Listening To Grasshoppers : Field Notes On Democracy

Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes On Democracy by Arundhati Roy, is a collection of essays written on India's democracy and the bitter truth associated with it. Roy questions readers about what the end result of democracy will be. She feels that only the upper 10 percent of society enjoy a democracy, while the rest are subdued to surviving through their same poverty stricken lives.

Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire

The Algebra Of Infinite Justice

This revised paperback edition includes two new essays, written in early 2002: 'Democracy: Who's She When She's Not at Home', which examines the horrific communal violence in Gujarat, and 'War Talk: Summer Games with Nuclear Bombs', about the threat of nuclear war in the Subcontinent.

Broken Republic

Broken Republic by Arundhati Roy talks about India and the large multinational companies that are taking over India's poor people's businesses. Mining, Maoism, poverty, cruelty and whether India is truly advancing in development are also discussed in detail in the book. Roy ridicules the large mining companies like Posco and Vedanta, who are exploiting miners and tribals in Chhattisgarh and Orissa. She shares her wonderful experience with the Naxalites in the Chhattisgarh forests and describes how kind and nice they were to her. Describing their fears of how the government is eradicating them from their homeland, she takes readers into a world that is unseen.

Motherwit

A Dalit, a Buddhist and a feminist: Urmila Pawar's self-definition as all three identities informs her stories about women who are brave in the face of caste oppression, strong in the face of family pressures, defiant when at the receiving end of insult, and determined when guarding their interests and those of their sisters. Using the classic short story form with its surprise endings to great effect, Pawar brings to life strong and clever women who drive the reader to laughter, anger, tears or despair. Her harsh, sometimes vulgar and hard- hitting language subverts another stereotype - that of the soft-spoken woman writer. Pawar's protagonists may not always be Dalit, and the mood not always one of anger, but caste is never far from the context and informs the subtext of each story. As critic Eleanor Zelliot notes, there is 'tucked in every story, a note about a Buddhist vihara or Dr Ambedkar.... All her stories come from the Dalit world, revealing the great variety of Dalit life now.'

City Improbable : Writings On Delhi

A city of contradictions, where ancient traditions and modern aspirations jostle for space, Delhi has often been compared to a phoenix rising from the ashes. Its three thousand years of eventful history have witnessed the rise and fall of several empires, a process that continues today. City Improbable brings together writings by immigrants, residents, refugees, travellers and invaders who have engaged with India's capital over different epochs. Babur shares his earliest experience of the city and Amir Khusrau praises the fine lads of Delhi; Ibn Battuta and Niccolao Manucci record the glories and follies of prominent rulers; William Dalrymple and Khushwant Singh provide intriguing accounts of the threshold period that saw the coming of the British and the waning of the Mughals. Poets and storytellers Meer Taqi Meer, Ghalib, Yashpal, Kamleshwar, Ruskin Bond narrate their versions of the city. Contemporary Delhi is featured in a variety of vignettes: the bureaucracy, the Emergency, the anti-Sikh violence, lovers and joggers in Lodi Gardens, the city's Sufi legacy as well as its changing cuisine. Among the new pieces in this expanded edition are Sam Miller's account of his experiences in the suburb of Noida, Manto's story about a girl from Delhi leaving the city during Partition, Jarnail Singh's unflinching recollection of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, a photo essay on Shahpur Jat by Karoki Lewis, and a composite narrative by the young writers of the Cybermohalla Collective about the making of a resettlement colony.

Day Of Reckoning

Literary Occasions

Centrepiece : New Writing And Art From Northeast India

This book brings you a wealth of stories, in words and images, from a part of India known as the Northeast, a term that is widely contest for the ways in which it homogenizes a region of great diversity. It is also a term that has come to be a marker of identity and solidarity by many who are of the region. Here, 21 writers and artists look at the idea of ‘work’ — from street hawking to beer brewing, from mothering to dung collection — and describe their lives or those of others with humour and compassion. Parismita Singh’s wonderful compilation of the works of women asks: what are the different ways of telling a story? What if we were to attempt these tellings through poetry and portraits and essays, older traditions like textile art and applique and new genres like hashtag poetry tapped into a smartphone? Where would it take us, wheat would the world look like?

Aleph

Aleph marks a return to Paulo Coelho???s beginnings. In a frank and surprising personal story, one of the world???s most beloved authors embarks on a remarkable and transformative journey of self-discovery. Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, Paulo decides to start over: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world. On this journey through Europe, Africa, and Asia, he will again meet Hilal???the woman he loved 500 years before???an encounter that will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, through past and present, in search of himself. Aleph is an encounter with our fears and our sins; a search for love and forgiveness, and the courage to confront the inevitable challenges of life.

Winner Take Nothing

Hunters, wives, old men of wisdom, waiters, fighters, women loved, women lost: they are all here, living on the raw edge, making love, facing the inevitable reality of death. The characters, the dialogue, the settings, the remarkable insight could have come only from Hemingway's imagination. As an introduction to his work, or as an overview of the themes he developed at greater length in his novels, it is a stunningly successful collection. From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Waterlog

In 1996 Roger Deakin, the late, great nature writer, set out to swim through the British Isles. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers and streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools and spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain. Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicide on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, he discovers just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully-dressed fellow citizens. This is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What Young India Wants (Selected Non-Fiction)

Based on his experience as a motivational speaker and a writer, Bhagat tries to analyse the current socio-political scenario in the country and tries to analyse different situations and crises, for which he even attempts to offer some solutions. Known for his deep understanding of aspiring young Indians, Chetan Bhagat in this book, beyond doing a methodical analysis of problems confronting youngsters, is blunt about the solutions that need to be worked out. He also addresses them with difficult approaches that need to be taken so as to realise their dreams as well as that of the nation. In the last chapter, titled ‘Unless we are all in agreement on what it is going to take to make our country better, how will things ever change?’ the author in clear terms advocates a consensual approach backed by hard work to bring about the change that all of us desire.

The Rupa Book Of Himalayan Tales

This is Ruskin Bond`s own collection of short stories, essays and poems.

The theme for the collection is of course the hills. Whether it is nature, people, places or even animals, Ruskin Bond is keenly observant of all forms of life and activity in the hills.

The Rupa Book Of Snappy Surprises

Over the ages, story-telling has been a challenge and a passion for writers across the world. Keeping a reader's attention and interest alive is no easy task. But the toughtest of all is to tell a story that is both engaging and gratifying in few words. Ruskin Bond presents this anthology of 'super short' stories that qualify the doubly difficult criteria of being entertaining as well as crisp.

In an amalgamation of sorts, here are tales that combine thrill with social comment, humour with horror, temperament with the supernatural, and wit with tradegy. A wide variety of simple stories, each with its own distinct auro of sentiment, terror, the bizaree, or the unexpected, meant to keep you excited till the last word.

The Very Best Of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam : The Righteous Life

A definitive collection that brings together the best of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's writings. Dr. Kalam, who was India's eleventh President and has been a scientist and a teacher, has written more than twenty books.

Ranging from inspirational and spiritual thoughts, to autobiographical reflections to his vision statements for a developed India, these works bear the imprint of a mind that is deeply reflective. For the first time, some of the most thoughtful, inspiring and educative of these writings have been compiled in one place in The Righteous Life. Some of the essays in this volume describe his early life, family and teachers and his entry into the world of scientific development and research.

Also included are his thoughts on education, governance, probity in public life and his analysis and solutions to some of India's problems such as corruption, energy independence and the overall development of the country. Filled with wisdom and farsighted thinking that upholds honesty, diligence and spirituality, the Righteous Life showcases the working of one of the finest minds in the country.

Making India Awesome : New Essays And Columns

'Making India Awesome: New Essays and Columns??? by renowned Indian author Chetan Bhagat is a book that showers light on India???s most obstinate snags???unemployment, violence, poverty, discrimination against women, religious fundamentalism, illiteracy and communal violence.This is the first time Chetan Bhagat, renowned for writing non-fiction books based on the lives of Indian youth, has tried his hand at writing non-fictional contents with 'Making India Awesome??? being a collection of essays that discusses some of the most prevalent problems prevailing in India.Starting with a note on his journey, the book is strategically divided into four parts i.e., Our Society, Politics, Our Youth and Two stories. Written using simple language and concept, the book aims to make the readers understand the most complex problems that the nation is facing today.Giving practical suggestion on how to solve the problem, Bhagat also give suggestions on how the youth of India can give their bit in solving these problems.Sixth book in a row, it is all about Chetan Bhagat???s take on Indian Society, culture and, most importantly, on politics.

Great Stories By Nobel Prize Winners

50 Greatest Short Stories