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Tag: fiction

Books to Read This February!

Posted on by Penguin India

Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or a picture book on the theme of depression. We have an exciting range of books for you this February. You’ll run out of days before you run out of books to read this month!

Here’s the list of books you should look out for:

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Nine-year-old Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him.

But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.

 

Undertow

The tale of the troubled relationships of a family and what it might take to put the pieces back together.

Years ago, Torun Goswami and his charismatic, formidable wife cast their Rukmini away from their home and their lives for marrying out of her community.

Now, Rukmini’s daughter, Loya, twenty-five, solitary and sincere, arrives at Torun’s old yellow house. Will she be able to change her nonexistent relationship with her grandfather and in the process figure out who she is?

 

Soar

A laugh-out loud book by the author of Sitayana and Godsong. 

Bholanath and Khudabaksh are two soldiers in the British Indian Army, sent off to Europe to fight in World War I.

When a mission in a surveillance balloon goes awry, these two gentle soldiers-along with an exceptionally ill-tempered squirrel-are set adrift high above the Western Front. Follow their grand tragicomic adventure!

The World Between Us

The bestselling queen of romance is back!

When Amal finds out that her disastrous Tinder match is now going to be her boss, she can’t be more annoyed. Qais Ahmed is everything she never wants to be: narcissistic, manipulative and arrogant.

However, despite her relentless efforts, she is unable to resist his charm. Will a disturbing secret tear them apart or bind them together forever?

Calligraphies of Love

Inspired by timeless poems from around the world, Hassan Massoudy’s calligraphy takes us on a visual journey through love in its many forms.

Through his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours, this master calligrapher brings to life the words and wisdom of some of our greatest poets, from Ibn Zaydoun and Rumi to John Keats.

 

With Love: A Collection of Letters 

Dear Reader,

Letters change people.

They turn forty-year-old men into helpless fathers.
Scared mothers into fierce fighters.
Long-lost pets into possessive exes.
And old lovers into best friends.

They make you spell help.
Give someone a second first chance.
Make you leave behind a home.
And find another in someone.

Sometimes, they’re warnings.
Sometimes, confessions.
And sometimes, a story left untold.

Letters change people, they say.

Let’s hope these change you too.

With love,
Us

Terribly Tiny Tales and Penguin come together on the same page with this book!

The Girl Who Disappeared

The bestselling author of The Girl Who Knew Too Much is back!

At the onset of her getaway to the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Nisha knew something terrible was going to happen. Less than seventy-two hours later, she goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

With barely any leads, the police know they have to work doubly hard if they want to find her, but with each passing day, the mystery around her disappearance gets murkier.

Where is Nisha?

Inside A Dark Box 

A pertinent picture book on depression.

When you get trapped in darkness, finding your way out can be a long and lonely battle, especially when the war is within your own mind. Here’s a peep inside a mind struggling with itself.

Fearless

One girl can change everything.

Through the ages, strong, inspirational women and girls have risen in response to uncertainty and injustice. A timeless call to arms that many like Fatima Jinnah, Asma Jehangir and Malala Yousafzai have always been answering.

Fearless chronicles the lives of fifty such incredible women-scientists, lawyers, politicians, activists and artists-who incite hope, inspire action and initiate dialogue.

Not All Those Who Wander

Quirky and heartfelt, this is a story of millennial friendship that is #litAF.

Seventeen-year-old Gehna Rai has normal friends and belongs to a normally dysfunctional family. Everything about Gehna is normal-except she just found out that she’s going to be a mom.

Eram, a nerdy high-school dropout, dreams of becoming a poker pro while trying to keep his dad, who has Parkinson’s disease, from going completely mental. He has little time for much else-until a chance meeting with a girl blows his life to pieces.

The Crown of Seven Stars

Aum is under attack. The enemies are not external; rather, they are within the kingdom, each obsessed with the Crown of Seven Stars. Early one morning, Destiny rolls her dice. General Saahas, heir to the throne, 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.

Rolling the dice once more, Destiny prepares to bend Saahas to her will. She, not Saahas, must decide the winner of the Crown of Seven Stars.

The Other Side of the Divide

A fresh perspective on Pakistan, how Indians view Pakistan and how Pakistanis view India and Indians.

Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, this book provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. The Other Side of The Divide attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.

Chanakya Niti

Chanakya’s numerous sayings on life and living — popularized in the wake of his successful strategy to put Chandragupta Maurya on the throne, if legend is to be believed — have been compiled in numerous collections and anthologies over time. This entire corpus was referred to as Chanakya Niti.

A.N.D. Haksar’s wonderful translation places this work into context, showing how these verses have endured in the popular imagination for so long.

Endless Song

The Tiruvaymoli is a grand 1102-verse poem, composed in the ninth century by Sathakopan-Nammalvar, the greatest of the alvar poets. Ingeniously weaving a garland of words-where each beginning is also an ending-the poet traces his cyclical quest for union with the supreme lord, Visnu.

In this magnificent translation, Archana Venkatesan transports the flavour and cadences of Tamil into English, capturing the different voices and range of emotions through which the poet expresses his enduring desire for release.

Nava-e-Sarosh

 

Delhi established a legacy of poets whose words set hearts ablaze for the times to come. Love, with all its wine-infused passions and experiences of yearning, has preoccupied classic poets of the city.

As a patron of Urdu poetry and a resident of Delhi, Sanjiv Saraf’s personal investment in preserving and furthering the arts in the Urdu world led to the creation of this book.

Desire, longing and the complexities of love are therefore open to exploration for you, dear reader and lover, through the words laid out in these ghazals by the ‘voices from beyond’.

An Officer and His Holiness

In 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into India, where he was granted refuge. Few know about the carefully calibrated operation to escort him safely from the Indian border. An Officer and His Holiness narrates how political officer Har Mander Singh successfully managed this assignment in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) with limited resources, and despite a treacherous terrain and external threats.

The Story of Yoga

How did an ancient Indian spiritual discipline turn into a GBP 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the global wellness industry?

This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time. From arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through muscular Christianity and the British Raj, to the Indian nationalist movement and the arrival of yoga in the twentieth-century West.

5 Beautiful Lines from ‘The Yogini’

Posted on by Penguin India

The Yogini is a thought provoking and sensual novel by acclaimed Bengali writer Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay. It is the story of a modern woman, Homi who encounters a mysterious yogi on the street. The yogi, visible only to her, begins to follow her everywhere. Convinced that the yogi is a manifestation of fate, Homi embarks on a series of increasingly desperate attempts to prove that her life is ruled by her own free will.

Set in Kolkata, this tale is both unique and unsettling, philosophical and beautiful!

Here are some lines that mesmerised us:

 

‘…niyati also refers to a state in which the individual is under the illusion of being bound to a particular time and space, when in fact they are not. So, in its earthly manifestation for human beings, niyoti/ niyati is a constraining factor for the individual but still not real, only illusory.’

*

‘”fate isn’t just the big things. It isn’t only the sorrows and suffering, the pain and torture, the grief and accidents. Fate is every single footstep. When you wake up and yawn or stretch, that’s fate too. It’s predetermined. If you set off on a journey, and make it safely to the end, then that’s what was predestined.”’

*

‘A game, nothing but a game. Everyone in this immense land of India was engrossed in a game with their gods.‘

*

‘“All our childhoods are actually forms of madness”’ Lalit said. “There’s just one thing you have to remember. We’ve built a relationship, a beautiful relationship, which has an existence in reality, where there is room for reason and evidence. As long as you can hold on to that reality, that reason, everything will be fine, you’ll see.”’

*

‘“Only birth and death are inevitable – everything else is in your hands. Circumstances play a huge role in our lives, but we ourselves can make or break those circumstances. What you’re forgetting is that we’re human beings, we have no choice but to believe in the power of work.”’

Grab your copy of The Yogini to read more such incredible words!

Meet Ikhlaq from Intizar Husain’s ‘The Chronicle’

Posted on by Penguin India

The decade spanning 1978 to 1988 saw the terrifying rule of Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan. In a Lahor under Martial Law, we meet Ikhlaq and his family, who are struggling to build a home in the city.

Set in a troubled time and leadership, The Chronicle by the celebrated Pakistani author Intizar Husain – translated by Matt Reeck – tells the epic story of a family and its illustrious homes. The reader is introduced to a dramatic and darkly comedic chain of events through Ikhlaq’s voice.

We are here to introduce you to our main character! Read on to meet Ikhlaq:

A Storyteller

When he finds the manuscript of the tazkirah, his family chronicle, he decides to continue writing the story as the last chapter has become illegible. Ikhlaq is both a reader and storyteller, and we are introduced to his world entirely through his voice.

‘I thought that, in the end, I was of the same blood as my ancestors, so why wouldn’t I want to continue writing the chronicle? Why hadn’t I seen any such desire in my father? All he had done was to make sure that the chronicle had not been destroyed.’

*

A Family Man

His desire to continue the chronicle in an effort to safeguard and maintain his family’s history also presents Ikhlaq as a family man. His excitement and engagement with the family chronicle also reaffirms this point.

‘…I began to find some pleasure in deciphering [the chronicle]. I began to feel that I should see what the pages contained so as to figure out what it was about my family that in every generation someone took it upon himself to sit down with an inkpot and start writing. With such concentration they had written down the histories of the family—as though they were leaving for their children a valuable piece of property.’

*

Nostalgic for What his City Used to be

With Haq’s rule, Ikhlaq’s life and environment have become very dynamic, and we often find him reminiscing about his home and how much the world around him has changed.

‘I got the feeling that the world had really changed, and the city was something altogether new. I thought about how the city used to be. I remembered a fall afternoon. There was a carpet of yellow leaves on the street […]How many city streets from the Red House to Mall Road did I imagine in this way, each one covered with fall leaves?’

*

Restless for Home

His search for a house, struggles with the rising rent, and eventual attempts to build a house for him and his family tell us of his inherent desire to find a home, stability and peace in his ever-changing life.

‘Maybe I felt restless because I didn’t have a house.

Maybe if I had a place to lay my head and rest my feet, I would find some peace of mind. So building a house, which would soon drive me crazy, became something to think about. I started to share the worries of my co-workers. These men had been going back and forth to their housing development’s offices.’

*

Desire for Freedom

Ikhlaq’s life and feelings act as microcosms for the larger desire of freedom in Haq’s Pakistan. His act of building a new house and neighbourhood give Ikhlaq a powerful insight into both the desire and the fear of freedom.

‘Finally I understood why people were fleeing the alleys for the new neighbourhoods. I had thought they were doing so just to show off their new wealth. But I realized that they were tired of alleys. after hiding from the land and the sky, they grew weary of the tight alleyways and the tall houses. It’s so difficult. The one doesn’t let you breathe, but neither does the other. People are scared of the open land and the endless sky. But they also grow tired of the claustrophobia of alley after alley and house after house. So after having left behind the fear of the open land, we grew of tight quarters.’

Step into the lanes of Lahore and Ikhlaq’s ever-changing life in The Chronicle!

What We Learn About Our Times from ‘Shakti’

Posted on by Penguin India

Structured as a fantastical, women-driven superhero story, Shakti by Rajorshi Chakraborti also gives us a scathing social commentary on present-day concerns of feminism, sexism, communal violence and mental health.

Through the characters of Jaya, Arati, and Shivani – three women in Calcutta who are gifted with magical powers – Chakraborti takes us on a journey across a nation that is in the throes of profound transformation. In the process, we get to glimpse a hitherto unseen country that is made up of the secrets, longings, wounds and strengths of many human hearts.

What facets of our times do we get to see in Shakti? We list some below.

Deep-rooted Communal Divides

Throughout the story, we see attempts to instigate communal violence and hatred between Hindus and Muslims; something that relates directly to our current socio-political sphere outside of the book.

An instance in the book illustrates the resulting violence due to such manipulation, where the narrator Jaya receives a Times of India link from Shivani:

“It turned out to be just a Times of India story, four paragraphs long. There had been violence in a village in Bardhaman district, about a hundred kilometres from Calcutta, where Hindus and Muslims had clashed because a Hindu boy had been found dead a few days earlier, and the belief grew that he had been punished for his sister’s friendship with a Muslim boy. Three Muslims and another Hindu had since died, including, especially sadly, two brothers of the boy, who was now in hiding. An evening curfew had been imposed on the village, and extra police had been sent from other parts of West Bengal to all likely flashpoints in the district. The final paragraph was a quote from a local opposition leader, alleging another example of a state-wide breakdown of law and order.”

School, Learning and Education

One of the narrative arcs for Jaya – the narrator of the story – also highlights some ingrained attitudes towards the syllabus and the content being taught in schools, which is expected to be restrictive and ‘nationalistic’. Jaya tells us how and why Mrs Dhanuka, the Principal of the school she teaches History in, disapproves of Jaya’s teaching:

“The [only] surprise Dhanuka threw in near the end of her tirade [was the additional charge of being ‘anti-national’! Apparently, she’d been planning to haul me in ‘even before this morning’, because of ‘the number of unhappy parents’ who’d emailed her about some of the content of our class conversations, in which, instead of ‘sticking to the syllabus’, I supposedly spent a great deal of time ‘undermining our present Prime Minister’ and also — again, to use Dhanuka’s words — ‘devaluing the heritage of our Hindu myths and epics by repeatedly insisting they couldn’t be seen as history or science’.”

Class Divides

In a fleeting but poignant incident in the book, the responses of some of Jaya’s colleagues also expose the larger lack of empathy and compassion towards the economically less privileged classes in the urban milieu.

“My shock must have been obvious, because two colleagues sitting across from me at the table asked almost immediately if something had happened. I couldn’t speak at school about how I knew Shivani (only my three closest friends knew about the column, and none of them was in the staff room), so I merely said my domestic help has been going through a wrenching personal tragedy and I can’t do anything useful. And that dissipated my questioners’ compassion even more quickly than I’d anticipated. Oh well, if it’s only something to do with your help . . .”

Struggles of the Youth

Jaya works as a columnist for an agony column to help teenagers and young adults struggling with mental health or familial issues.  The narrator provides glimpses of some of her correspondences which bring to light some deep-rooted struggles that this demographic faces in the real world. Rising mental health concerns amongst the youth in India have become an important topic of discussion in the country today; and Jaya’s columns and her correspondents reflect this.

A crucial incident that speaks to this concern is Shivani’s refusal to share her emotional trauma with her family, which is why she is compelled to turn to Jaya’s column. As a fifteen-year-old, Shivani’s situation, on a microcosmic level, speaks to the pervasiveness of the lack of familial support-system and understanding that teenagers and young people face today.

Shivani writes in one of her responses to Jaya:

‘So all your concern is only from a distance. As long as you can reply by email, you care.

If you knew my parents, if you spent just half an hour in our house, you would take back the suggestion of sharing my secret with them. And without parents behind me, show me the psychiatrist who would take me seriously.’

The Power of Social Media

Social media has become a norm in the society today – especially when it comes to rebellion and mobilization. A particularly memorable incident in the story gives us a glimpse into the power of social media in (re)defining public opinion.

In one instance, Jaya – who had been writing her agony column under a male pseudonym, ‘Chandra Sir’, in an attempt to hide her true identity – is outed by a vengeful mother on Twitter. Jaya appeals to her readers to give her honest feedback about how her column impacted them. The response is overwhelmingly positive, which helps her bring back her column under her real name.

‘‘@ChandraSir is always worth reading. When the advice is good, who cares about the name? #KeepChandraSir

Police Forces

Another fleeting but poignant moment in the story makes the reader reflect on police procedures and processes. Arati – Jaya’s friend and domestic help who is also gifted with powers – attempts to confront her husband Ramesh for selling their nine-month-old daughter sixteen years ago. When he is arrested, the ease with which his bail is arranged and granted shocks Jaya:

‘‘Even greater than my amazement that a man who’d confessed to selling his own nine-month-old child could be eligible for bail was that of learning how quickly the money had been arranged.”

 

As a feminist superhero(ine) story we all needed, Shaktiis a highly relevant and compelling narrative for our times.

Naveen Chourey on Poetry, His Engineering Background and His New Book

Posted on by Penguin India

Bold, sharp and amazingly relevant, Naveen Chourey’s impassioned poetry-on mob lynching, Kashmir and the plight of out soldiers among others-will force you to think afresh on nationalism, patriotism and the state of our country.
Naveen’s youthful idealism, vision for an egalitarian world and progressive thoughts make Kohra Ghana Hai one of the most courageous works of our times.

Read on to know more about Naveen:

1. What drew you towards poetry?

It is hard to pin one event that drew me toward poetry. I moved towards it gradually and did not realize how much hold it had over me, till I was in too deep. But a few poets that played a significant role in pushing me towards it are Jagjeet Singh ji and Nukkad Natak.

2. Has your engineering background helped your artistic craft?

Yes, it’s helped me a lot! For me, engineering helped me find patterns in life. I think I can craft my poems with a fresh perspective due to my engineering background.

3. What does mukammal mean to you?

For me, Mukammal is the concept of an ideal human being. Something that I am walking and moving towards everyday. I wish to be that person before I die.

4. Which poem is the closest to your heart?

There are many. Bachchan Sahab’s ‘Us paar na Jaane kya hoga’, Javed Sahab’s ‘Waqt’ and ‘MahisasurMardini’ by Aadi Shankaracharya are few that come to mind.

From my own compositions, I enjoy performing the poem ‘Aham Brahmosmi’ ‘Pinjara’ and ‘Main, Wo aur Main’.

5. Why ‘Kohra Ghana Hai’?

When there is unrest, everything becomes confusing. Like the dense fog, you can see but can not make anything out of it. I felt this book will help people see through the dense fog of unrest and show people what is happening in our society.

Are you ready to go on this journey with Naveen and see through this fog with Kohra Ghana Hai?

7 Lines that Prove that True Love Never Dies

Posted on by Penguin India

In Find Me, Aciman shows us Elio’s father, Samuel, on a trip from Florence to Rome to visit Elio, now a gifted classical pianist. A chance encounter on the train upends Sami’s visit and changes his life forever.
Elio soon moves to Paris, where he, too, has a consequential affair, while Oliver, a New England college professor with a family, suddenly finds himself contemplating a return trip across the Atlantic.

Find Me brings us back inside the world of one of our greatest contemporary romances to show us that in fact true love never dies.

Read a few beautiful lines from the book:

 

I’m listening.
And you know, you do know I’ve been floundering all these years.
I know. But so have I.
What lovely music you used to play for me.
I wanted to.
So you haven’t forgotten.
Of course I haven’t

*

We’re still the same, we haven’t drifted. This is how he always spoke to me in such moments, We’re still the same, we haven’t drifted —with a jeering languor inflecting each of his features…I try to remind him each time that he has no reason to forgive me. But he utters an impish laugh…

*

She reminded me of someone who storms into your life…only to remind you, once she’s added flowers to a vase that’s been standing empty for ever so long that, in case you were still struggling to downplay her presence, you wouldn’t dare ask for more than a week, a day, an hour of this. How close had I come to someone so real, I thought.

*

“I don’t want to stop knowing you. So there’s the long and the short of it.”

*

“Everything I have is yours. Not much, I know,” she said.

*

“But you didn’t know you’d meet me.”
“A meaningless detail. Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”

*

You fool, it takes two of them to make one of me. I can be a man and woman, or both, because you’ve been both to me. Find me, Oliver. Find me.

 

Fans of Call Me By Your Name, it’s time to get excited for Find Me, Aciman’s newest novel that revisits the world of one of our greatest contemporary romances.

A Chat with War Photographer Maali Almeida…in the Afterlife

Posted on by Penguin India

Renegade war photographer Maali Almeida has to solve his own murder. Does that sound fun? It would be if there wasn’t so much bloody red-tape to get through. It’s also doesn’t look like anyone alive is actually missing him. Worst of all, it’s all those goddamn memories of war, constantly interrupted by the overly chatty dead folks breezing through the afterlife. Besides, he’s so busy solving his ethical dilemmas that there’s barely any time to solve a murder-even if it’s his own. 

As we meet the photographer in the afterlife in Chats with the Dead, we discover there is so much more to him than just a name. As well as to the stories of all the people who are dead and gone.

Meet (late) Maali Almeida in an excerpt below:

 

Say My Name

You want to ask the universe what everyone else wants to ask the universe. Why are we born, why do we die, why anything has to be. And all the universe has to say in reply is I don’t know arsehole stop asking. The After Life is as confusing as the Before Death, the In Between is as arbitrary as the Down There. So, we each make up stories because we’re afraid of the dark.

The wind brings your name and you follow it through air and concrete and steel. You float through a Slave Island alley and you hear the whispers in every doorway. ‘Almeida . . . Malinda . . .’ Then the wind blows through busy Dehiwela streets and you hear more voices. ‘War photographer . . . activist . . . Almeida . . . Maali . . . missing . . .’

From slave to Dehiwela in one breath, faster than a helicopter ride. At least death frees you from Galle Road traffic, Parliament Road drivers and checkpoints on every road. You ride past the faces of oblivious people ambling through Colombo’s shabby streets, the mortal brothers and sisters of the dearly departed and quickly forgotten. You are a leaf in a gale, blown by a force you can neither control nor resist.

Lankan visionary Arthur C. Clarke said thirty ghosts stand behind everyone alive, the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. You look around you and fear the great man’s estimate might have been conservative.

Every person has a spirit crouching behind them. Some have guardians hovering above and swatting away the ghouls, the pretas, the rahu and the demons. Some have distinguished members of these latter groups standing before them, hissing idle thoughts in their faces. A few have devils squatting on their shoulders and filling their ears with bile.

Sir Arthur has spent three decades of his life on these haunted shores and is clearly a Sri Lankan. Austria convinced the world that Hitler was German and Mozart was theirs. Surely, after centuries of armed plunder, courtesy the sea pirates from London, Amsterdam and Lisbon, may we Lankans at least help ourselves to one sci-fi visionary?

At Borella junction, a woman in white walks the edge of your periphery and disappears when you focus; a demon toddler squats in a corner and hisses at the young girls waiting for buses; a clovenhoofed ghoul stands at the headlights looking for a motorcyclist to impale. It appears that too many in Colombo have died unwillingly and too few are ready to leave.

One by one, the figures look at you, each pupil a different shade, each iris with its own sheen. The angry flash greens and yellows, the lost glimmer in browns and in blues. The hungry blink in famished purple, the helpers wink in pretentious white. There are also those with red eyes and black eyeballs whose gazes you dare not meet.

Bestselling author of Chinaman, Shehan Karunatilaka is back with a darkly comedic story of life and death – with a brilliant twist. Infused with moments of staggering humanity, this one is a powerful read that exposes the plight of Sri Lanka in the aftermath of a civil war.

 

The anonymous letter

Posted on by Penguin India

Celebrated writer and festival director Namita Gokhale is back with her latest novel, Jaipur Journals. This time, she offers us a diverse cast of characters whose worlds collide in the Jaipur Literature Festival: an author who receives a threatening anonymous letter, a burglar with a passion for poetry, a twelve-year-old prodigy, an American woman looking for the vanished India of her youth, a lonely writer who carries her unsubmitted manuscript everywhere with her, and a historian who reunites with a past lover.

As rich as the Festival itself, Jaipur Journals is a metafictional ode to literature. A nod to the millions of aspiring authors carrying unsubmitted manuscripts in their bags, the book is an intimate look into the pretensions and pathos of the loneliest tribe of all: the writers.

In the excerpt below, we give you a glimpse of one of these stories.

*

A volunteer with a round smooth face and dark shining eyes stepped forward to address the group. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘please excuse me, but which of you is Ms Zoya Mankotia?’

Zoya swished her mane of grey flecked hair and lifted one grey black eyebrow in interrogation. ‘You mean me?’ she asked, almost girlishly, almost coquettishly.

‘One of your fans was waiting for you—he left this card which he wanted delivered to you,’ the smooth-faced volunteer said. ‘And I must tell you, Ms Mankotia, that I too am a great fan of yours … I would love you to sign a copy of The Quilt for me.’

Front Cover of Jaipur Journals
Jaipur Journals || Namita Gokhale

She handed over a pale purple envelope, which had Zoya Mankotia’s name written with a purple marker, in a neat italic hand. Inside was a card with a photograph of a kitten wearing a purple ribbon around its neck.

The message was written in capital letters, in purple ink. It was brief and brutal. ‘Miaow Ms Mankotia!’ it said. ‘I can see through you. You faithless bich, I know what you have been up to, how many women you have betrayed. And your pathetic intellectual pretenshuns leave me speechless! And your novel, The Quilt, is a copycat version of Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf. You plagiarizer, you pornographer . . . Your time is up.’

Zoya’s expression did not change when she read this, although the set of her jaw tightened visibly. She put the card back into the purple envelope and passed it wordlessly to Geetha Gopalan.

‘So who is this mysterious fan?’ Geetha asked in her jolly booming voice. ‘May I read it?’

Zoya nodded. Geetha Gopalan opened the envelope. ‘What on earth is this?’ she asked in surprise.

‘It is an anonymous letter,’ Zoya replied, lifting first one eyebrow, and then the other. ‘Or an anonymous card, to be accurate, a deeply critical pretty kitty card.’

‘An antediluvian troll,’ Geetha Gopalan responded. ‘What a nasty man he must be!’

‘He could be a woman,’ Shonali Sen ventured. The card had been circulated to her and Leila Nafeesi as well.

‘I can never make out if men hate women more, or women themselves,’ Zoya Mankotia said.

‘Purple is a woman’s colour, somehow,’ Geetha Gopalan observed thoughtfully.

‘Oh, don’t please get into these tired gender stereotypes,’ Zoya snapped, her voice combining weariness and anger.

Leila Nafeesi had been quiet all this while. She spread out her fingers to display her long nails, which were painted purple. She had beautiful, pale ivory hands with rings set in silver on all her fingers lapis lazuli, turquoise, jade, topaz. ‘The colour purple,’ she said. ‘By the way, I don’t believe someone with such an elegant italic handwriting doesn’t know how to spell—it’s a pose.’

*

To find out more about the letter, and to meet all the other attendees, step into Namita Gokhale’s literary world today!

The Yogini- An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

With her days split between a passionate marriage and a high-octane television studio job, Homi is a thoroughly modern young woman-until one day she is approached by a yogi on the street. This mysterious figure begins to follow her everywhere, visible only to Homi, who finds him both frightening and inexplicably arousing.

Read an excerpt from The Yogini below:

 

It was late into the inflated night when she returned to her senses for the first time. She found herself standing by the door of a train compartment, holding the handles and swaying with the train as it hurtled along. Her body lurched alarmingly from side to side. She was leaning forward perilously. She would fall out of the train at any moment.

 

Was it time, then? she wondered. Was this how she and her fate were to be separated? Was this, finally,what fate had written for her?

 

The tracks seemed to howl fiercely at her when she looked down. Sparks flew from the friction of steel against steel. All she had to do was loosen her hold for everything to end.

 

Rattling a thousand chains, her soul cried out, Freedom! Freedom!

 

And she decided to jump. But then someone gripped her elbow. She didn’t turn around. There was no need to, for she knew who it was. She could see the hand clamped on her arm – the wrist encircled by rosary beads. A copper band, an iron chain, a red thread, chunky amulets. He scavenged for all sorts of things to slip around his wrist. Mounds of grime were gathered beneath his long nails. She raised her eyes to look – not behind her, but ahead. There was no beginning, no end, only a train passing through an endless expanse. No artificial lights shone now – the world beyond was lit generously by the moon, its beams crystallised in pools of water in the fields, the light magnified a million times by the reflections. The train raced through a silvery kingdom. Her heart was disproportionately heavy – but she no longer had cause to be sad or angry.

 

An icy current whispered in her ear, ‘Homi! Homi! Empress?’

 

‘Come closer, Empress.’

 

How much closer, man with the matted locks? Haven’t I already given you the right to claim me? So many thoughts flow through my head, but not one of them will lead to anything tangible. Not one will leave a physical imprint on the planet. Such notions, only some of which I embrace. I let go of the rest, to ensure that you have no power over me – neither over the causes of things happening to me, nor over their effects. Not even over the merging of cause and effect, because both are mechanical in my life, just as you are, an automaton. This is my final observation about existence. There is no such thing as free will here. No fundamental independence. I have long accepted that I have a natural fate in this world, a human being’s fate. I am no one, fate is everything. You are everything. This way, I can be closer to you too, can’t I?

These thoughts ran through her head, but she wished, too, to escape, to be free. A strange force took hold of her. She jerked her arm out of his grasp, and, the very next moment, whirled around to strike at the figure with the matted locks. With all her strength she lashed out at him, hoping that the impact would throw him off the train.

Following the inexorable pull of tradition, the mystic forces that run beneath the shallow surface of our modern existence like red earth beneath the pavements, The Yogini is AVAILABLE NOW!

 

“The trouble with discount websites is, you can’t see the people snatching bargains away from you.”- An excerpt from ‘Christmas Shopaholic’

Posted on by Penguin India

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. I’ve got 5 minutes 52 seconds before my basket expires. That’s loads of time! All I have to do is quickly find one more item to bump up my total to £75 so I’ll get free delivery.

Come on, Becky. You can find something.

I’m scrolling down the BargainFamily site on my computer screen, feeling like a NASA operative keeping cool under unspeakable pressure. The onscreen timer is in my peripheral vision, ticking down steadily beneath a heading that reads, Your Basket Will Expire Soon!

But you can’t give in to timer- fear when you’re shopping on discount sites. You have to be strong. Like tungsten. Shopping has really changed for me over the years. Or maybe I’ve changed.

The days when I was a single girl, living in Fulham with Suze and going round the shops every day, seem ages ago now. Yes, I used to spend too much. I’ll freely admit it. I’ve made mistakes. Like Frank Sinatra, I did it my way.

(Except ‘my way’ involved stuffing Visa bills under the bed, which I bet Frank never did.)

But I’ve learned some important lessons, which have genuinely changed the way I go about things. Like, for example:

1. I don’t use carrier bags any more. They used to be my biggest joy in life. Oh my God, the feel of a new carrier bag . . . the rope handles . . . the rustle of tissue paper . . .(I still sometimes go and swoon over my old collection at the back of the wardrobe.)

But now I use a Bag for Life instead. Because of the planet and everything.

2. I’m totally into ethical shopping. It’s like a win–win!

You get cool stuff and you’re being virtuous.

3. I don’t even spend money any more. I save money.

So obviously that’s not exactly, actually, literally true. But the point is, I’m always looking for a good deal. I see it as my responsibility as a parent to procure all the items that my family needs at the most cost-effective prices possible. Which is why BargainFamily is the perfect place for me to shop.

It’s all reduced! Designer labels and everything! The only thing is, you have to be a fast shopper, or else your basket expires and you have to start again.

I’m on £62.97 already, so all I need is another item around 12 quid. Come on, quick, there must be something I need. I click on an orange cardigan, £13.99, RRP £45, but when I zoom in I see a horrible lacy border.

White shirt?

No, I bought a white shirt last week. (One hundred per cent linen, £29.99, RRP £99.99. I must remember to wear that, actually.)

I click on my basket to double-check on what I’ve already got, and a pop-up window bursts forth, announcing You’ve

Saved £284 Today, Becky!

I feel a flash of pride as I survey my items. I’ve saved a whole £284! I’ve got an adorable bunny rabbit dressing gown for Minnie and a fantastic DKNY jacket, down from £299 to £39.99 in clearance, and a huge rubber ring shaped like a flamingo, which we can use next time we go on holiday.

And OK, yes. I could theoretically check out now and pay £5.95 for delivery. But that’s not prudent. I’m not a former financial journalist for nothing, I know these things. It’s far more economically sound to find yourself something else that you need, and get the free delivery.

Come on, there must be something. Tights? Everyone needs tights. Oh, but I’m always bumping up orders with tights. I have so many black opaques, they’ll last me till I’m 105. And those tartan patterned ones I clicked on last week were a big mistake.

I click on ‘Homewares’ and scroll down the items quickly. Silver antelope sculpture, was £79.99, now £12.99? Hmm, not sure. Scented candle? Oh God. No. I can’t buy another one.

Our whole house is like one big scented candle. In fact, Luke said the other day, ‘Becky, is there any chance of buying a candle called “Fresh Air”?’

I’m just squinting at a bread bin shaped like Big Ben when a pop-up appears in front of my eyes – Your Time Is Running Out, Becky! – and my heart jumps in fright.

I wish they wouldn’t do that. I know my time is running out. ‘I know!’ I hear myself saying out loud. ‘Don’t stress me out!’

Just to reassure myself, I click back on my basket again and my heart stops. The flamingo ring is sold out!

Sold out!

Noooo! I was too slow! Argh. The trouble with discount websites is, you can’t see the people snatching bargains away from you. Now my heart really is thumping. I’m not losing my jacket, or Minnie’s dressing gown. I need to fill this basket and check out, pronto.

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