapproved of Nigel and the vague notion that there was more to his story than my aunt thought suitable for sharing with my ten-year-old self. A decade later, when I was on the verge of heading East myself for a college year abroad in Nepal, my mother confirmed my suspicions.

Nigel, she confided, had separated from the East India Company under some sort of cloud. Afterwards he had supposedly “gone native” in Nepal and lived until his death in 1878 as one of a handful of Europeans admitted to the then-forbidden Himalayan kingdom.

According to family legend, his exile was forced — he couldn’t stay in India or come back to England. But no one quite knew why. He might have been a jewel thief, he might have been a spy. He was, everyone agreed, a hunter of big game, and one story had it that he met his end in the mouth of a man-eating tiger in the Terai jungle, on the border of Nepal and India.


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Eight reflections and questions about the self from ‘Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction’

In Roshan Ali’s debut novel, Ib lives with his schizophrenic father and his ‘nice’ mother, negotiating life, not knowing what to do, steered by uncaring winds and pushy people. From his slimy, unmiraculous birth to the tragic death of a loved one, Ib wanders the city, from one thing to another, confused, lost and alone, all the while reflecting on his predicament, of seeking meaning where there is none, and ultimately contemplating the futility of the seeking itself.

In this journey of sadness and self-reflection, Ib transforms into an ordinary man from an ordinary boy and along the way, tries to figure out life and understand himself.

In this audacious debut that is insightful, original and deeply disturbing, the various characters that Ib interacts with, and his own consciously assumed position as an observer, create reflections about the ‘self’. The answers to these, like Ib’s quest for satisfaction are endless.

 

Why is there so much pressure on the self to be purposeful, to be successful, to be able to ‘fit into’ the abstract idea of society?

Maybe it’s the density, the fullness, stuffed with people of such lofty stuffing that the natural technique of nature to empty the filled and to fill the empty is reversed by this overdose of man and his mischief; and thus a thin man like me gets the stuffing sucked out of him, till he is hollow and restless. So it is necessary for any objects that move about a city to have these lofty notions of man and society, to contribute, to fit in and thus avoid the mad dissatisfaction of being hollow.

 

Are experiences only significant to the self in retrospect, as the minds seek comfort in imagined connections and created meanings?

It was one of those days, the kind of day that feels strange in retrospect, because our minds are made in such a way as to see connections where none exist and to see coincidence in randomness, meaning in meaninglessness. Such as it was, I had no feeling of strangeness on that day, but now after all these years, coloured by the sepia lenses of nostalgia, that melancholy of oldness, a yearning for lost things, all combined in fateful ways to produce the kind of feeling that makes you think the past matters more than it actually does.

 

Is adulthood not a maturing of the self, but simply the self-learning the struggle of performing in a callous world?

Once school ended there were supposed to be some things happening in and around your life—freedom and college, drinking and coming home late. But if you stayed at home, like I did, nobody came into your home and took you by the hand and led you out into the world. You had to do this yourself and this somehow I wasn’t taught, and was taught instead that the world was a wonderful place full of happiness and helpful people, but in truth it was a cruel and rude place and nobody looked twice if you fell from your cycle and nobody helped you.

 

Why does the self seek validation in sacrifice, even if it is the pettiest kind of sacrifice?

When he wanted things, he would put it as if he didn’t really want them for his personal satisfaction, rather he wanted them for the general good of humanity as a whole, as though everyone would benefit if he was given a fried egg for lunch. Everyone knows the truest sacrifice is the one that is not talked about. But when he was inconvenienced in any way, he would make it out to be great sacrifice, never once saying either that he had sacrificed something great, or that he was upset by the sacrifice, but saying too many times exactly the opposite, saying, ‘It’s OK. The food was less tasty, but it’s OK, I don’t care about taste anyway, I eat for nutrition. A man must be simple and not have desires.’

 

 Is it possible for the self to constantly and persistently monitor and balance the choices that shapes it?

 It’s not easy to tell which moment shaped your life, or steered it in any one way. Life forces are like a potter and life is clay and there is a gradual moulding that takes place, and the faster the wheel spins, the smoother you become. But suddenly, one force becomes too much and the clay is torn from the wheel and rips apart, flying everywhere, or is grotesquely deformed. So one must balance the influences that come from everywhere, all trying to mould you, all trying to spin the wheel faster and faster.

 

Does the death of a person close to us come as liberation not only to them but to our own selves freeing us of their expectations, of the weight of their personalities?

 It felt strange after that; that a creature so powerful could dissolve into ash and have no influence any more on the world, even on its closest people. And maybe death was just the beginning, not for the dead, but for the people the dying weigh down. And once dead, the body sinks to the earth and the ones around are cut off and set free like helium balloons.

 

Is the whole process of ascribing significance to things or events simply an exercise for the self to convince itself that it is special?

 And so there was a lesson to be learnt, not in everything, but in some things and one must be careful in choosing what lessons one learns. Everything sometimes has the appearance of specialness but look carefully and you see it’s just a stupid coincidence; a chance happening that has no significance for you or the universe. The credulous see meaning in everything…

 

In moments of grief why does it come as a shock to know that one is alone in the experience, that the world does alter itself significantly for one’s essentially egocentric self?

 At first there is a numbness, always, when such things occur. Then the thunk! between the chest and the stomach. Then we look around, perhaps outside the window, if there is one, to see if anything else has changed, but the trees continue their merry dance with the wind, and traffic flows according to old rules and new haste, and the sky looks on with that wide idiotic smile. And inside, everyone goes on with their dinner and drinks, laughing and talking.

 


Read Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction for a soul-stirring experience of life.

Why Do We Need to Know about the Sea?

In a crumbling neighbourhood in New Delhi, a child waits for a mother to return home from work. And, in parallel, in a snow-swept town in Germany on the Baltic Sea coast a woman, her memory fading, shows up at a deserted hotel. Worlds apart, both embark, in the course of that night, on harrowing journeys through the lost and the missing, the living and the dead, until they meet in an ending that breaks the heart – and holds the promise of putting it back together again.

Here is an excerpt of Raj Kamal Jha’s book The City and the Sea


“Like all children, I have a father.

We shall meet him in just a little while.

An odd character, my father. Sometimes, it seems, I am the one who is the adult and my father is the child. But then that’s the way Papa is. I cannot do much about it, Ma told me about Papa, I love him but I am no longer sure how much. If you ask me, I would tell you that I think Ma deserves someone better. I know that’s a hurtful thing to say but I will say this behind Papa’s back, he won’t know because there’s no way he’s ever going to read any of this.

That, I am absolutely sure of.

 *

As was her routine Monday to Friday and one working Sunday a month—which was that day—Ma should have been home latest by 4 p.m. from the newspaper where she worked on the copy desk, most of the time on the morning shift. It began at 8 a.m. and ended at 3 p.m., during which she edited stories and made pages. She had to send out at least two or three inside pages to bed, to the press, ready for plating and printing before the night shift came in and began work on the front page and the national pages.

If I sound as if I know quite a bit about Ma’s work it’s because Ma often talked to me about it, once she took me to office when there was no one there. She showed me how she made a page on QuarkExpress, how she drew text boxes into which she flowed the text, picture boxes into which she placed the pictures. She showed me how she typed in the headline, chose its size and font from the style sheet that popped up on the right-hand side when you hit F9 on the keyboard. Many of these stories and pictures that I edit are from The Sea, she said, about people who live there, things that happen to them. If we don’t put these stories out, no one will get to know what’s happening in The Sea.

Why is that important, I asked, why do we need to know about The Sea?

What kind of a question is that, Ma said, if you want to live in this city, you can never run away from The Sea so why not get to know what’s happening there? That way, you will always be prepared.

Prepared for what? I asked.

When someone from The Sea comes visiting, she said.

I didn’t understand what she meant, it was 3 p.m., her shift was over, it was time to go home.

  *

That evening, however, 4 p.m. became 5 p.m. became 6 p.m. and it was shortly before 7 p.m., more than three hours after I had returned from school, had lunch, washed, even changed into my night clothes, when Papa walked up to me and said—he was speaking to me for the first time that day—your mother still hasn’t come home, did Ma tell you anything this morning about coming home late?

No, I said, she didn’t tell me anything like that.

  *

You aren’t going to hear much about Papa, I will tell you that up front, because he is here, he is not here, he comes and he goes. He is at home most of the time when Ma is at work and I am at school. Or, he wanders around the city all by himself because he lost his job a year ago. When we are home, all three of us, most of the time Papa rarely gets in our way, he lives and moves in spaces in our house constantly draped in shadow. Maybe a bit of The Sea has slipped into your Papa, mixed with a little of his blood and that’s what has made him seem lost all the time, as if he’s missing a vital piece, Ma whispered to me once, and I think she felt sorry for saying this because she tried to be nice to him the rest of the day even though he remained, as ever, cold and distant.

One night, when they thought I was asleep, Papa and Ma were in my room talking and Ma told him to keep meeting people, keep going for job interviews but he said there was no point, no one wanted him, they would like to get the same work done for half his salary to which Ma said forget the salary, take anything they give you, you need to be out of this house working, you need to be with other people, forget about us, you need to feel safe and secure, I can’t be the only one dreaming around here. I would love to take a vacation with all of us, I would love to walk on a beach, I would love to go abroad, to watch the snow fall, how is all this going to happen, how is any of this going to happen?

The way she said all of this, angry and defiant, set Papa off. He shouted back at her, don’t tell me about your dreams, he struck his palm hard on the dresser table, making things fly away, do you think I should work as a security guard? As Santa Claus? I should beg at the streetlight, scrub the toilet floor at the mall? That, too, is a job, isn’t it, he said, and he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

Ma followed him a few minutes later.

She was crying.

I heard all this, I saw all this with my eyes open just a chink.

I am very good at watching with my eyes closed, at making people believe I am sleeping, that I am not listening when I am, actually, wide awake, fully alert.”


This is a book about masculinity – damaging and toxic and yet enduring and entrenched – that begs the question: What kind of men are our boys growing up to be?

Books to remind you #LoveIsLove, always

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.

ShikhandiAnd 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.

Six Reasons Why You Should Read ‘Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds’

It’s the summer of 1969, and the shock of conflict reverberates through the youth of America, both at home and abroad. As a student at a quiet college campus in the heartland of Indiana, Terry Ives couldn’t be farther from the front lines of Vietnam or the incendiary protests in Washington.

But the world is changing, and Terry isn’t content to watch from the sidelines. When word gets around about an important government experiment in the small town of Hawkins, she signs on as a test subject for the project, code-named MKULTRA. But behind the walls of Hawkins National Laboratory—and the piercing gaze of its director, Dr Martin Brenner—lurks a conspiracy greater than Terry could have ever imagined.

Are you excited to unravel the mysterious happenings in Stranger Things? Here are a few surprises that await you!

While the third season of Stranger Things will be released this coming July, after what feels like the longest wait for fans. But, if you’re missing much-needed news from Hawkins,  you can explore more of Eleven’s backstory in the book.

The book Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds is set much further back in time, in the year 1969 – 14 years before the TV show.

 It follows the journey of  Terry Ives, as she participates in the hush-hush CIA MKULTRA programme with Dr Brenner – not realising she was pregnant with Eleven, played by Millie Bobby Brown in the hit series, at the time. Fans will get to know the first glimpse at Eleven’s dad, and find out what exactly happened between Terry and him all those years ago.

While in season 2 of the show, viewers were introduced to Eleven’s sister, Kali, which proved to be quite divisive, Stanger Things: Suspicious Minds sheds light on some of the questions we all have about the show.

The book finally reveals how the Upside Down was first discovered, and why it’s so important to Dr. Brenner and the leaders of MKULTRA.


A mysterious lab. A sinister scientist. A secret history. If you think you know the truth behind Eleven’s mother, prepare to have your mind turned Upside Down in this thrilling prequel to the hit show Stranger Things.

 

Getting off at a Place not Printed on the Ticket – an excerpt from Ali Smith’s ‘Spring’

Spring will come. The leaves on its trees will open after blossom. Before it arrives, a hundred years of empire-making. The dawn breaks cold and still but, deep in the Earth, things are growing. 


Yesterday morning, a month to the day since the memorial service (they’d had her privately cremated some time before the memorial, he doesn’t even know when, close family only), he is walking along the Euston Road and as he passes the British Library he sees a woman sitting against its wall, thirties, as young as twenties, maybe, blankets, square of cardboard ribbed off a box on which there are words asking for money.

No, not money. The words on it are please and help and me.

He’s passed countless homeless people even just this morning coming through the city. Homeless people are the word countless again these days; any old lefty like him knows that this what happens. Tories back in, people back on the streets.

But for some reason he sees her. The blankets are filthy. The feet are bare on the pavement. He hears her too. She is singing a song to nobody – no, not to nobody, to herself – in a voice of some notable sweetness, at a quarter to eight in the morning.

It goes:

a thousand thousand people

are running in the stre-eet

oh nothing nothing nothing

oh nothing nothing nothing

oh nothing

Richard keeps going. When he stops keeping going he is just past the front of King’s Cross station. He turns and goes in, as if that’s what he meant to do all along.

There is a stall in the middle of the concourse beneath the giant Remembrance poppy. The stall is selling chocolate in the shapes of domestic utensils and tools: hammers, screwdrivers, pliers, cutlery, cups and so on; you can buy a chocolate cup, a chocolate saucer, a chocolate teaspoon and even a chocolate stovetop espresso-machine (the stovetop machine is costly). The chocolate things are extraordinarily lifelike and the stall is thronged with people.  A man in a suit is buying what looks like a real kitchen tap, made of silver-sprayed chocolate; the woman selling it to him places it delicately into a box she first lines with straw.

Richard puts his card into one of the ticket machines. He inserts the name of the place that’s the furthest a train from here can go.

He gets on to a train.

He sits on it for half a day.

An hour or so before the train reaches this final destination he’ll see some mountains against some sky through the window and he’ll decide to get off the train at this place instead. What’s to stop him doing what he likes, getting off at a place not printed on the ticket?

Oh nothing nothing nothing.

King Gussie, to rhyme with fussy, is how he’d always thought it was said, like the robot announcer pronounces it over the speakers in London King’s Cross above his head before he boards the train.

Kin-yousee is how it’s said by the guest house people whose door he knocks on when he gets there. They will be suspicious. What kind of person doesn’t book ahead on his phone? What kind of person doesn’t have a phone?

He will sit on the edge of the strange bed in the guest house. He will sit on the floor and brace himself between the bed and the wall.

By tomorrow his clothes will have taken to the air-freshener smell of the room he’ll spend the night in.


Get a copy of Ali Smith’s Spring here!

Meet the boy who will Change the Destiny of the World, and the others from ‘Astra: The Quest for Starsong’

“The world should burn . . . burn like a star!”

The balance of the world is askew.The winds speak of a terror from the south. Ravana, the Lord of Lanka, is on the march. Seers whisper that he has awakened Starsong, a mythical astra of the gods. And that he thirsts for this weapon that will make him invincible. But there is one thing that he hasn’t considered. Up high in the glistening tower of the city of Ulka is a boy, held captive.

Today is the day Varkan, the young prince of Ashmaka, will taste freedom. Today is the day he will lay claim to his destiny as the wielder of Starsong. And along the way, perhaps he will change the destiny of the world itself.

Meet the characters from Aditya Mukherjee  and Arnav Mukherjee’s new book, Astra: The Quest for Starsong 


Varkan’s father passed away mysteriously, taken by a ‘madness’. Then his mother seemed to succumb to the same madness and was imprisoned as his  uncle took over the kingdom. He was kept locked up in one of the towers in the palace. However, he never gives up. He plots again and again to escape, and finally does. When he finds the responsibility of the Astra on him, he embraces it since it is a mission given to him by his mother, and he feels the secret of his father’s demise lies with the Astra

 

Tara can’t help provoke people to get a reaction from them. She’s also very intelligent and deeply cares about nature, animals and her grandfather, even though she troubles him. Though she and her grandfather travel as gypsies, they are secretly the Regent and Princess of Gandhara, Ashmaka’s old ally.

 

All Princes of Ashmaka get an elephant, and Varkan got gifted Daboo when they were both children. However, as Daboo grew up he didn’t grow much physically, and he’s the smallest elephant in Ashmaka. That doesn’t stop him from being very brave, very loyal and always up for an adventure. (If anything he tends to overcompensate…)


Read Astra: The Quest for Starsong to find out what happens!

The Story Behind my New Book

by Tanaz Bhathena

The Beauty of the Moment began as a short story, one that I didn’t think I would write, because I’m usually uncomfortable writing about anything that’s too close to my own life.

The story, titled Last Days, First Days, was structured as a series of flashbacks and flash forwards, the flashbacks set in an Indian secondary school in Saudi Arabia, the flash forwards in a public high school in Canada. There was a girl named Susan, a boy who was not named Malcolm, and the story wasn’t about love, but about culture shock.

I grew up in the city of Mississauga, one of the most diverse cities in the greater Toronto area, with a large population of South Asians and Arabs, but the books that I read and the movies I saw catered primarily to a Caucasian demographic.

As a sixteen year old I realized quickly that wearing any Indian clothing made me stand out—and not in a good way. After a racist incident, where a girl tried to run me over with her bicycle, I eschewed my salwar-kurtas and stuck to Western wear for the longest time.

Now, over eighteen years after that incident, things have changed along with the demography. Indian culture has gained popularity in North America—largely thanks to the powers of Bollywood and globalization. Wearing Indian clothing doesn’t make you stand out any more than wearing Western clothing.

In publishing, things were changing, too. Writers in the YA community in America were the ones driving the change, forming an organization called We Need Diverse Books in 2015. In Canada, the Festival of Literary Diversity began in Brampton. Both organizations advocated for more inclusivity in the stories that were being produced and in the writers who were telling the stories. #OwnVoices, coined on Twitter by Corinne Duyvis, was turning into a revolution. More and more readers were demanding diverse stories—and that too by authors who had lived their characters’ experiences.

My first book, which you all know as A GIRL LIKE THAT, would likely still be languishing in a slush pile at a publishing house if not for these movements.

When the time came for me to write another book, I went back to Last Days, First Days and wondered: What if this were a novel?

I’d read a few books starring Indian American teen protagonists such as Tanuja Desai Hidier’s brilliant Born Confused. Yet, there were few if any books about first- or second-generation Indian Canadian teens. And there were no books that I came across that were actually set in Mississauga.

Back when I was a teenager—or even eight years ago (when I wasn’t), I wouldn’t have thought it possible to write a story about these things. I didn’t see myself on the page in North American fiction and I had grown used to my own exclusion.

So I went back to the story I had written, tore it apart and started rewriting a story that had my heart all over it.

I wanted to write a book that broke the monolithic view that North Americans can have of Indians, not realizing how diverse people from my birth country really are. I also wanted to show the world what life is like for Indians in the diaspora—with a focus on the griefs and the joys of displacement.

This book combines all three of my identities: Canadian, Saudi and Indian. Like Susan, I do not fit into a neat little compartment or category. But writing this book allowed me to realize that it is okay to stand out at times. To even step outside our comfort zones.

For me, writing a romance definitely was out of my comfort zone. So was allowing my characters to be teenagers and make the mistakes I made when I was that age.

The Beauty of the Moment is not perfect. It certainly isn’t the single best representation of Indian Canadian teens—and I don’t want anyone to see it that way. But I do hope that there will be teen readers who will be able to see themselves in the story and that there will be even more teens who will use the book as a window to cultures and experience different from their own.

Furthermore, I hope other writers—teens and adult—will be inspired add their tales to the repertoire of #ownvoices stories.

If the story you want to read hasn’t been told yet, the you must write it.

The world is waiting for you.


Tanaz Bhathena’s new book, The Beauty of the Moment tells the story of

9 Thankfully Fictional Fathers Who Will Make You Appreciate Your Own Dad a Little More!

This Father’s Day, while you celebrate your father and his contribution to your existence, let us take a moment to look at some of the not-so-great fathers ever written, in some of the greatest books ever written and sympathize with their unfortunate offspring. These fictional fathers, from ragingly violent to downright deranged, will hopefully make you appreciate your own so much more!

Go through our hall of paternal shame and decide if your own father deserves a few extra presents as a mark of your gratitude! After all, ‘to quote one of our Dubious Dads, ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’


Laius in King ‘Oedipus’-Sophocles

The legends surrounding the royal house of Thebes inspired Sophocles (496–406 BC) to create a powerful trilogy of mankind’s struggle against fate. King Oedipus tells of a man who brings pestilence to Thebes for crimes he does not realise he has committed and then inflicts a brutal punishment upon himself. With profound insights into the human condition, it is a devastating portrayal of a ruler brought down by his own oath

Terrible dad 101- Having been told by an oracle that his newborn son is destined to kill him. Laius binds the infant’s feet together with a pin and orders his wife to kill him.

 

Walter Morel in ‘Sons and Lovers’ – D.H. Lawrence

Taking its autobiographical inspiration from D.H. Lawrence’s experience of growing up in a coal-mining town, Sons and Lovers is a vivid account of the conflict between class, family and personal desires.

The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul – determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother’s suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.

Terrible dad 101-Alcoholic, violent and weak and insecure of his own position in his family

 

King Lear in ‘King Lear’ – Willliam Shakespeare

In William Shakespeare’s moving tragedy of political intrigue and family strife, the ageing King Lear, tired of office, decides to split his kingdom between his three daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia; but the decision to allot their share based on the love they express for him proves to be a terrible mistake. When Cordelia refuses to take part in her father’s charade, she is banished, leaving the king dependent on her manipulative and untrustworthy sisters.

Terrible Dad 101- He distributes his wealth on the basis of flattery and fulsome declarations of love, while completely disregarding his youngest, devoted offspring in favour of his two older daughters.

 

Pap Finn in ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’-Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s witty, satirical tale of childhood rebellion against hypocritical adult authority, the Penguin Classics edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is edited with a critical introduction by Peter Coveney. Mark Twain’s story of a boy’s journey down the Mississippi on a raft conveyed the voice and experience of the American frontier as no other work had done before. When Huck escapes from his drunken, abusive ‘Pap’ and the ‘civilizing’ Widow Douglas with runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous ‘Duke’ and ‘Dauphin’.

Terrible dad 101-One of the most terrifyingly vicious fathers ever written, he is an alcoholic, racist, repellent individual who beats his son to extract whiskey money and almost murders him with a hunting knife.

 

Harry Wormwood in ‘Matilda’- Roald Dahl

A splendiferous new hardback of Matilda, part of a collection of truly delumptious classic Roald Dahl titles with stylish jackets over surprise printed colour cases, and exquisite endpaper designs. Matilda Wormwood’s father thinks she’s a little scab. Matilda’s mother spends all afternoon playing bingo. And Matilda’s headmistress Miss Trunchbull? Well, she’s the worst of all. She is a big bully, who thinks all her pupils are rotten and locks them in the dreaded Chokey. As for Matilda, she’s an extraordinary little girl with a magical mind – and now she’s had enough. So all these grown-ups had better watch out because Matilda is going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.

Terrible dad 101-Pompous with a streak of venom jealousy, he really hates the fact that his daughter is a genius. He is somewhat verbally abusive and destroys her library books, before abandoning her without any noticeable qualms.

 

Adam Penhallow in ‘Penhallow’- Georgette Heyer

The death of Adam Penhallow on the eve of his birthday seems, at first, to be by natural causes. He was elderly after all. But Penhallow wasn’t well liked. He had ruled over his estate with an iron will and a sharp tongue. He had played one relative off against another. He was so bad-tempered and mean that both his servants and his family hated him. It soon transpires that far from being a peaceful death, Penhallow was, in fact, murdered. Poisoned. With his family gathered to celebrate his birthday, and servants that both feared and despised him, there are more than a dozen prime suspects. But which one of them turned hatred into murder?

Terrible dad 101-Vicious, domineering and gets his thrills from humiliating and controlling his family especially his sons.

 

 

Jack Torrance in ‘The Shining’ – Stephen King

Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

Terrible dad 101-Deranged dad who lets his personal and external demons send him on gleeful spree to murder his wife and son.

Which Guy from ‘Once Upon A Curfew’ Will You Fall For, Rajat or Rana?

Once Upon a Curfew takes us through the journey of Indu and Rajat; their love which blossomed during pre-Emergency India. With the socio-political situation of the time as a subtle backdrop, the book gives us a peek into love and romance in India in the 1980s.

The book introduces us to Rajat and Rana, two strong male protagonists, vying for Indu’s affection – each with a different demeanour and outlook towards life.

Who do you think you would have chosen? Take this quiz and find out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To get a true glimpse of love in the decade of ’70s, read Once Upon A Curfew  by Srishti Chaudhary.

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