The Book of Aleph {Volume 6}

The Book of Aleph {Volume 6}

The Book of Aleph
January to December 2017
...…..….

ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
Published in India in 2017
by Aleph Book Company
7/16 Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110 002
Copyright © Aleph Book Company 2017
All rights reserved.
Copyright in individual excerpts vests in the authors
or proprietors. Copyright in this selection vests in
Aleph Book Company. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a
retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
without permission in writing from Aleph Book
Company.
In the works of fiction in this selection characters,
places, names and incidents are either the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously
and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or
dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
In the works of non-fiction in this selection the
views and opinions expressed are the author’s own
and the facts are as reported by him/her which
have been verified to the extent possible, and the
publishers are not in any way liable for the same.
ISBN: 978-93-86021-06-9
PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN 2016 7
WINTER 21 | SPRING 37 SUMMER 47 | MONSOON 61
AUTUMN/WINTER 87 PRIZE WINNERS & FINALISTS 111
INDEX 119
Contents
BACKLIST 131 | ABOUT US 159
Printed and bound in India by
All prices, publication dates, and other specifications
in this volume are liable to change without notice.

previously
published
in 2016

an era of darkness
the british empire in india
shashi tharoor
In 1930, the American historian and
philosopher Will Durant wrote that
Britain’s ‘conscious and deliberate
bleeding of India...[was the] greatest
crime in all history’. He was not the
only one to denounce the rapacity
and cruelty of British rule, and his
assessment was not exaggerated.
Almost thirty-five million Indians
died because of acts of commission
and omission by the British—in
famines, epidemics, communal riots
and wholesale slaughter like the
reprisal killings after the 1857 War
of Independence and the Amritsar
massacre of 1919. Besides the deaths
of Indians, British rule impoverished
India in a manner that beggars belief.
When the East India Company took
control of the country, in the chaos
that ensued after the collapse of the
Mughal empire, India’s share of world
GDP was 23 per cent. When the
British left it was just above 3 per cent.
The British empire in India began with
the East India Company, incorporated
in 1600, by royal charter of Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, to trade in
silk, spices and other profitable Indian commodities. Within a century and a half,
the Company had become a power to reckon with in India. In 1757, under the
command of Robert Clive, Company forces defeated the ruling Nawab Siraj-ud-
Daula of Bengal at Plassey, through a combination of superior artillery and even
more superior chicanery. A few years later, the young and weakened Mughal
emperor, Shah Alam II, was browbeaten into issuing an edict that replaced his
own revenue officials with the Company’s representatives. Over the next several
decades, the East India Company, backed by the British government, extended
its control over most of India, ruling with a combination of extortion, doubledealing,
and outright corruption backed by violence and superior force. This
state of affairs continued until 1857, when large numbers of the Company’s
Indian soldiers spearheaded the first major rebellion against colonial rule. After
the rebels were defeated, the British Crown took over power and ruled the
country ostensibly more benignly until 1947, when India won independence.
In this explosive book, bestselling author Shashi Tharoor reveals with acuity,
impeccable research, and trademark wit just how disastrous British rule was
for India. Besides examining the many ways in which the colonizers exploited
India, ranging from the drain of national resources to Britain, the destruction
of the Indian textile, steel-making, and shipping industries, and the negative
transformation of agriculture, he demolishes the arguments of Western and
Indian apologists for Empire on the supposed benefits of British rule, including
democracy and political freedom, the rule of law, and the railways. The few
unarguable benefits—the English language, tea, and cricket—were never
actually intended for the benefit of the colonized but introduced to serve the
interests of the colonizers. Brilliantly narrated and passionately argued, An Era
of Darkness will serve to correct many misconceptions about one of the most
contested periods of Indian history.
For a note about the author, please turn to page 72.
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9

1991
how p. v. narasimha rao made history
sanjaya baru
P. V. Narasimha Rao (or PV as he was
popularly known) has been widely
praised for enabling the economic
reforms that transformed the country
in 1991. From the vantage point of
his long personal and professional
association with the former prime
minister, bestselling author Sanjaya
Baru shows how PV’s impact on the
nation’s fortunes went way beyond the
economy.
This book is an insider’s account of the
politics, economics and geopolitics
that combined to make 1991 a
turning point for the country. The
period preceding that year was a
difficult one for India: economically,
due to the balance of payments crisis;
politically, with Rajiv Gandhi’s politics
of opportunism and cynicism taking
the country to the brink; and globally,
with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
its ally. It was in this period that the
unheralded PV assumed leadership of
the Indian National Congress, took
charge of the central government,
restored political stability, pushed
through significant economic reforms and steered India through the uncharted
waters of a post-Cold War world. He also revolutionized national politics, and
his own Congress party, by charting a new political course, thereby proving that
there could be life beyond the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
1991 marked the end of an era and the beginning of another. It was the year that
made PV. And it was the year PV made history.
Sanjaya Baru is Consulting Fellow for India, International Institute for
Strategic Studies, London and Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy
Research, New Delhi. He was Media Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh (2004-08). He has been Chief Editor, the Financial Express and Business
Standard; Editor (Delhi), the Economic Times; and Editorial Page Editor,
the Times of India. He has taught at the University of Hyderabad and Lee
Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore. His publications include The
Political Economy of Indian Sugar, Strategic Consequences of India’s Economic
Performance and The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of
Manmohan Singh.
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11

{aleph spotlight}
on nationalism
romila thapar, a. g. noorani
and sadanand menon
What is nationalism? What is pseudonationalism?
Who is an anti-national?
What is patriotism? Is the shouting of
nationalist slogans important to prove
one’s patriotism? Why is ‘Bharat Mata
ki Jai’ so important to the right wing?
Why does the law of sedition continue
to exist on the statute book of an
independent country? Who should
the sedition law be used against?
Why is cultural freedom important
to a nation? What sort of India do
we want? What sort of Indians do we
want to be? What sort of country do
we want to leave behind for future
generations? These questions all
involve one of the most fundamental
ideas of India—the nationalism we
inherited at birth. It is also one of
the most hotly contested ideas of the
twenty-first century. In this book
some of our finest thinkers and writers
provide calm, measured insights into
the origins, nature, practice and future
of Indian nationalism.
Romila Thapar is Emeritus Professor of History at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2008,
Professor Thapar was awarded the prestigious Kluge Prize of the US Library of
Congress, which honours lifetime achievement in studies such as History that
are not covered by the Nobel Prize.
A. G. Noorani is an Indian lawyer, historian and author. He has practised as an
advocate in the Supreme Court of India and in the Bombay High Court. His
columns have appeared in the Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Frontline, Economic
and Political Weekly and Dainik Bhaskar. He is the author of a number of books,
among them The Kashmir Question, The Trial of Bhagat Singh, Constitutional
Questions in India and The RSS and the BJP: A Division of Labour.
Sadanand Menon explores the charged space linking politics and culture
through his work in media, pedagogy, and the arts. He is Adjunct Faculty, Asian
College of Journalism, Chennai and at IIT, Madras. He has been an arts editor,
columnist and photographer. He was a long-time collaborator of the late dancer/
choreographer Chandralekha. He is also a leading stage-lights designer. He has
been on the Advisory Committees of the National Museum, National Gallery
of Modern Art, Lalit Kala Akademi, National School of Drama and the Indian
Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is currently managing trustee of the
Arts Foundation, SPACES, Chennai.
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13

WINNER OF THE R. K.
NARAYAN AWARD FOR
BEST AUTHOR IN ENGLISH
(2005)
m. s. subbulakshmi
the definitive biography
t. j. s. george
M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004),
who was popularly known as MS,
was one of India’s greatest classical
musicians. Born into a humble
devadasi home, her talent and
dedication to her art made her one
of India’s most critically acclaimed
classical singers. She was the first
Indian musician to receive the Bharat
Ratna, the country’s highest civilian
honour, in addition to numerous
other awards. Jawaharlal Nehru called
her ‘a Queen of Music’ and Sarojini
Naidu dubbed her ‘the Nightingale
of India’. Her fellow musicians were
no less generous in their praise. Ustad
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan said she
was Suswaralakshmi (the Goddess
of the Perfect Note) while Kishori
Amonkar said she was Aathuvansur
or music’s ‘Eighth Note’ (there are
only seven notes that are basic to
all musical forms). MS’s genius had
principally to do with her exquisite
voice, her extraordinary range and
her unequalled command of all the
material she worked with, whether
it was Carnatic music, Hindustani
music or devotional music such as bhajans.
In this, the definitive biography of the musician (previously published as
MS: A Life in Music), award-winning biographer T. J. S. George traces her
journey from her beginnings as a singer in Madurai, through her breakthrough
performance at the prestigious Madras Music Academy in 1932, to her carving
out a place for herself as a cultural icon. Besides exploring MS’s genius, the
author describes the musical and social milieu that she was part of, and the
various barriers she was instrumental in breaking in the course of her journey to
superstardom. He covers her stint as an actress and looks at how her career was
helped by various mentors and sponsors, including C. Rajagopalachari, India’s
last governor general. He pays particular attention to the role of her husband,
T. Sadavisam, in the creation and burnishing of MS’s reputation. He examines
the various controversies that surrounded her origins, and also underlines her
essential humility and generosity. Told with a music connoisseur’s passion and
understanding, M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography is an enthralling
portrait of a musical legend.
T. J. S. George is a journalist who began his career at the Free Press Journal
in 1950, and was the founding editor of Asiaweek. He established himself as a
serious political author and biographer with a series of major books, including
Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore, The Life and Times of Nargis and Krishna Menon: A
Biography. His latest book is Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore. He is editorial
adviser to the New Indian Express and lives in Bangalore with his wife, Ammu.
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15

the dashing ladies of shiv sena
political matronage in urbanizing india
tarini bedi
Rich in detail, this eye-opening
book explores the activities and
political strategies of women political
workers and leaders of Shiv Sena.
Based on more than ten years of indepth
ethnographic fieldwork with
dozens of women Sena workers in
urban Maharashtra, the work shows
how they conjure political authority
through the inventive, dangerous,
and transgressive political personas
known as dashing ladies. Through
the narratives of these women, Tarini
Bedi develops a feminist theory of
brokerage politics, and what can be
termed ‘political matronage’.
Excerpt
Political dhang is absolutely vital to
women’s rise in the party and to their
visibility within Shiv Sena and in their
local neighborhoods. Ragini Munde,
a fifty-five-year-old Shiv Sena branch
leader in Mumbai, was a force to be
reckoned with in her area. She lived in
a lower-middle-class housing colony
in the Goregaon area called Lilia
Nagar. Until the late 1980s this area
was a satellite industrial area for the central hubs of Mumbai. When Ragini
first moved here there was almost no residential property or any public services
to speak of. Now of course there are posh high-rise towers everywhere; a fancy
country club has opened just around the corner from Ragini. But she and her
family continue to live in the same low-rise building in a one-room flat they
bought with a loan from her husband’s employer in the early 1980s. Ragini
saw herself as central to the establishment of many of the amenities that go
with residential life in this area (water, roads leading to the buildings) through
her ‘social work’. She began her political career by working with the veteran
socialist activist and later Member of Parliament, Mrinal Gore. Gore and many
of the other progressive activists who worked with her succeeded in bringing the
drinking water supply to Goregaon. Gore’s hard work and success earned her the
nickname by which she was affectionately referred to across the area until her
death in July 2012: paniwali bai (water aunt). Ragini said that she left Gore’s
progressive party, the Janata Dal (People’s Movement), to join Shiv Sena because
she did not see the Janata Dal providing her with any opportunities for political
recognition and not enough hungama (trouble-making). Also, she said, that she
felt that the Janata Dal was not staunchly Hindu enough. She also said that her
membership in Shiv Sena has changed her ‘nature’.
‘I have got another kind of nature now, what do you call it? I have an image now.
People will see me and say see there is Munde bai. Whoever will see me, they
will say they know me, they recognize me. Wherever I walk around in the ward
people will say to me that they recognize me. So people have started to recognize
me because I do all these things like andolans, like haldi-kumkum programs, like
social work programs. In my ward they all recognize me. I go to all the programs,
I do all the work all over. Really other ladies do not do this that much. It is not
that I am too proud, but I will tell you, my dhang (style) of working is different.’
Tarini Bedi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois,
Chicago.
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17

magic for the soul
an adult colouring book of postcards featuring gond art
venkat raman singh shyam
The story of the Gond artists, and the
illusory world they create through
their marvellous art, originated in the
Patangarh, a land they knew as their
own. It was situated on top of a hill
in the Dindori Valley in Mandla.
Patangarh was a tranquil place with
slopes and valleys richly clothed in
green, yellow and brown. It offered its
inhabitants a peaceful existence and
a serene view of the universe and life
about them. All this would change,
and the Adivasis would be called upon
to fight to save what was precious to
them, but that is not a part of their
lives that we will delve into in this
book.
What I would like to draw your
attention to is their art, that has
captured the imagination of people
everywhere. My story begins with
a young dreamer by the name of
Jangadh who came to the attention
of the elders and others in the village
when he began painting in a frenzy.
He painted on walls, floors, on
virtually every surface he came across.
He seemed to be a man possessed as he
energetically painted his magnificent murals of gods and men, beasts, birds and
trees. It was clear that he was dismissive of the existing traditions because his own
style was inventive and original.
Jangadh was the uncle of the artist whose dazzling works comprise this colouring
book. When you look at Venkat Raman Singh Shyam’s work you can see the
influence of his uncle and the other senior artists whose work he observed closely
in his formative years. It was only natural for Venkat as a young boy to pick up
the brush and paint his own pictures, as he had seen others in the community
do.
Chachan birds, the katheli tree, snakes, animals, plants were early subjects of
Venkat before he began to develop his own unique vernacular, confidently
narrating his own parables of deities and how they navigated their way around
the rapidly changing modern world. In Venkat’s world, as reflected in his art,
even the palash and katheli trees join in the singing and revelry when festivals
are celebrated. ‘Our gods need us to drink, eat and be merry,’ Venkat says. On
his canvas, mythological tales he has heard from his mother and other elders
come alive, painted in radiant reds, blues, yellows and oranges. What is unique
to Venkat’s distinct style is how he melds the different influences in his work
by allowing them to flow into each other. And how adroitly both ancient and
modern civilizations find a place in this magical world! While the pages in this
colouring book have paintings that will challenge and draw out the artist in you,
we hope that this book will lead you to further explore the extraordinary world
of Adivasi art.
— From the foreword by Ina Puri.
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam is a renowned Pardhan Gond artist. Nephew
of the legendary Jangadh Singh Shyam, he creates murals, paintings, etchings,
mixed media and animation and has exhibited widely across the world. Venkat
Raman Singh Shyam’s art is radiant and full of enchantment.
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19

previously published in 2015
21

saint teresa of calcutta
a celebration of her life & legacy
raghu rai
Raghu Rai, India’s greatest living photographer, met Mother Teresa (as she was
then called) for the first time in 1970. Over the next twenty-seven years, until
her death in 1997, he photographed her, almost without pause, producing an
unparalleled pictorial record of her life and work. In September 2016, Rai was
present at the Vatican to photograph the canonization of Mother Teresa who
would henceforth be known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Says Rai of Saint Teresa:
‘She is my mother, my guru and mentor.’
Raghu Rai has won many national and international awards and accolades
including being nominated in 1971 by Henri Cartier-Bresson to Magnum
Photos. His solo exhibition has travelled to London, Paris, New York, Hamburg,
Prague, Tokyo, Zurich and Sydney. His photo essays have appeared in Time,
Life, Newsweek, The Independent, GEO, the New York Times, Sunday Times, and
New Yorker.
He received the Padma Shri in 1971. Raghu Rai currently lives and works in
New Delhi.
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23

dragon on our doorstep
managing china through military power
pravin sawhney and ghazala wahab
India might not admit it, but should it find itself involved in a border war
with China it will lose. Apart from superior military power, close coordination
between the political leadership and the military, and the ability to take quick
decisions, China has potent anti-satellite and cyber warfare capabilities. Even
more shockingly, regardless of popular opinion, India today is not even in a
position to win a war against Pakistan. This has nothing to do with Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons. It is because while India has been focused on building military
force (troops and materiel needed to wage war) Pakistan has built military power
(learning how to optimally utilize its military force). In this lies the difference
between losing and winning. Far from being the strong Asian power of its
perception, India could find itself extremely vulnerable to the hostility of its
powerful neighbours. In Dragon On Our Doorstep, Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala
Wahab analyse the geopolitics of the region and the military strategies of the
three Asian countries to tell us exactly why India is in this precarious position
and how it can transform itself through deft strategy into a leading power.
Pravin Sawhney has been editor of FORCE (a magazine on national security
and defence) since 2003. The author of two books—The Defence Makeover: 10
Myths That Shape India’s Image and Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished—
he has been visiting fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence
and Security Studies, United Kingdom, and visiting scholar at the Cooperative
Monitoring Center, United States.
Ghazala Wahab is executive editor, FORCE, where she writes on homeland
security, terrorism, Jammu and Kashmir, left-wing extremism and religious
extremism, and contributes a column, First Person.
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small towns, big stories
new & selected fiction
ruskin bond
Small Towns, Big Stories showcases twenty-one stories of small-town life by the
country’s greatest living chronicler of the Indian heartland. Ruskin Bond has
been writing evocative stories about the dusty towns and settlements in the
hinterland for decades but this is the first time his finest stories on the theme
have been brought together in a single volume. Timeless classics like ‘Time Stops
at Shamli’, ‘Bus Stop, Pipalnagar’, and ‘The Night Train at Deoli’ rub shoulders
with brilliant new stories that have never been published before like ‘Strychnine
in the Cognac’, ‘The Horseshoe’ and ‘When the Clock Strikes Thirteen’.
Vibrant, poignant, beautiful and tragic, these stories show a master storyteller at
the height of his powers.
Excerpt
Dawn crept quietly over the sleeping town. Only a cock was aware of it, and
crowed. Koki heard a soft tapping on the windowpane, and immediately sat up
in bed. She was ten years old. Her hair fell about her shoulders in a disorderly
fashion and there were slight shadows under her dark eyes, but she was wide
awake and listening. The tapping was repeated.
Koki got out of bed and tiptoed across to the window and unlatched it. Ranji
was standing outside, looking somewhat disgruntled.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s nearly time.’
Koki put her finger to her lips, for she did not want her parents and grandmother
to wake up.
‘You go and tell Bhim,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll meet you at the maidan.’
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Ranji hurried off in the direction of Bhim’s house, and Koki turned from the
window and went to the dressing table. She combed her hair carelessly and tied
it roughly with a ribbon. She was excited and in a hurry, and had slept in her
dress, which was very crushed. Now she was ready to leave.
{now in paperback}
tiger fire
500 years of the tiger in india
valmik thapar
Very quietly, she pulled open a dressing table drawer and brought out a cardboard
box in which were punctured little holes. She opened the lid of the box to see if
Rajkumari was all right.
Rajkumari, a dumpy rhino beetle, was asleep on the core of an apple. Koki did
not disturb her. She closed the box and barefoot crept out of the house through
the back door.
As soon as she was outside, Koki broke into a run. She did not stop running
until she reached the maidan.
Ruskin Bond is the author of several bestselling novels and collections of short
stories, essays and poems. These include The Room on the Roof (winner of the
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time
Stops at Shamli, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra (winner of the Sahitya Akademi
Award), Angry River, The Blue Umbrella, Delhi Is Not Far, Rain in the Mountains,
Roads to Mussoorie, A Little Night Music, Tigers for Dinner, Tales of Fosterganj, A
Gathering of Friends and Upon An Old Wall Dreaming.
Ruskin Bond was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999,
a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi government in 2012 and the Padma
Bhushan in 2014.
The tiger has captured the imagination of human beings from the beginning
of recorded history. It has been feared, worshipped, admired, hunted, studied,
photographed, written about, immortalized in art and poetry, and has enthralled
king and commoner alike. Tiger Fire celebrates this magnificent predator by
bringing together the very best non-fiction writing, photography and art on the
Indian tiger from the first written description of a real-life encounter with the
animal by the Mughal Emperor Babur in the sixteenth century to photographs
and studies of the last of the species surviving in the wild today.
Conceived and edited by the world’s foremost authority on the Indian tiger,
Valmik Thapar (who has also contributed many pieces to this volume), the
book’s contributors are drawn from an array of renowned naturalists, writers,
photographers, and tiger enthusiasts down the centuries including Babur,
Akbar, François Bernier, Thomas Roe, R. G. Burton, Walter Campbell, Thomas
Williamson, F. W. Champion, Kesri Singh, Jim Corbett, Hugh Allen, Richard
Perry, Arjan Singh, George Schaller, Kenneth Anderson, M. Krishnan, Peter
Jackson, Fateh Singh Rathore, Kim Sullivan, Tejbir Singh, Jaisal and Anjali
Singh, Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh, K. Ullas Karanth, Dharmendra Khandal, and
Dhritiman Mukherjee. Culled from over a million words (both published and
unpublished) on the animal, the accounts and pictures assembled in this book
show us the tiger in extraordinary and compelling detail.
Valmik Thapar has spent four decades serving the cause of wild India. During
this time, he has authored, co-authored and edited more than twenty-five books
and made or presented nearly a dozen films for the BBC and several other
television networks on the tiger and Indian flora and fauna.
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heroines
powerful indian women of myth and history
ira mukhoty
The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often
associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women’s heroism has
tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women
in this book—Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara,
Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal—share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which
they are willing to fight to the death if need be.
There is the lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story
emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal
respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan,
who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and
wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth; Raziya,
the battle-scarred warrior, who proudly claimed the title of Sultan, refusing its
fragile feminine corollary, Sultana; the courageous Meerabai who repudiated her
patriarchal destiny as cloistered daughter-in-law of a Rajput clan; gentle Mughal
princess Jahanara, who claims the blessings of both Allah and the Prophet
Muhammad and wishes ‘never to be forgotten’; Laxmibai, widow, patriot, and
martyr, who rides into legend and immortality fighting for her adopted son’s
birthright; and Hazrat Mahal, courtesan, begum, and rebel queen, resolute till
the very end in defying British attempts to seize her ex-husband’s kingdom.
Ira Mukhoty was educated in Delhi and Cambridge, where she studied
Natural Sciences. After a peripatetic youth, she returned to Delhi to raise her
two daughters. Living in one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the
world, she developed an interest in the evolution of mythology and history and
its relevance to the status of women in India.
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{aleph spotlight}
understanding the black
economy & black money in india
causes, consequences and remedies
arun kumar
His areas of specialization are Development Economics, Public Finance and
Public Policy and Macroeconomics, and he has published widely in these areas,
both in academic journals and the popular press.
The Modi government’s sudden demonetization of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes
in November 2016, besides causing untold hardship to hundreds of millions
of Indians, did not do much to destroy the black economy which has crippled
the country for decades now. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country’s leading
authority on the problem, tells us exactly why Modi’s gambit failed. He shows us
the only way in which the black economy can be rooted out, provided the ruling
government has the political will and determination to achieve its objective.
Today, the black economy is estimated to be 56 per cent of GDP—or about Rs
65 lakh crore ($1 trillion). A triad of corrupt businessmen, corrupt politicians,
and corrupt members of the executive (bureaucrats, police and the judiciary)
are responsible for controlling and growing the black economy. If the black
economy were to be dismantled and merged with the ‘white’ economy, the
country’s rate of growth would be 12 per cent, its per capita income would
be approximately Rs 7 lakh per annum ( $10,000) and India would become
the second largest economy in the world. If the black economy was taxed at
current rates, it would generate Rs 26 lakh crore in additional taxes and the
union budget would show a surplus of Rs 10 lakh crore instead of a deficit as is
the case at present. The failure of successive governments to tackle the problem
effectively is the single biggest obstacle to eradicating poverty and corruption
in the country.
Arun Kumar is the country’s leading authority on the black economy and has
studied, written about and lectured extensively on the phenomenon for nearly
four decades. He was educated at Delhi University, Princeton University and
Jawaharlal Nehru University. He taught Economics at JNU from 1984 to 2015.
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how i became a tree
a memoir
sumana roy
In this remarkable and often unsettling book, Sumana Roy gives us a new vision
of what it means to be human in the natural world. Increasingly disturbed by the
violence, hate, insincerity, greed and selfishness of her kind, the author is drawn
to the idea of becoming a tree. ‘I was tired of speed’, she writes, ‘I wanted to live
to tree time.’ Besides wanting to emulate the spacious, relaxed rhythm of trees,
she is drawn to their non-violent ways of being, how they tread lightly upon
the earth, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, the unselfishness with
which they give freely of themselves and much more. She gives us new readings
of the works of writers, painters, photographers and poets (Rabindranath Tagore
and D. H. Lawrence among them) to show how trees and plants have always
fascinated us. She studies the work of remarkable scientists like Jagadish Chandra
Bose and key spiritual figures like the Buddha to gain even deeper insights into
the world of trees. She writes of those who have wondered what it would be like
to have sex with a tree, looks into why people marry trees, explores the death
and rebirth of trees, and tells us why a tree was thought by forest-dwellers to be
equal to ten sons.
Mixing memoir, literary history, nature studies, spiritual philosophies, and
botanical research, How I Became a Tree is a book that will prompt readers to
think of themselves, and the natural world that they are an intrinsic part of, in
fresh ways. It is that rarest of things—a truly original work of art.
Sumana Roy writes from Siliguri, a small town in sub-Himalayan Bengal.
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winter
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maid in india
stories of opportunity and inequality inside our homes
tripti lahiri
In many countries, the richest citizens and the poorest ones know little about
each other. In India, we rub shoulders every day, under the same roof. There’s
sir, madam, and their children. Often, the parents of sir or madam are around
too. And then there’s the help: the boon—or bane—of life for affluent Indians,
depending on whom you talk to. In the not-so-distant past, everyone’s place—
whether maid, ayah or cook, sahib or memsahib—was well understood. There
were clear rules for negotiating (and maintaining) the vast chasm between the
two sides. Today, it’s a little different. There are housekeepers who are part of the
middle class who ensure their children join white-collar India. There are teenage
girls brought to the city by ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ to serve as ‘24-hour’ help, who
find themselves virtually caged. There are employers who wrestle with the guilt
of spending more on an Italian meal in a fancy hotel than on those who clean
their homes—and other employers who insist ‘these people’ are all thieves. With
in-depth reporting in the villages from where women make their way to upperclass
homes in Delhi and Gurgaon, in courtrooms where the worst allegations of
abuse get an airing, and in homes up and down the class ladder, Maid in India
is an intimate account of the complex and troubling relations between the help
and those they serve.
Hong-Kong-based journalist Tripti Lahiri was the founding editor of the Wall
Street Journal’s India Real Time blog. In 2013, she was part of an award-winning
WSJ team that reported in-depth on the law enforcement and judicial response
to crimes against women in India. She is also a winner of the Ramnath Goenka
Award for civic journalism. Maid in India is her first book.
Excerpt
For much of India’s independence, only a very tiny share of people could afford
to have servants. But in the last two decades, Indians who are experiencing, at
long last, a new level of prosperity are now able to hire people to aid in carrying
out the astonishing amount of housework that life in India seems to entail at
any income level. Particularly for the growing numbers of women who work
in urban India, ‘work-life balance’ depends increasingly on having help. In the
decade after liberalization in 1991, the number of maids, drivers and nannies in
India doubled. Their ranks doubled again in the decade that followed.
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{aleph spotlight}
the decline of civilization
why we need to return to gandhi and tagore
ramin jahanbegloo
foreword by romila thapar
This new book by the Iranian-Canadian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo
examines the concept of civilization and its decline into a decivilizing process.
The big question that the author grapples with is: what does it mean to talk
about a decivilized society? Can it mean that our time is barbaric? Or does it
mean that our century is submerged in a new Dark Age? The basic challenge
is, therefore, to understand and analyse this gradual absence of the concept
of civilization in our everyday lives. Through a profound and argumentative
analysis of Gandhi’s concept of civilization in Hind Swaraj and Tagore’s intercivilizational
dialogue, the author tries to find alternative modes of redefining
civilization in terms of ethical empathy and cultural hospitality. This book
invites readers to rethink the concept of civilization as a ‘shared human horizon’
of empathy which avoids moral anarchy and relativism while acknowledging the
plurality of modes of being human. This is a rare and much needed book for its
commitment to concepts and ideas which remind us of how civilization is also a
way of questioning the world in which we live.
Excerpt
Let it be understood that the ongoing globalization of the high-tech capitalist
culture has created cultural uniformity throughout the world without leaving
any ontological space for cultural diversities. However, in the era of present
globalization of techno-capitalist culture, the great lack is the idea of civilization.
The basic challenge is, therefore, to understand and analyse this gradual absence
of the concept of civilization in our everyday lives. Thus it is noteworthy that the
decline of the idea of ‘civilization’, as it was known to humanity for over 5,000
years, is intimately connected with the irresponsible and un-empathic nature of
techno-capitalist rationality. Apart from this, what has contributed most to the
erosion of the concept of civilization in our present world is the erosion of political
consciousness itself. The global melting pot of capitalism and new technologies
has thereby deteriorated and diminished the culture of politics around the world.
Even if the world can still avoid the bureaucratization of politics at every level,
the notion of politics itself, linked to the idea of civilization, has no more a sense
of being forward looking, especially in regard to human destiny. Like civilization
itself, politics has become aimless and meaningless. Though politics is about
linking the present life of humans to the realm of future, today’s political culture
is totally incapable of foreseeing the road ahead. The fact that contemporary
politics is no more future oriented is the underlying reason why the fundamental
problem of humanity is not solely political but mainly civilizational.
Hence, in trying to take into account the crucial issues of our time in relation
with the dynamic of decivilization in the world today, we hope to be in a
position to advance a correct diagnosis of where humanity stands at this present
historical crossroad but also where it seems to be heading without a clear concept
of civilization. It is with this requirement in mind that we present this study
as a political and philosophical analysis of the concept of civilization without
following the path of a conventional study of the history of civilization.
Ramin Jahanbegloo is a political philosopher and the author of twenty-seven
books. He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre
for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at
Jindal Global University, Delhi.
He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain
(2009) for his extensive academic work in promoting dialogue between cultures
and his advocacy of non-violence. More recently, he won the Josep Palau i Fabre
International Essay Prize (2012).
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asia reborn
a continent rises from the ravages of colonialism & war to a new dynamism
prasenjit k. basu
This book is an Asian telling of the continent’s twentieth-century story. It
weaves together the stirring tales of how Asia’s nations overcame European
domination—and its legacies of war and famine—and began the long climb
to economic dynamism. Japan, having resisted colonial conquest through its
conservative revolution in 1868, played a vital role as leader of Asia’s rebirth.
The tide turned when Japan triumphed in its decade-long tussle with Russia
over Manchuria, the homeland of the non-Chinese dynasty that then ruled
China. Britain’s Curzon, seeking to nip nascent nationalism in the bud, quickly
partitioned India’s largest province—the first gambit in Britain’s long game of
divide et impera. The book examines why the most prosperous parts of Asia in
the second half of the twentieth century were precisely those that had been ruled
by Japan (even fleetingly), while those parts of Asia that were ruled longest by
the British were its poorest.
Prasenjit K. Basu lives and works in East Asia (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur)
with his wife, Aarti, and three children. He has spent the past quarter century
analysing Asia’s economies for various clients of Wharton Econometrics, UBS,
Credit Suisse First Boston, Khazanah Nasional, Daiwa Securities and Macquarie.
Apart from copious reports for his employers, Prasenjit has been a regular
commentator for the BBC, CNBC-Asia, Channel News Asia, NDTV Profit
and Zee Business, and has written op-eds for the Financial Times, International
Herald Tribune, Business Times (Singapore), The Statesman (India), India Today,
The Edge, The Star (Malaysia) and BBC Online, and co-authored a little book
called India as a New Global Leader (Foreign Policy Centre, 2005).
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the book of indian dogs
s. theodore baskaran
The Book of Indian Dogs is the first comprehensive book on Indian dog breeds
in over fifty years. It features the twenty-five breeds that most breeders and
dog fanciers agree constitute the country’s canine heritage. Divided into three
groupings—working dogs, companion dogs and hounds—the book provides
detailed background notes to each breed, along with information on its physical
characteristics, behaviour, uses, origins and history. Along with popular breeds
like caravan hounds (or Karuvanis), Chippiparais, Mudhol hounds, Pashmis,
Rajapalayams and Rampur hounds the book also features lesser known breeds
such as the Alaknoori and the Jonangi. The fruit of several years of travel and
research into India’s dog breeds, as well as S. Theodore Baskaran’s hands-on
experience of raising various dogs, this celebration of our dogs is a book that no
dog lover can do without.
Baskaran’s other scholarly interests include film studies and art history, areas in
which he has published books and articles. His book, The Eye of the Serpent, won
the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema, 1997. He was awarded the Iyal
Virudhu for Lifetime Achievement in Tamil Writing by the Canada-based Tamil
Literary Garden.
He is a graduate of the National Defence College. He retired as Chief Postmaster
General of Tamil Nadu. He lives with his wife in Bangalore.
A lifelong dog lover, S. Theodore Baskaran has raised many dogs, including
two Indian breeds. He has been associated with the Kennel Club of India,
Chennai, and was a member of the show committee. He was instrumental in
bringing out a set of four postage stamps on indigenous breeds of dogs.
Baskaran is a well-known naturalist and conservationist. He served two terms as
a trustee of WWF India and has been an honorary wildlife warden in Chennai.
His book The Dance of the Sarus: Essays of a Wandering Naturalist was published
in 1999. He edited a book on Indian wildlife, Sprint of the Blackbuck. He writes
frequently on conservation for The Hindu and Frontline. He has also contributed
to important anthologies such as An Anthology of Indian Wildlife, Waterlines:
Rivers of India and Voices in the Wilderness. He writes on conservation in Tamil
in magazines like Uyirmmai and Kalachuvadu and also has three books on
conservation in Tamil to his credit. He believes that to make conservation a
people’s movement the discourse has to be in local languages.
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47

god in hinduism
devdutt pattanaik
The bestselling author of books on mythology, spirituality and religion, Devdutt
Pattanaik follows up his number one bestseller My Gita with this extraordinary
encyclopaedia on the various manifestations of God in Hindu scriptures, temples
and everyday worship. This book is designed to appeal to anyone looking for
concise descriptions, explanations and insights into God, gods and goddesses
in Hinduism from one of the world’s greatest authorities on the subject. In the
author’s own words:
© Prashant Sareen
God in Hinduism has many definitions.
God is God, Goddess, and gods.
God is an idea and entity.
God is one and many.
God is man, woman, and everything in between.
God is element, plant, animal and human.
God is space, time and star.
God is within and without.
God is source and destination.
God is container and contained.
God is hermit and householder.
God is imagination and consciousness.
God is form and formless.
God is meaning and manifestation.
God is flesh and soul.
Devdutt Pattanaik is a renowned author, mythologist and leadership
consultant. He has written over thirty bestselling books (among them Business
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Sutra, The Success Sutra, The Leadership Sutra and The Talent Sutra), published
several hundred articles and given numerous talks and presentations on Indian
mythology, religion, culture, business and management. He was formerly the
Chief Belief Officer of the Future Group.
zelaldinus
a masque
irwin allan sealy
He is currently a much sought-after speaker, leadership coach, management
adviser and consultant on Indian mythology, religion and culture. To know
more about him please visit www.devdutt.com.
While Zelaldinus [Jalal al-Din, Akbar, the Great Mogul] was residing at Agara, he
decided to remove his court to siquirinum [Sikri].
—Father Antonio Monserrate, Jesuit, reporting
from Akbar’s court to Rome, 1579.
In the inner court of Emperor Akbar’s palace at Fatehpur Sikri is a broad
stone terrace with a chequered pattern that resembles a game board. Here,
contemporary accounts say, the emperor played a kind of chess using pieces
drawn from his harem of three hundred. Costumed in various guises, the women
would have presented many a lively masque for the king.
Zelaldinus mounts such a pageant, glittering and fantastical, where past and
present, nobles and commoners, history and fiction, rub shoulders. The emperor
himself, a man of limitless enthusiasms, is both chief participant and magus. The
emperor, and one other, the tourist and narrator Irv.
i got in late at night
and took the only bed
hotel trishul—a fright
in six colours at the foot of the red
city. pink-tiled bathroom a joke
encrypted kitchen head-
on, its furnace blast insinuating smoke.
Smoke and glare merely spike Irv’s crackling tale of romantic love across the
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Pakistan border, while through it all strides the nimble ghost of Akbar himself.
Irwin Allan Sealy was born in Allahabad in 1951 and educated in Lucknow and
Delhi. He is the author of The Small Wild Goose Pagoda, The Trotter-Nama, The Everest
Hotel, The Brainfever Bird and other novels, and a travelogue, From Yukon to Yucatan. He
lives in Dehradun.
the parrots of desire
3,000 years of indian erotica
edited by amrita narayanan
Erotic writing (or writing that addresses the philosophical questions that arise
in the erotic life), has unfolded in India in different cosmopolitan and spiritual
hubs at different periods in history; yet Kama’s arrows are less well-known than
Cupid’s despite pre-dating and most likely influencing them. In this anthology,
divided into sections that speak to the burning emotions and questions of the
erotic life, modern lovers and the erotically curious can find access and use for the
breadth of erotic writing and thinking that has emerged from the subcontinent
from antiquity to the present day.
The book covers a vast span of time and language and a stunning range of
geographical locations. The readers will find questions on the nature of erotic life
arising on the battlegrounds of Kurukshetra; erotic Tamil Sangam poems (many
by women writers) in the hills, woods, plains, desert and seaside and in the form
of complaints, laments, lust and rapture; sky and ether are the geography of
the ecstatic verses of Andal, the Tamil wanderer poet of the Bhakti Movement;
the stylized sexuality of courtly and courtesan life hovers in the backdrop of
the intensely sensual lovemaking in Mudduppalani’s text, translated from the
Telugu; the gritty sexuality of brothels in pre-Partition Lahore penetrates Manto’s
short story ‘Smell’; global metaphors suffuse and elevate desire in ‘Infinite’, the
translated Malayalam poem of K. Satchidanand; in the excerpt from Tarun
Tejpal’s Alchemy of Desire, an extraordinarily sexual tale of urban love threatens
to rip asunder a quiet home in the hills in north India.
Organized according to the different moods of the erotic, from the rawly sexual
to the elevated ecstatic, the anthology covers the problems and pleasures of a
favourite human—and clearly Indian—pastime.
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Amrita Narayanan is a clinical psychologist and writer based in Goa. She is
the author of A Pleasant Kind of Heavy and Other Erotic Stories (a finalist for
the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award) and of numerous essays on psychoanalysis,
women and sexuality that have been published in India, the UK and US.
{aleph spotlight}
political corruption
in india
how should it be combated?
n. ram
Political corruption in India is something that everyone talks about, feels strongly
about, and imagines he or she knows a lot about. In a land where myths and
fantastical notions abound, it is not surprising that in the public mind this beast,
which is constantly in the news, can assume fantastic forms and proportions.
The ‘folklore of corruption’ (a term coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist
Gunnar Myrdal) that has developed over time is itself socially and politically
significant, almost on a par with anti-corruption arrangements and movements
and the facts of corruption.
Political Corruption in India will focus on the Indian variant of ‘grand corruption’,
an idea and category that harks back to Hegel’s famous differentiation between
ordinary corruption or ‘a great and general corruption’. Today, grand corruption
in India denotes the systemic abuse of power on a massive and ever-increasing
scale for personal gain or other illegitimate ends. It takes place in the higher
reaches of the political system, subverts the rule of law, and is deeply embedded in
the country’s socio-economic and political systems. Despite the existence of anticorruption
laws, the periodic surfacing of anti-corruption movements, and some
notable prosecutions and convictions of the corrupt, it is widely acknowledged
that an immunity from independent investigation and prosecution operates in
most cases for the politically powerful.
Drawing on his experience of investigating Bofors—modern India’s defining
corruption scandal—and analysing more recent investigations of grand
corruption, the author throws a spotlight on what independent and publicspirited
journalism can do, in tandem with other democratic institutions, to
combat corruption across the land. The book ends with a forecast on whether
India will be able to root out corruption from its polity in the conceivable future.
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N. Ram, chairman of Kasturi & Sons and former editor-in-chief and publisher
of The Hindu and Frontline magazine, is a political journalist with literary
interests. He has written on a range of socio-political subjects and specialized in
investigative journalism. Along with Susan Ram, he is the biographer of the great
Indian writer, R. K. Narayan, whom he knew well. Ram was elected president
of the Contemporary India Section of the 72nd Session of the Indian History
Congress (2011). He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for Journalism (1990).
He also received the Asian Investigative Journalist of the Year Award from the
Press Foundation of Asia (1990); the B. D. Goenka Award for Excellence in
Journalism (1989); and a Columbia J-School Alumni Award (2003).
{aleph spotlight}
knowledge and education
in india
g. n. devy
Over the last two centuries, thinkers of every hue have debated the nature of
‘knowledge’ relevant for India. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the
debate was focused on the need to choose between Western forms of knowledge
and traditional Indian forms of knowledge, between the ‘puratan’ and the
‘nutan’. Subsequently, various social reformers and thinkers attempted to bring
about an eclectic synthesis of these two essentially divergent modes of learning
and knowledge generation, without much success.
Since Independence, repeated attempts have been made to shape regulatory
institutions and educational processes so as to be able to train educated minds,
which in turn are expected to contribute to the progress and growth of India.
However, there has been a pervasive dissatisfaction about education and the
capability of educational institutions, especially in regard to the research they
undertake and the knowledge they shape.
This book briefly describes the historical context and the general nature of
dissatisfaction about education in India, and goes on to offer an analysis of the
historical context of various forms of social exclusion. The main focus of the
book is a discussion of the nature of the central component in education, namely
‘knowledge’. It outlines the development of ideas surrounding the notions of
‘knowledge’ in Western societies over the last four centuries, dwelling at some
length on the role of ‘memory’ in the rise of different disciplines of learning; the
book then comments on trajectories of ‘memory’ in Indian tradition(s). Having
presented these two distinct overviews of ‘memory’, it seeks to explain why
the forms of knowledge in India took divergent paths distributed between the
‘classical’ and the ‘folk’, and why many of the indigenous fields of knowledge did
not culminate in unified fields of knowledge with a universal value. The book
argues that the conceptual uncertainty about what ‘knowledge’ is, or should do,
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to and within a society is a likely reason why attempts made to impart the right
sort of knowledge (and education) in India haven’t been satisfactory.
Another central strand in the book is an examination of the general ignorance
about the communities at the margins—Adivasis and nomads—and its adverse
impact on the quality of knowledge circulated in formal education. It then
proposes that ‘not knowing India sufficiently well’ produces a ‘not knowing
India’.
Formerly Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, G. N. Devy writes
in English, Marathi and Gujarati. He is the founder of the Bhasha Research
Centre, Baroda, and Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, and has worked extensively with
Adivasis and nomadic communities in India. He led the People’s Linguistic Survey
of India (PLSI), a comprehensive documentation of all living Indian languages,
forming a fifty-volume PLSI Series (Orient BlackSwan). He has received several
awards for his writing as well as for his community work, including the Padma
Shri, Prince Claus Award and Linguapax Award. Among his better known works
are After Amnesia (1992), Of Many Heroes (1997), Painted Words (2003) and
Nomad Called Thief (2003) (in English), Vanaprastha (in Marathi), and Adivasi
Jaane Chhe (in Gujarati). He has co-edited a series of six volumes on indigenous
cultures and knowledge. As an activist, he played a leading role in the movement
for the rights of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, and more recently has initiated
the Dakshinayan Movement of writers and artists.
the demon-hunter of chottanikkara
a novel
s. v. sujatha
The rhythm of the days in Chottanikkara is languid. Surrounded by lush forest
and sprawling sea, this village in Malabar is idyllic, its winds warm and scented
with salt, its air tasting of jackfruit and spices, its inhabitants immersed in simple
routines of farming and trading and fishing. The nights, however, are not as
calm. For, when darkness falls, the demons come out of hiding, consumed with
an insatiable bloodlust and hunger, ready to prey on the living. It is then up to
Devi to stop them, to hunt them down and expel them from the land of the
living.
This blazingly original work of fiction is based on the mythology and folklore of
Goddess Devi, the protector, exorcist and native deity of Chottanikkara, where
her temple still stands at the nerve-centre of the village. The story reimagines the
goddess as a young warrior and sets her story in a time when the demons weren’t
simply in our heads but roamed free and had to be slain.
Excerpt
At the eastern corner of the temple, a little away from the doors, was the
mahavedi, the main altar. It was alive now, the pyre burning bright within the
robust red-brick frame, stoked by the pots of ghee poured onto the wood, the
smoke rising thick, the tongues of flame leaping up fiercely. The priests were
already seated around the altar, prepared and eager, and beside them were the
baskets of offerings the villagers had brought along to the temple. Devi took her
place beside these men of God, lowering herself onto the thick wooden platform
set at the head of the altar. The melsanthi had placed her turban beside her seat,
so it would be blessed too.
‘Let us begin,’ she said to the priests.
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The head priest began softly uttering verses and incantations, invoking and
praying, his voice cutting through the air in staccato bursts. Then all the priests
joined in. Their voices moved in seamless rhythms, coming together, soaring
towards the pyre. Devi sat there soaking up the prayers, her lips moving along
with their chants, speaking the words from memory. They made their offerings
to Agni, poured in pots of freshly churned butter, ghee, rice, barley, lentils,
herbs, roots, tree barks, milk, and water. Smoke rose from the altar, profuse and
fragrant. Devi let the chants spill onto her like sacred rain. They flowed over
her—first a soothing river, then becoming a swelling sea. The chanting slowly
crescendoed around her, the smoke thickened, wrapping her in waves of rapture.
Suddenly, Devi sprang to her feet and raised her trisoolam, her breath coming in
quick bursts, her pupils dilating big and black. She held the spear tight, turning
it so its prongs faced downwards, and she stretched her other hand before her:
the veins on her arms and legs writhed under the skin. In one swift motion,
and aiming at the three dark scars that still remained on her wrist from the
last sacrifice, she plunged the trident into herself: blood spurted out, bubbling,
burning crimson. She placed her open wound over the mouth of the altar. As her
blood poured into the sacrificial pyre, she watched impassively, patiently.
‘I offer Agni, the fierce god of fire, my blood, my life-force,’ Devi cried, ‘and I ask
in return for strength to protect my people from evil. To cure them from disease.
To save them from demons.’
S. V. Sujatha was born in Madras, the land of filter coffee and elaborate meals
and wonderful temples. She is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme
where she eventually found her calling as writer and storyteller. However, it took
her five years of working as an editor and helping others write their books to
finally work up the courage to author her own. She currently lives in the United
States of America and is a full-time writer. This is her debut novel, born out of
her love for the Mother Goddess and passion for Indian mythology.
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monsoon

prescriptions for success
the autobiography of dr b. r. shetty
with pranay gupte
The story of Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, known as Dr B. R. Shetty—the man
with a net worth of over $1.1 billion—is a classic rags-to-riches one. Dr Shetty
was born in Udupi in 1942 and served in a number of leadership roles including
being the vice chairman of the Udupi Municipal Council. He moved from India
to the UAE in 1973 in search of greener pastures and went on to become the
pioneer of the private healthcare sector with NMC. When Dr Shetty first landed
on Arab soil, he was a young, aspiring entrepreneur with a degree in clinical
pharmacy and a few dollars in his pocket. He saw tremendous potential for
growth in the UAE and, using his entrepreneurial spirit and skills, he became
one of the biggest players in the healthcare sector. Beginning with NMC, which
was established in 1975, he built an enormous business empire in less than
three decades. Under his leadership an array of service-oriented businesses have
flourished in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, financial services, hospitality and
education.
Besides his core business interests, Dr B. R. Shetty has an abiding interest in
education. He is the honorary chairman of the Abu Dhabi Indian School. He
runs a number of schools in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, including the Bright Riders
School and Deira Private School.
A humanitarian to the core, Dr Shetty has provided aid to countries ravaged by
natural calamities or acts of violence including Bangladesh, Japan, Indonesia,
India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal and Palestine. He supports the Special
Care Centre in Abu Dhabi.
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the collected stories of saadat hasan manto
(volume one)
translated by nasreen rehman
Saadat Hasan Manto (1912–1955) needs no introduction. One of the greatest
stars of Urdu literature, in a literary career spanning no more than two decades,
Manto published over twenty collections of short stories. Several of these have
been adapted into films and plays that have won a multitude of awards. His
stories about the 1947 Partition are some of the best accounts ever written on
the catastrophic event.
In The Collected Stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, award-winning writer and
translator Nasreen Rehman will translate and collect all of Manto’s stories (over
two hundred in all) into English (this is the first time that such an effort has been
made). Authorized by the Manto family, and to be published in three volumes
over three years, this comprehensive collection will include well-known stories
like ‘My Name is Radha’, ‘Toba Tek Singh’, ‘True Love’, ‘The Psychoanalyst’ and
‘Open’, as well as several that have never been translated into English before.
Nasreen Rehman was born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She divides her time
between England and South Asia. A lapsed economist, she was lured to history
by the work of the late professor Sir C. A. Bayly (1945-2015). As a very mature
student, she went to the University of Cambridge where, supervised by him, she
completed her PhD dissertation on A History of the Cinema in Lahore c. 1919-
1947. It will be published by OUP Pakistan in 2017.
Nasreen is an award-winning screenwriter who has worked with directors such
as Yash Chopra, Deepa Mehta and Mehreen Jabbar. Kaifi and I (2010), her
translation of Shaukat Kaifi’s memoir, was a bestseller.
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superhuman river
a biography of the ganga
bidisha banerjee
Worshipped as a living goddess for centuries, the Ganga is one of the most
significant rivers in India, if not the world. From its icy origins in the Gangotri
glacier in the Himalaya, the river wends its way for 2,525 kilometres through
five major northern states before ending its journey in the east at the Bay of
Bengal through the Sundarbans delta, the largest mangrove system in the world.
The Ganga’s significance transcends the spiritual and mythological as it sustains
millions of people who live by its banks or eke out a living by tilling lands
that the river fertilizes. Its waters have spawned hundreds of towns and cities,
foremost amongst them Varanasi, or Kashi, the city favoured by Lord Shiva
himself—one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
the Danube, the Amazon and the Mississippi, curiously there has been no major
biography of the Ganga. There are nearly a dozen travelogues, of varying quality,
of journeys on or alongside the river, but this is the first substantial account of
a river that supports over 400 million people and is worshipped and venerated
by millions more.
Bidisha Banerjee has been obsessed with the Ganga ever since she pretended,
as a child, that ordinary shower water was Ganga water. She lives in Oakland,
California, the obvious midpoint between her two homes, Kolkata and Kansas.
She has written for Slate, the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media,
Triple Canopy, and the Stanford Journal of Law, Science, and Policy. She is an
ethical leadership curriculum designer for the Dalai Lama Fellows. This is her
first book.
For tens of millions of people, the Ganga is the living threshold between the
human and the superhuman. This is the river that supposedly originates in
the Milky Way and extends all the way to the underworld. It is the river that
medieval Europeans considered one of the four rivers of Eden. The same river
that drove Alexander and Columbus mad. Famous for its gold, its muslins, its
malabathrum and spikenard, today, apart from being one of the most venerated,
it is also one of the most polluted rivers in the world. The amount of sewage
dumped into its waters is 2.9 billion litres, roughly the amount of water that
would pump out of the Niagara Falls if you were to stare at it for an hour.
The Gangetic river dolphin, an emblem of its waters and once present in the
thousands, is now a severely endangered species and nearly impossible to see. In
September 2014, the Modi government pledged 510 billion rupees over the next
five years to stop the discharge of untreated sewage into the river. Will Modi’s
ambitious plan do for the Ganga what billions of dollars and the collective effort
of five European nations did for the Rhine?
One of the world’s legendary rivers, spoken of in the same breath as the Nile,
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a time of madness
a memoir of partition
salman rashid
Nearly seventy years ago, in the city of Jalandhar in Punjab, something dreadful
happened during the chaos of Partition. The author, whose family fled Jalandhar
for Pakistan, lived in the shadow of that tragedy for decades, until, in 2008,
he made the journey back to his village to uncover the truth about the horror
of 1947. A Time of Madness tells the story of what he discovered with great
poignancy and grace. It is a tale of unspeakable brutality but it is also a testament
to the uniquely human traits of forgiveness, redemption and the resilience of the
human spirit.
Excerpt
On the twentieth day of March 2008, I headed home for the first time in my
life. On that day I was fifty-six years and a month old. Walking east across the
border gates at Wagah I was on my way to the fulfilment of a family pietas of
very long standing. I was going home to a home I had never known; a home in a
foreign land, a land that state propaganda wanted me to believe was enemy land.
But I knew it as a country where my ancestors had lived and died over countless
generations. That was the home where the hearth kept the warmth of a fire first
kindled by a matriarch many hundred years, nay, a few thousand years, ago and
which had of a sudden been extinguished in a cataclysm in 1947.
who had homes thousands of years old, west of this line in the land that became
Pakistan.
Born five years and six months after the dreadful event, I had grown up in a
home where we only knew in an amorphous, indirect sort of way that the family
had suffered terribly in what the elders referred to as Partition. Even though the
lost ones were referred to from time to time, no one ever spoke explicitly of the
loss of loved ones and how it may have occurred. The inhumanity of man turned
against fellow man, of neighbours slaughtering those with whom they shared the
same wall, was never spoken of. Never was it mentioned that some might have
survived and, forced to convert to another faith, could still be living in India.
This last thought was simply too much for staunchly Muslim minds.
Salman Rashid is Pakistan’s leading travel writer. The author of nine travel
books, this is his first memoir.
In that great upheaval, in a singular moment in time, that home ceased to
be home. One part of the family made it across to become one bit of a huge
databank—they were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their
homes. Another part of the family also became a statistic—a grim and ghastly
one: they were part of the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid
with their blood for the division of India and foundation of the new country of
Pakistan for Muslims. They who died were not just Muslims who lived east of
the new line drawn by Cyril Radcliffe. They were Sikhs, Hindus and even Jains
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indians
a portrait of a people
shashi tharoor
Who are we and why are we the way we are? Bestselling author Shashi Tharoor
sets out to discover the truth about us Indians on the seventieth anniversary
of our existence as an independent nation. He examines our habits, food,
languages, customs, religions, attitudes towards one another and foreigners,
culture, history, gods, celebrities, pet peeves, obsessions and a whole lot more.
Among the questions he addresses:
• If we pride ourselves on being the inheritors of a culture that is several
millennia old why are we so uncultured in our public behaviour?
• If the supreme deity the majority of our people worship is Devi, why do
Indian men treat women so badly?
• For a country that moves on Indian Standard Time, where nobody is ever
punctual, why are we always in such a hurry, jumping queues, red lights and
so on?
• For a country that invented non-violence why are we so violent towards one
another?
• If we are so proud of our role in cutting-edge technology why are we so
reliant on astrologers?
• For a country that is so prudish about sex how do we reproduce so much?
Monumental, wise, hilarious and entertaining, Indians is an extraordinarily
insightful study of a country and its people.
Shashi Tharoor is the bestselling author of sixteen previous books, both fiction
and non-fiction, besides being a noted critic and columnist. His books include
the path-breaking satire The Great Indian Novel (1989), the classic India: From
Midnight to the Millennium (1997), and, most recently, An Era of Darkness:
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The British Empire in India (2016). He was a former Under Secretary-General
of the United Nations and a former Minister of State for Human Resource
Development and Minister of State for External Affairs in the Government of
India. He is a two-time member of the Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram
and chairs Parliament’s External Affairs Committee. He has won numerous
literary awards, including a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was honoured as
New Age Politician of the Year (2010) by NDTV. He was awarded the Pravasi
Bharatiya Samman, India’s highest honour for overseas Indians. (For more
on Shashi Tharoor, please see www.shashitharoor.in. Follow him on Twitter@
ShashiTharoor and Facebook at www.facebook.com/ShashiTharoor.)
the book of chocolate saints
a novel
jeet thayil
In incandescent prose, award-winning novelist Jeet Thayil tells the story of
Newton Francis Xavier, blocked poet, serial seducer of young women, reformed
alcoholic (but only just), philosopher, recluse, all-round wild man and India’s
greatest living painter. At the age of sixty-six, Xavier, who has been living in New
York, is getting ready to return to the land of his birth to stage one final show of
his work (accompanied by a mad bacchanal). As we accompany Xavier and his
partner and muse ‘Goody’ on their unsteady and frequently sidetracked journey
from New York to New Delhi, the venue of the final show, we meet a host of
memorable characters—journalists, conmen, alcoholics, addicts, artists, poets,
whores, society ladies, thugs—and are also given unforgettable (and sometimes
unbearable) insights into love, madness, poetry, sex, painting, saints, death, God
and the savagery that fuels all great art.
Excerpt
Born in the small village of Forgottem, Xavier was its only famous son. He shared
a birthday with Goa’s patron saint, Francis Xavier, and named himself after the
saint: Newton Francis Xavier. He was expelled from school for drawing on the
wall of the boys’ toilet, in black marker, a precisely enhanced female figure with
a soul- or penis-shaped cavity in the inexact region of her belly. The drawing was
captioned with a quotation from Francis of Assisi, ‘Wherever we go we bring
our cell with us. Our body is the cell and our soul the hermit living in it.’ He
signed it, X. And even then the boy Xavier had thought of documentation: he
had persuaded a friend to photograph the picture.
‘Why,’ said Dismas, ‘did you name yourself after Saint Xavier?’
Xavier examined his nails, which were chipped though not dirty.
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‘I rather would like to offer coffee but the truth of the matter is there’s no one
here to make it.’
‘I’m good.’
‘Quite. Do you want the long version or the short?’
‘The long.’
‘Francis Xavier achieved sainthood by unstinting, aimless motion. His great wish
was to be never at home. Never at Home—good title, don’t you think, for a
memoir about professional exiles such as us? I can see by your terrifying stare
that you don’t think so. The point about saints is they understand the futility and
the beauty of movement for its own sake. And since the self-denying artist is a
kind of saint, I allied myself to one I felt some kind of affinity with.’
Jeet Thayil was born in Mamalasserie, Kerala, and educated in Bombay, Hong
Kong and New York. His first novel, Narcopolis, won the DSC Prize for South
Asian Literature 2012 and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Man
Asian Prize and the Commonwealth Prize. His five poetry collections include
Collected Poems, English, and These Errors Are Correct, which won the 2013
Sahitya Akademi Award for poetry. He is the editor of 60 Indian Poets and The
Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets. Jeet Thayil wrote the libretto for
Babur in London, which toured Switzerland and the United Kingdom in 2012.
© Sanskrita Bharadwaj
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the lovers
a novel
amitava kumar
The Lovers: A Novel is about a man in search of a love story. This man, our narrator,
is Kailash. His friends teasingly call him Kalashnikov, and sometimes AK-47, even
AK. Through a recounting of his years in a college in Delhi and university in
New York, AK takes us through the bittersweet arc of youth and love. There is
discovery and disappointment. There are the brilliant women, Jennifer and Nina
and Cai Yan. There is the political texture of campus life and the charismatic
professor overseeing these young men and women, Ehsaan Ali (modelled on the
real-life Eqbal Ahmad). A supremely modern novel that melds story and reportage,
anecdote and annotation, picture and text, fragment and essay, The Lovers reminds
us of the works of John Berger and Teju Cole; at heart, an investigation of love,
the novel also explores feelings of discomfort about cultural misunderstandings
and the lack of clarity between men and women. Always the feeling, has something
happened? Funny, meditative, and shot through with waves of longing, this is a
novel that makes us think of fiction as something that we practise every day in the
way we narrate our lives not just to others but also ourselves.
Amitava Kumar is the author of A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna,
published by Aleph in 2013. His first novel, Home Products (2007), was shortlisted
for the Crossword Prize, and his non-fiction report, A Foreigner Carrying in the
Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb (2010), which the New York Times described as a
‘perceptive and soulful…meditation on the global war on terror and its cultural
and human repercussions’, was given the Page Turner Award. Kumar’s writing has
appeared in Harper’s, the New Yorker, The Guardian, Caravan, Vanity Fair and New
York Times. His essay ‘Pyre’, first published in Granta, was selected by Jonathan
Franzen for Best American Essays 2016. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2016. Kumar is Professor of English at Vassar College.
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{aleph spotlight}
what it means to be indian
veena das
What does it mean to be Indian? In this seminal book, renowned social
anthropologist Veena Das tries to answer the question by exploring a plethora of
experiences that are quintessentially Indian. She discusses individual and group
identity and deals with the concepts of nationhood, patriotism and Indianness.
What it Means to be Indian is a timely discussion of ideas that are constantly
being questioned and redefined.
Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns
Hopkins University. Before joining Johns Hopkins University in 2000, she taught
at the Delhi School of Economics for more than thirty years. She is a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Academy of Scientists
from Developing Countries. She has been awarded the Nessim Habif Prize by the
University of Geneva (2014), the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2009),
Anders Retzius Award of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography
(1997) and Ghurye Award (1977).
© Prashant Sareen
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a life in politics
a memoir
jayanthi natarajan
Jayanthi Natarajan became one of India’s youngest MPs at the age of thirty.
Thereafter, she quickly made her mark on Indian politics and went on to hold
a number of important ministerial positions. Her extraordinarily distinguished
political lineage stretches back to her great-grandfather who was the Congress
president of Tamil Nadu, and a member of India’s constituent assembly, and her
grandfather who was the last Congress chief minister of Tamil Nadu.
In this candid memoir, Jayanthi talks about her storied political heritage, as well
as her own remarkable political journey this far.
Excerpt
I grew up in a high-octane political household. My maternal grandfather was
the chief minister of the state and my paternal grandfather the leader of the
Opposition. The atmosphere at family functions was interesting, to say the least.
When I was born, although my maternal grandfather was not yet chief minister,
the political barometer in our home was so volatile that my grandmother had
to exercise considerable ingenuity to ensure my paternal grandfather’s visits to
see his granddaughter at the home of his political opponent went off without a
hitch.
Throughout school and college I used to do battle to defend the fair name of
the Congress Party from teasing classmates, especially after the party’s defeat
in 1967. It was thus perhaps natural for me to move into political work after
practising as a lawyer for a few years in the Madras High Court. The arrival
of Rajiv Gandhi into politics was a seismic event in my life, and that of many
young Indians at the time. Although already an active member of the Congress
Party, I was genuinely inspired by his idealism and vision for a modern, dynamic
twenty-first-century India, and threw myself into full-time political work.
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One day, while arguing a case, I was called to my chambers, and told that Rajiv
Gandhi, who was then prime minister of India, wanted to speak with me. I
thought it was a prank call and ignored it. Minutes later I received an official
summons to Delhi to meet the prime minister. When I reached Delhi the same
evening, all I was happily looking forward to was the chance to meet with the
prime minister.
I had no other expectations of the meeting and was therefore dumbstruck when
Rajiv Gandhi cheerfully informed me that I had been selected as an official
candidate for election to the Rajya Sabha. It was in this fashion that I became
one of the youngest MPs in Parliament.
Jayanthi Natarajan is one of the country’s most distinguished political leaders.
the indian copyright handbook
pravin anand (with dhruv anand & tanvi misra)
The Indian Copyright Handbook is a comprehensive, up-to-date book on
copyright and copyright law in general, and how it works in India in particular.
Written by one of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, it should
prove indispensable for writers, journalists, editors, publishers, bloggers and
others who create, work on or are custodians of the written, spoken or printed
word. It covers the use of copyright as it applies to all kinds of material including
books, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, song lyrics, photographs, scripts,
fine art, e-books, motion pictures, quotations and multimedia work. The book
explains, in jargon-free language, what copyright is, what rights are granted
under it, how it can be protected, how it can be infringed, how long it lasts and
so on. In addition, the book provides a concise history of Indian copyright law
from the time it was framed to the present day. The book contains examples
of ideal author contracts, permissions forms, assignment letters and the like.
It provides a clear understanding of libel and defamation, and how creators of
copyrighted material can avoid committing these infringements of the law.
Pravin Anand is one of the country’s leading intellectual property lawyers. In
a career that spans almost four decades, he has been counsel in several landmark
IP cases, including the first Anton Piller order (HMV case), the first Mareva
Injunction Order (Philips case), and the first order under the Hague Convention
(Astra Zeneca case). He has won several prestigious awards for his work, the most
recent being an award given by the FT Asia-Pacific for Most Innovative Lawyer
2015. Pravin Anand is Managing Partner of Anand and Anand Advocates, one of
India’s leading Intellectual Property Law firms. The Indian Copyright Handbook
is his first book.
Dhruv Anand is a partner at Anand and Anand. He has been involved in many
significant IP cases. His clients include Louis Vuitton Malletier, Yahoo! Inc., Tata
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Group, Hamdard, Merck and Qualcomm. He has been a regular contributor
to various legal journals such as Copyright Throughout the World, Managing the
IP Lifecycle, Chambers and Partners—Global Practice Guide—Patent Litigation,
India Business Law Journal and Asia IP.
Tanvi Misra is a former employee of Anand and Anand and currently works
for the firm on assignments related to copyright, lawsuits and opinions. She
has extensively researched the evolution of copyright law in India. ​She has been
responsible for researching and drafting several petitions and opinions that have
to do with Indian copyright law and IP matters. She has published articles in
legal journals like Asia IP and World Trademark Review and contributed chapters
to books on IP matters such as Copyright Litigation: Jurisdictional Comparisons,
Getting The Deal Through​and Cross Border Copyright Licensing (forthcoming
from Edward Elgar Publishing).
strangers no more?
conflict and reconciliation in india’s northeast
sanjoy hazarika
In 1994, Sanjoy Hazarika’s first book on the Northeast, Strangers of the Mist, was
published and immediately acclaimed as a path-breaking, powerful narrative on
the state of the country’s Northeast region. It has been used as course material
in governments and colleges, and has been cited widely in studies of the region.
Twenty years later, with more travel, stories, interviews and research under his
belt, Hazarika asks in Strangers No More? whether the region and its people are
still ‘different’ to the rest of India and to each other and destined to remain so.
Alternatively, he wonders whether reconciliation is possible and is taking place.
While lingering hatreds, divisions and differences may not be overcome by brute
power or economic might or cultural assimilation, there are other ways forward.
These include the process of engagement: by accepting, if not embracing, the
‘Idea of India’ and working on forging connections between disparate cultures to
overcome the mutual mistrust that has existed for decades. The new book looks
at little-known stories, drawn from personal experience and knowledge, of the
way in which insurgents operate, of the reality of border towns in the region, the
pain of victims, the courage of fighters on either side of the battlefield, in the
jungles, in lands awash with rain and swamped by mist. Hazarika walks across
borders and mountains, listening to the people of the region and those who live
in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Tibet and Myanmar. He critiques
the categorization of the ‘Bangladeshi’, challenges the standard stereotype of
the ‘Northeasterner’, deals with issues of ‘race and discrimination’, and looks at
best practices that could be used to deal with intractable issues and combatants.
Most importantly, he tries to present a clear picture of how new generations are
grappling with old and current issues with an eye to the future.
Sanjoy Hazarika is director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.
Earlier he was director of the Centre for Northeast Studies and Policy Research
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at Jamia Millia Islamia. He is an award-winning journalist, formerly with the
New York Times. His books include Bhopal: The Lessons of a Tragedy; Strangers
of the Mist: Tales of War and Peace from India’s Northeast; Rites of Passage: Border
Crossings, Imagined Homelands, India’s East and Bangladesh; and Writing on
the Wall, a collection of essays. He has written and published extensively on
draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Eastern Himalaya,
and freedom fighters from the Northeast. He is founder and managing trustee
of C-nes (www.c-nes.org) which has pioneered the work of boat clinics on the
Brahmaputra River; these provide hundreds of thousands of poor people with
regular healthcare. Hazarika has made over a dozen documentary films on a
number of subjects including the Brahmaputra, the endangered Gangetic river
dolphin, and the danger that women face in conflict situations. These have
been screened across India, in Bangladesh, at national and international film
festivals and also at the Nehru Centre in London, Rubin Museum in New York,
at Göttingen University and the University of Vienna.
winter
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monsoon

pilgrim nation
journeys of the spirit
devdutt pattanaik
In its essence, India was not created by emperors, rajas or politicians; its sacred
geography was established by pilgrims who saw the face and spirit of God in
its holy mountains and mystic waters. Devdutt Pattanaik explores the idea of
pilgrimage and uses various sacred spots of India—Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh,
Islamic, even ones inspired by Bollywood—to understand the glue that binds
this land.
Excerpt
There are two gates in the temple of Dwarkadhish in Dwarka that stands in
the Jamnagar district of Gujarat: the main northern one is called the Moksha
Dwara, or liberation gateway, and the southern one is called Swarga Dwara, the
paradise gateway. Why are they located in opposite directions? Is it a code of
Hindu wisdom?
© Prashant Sareen
In the Puranas, north indicates permanence as it is the direction of the Pole
Star, and south indicates the opposite, impermanence or mortality, the realm of
Yama. The two gates direct pilgrims to the two goals of human life: liberation
from all hungers (moksha) and indulgence of all hungers in paradise (swarga).
The former is permanent while the latter impermanent. Rishi Mugdala draws
attention to this choice, for the first time in the history of Hinduism, in the epic
Mahabharata.
The Mahabharata describes a war traditionally believed to have taken place
5,000 years ago. The text that we have, however, is only 2,000 years old. Here
the Vedic idea of paradise attained through ritual (swarga) and the Upanishadic
idea of liberation through wisdom (moksha) are brought together.
The Mahabharata also introduces us to Krishna, the maternal cousin of the
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Pandavas who resides in Dwarka. But isn’t Krishna associated with Mathura,
in the Gangetic plains, in the region known as Vraja? How does his residence
move to the western coast of India, in the region once known as Anarta? For this,
we have to revisit a little known chapter in the life of Krishna that is revealed
first in the Harivamsa, considered an appendix of the Mahabharata, and later
elaborated in the Bhagvata Purana.
When Krishna kills his maternal uncle, Kansa, the residents of Mathura rejoice.
News of this reaches the king of Magadha, Jarasandha, who is also Kansa’s fatherin-law.
He attacks Mathura and burns it to the ground, forcing Krishna to take
his kinsmen faraway across the desert to an island now known as Bet Dwarka.
Here, there once stood the city of Kushasthali ruled by King Revata but the
city was now in ruins as the king had gone to meet Brahma for a day seeking a
suitable groom for his daughter, not realizing that one day in Brahma’s abode is
a thousand years on earth. When the king returned, he found his city had now
been occupied by Krishna and his Yadavas. The king was unhappy but realized
this was the result of his own foolishness. All ended well when Krishna suggested
that his elder brother, Balarama, marry the king’s daughter, Revati, thus making
him the son-in-law of the former king hence legitimizing the Yadava claim over
the island.
Krishna of Dwarka is called Dwarkadhish, which is wrongly translated as ‘king
of Dwarka’ for Krishna is never king (unlike Ram). He is simply ‘guardian of
Dwarka’.
For a note about the author, please turn to page 49.
coming out as dalit
a memoir
yashica dutt
Dalit student Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide in January 2016 started many
charged conversations around caste-based discrimination in universities in
India. For Yashica Dutt, a journalist living in New York, this was the moment
to stop living a lie, and admit something that she had hidden from friends and
colleagues for over a decade—that she was Dalit.
In Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt recounts the exhausting burden of living with
the secret, terrified of being found out, and dealing with the crushing guilt of
denying her history. In this personal memoir that is also a narrative of the Dalits,
she writes about the journey of coming to terms with her identity and takes us
through the history of the Dalit movement; the consequences of the lack of
access to education and culture; the paucity of Dalit voices in mainstream media;
and attempts to answer crucial questions about caste and privilege. Woven from
personal narratives from her life as well as that of other Dalits, this book forces
us to confront the injustices of caste and also serves as a call to action.
Excerpt
What does it mean to be Dalit in 2016? Like any other group comprising more
than 200 million people, it cannot mean the same thing for everyone. There
are common experiences of systemic oppression, discrimination and often
humiliation that symbolize us. But their individual manifestations hinge on
where we live and how fortunate our families have been in breaking free of the
tight fabric of inequity. Some of the lucky ones (myself included) locate in it a
perforation just wide enough to force our way through the asphyxiating layer
of our ‘lower’ castes. But that transformation comes at a cost—the cost of our
confidence, the cost of our identities, the cost of our personhood, and often the
cost of our existence (just ask young Dalit men who dare to challenge the caste
structure by marrying ‘upper’ caste women or young Dalit women who were
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aped and murdered as ‘penance’ for asserting themselves).
Some of us never identify our oppression; we claim we were never discriminated
against and that we only experienced kindness from the upper castes. Undeniably,
some upper caste people are kind… When we speak of oppression we are not
speaking of them. But even the most open-minded people are controlled by the
caste system in insidious ways. Perhaps in their pride and identification with
their last name, their casual usage of ‘lower’ caste identities as abuse or their
mild obsession with ‘purity and pollution’ and unquestioning acceptance of
only Brahmins as Hindu temple priests and only Dalits as manual scavengers,
sweepers and garbage collectors. And in their refusal to acknowledge the reality
of caste. Our silence is what we trade for their sanction of our existence as nearly
one of them.
This status quo needs to be challenged. And that challenge can only come
from within. It’s only the Ambedkars, the Phules, the Periyars, the Birsas and
the Rohiths who can and who will question the validity of a system that we
all acknowledge as an essential ingredient of ‘Indian culture’. Not every Dalit
person needs to ‘come out’, attend protests, tackle trolls on social media or even
read Ambedkar. They don’t even have to be grateful for reservation and the
subsequent opportunities that allowed them to live with dignity. But they should
read Ambedkar. Reading his work and recognizing our systemic oppression as
opposed to the systemic privilege of the ‘upper castes’ is the first step towards
reconciling the struggle and shame so many of us wrestle with. Nothing
can change the fact that we were born as Dalits. Any effort towards erasing
that necessary detail will only confine us in inferiority. Ultimately it is about
discovering pride in our history and the identity that makes us Dalit.
Yashica Dutt is a New York-based journalist who writes on gender, identity
and culture. She was previously a principal correspondent with Brunch and the
Hindustan Times and is the founder of dalitdiscrimination.tumblr.com
the malayalis
a portrait of a community
paul zacharia
The book is an informal introduction to Malayalis—the occupants, so to say, of
Kerala—by a writer who is one of them and has much fun being one. It looks
at the way Malayalis conduct their struggle for a place under the Indian sun,
how their politics dupes them, how the media fools them, and yet how they
keep surfacing and surviving. It is an account of how an ingenious, resilient
and creative people fight to keep their dreams alive by putting their everything
into education, by scrupulously maintaining communal harmony, by turning
themselves into unrelenting immigrants—even working as hired killers on
occasion. Incorrigibly argumentative and contrary, brilliant in unpredictable
ways, blessed with uncanny wit, devastatingly addicted to the media, leftist for all
to see but feudal and patriarchal to the core, bathing in the glitter of expatriate
money, here is an Indian people whose saga of survival is both comic and heroic.
Excerpt
Cross the border into Kerala—the Malayali motherland—and you meet a
different India. Like you would, of course, in all the cultures that make up the
Indian nation.
Nature and geography make Kerala special. On the west, the Arabian Sea fringes
it end to end for 580 kilometres and in the east the mountains and dense forests
of the Western Ghats present a natural border along the boundaries of the states
of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
This narrow strip of land at the southern tip of India is, arguably, one of the
most beautiful places of India. Monsoon-and-sun-drenched, mega green, hot
and humid in the plains and cool in the hills, Kerala is the much loved and much
hated motherland of Malayalis.
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It is doubtful, though, if Malayalis realize how lucky they are to be the children
of this little paradise smartly marketed across the world as God’s Own Country.
They, in general, sidestep the uncomfortable fact that Kerala is a fragile,
vulnerable, special world, which demands intimate care. Instead, sitting in
Thrissur, Thiruvananthapuram or Kasaragod, or in Cape Town, Seattle, Dubai
or Copenhagen, they engage in escapist outpourings about a phantom Kerala.
The real Kerala is dealt with quite ruthlessly.
my kashmir
omar abdullah
Omar Abdullah’s first book, part memoir, part history and part analysis of the
various problems that have beset Jammu and Kashmir in the decades since
Independence, will be one of the most important books to be published about
The word ‘Malayali’ derives from Malayalam, the language of Kerala. There is
general consensus that Malayalam’s roots are in ancient Tamil. It was Sanskritized
and moulded over centuries by a variety of influences ranging from Arab, Jew
and Syrian to Portuguese and English. There are around thirty-five million
Malayalis speaking the tongue which, as we shall see, they reject with one hand
and embrace with the other.
Once you leave the safe zone of standardized print-Malayalam, you plunge into
a bewildering arena of accents, intonations and coinages that change startlingly
from district to district—even within the district—becoming an unrecognizable
potpourri around Kerala’s northern borders. So, too, the Malayali changes.
Whole attitudinal chasms divide, say, the Malayali of Thiruvananthapuram
from, say, the Malayali of Kozhikode. The Malayali—popularly Mallu—label is
deceptive. S/he has a thousand faces.
Paul Zacharia writes in Malayalam and English. He has published over fifty
books and has received several awards, including the Kendra Sahitya Akademi
Award. He lives in Thiruvananthapuram.
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the beautiful and troubled state that was born in fire and blood. My Kashmir will
not only offer the reader unprecedented clarity about the situation in Kashmir
today, it will also offer rare insights into Kashmiri politics and the Abdullah
family that has played a prominent part in shaping the discourse on Kashmir.
Omar Abdullah is one of India’s most remarkable political leaders. Belonging
to the National Conference (NC) political party in Jammu&Kashmir, he was
the youngest ever chief minister of the state. He has also been twice president of
the National Conference. A three-time MP, he has served as Union Minister of
State for Commerce and Industry as well as Union Minister of State for External
Affairs. He is presently a member of the J&K Legislative Assembly.
Omar Abdullah belongs to one of India’s most distinguished political families.
His grandfather, Sheikh Abdullah, also known as Sher-e-Kashmir, formed
the first ever political party in Kashmir which later evolved into the National
Conference. Sheikh Abdullah led the state, first as prime minister from 1948
to 1953, and later as chief minister for two terms. Omar’s father, Dr Farooq
Abdullah, was a three-time chief minister of Jammu&Kashmir.
Omar Abdullah divides his time between Srinagar and New Delhi. His interests
include reading, travelling, swimming and skiing. My Kashmir is his first book.
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the bengalis
a portrait of a community
sudeep chakravarti
A community of a quarter of a billion should count for something. Certainly
the Bengalis do. They occupy some of the most fertile, bountiful and densely
populated spaces on the planet. The homeland of the Bengali, spread across
two countries—India and Bangladesh—is a teeming, heaving, raucous place
where empires have been won and lost, civilization celebrated and ground to the
dust, a place of wealth, of grand and lucid intellects and terrible illiteracy and
poverty, of great reformation and great wretchedness, where emotion seems to
be as much a cachet as education.
Sudeep Chakravarti is an award-winning author of ground-breaking and
bestselling works of narrative non-fiction (Red Sun, Highway 39, Clear. Hold.
Build), novels (Tin Fish, The Avenue of Kings) and short stories. His essays and
short fiction have appeared in collections in India and overseas, and, along with
his books, have been translated into several Indian and Western languages.
He is among India’s leading commentators on matters of conflict, democracy,
development, economic policy, foreign affairs, culture, society and the
convergence of business and human rights. An extensively published columnist,
he has over three decades of experience in media, and has worked with major
global and Indian media organizations including the Asian Wall Street Journal,
the India Today Group and HT Media.
The Bengali community comprises Nobel laureates and scientific geniuses, free
thinkers and philosophers, literary minds and cinematic icons, revolutionaries
and sages. Within it, an animated discussion on the future of mankind can be
as commonplace as an animated discussion on the best way to cook fish. An
argument over politics—and even sports—can lead to death. It is also one of the
most economically weak and socio-politically fragile communities to be found
in the world.
In this fascinating book, Sudeep Chakravarti, Bengali by birth and cosmopolitan
by practice, interprets what it means to be Bengali. His exploration of one of
the most prominent communities on the planet embraces history, politics,
conflict, culture, Kolkata (and Calcutta), and the eastern part of Bengal—once
East Bengal, then violently East Pakistan and, since the horrific war in 1971,
Bangladesh, the country that was born because it wanted to be Bengali, as much
as speak it. Deeply personal yet wide-ranging, The Bengalis is a freewheeling,
searching, emotional, empathetic, and yet unswervingly critical biography of a
people that have, for better and worse, helped shape a subcontinent.
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the nehru reader
edited by rudrangshu mukherjee
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s charismatic first prime minister, was a prolific and
perceptive writer. He was the author of two major books—his autobiography,
and The Discovery of India—and he wrote continuously on a variety of themes,
in letters, prison diaries and for newspapers and journals. As prime minister,
and before that as a leader of the nationalist movement, he also delivered
innumerable speeches. This volume brings together a representative selection of
Nehru’s writings and speeches so that readers can get a glimpse of the style and
the mind of one of India’s most outstanding public intellectuals.
Included in this reader are some of Pandit Nehru’s best-known (as well as
relatively unfamiliar) and most interesting works on history, culture, the national
movement, the Congress party, India, the world, his family and himself.
Rudrangshu Mukherjee is Vice Chancellor and Professor of History at Ashoka
University. He was educated at Calcutta Boys’ School, Presidency College,
JNU, and St Edmund Hall. He was awarded a DPhil in Modern History by
the University of Oxford. He has taught in the department of history, Calcutta
University, and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, Manchester
University and the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 1993 to 2014 he
was the editor, Editorial Pages, The Telegraph. He is the author of many books—
these include Awadh in Revolt 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance; Spectre of
Violence: The Massacres in Kanpur in 1857; The Year of Blood: An Essay on 1857.
He is the editor of Great Speeches of Modern India and of The Penguin Gandhi
Reader. His latest publication is Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives.
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ayodhya
the definitive biography
valay singh
1965
a western sunrise
shiv kunal verma
On 6 December 2017, twenty-five years would have passed since a frenzied mob
of Hindus demolished a sixteenth-century mosque in Ayodhya. The demolition
of the Babri Masjid in 1992 was followed by large-scale riots that killed thousands
of people and permanently communalized the polity of the country.
In the years leading up to the demolition and in its aftermath, the right-wing
gained decisive ground in electoral politics and deepened its hold on Hindu
society leading to the pronounced othering of minorities by the majority
community. The demolition was a climax of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement
that has been at the heart of Indian politics for a quarter century since the BJP
first campaigned on the promise of building a Ram Temple at the site of the
mosque. Do the people of Ayodhya still dream of a Ram Temple and will the
issue be reinvigorated by the party in power?
Ayodhya: The Definitive Biography is an unprecedented portrait of the sleepy
town in northern India, which has been a place of reverence for many faiths
for millennia, but has also been a place of violence, bloodshed and ill-will.
Through numerous interviews, exhaustive research, and rare insights from being
embedded in Ayodhya, the author presents a comprehensive account of one of
the most fiercely contested places in the country.
Valay Singh is a journalist and photographer based in New Delhi. Originally
from Bhopal, Valay started his career in journalism with NDTV 24x7. He has
produced documentary films for Indian and French media and has written for
the Economic Times, Himal Southasian and DailyO, among other publications.
This is his first book.
In 1964, while India was still licking its wounds from the fiasco against the
Chinese in 1962, the belligerent Pakistanis decided to test the Indian armed
forces in the Western Sector. The first probes were launched in the Rann of Kutch
and India came out of the initial skirmishes with egg on its face. Its success in the
Rann of Kutch (Operation Desert Hawk I, II and III) made the Pakistani Army
extremely cocky, which led to the launching of the covert Operation Gibraltar in
Kashmir in August. Confident that they had better armour (Patton tanks), better
fighters (F-86 Sabres and F-104 Starfighters) and better submarines (Daphnes)
than India, the Pakistanis expected that in the event of an armed clash, the
Indians would collapse just as they had against China in NEFA.
The civil disturbance in Kashmir due to the alleged theft of the Moe-e-Muqaddas
(Hair of the Prophet) from the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar provided the perfect
backdrop for the covert war. Six thousand trained mujahids were deployed by
the Pakistan Army, operating in four distinct forces. 1965: A Western Sunrise
details the sector-by-sector response of Indian troops, the initial fighting in
Kargil, and the eventual capture of the Haji Pir Pass.
Operation Gibraltar fizzled out and India gave in to the UN and stood down
troops it had mobilized in the Punjab. Pakistan then launched Operation Grand
Slam in September 1965. The resultant Indian counter-attack saw the focus shift
to various sectors all across the international border. The conflict became a fullblown
war.
Starting with the wounds of Partition and the disagreements over Kashmir, the
book gives a complete account of the war—from the initial skirmishes to all-out
war along various sectors. It also shows the resurgence of the Indian army and
air force as fighting forces.
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Writer and filmmaker Shiv Kunal Verma has produced many critically
acclaimed films for the Indian armed forces that include Salt of the Earth and
Aakash Yodha on the air force; The Naval Dimension for the Indian Navy; The
Standard Bearers (NDA), The Making of a Warrior (IMA) and The Kargil War for
the Indian Army. He has also authoredThe Long Road to Siachen: The Question
Why and the highly acclaimed Northeast Trilogy, a seminal work that covers the
entire Northeastern region of India. His latest book is 1962: The War That Wasn’t.
the short life and tragic death of
qandeel baloch
sanam maher
In February 2016, a journalist from the international news agency Agence
France-Presse interviewed a twenty-five-year-old Pakistani woman for a story
on how the country’s youth—an estimated 180 million people under the age of
thirty—interacted with social media. ‘Young people can communicate online
in relative freedom,’ the journalist Issam Ahmed reported, ‘and the country
even has a Kim Kardashian type figure—Qandeel Baloch.’ The young woman
caught the reporter’s attention after she posted a video on Facebook mocking a
presidential ‘warning’ not to celebrate Valentine’s Day—a ‘Western’ holiday. In
the video, made on a cell phone as she lies in bed, Baloch wears a low-cut red
dress, and her full lips are painted scarlet. The sheets match her outfit, and her
dress rides up her legs to reveal her thighs. ‘They can stop to people go out,’ she
says in broken English, ‘but they can’t stop to people love.’ She says the same
thing once more, this time in Urdu, with an exaggerated American accent, as
though she is not used to speaking the language. ‘Woh logon ko pyaar karnay
se nahin rok saktay. Kuch bhi kar lein. (No matter what they do, they can’t stop
people from loving).’
The video shows us everything that Pakistanis loved—and loved to hate—
about Qandeel: she played the coquette, dished out biting critiques of some of
Pakistan’s most holy cows, and gave her heart away to politicians, actors, singers
and cricketers. We snickered at the way she spoke and her accent, and marvelled
at her gumption. She was the stuff of a hundred memes and the butt of our
jokes. She was Pakistan’s first celebrity-by-social media.
At the time, the Valentine’s Day video had been seen 830,000 times. Five months
later, Qandeel Baloch would be dead. Her brother would strangle her in their
family home, in what would be described as an ‘honour killing’—a murder to
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estore the respect and honour Qandeel’s behaviour online robbed him of.
In 2015, 933 women and men were killed for ‘honour’ in Pakistan, according to
the country’s Federal Ministry of Law. Those are only the number of cases that
are reported by friends and families. Only a handful of these victims are featured
on the front pages of newspapers in Pakistan. In most cases, the murderers do not
face charges as they are ‘forgiven’—as per a loophole in the existing legislation—
by the surviving family members. In 2014, Senator Syeda Sughra Imam tabled
the Anti-Honour Killing Laws (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill in the Senate
to address such loopholes. The bill was finally passed by the Senate in March
2015, but lapsed in parliament in October last year.
However, just six days after Qandeel was murdered, this bill was fast-tracked
to be presented in parliament in two weeks. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s
daughter, and not a party or government spokesperson, was chosen to make the
announcement. What spurred the change? Who was Qandeel Baloch and how
did she come to reveal a fundamental schism in our understanding of ourselves
as Pakistanis and Muslims?
Sanam Maher is a Pakistani journalist. This is her first book.
indelible india
a golden treasury of journalism
edited by m. j. akbar
Indelible India: A Golden Treasury of Journalism features some of the finest
journalism produced in independent India by legendary editors and reporters
who wrote powerful stories and opinion pieces on politics, war, diplomacy,
economics, and that old staple, crime. This anthology will ensure that these
pieces live beyond the time and space when they first appeared.
Selected from hundreds of pieces by M. J. Akbar, Indelible India features greats
like Frank Moraes, N. J. Nanporia, S. Nihal Singh, Arun Shourie, Shekhar
Gupta, Vinod Mehta, Romesh Thapar, Khushwant Singh, N. Ram, B. G.
Verghese, Kuldip Nayar, Chitra Subramaniam, Surya Prakash, T. J. S. George
and many others, in a tribute to the golden age of Indian journalism.
Excerpt
How these puffed up bullies run at the slightest whiff of exposure! Just a few
stray revelations and Antulay, the self-righteous Sultan of Bombay, is on the run.
He has just announced that he, who had so successfully made a commerce of the
name ‘Indira Gandhi’, is dropping the name from the legend of his trust.
This, as we shall presently see, solves none of his problems. For the exploitation
of Indira Gandhi’s name was just a matter between him and his czarina. Much
more than the name is involved. For the man has made a commerce not just of
Mrs Gandhi’s name but of everything else too.
His device? Trusteeship. The Indira Gandhi Pratibha Pratishthan, the trust that
is being talked about, is only one of the trusts he has set up in his brief reign.
There are at least six others: the Konkan Unnati Mitra Mandal (Konkan being
the region from which Antulay hails), the Raigarh Zila Pratishthan (Raigarh
being the district from which Antulay hails), the Shriwardhan Matadar Sangh
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Pratishthan (Shriwardhan being the constituency from which Antulay hails), the
Mehasala Taluk Trust (Mehasala being the taluk from which Antulay hails), the
Ambet Pratishthan (Ambet being the village from which Antulay hails) and the
Sethia Foundation.
Antulay lost little time in setting up the trusts and even less in devising ways to
stuff them. When he assumed power, cement distribution was with the Civil
Supplies Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his personal
charge. Allotment of government plots to housing societies, etc., was in the
charge of the revenue minister. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his
personal charge. The question of how much one could build on a plot was in
the charge of the Urban Development Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay
put it under his personal charge. The granting of no objection certificates for
building on land held in excess of the urban ceiling regulations was in the charge
of the Revenue Department. To ensure efficiency Antulay put it under his
personal charge. And so on, all along the lucrative line. The mode was simplicity
itself and Antulay has himself described it: ‘When rich people come to see me,’
he told Congress (I) legislators recently, ‘I point out to them half a dozen trusts
I have set up. I tell them that I am working for the poor. I request them to
contribute to the trusts...’
—Arun Shourie
M. J. Akbar is one of India’s most distinguished editors and writers. Starting as a
reporter for the Times of India, he has written exclusively for the Illustrated Weekly
of India, Sunday, The Telegraph, India Today and the Deccan Chronicle. He is also
the author of several internationally acclaimed books. During his long career in
journalism he was editor of Sunday, a weekly newsmagazine, The Telegraph, Asian
Age and India Today. He was also the editorial director of the Sunday Guardian,
a weekly newspaper that he founded. He is a national spokesperson for the BJP
and Minister of State for External Affairs.
the kurukshetra war
a reconstruction
keerthik sasidharan
Lured away from the arms of his wife by voices that he hears, a hunter named
Jara walks into a forest seeking quiet. In that enchanted grove, a voice urges him
to shoot an elusive deer. His arrow pierces an ankle that belongs to a manyarmed,
plum-tree-coloured, luminous being who is now slowly bleeding out.
The wounded man tells Jara that he is Krishna, the Lord of Dwarka, Devaki’s
son and Arjuna’s friend. On this last night of his life as an avatar of Vishnu, he is
still part human and part God. But, as Jara discovers, before his ascent into the
heavens, Krishna must cede all that made him human: his triumphs, loves, and
despairs. To relive them for the last time, Jara tells him nine stories during that
fateful night. Stories of the nine emotions embodied by those who participated
in the Great War on the killing fields of Kurukshetra. Stories of the experiences
of those who were dearest to him on both sides of the bloody conflict. Bhishma’s
wonder, Draupadi’s loves, Arjuna’s valour, Shakuni’s derision, Karna’s disgust,
Bhima’s pathos, Duryodhana’s fear, Ashwathama’s rage and, finally, Krishna’s
own tranquility—Krishna relives those eighteen days of a holocaust where
humans revealed their worst and their best. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, where
Krishna self-reveals himself as God, this is Jara’s retelling of a human song of
violence and tenderness, of times when fires of ambition and lust burnt down
the forest of Dharma, so that it could be born anew.
Keerthik Sasidharan was born in Palakkad, Kerala. He was trained as an
economist in Canada and works for an investment bank in New York. His
writing has appeared in The Hindu, Caravan and other publications.
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and finalists
111

`350
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve,
in a village above the Rangeet river in
Sikkim, a woman called Kamala hacks
her husband, Police Constable Puran,
into forty-seven pieces, then walks to the
nearby police station and turns herself
in. At first, the murder seems an openand-shut
case to Dechen, the tough,
foul-mouthed, prickly lady cop in charge
of the investigation. But as she begins to
delve into the lives of Kamala and Puran,
she discovers a world of lies, deceit and
love gone wrong, where the past, including
her own, constantly shadows the present,
nothing is as it seems, and the guilt of
murderers is difficult to establish.
On a day of endless rain, a man emerges
from thirty-two years of isolation to meet
his king, whom he owes a share of the
harvest from his fields. Journeying across
leech-infested forests and forbidding
valleys, he tells his children the story of his
life—one that has been full of drama and
magic. But the biggest miracle of all awaits
him in Gangtok, where he will speak to
the absent king.
These two novellas, united by their strong
sense of place, showcase Chetan Raj
Shrestha’s enormous gifts as a storyteller.
Magical, gritty, nerve-wracking and stylish in
equal measure, this is an exceptional debut.
Em and the Big Hoom
Jerry Pinto
Winner of the Hindu Literary Prize 2012
Winner of the Crossword Book Award for Fiction
2013
Winner of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction
2016
Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar for
Best Novel in English 2015
Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014
Chronicle Of A Corpse Bearer
Cyrus Mistry
Winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
2014
Arctic Summer
Damon Galgut
Winner of the Tata Literature Live! Best Book Award
for Fiction 2014
The Wildings
Nilanjana Roy
Winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2013
Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013
Between Clay and Dust
Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2012
fiction
www.alephbookcompany.com
The King’s Harvest
chetan raj shrestha
The King’s Harvest
chetan raj shrestha
~
two novellas
~
~
The King’s Harvest
Chetan Raj Shrestha
Winner of the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award
2012
Finalist for the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013
City of Spies
Sorayya Khan
Winner of the Sharjah International Book Fair Best
International Fiction 2015
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The Book of Aleph Prize winners and finalists
113

A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces:
Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th
Century to the Present
edited by David Davidar
Winner of the Publishing Next Printed Book of the
Year Award 2015
Swimmer Among the Stars
Kanishk Tharoor
Winner of the Tata Lit Live! First Book Award 2016
Finalist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2016
Longlisted for the Atta-Galatta Bangalore Literature
Festival Book Prize 2016
The Competent Authority
Shovon Chowdhury
Finalist for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award
2013
Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014
Finalist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2014
Finalist for the Crossword Book Award for Fiction
2015
Being the Other: The Muslim in India
saeed naqvi
Longlisted for the Atta-Galatta Bangalore Literature
Festival Book Prize 2016
Shadow Play
Shashi Deshpande
Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2014
The Success Sutra: An Indian Approach to
Wealth
Devdutt Pattanaik
Finalist for the Crossword Book Award (Popular
category: Business and Management) 2016
The Patna Manual of Style
Siddharth Chowdhury
Finalist for the Hindu Literary Prize 2015
The Black Hill
Mamang Dai
Finalist for the Crossword Book Award Fiction 2016
114
The Book of Aleph Prize winners and finalists
115

Butterflies on the Roof of the World
Peter Smetacek
Finalist for the Tata Literature Live! First Book Award
2013
Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in
Search of the Sacred and the Sublime
Stephen Alter
Winner of the Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for
Himalayan Literature 2015
Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to
Management
Devdutt Pattanaik
Winner of the DMA-NTPC Book Award 2013
Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir
Arun Ferreira
Finalist for the Crossword Book Award
for Non-fiction 2015
Wild Fire: The Splendours of India’s Animal
Kingdom
Valmik Thapar
Winner of the Publishing Next Printed Book of the
Year Awards2015
Filomena’s Journeys: A Portrait of a
Marriage, a Family and a Culture
Maria Aurora Couto
Finalist for the Crossword Book Award
for Non-fiction 2015
Korma, Kheer & Kismet: Five Seasons in Old
Delhi
Pamela Timms
Winner of the Publishing Next Digital Book of the
Year Award 2015
Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern
India
Leila Seth
Winner of the Oxford Book Cover Prize 2016
116
The Book of Aleph Prize winners and finalists
117

Picturing Time: The Greatest Photographs of
Raghu Rai
Runner-up for the Publishing Next Printed Book of
the Year Award 2016
index
P8
previously published in 2016
An Era of Darkness: The British Empire
in India
Shashi Tharoor
Format: Demy HB
Price: 699
ISBN: 978-93-83064-65-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P10
1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made
History
Sanjaya Baru
Format: Demy HB
Price: 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-68-7
Territory: World
P12
On Nationalism
Romila Thapar, A. G. Noorani &
Sadanand Menon
Format: A format HB
Price: 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-11-3
Territory: World
P14
M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive
Biography
T. J. S. George
Format: Demy PB
Price: 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-60-1
Territory: World
Index
119

P16
The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena:
Political Matronage in Urbanizing
India
Tarini Bedi
Format: Demy HB
Price: 699
ISBN: 978-93-83064-22-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P26
Small Towns, Big Stories: New &
Selected Fiction
Ruskin Bond
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: January
ISBN: 978-93-82277-54-5
Territory: World
P18
Magic for the Soul: An Adult Colouring
Book of Postcards Featuring Gond Art
Venkat Raman Singh Shyam
Format: Postcard
Price: 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-03-8
Territory: World
P30
Heroines: Powerful Indian Women of
Myth and History
Ira Mukhoty
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: January
ISBN: 978-93-84067-49-6
Territory: World
WINTER 2017 (january–february)
P22
Saint Teresa of Calcutta: A Celebration
of Her Life & Legacy
Raghu Rai
Format: Oversized Royal HB
Price: 1,499
Publication date: January
ISBN: 978-93-82277-61-3
Territory: World
P34
How I Became a Tree
Sumana Roy
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: February
ISBN: 978-93-82277-44-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P24
Dragon on Our Doorstep: Managing
China through Military Power
Pravin Sawhney & Ghazala Wahab
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 799
Publication date: January
ISBN: 978-93-82277-26-2
Territory: World
P32
Understanding the black economy
& black money in india: Causes,
Consequences and Remedies
Arun Kumar
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: February
ISBN: 978-93-86021-57-1
Territory: World
120
The Book of Aleph Index
121

P29
Tiger Fire: 500 Years of the Tiger in India
P44
The Book of Indian Dogs
Valmik Thapar
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: February
ISBN: 978-93-84067-24-3
Territory: World
S. Theodore Baskaran
Format: B format HB
Price: 399
Publication date: April
ISBN: 978-93-84067-57-1
Territory: World
SPRING 2017 (march-april)
SUMMER 2017 (may–june)
P38
Maid in India: Stories of Opportunity
P49
God in Hinduism
and Inequality Inside our Homes
Tripti Lahiri
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: April
ISBN: 978-93-84067-33-5
Territory: World
Devdutt Pattanaik
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: May
ISBN: 9789386021137
Territory: Indian subcontinent
p40
The Decline of Civilization: Why We
P51
Zelaldinus: A Masque
Need to return to Gandhi and Tagore
Ramin Jahanbegloo (Foreword by Romila
Thapar)
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: April
ISBN: 978-93-84067-26-7
Territory: World
Irwin Allan Sealy
Format: A format PB
Price: Rs 299
Publication date: June
ISBN: 978-93-86021-07-6
Territory: World
p42
Asia Reborn: A Continent Rises from the
Ravages of Colonialism & War to a New
Dynamism
Prasenjit k. Basu
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 999
Publication date: April
ISBN: 978-93-84067-19-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P53
The Parrots of Desire: 3,000 Years of
Indian Erotica
edited by Amrita Narayanan
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: June
ISBN: 978-93-83064-09-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
122
The Book of Aleph Index
123

P55
Political Corruption in India: How
Should It be Combated?
P64
The Collected Stories of Saadat Hasan
Manto (Volume one)
N. Ram
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: June
ISBN: 978-93-84067-31-1
Territory: World
Translated by Nasreen Rehman
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: July
ISBN: 978-93-82277-53-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P57
Knowledge and Education in India
G. N. Devy
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: June
ISBN: 978-93-86021-15-1
Territory: World
P66
Superhuman River: A Biography
of the Ganga
Bidisha Banerjee
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: July
ISBN: 978-93-84067-35-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P59
The Demon-hunter of Chottanikkara: A
Novel
S. V. Sujatha
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: June
ISBN: 978-93-86021-09-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P68
A Time of Madness: A Memoir
of Partition
Salman Rashid
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: July
ISBN: 978-93-83064-07-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
MONSOON 2016 (july–september)
P62
Prescriptions for Success: The
Autobiography of Dr B. R. Shetty
with Pranay Gupte
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
Publication date: July
ISBN: 978-93-86021-08-3
Territory: World
P70
Indians: A Portrait of a People
Shashi Tharoor
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: August
ISBN: 978-93-86021-10-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
124
The Book of Aleph Index
125

P73
The Book of Chocolate Saints: A Novel
Jeet Thayil
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 699
Publication date: August
ISBN: 978-93-86021-03-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P83
The Indian Copyright Handbook
Pravin Anand (with Dhruv Anand &
Tanvi Misra)
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 699
Publication date: September
ISBN: 978-93-86021-14-4
Territory: World
P78
What It Means to Be Indian
Veena Das
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: August
ISBN: 978-93-83064-73-1
Territory: World
P85
Strangers No More? Conflict and
Reconciliation in India’s Northeast
Sanjoy Hazarika
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: September
ISBN: 978-93-84067-48-9
Territory: World
AUTUMN/WINTER 2017 (october–december)
P76
The Lovers: A Novel
Amitava Kumar
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: August
ISBN: 978-93-86021-00-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P89
Pilgrim Nation: Journeys of the Spirit
Devdutt Pattanaik
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: October
ISBN: 978-93-84067-29-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P80
A Life in Politics: A Memoir
P91
Coming out as Dalit: A Memoir
Jayanthi Natarajan
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: September
ISBN: 978-93-83064-71-7
Territory: World
Yashica Dutt
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
Publication date: October
ISBN: 978-93-84067-32-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
126
The Book of Aleph Index
127

P93
The Malayalis: A Portrait of a
Community
Paul Zacharia
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: October
ISBN: 978-93-84067-69-4
Territory: World
P102 AYODHYA: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY
VALAY SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: December
ISBN: 978-93-82277-45-3
Territory: World
P95
My Kashmir
Omar Abdullah
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: November
ISBN: 978-93-86021-02-1
Territory: World
P103 1965: A Western Sunrise
Shiv Kunal Verma
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 999
Publication date: December
ISBN: 978-93-84067-23-6
Territory: World
P98
The Bengalis: A Portrait of a Community
Sudeep Chakravarti
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
Publication date: November
ISBN: 978-93-86021-04-5
Territory: World
P105 The Short Life and Tragic Death of
Qandeel Baloch
Sanam Maher
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: December
ISBN: 978-93-86021-05-2
Territory: Indian subcontinent
P100 The Nehru Reader
edited by Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 799
Publication date: November
ISBN: 978-93-83064-10-6
Territory: World
P107 Indelible India: A Golden Treasury of
Journalism
edited by M. J. Akbar
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
Publication date: December
ISBN: 978-93-84067-45-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
128
The Book of Aleph Index
129

(...continued from the front flap)
Cover photograph © Goa Streets: News & Entertainment Weekly
www.goastreets.com
Cover design: Bena Sareen
`499
(continued on the back flap...)
P109 The Kurukshetra War: A Reconstruction
Keerthik Sasidharan
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 999
Publication date: December
ISBN: 978-93-86021-11-3
Territory: Indian subcontinent
backlist
Non-FICTION
Maps for a Mortal Moon: Essays and
Entertainments
ADIL JUSSAWALLA
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-67-5
Territory: World
The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of
Nepal’s Maoist Revolution
ADITYA ADHIKARI
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-76-2
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Mrinal Pande, Nayantara Sahgal, Pinki
Virani, Qurratulain Hyder, Rashid Jahan,
Romila Thapar, Sarojini Naidu, Saudamini
Devi, Shivani; and powerful new voices from
our time like Arundhathi Subramaniam,
Nilanjana Roy and Nivedita Menon.
Profound, exhilarating, haunting, angry and
meditative, Unbound is a collection that will
shatter stereotypes about women’s writing
in India.
Annie Zaidi is the author of Gulab,
Love Stories # 1 to 14, and Known Turf:
Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales,
which was shortlisted for the Vodafone
Crossword Book Award. She is the coauthor
of The Good Indian Girl and a book
of illustrated poems, Crush. Her work has
appeared in several anthologies like Eat the
Sky; Drink the Ocean, Mumbai Noir, Dharavi,
Women Changing India, and 21 Under 40.
A collection of some of the
most significant writing by
Indian women over the past
two thousand years.
fiction/non-fiction
unbound
2,000 years
of indian
women’s
writing
edited by
Annie Zaidi
un
bound
2,000 years
of indian
women’s writing
edited by
Annie Zaidi
Unbound is a collection of some of the
most significant writing by Indian women
over the past two thousand years. Divided
into eleven sections, it encompasses writing
on various aspects of life: spirituality, love,
marriage, children, food, work, social and
individual identity, battles, myths and fables,
travel and death. While many of the pieces
are commentaries on the struggle that
women undertake to overcome obstacles—
social and political—all of them showcase the
remarkable creative ability of their creators.
The term ‘women’s writing’ has often been
used to limit and stereotype the work of
women writers. But it also has a larger and
more constructive meaning, and that is the
sense in which it has been used to inform
and describe the context of the book. As
Annie Zaidi explains in her introduction:
‘Women bring to their writing the truth
of their bodies, and an enquiry into the
different ways in which gender inequity
shapes human experience.’
Selected from hundreds of novels, memoirs,
essays, short story collections and volumes
of poetry that were either written in English
or that have been translated into English,
the pieces in this collection include the most
distinctive and powerful voices from every
era. There are verses from the Therigatha,
written by Buddhist nuns (circa 300 bce),
and writing by poet-saints like Andaal,
Avvaiyar, Lal Ded, Mirabai; modern classics
by writers like Ajeet Cour, Amrita Pritam,
Arundhati Roy, Attia Hosian, Bama, Bulbul
Sharma, Irawati Karve, Ismat Chughtai,
Kamala Das, Krishna Sobti, Mahasweta
Devi, Manju Kapur, Mannu Bhandari,
Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women’s
Writing
edited BY ANNIE ZAIDI
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-83064-16-8
Territory: World
Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir
ARUN FERREIRA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-70-5
Territory: World
130
The Book of Aleph Backlist
131

The cover shows a Montagu’s harrier,
a migratory raptor, in flight.
Photograph by Kiran Poonacha
`295
This Unquiet Land: Dispatches from India’s
The Leadership Sutra: An Indian Approach to
Fault Lines
Power
BARKHA DUTT
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-82277-16-3
Territory: World
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-84067-46-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Grey Hornbills at Dusk
The Talent Sutra: An Indian Approach to
BULBUL SHARMA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-65-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Learning
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-27-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Business Sutra: A Very Indian Approach to
Management
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-54-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
‘You will find no lack of superlatives among our
Indian birds’ writes Douglas Dewar in this superb and
idiosyncratic book about some of the most interesting
birds to be found in the country. From the common
crow, ‘splendid in sagacity, resource, adaptiveness,
boldness, cunning and depravity; a Machiavelli;
a Shakespeare among birds, a super-bird’ to the
scavenger vulture, ‘the ugliest bird in the world’,
wagtails ‘who dress most tastefully’, ‘mad babblers’,
‘upright cuckoos’, the night heron which ‘only sleeps
when it has nothing better to do’, hawks ‘the bandits
of the air’, the drongo, who ‘is the embodiment of
pluck’, and dozens of other species, well-known and
rare, Jungle Folk will make you see our birds in new
and arresting ways. In his closely observed sketches,
the legendary naturalist explores in detail every
significant element of the bird in question including
anatomy, physiology, behaviour, lifestyle and habitat.
Intended for the amateur naturalist as well as the
serious ornithologist, this is an eye-opening, intriguing
and original account of Indian birds.
Jungle Folk d o u g l a s d e w a r
indian
natural
history
sketches
‘Douglas Dewar’s
brilliant observations and
word pictures bring these
birds and animals
into your home.’
—Ruskin Bond
Jungle Folk
DOUGLAS DEWAR
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-84067-39-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
non-fiction
The Success Sutra: An Indian Approach to
Abolishing the Death Penalty: Why India
Wealth
Should Say No to Capital Punishment
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-84067-41-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-82277-78-1
Territory: World
132
The Book of Aleph Backlist
133

Born in Punjab’s Hadali village (now in Pakistan)
in 1915, KHUSHWANT SINGH was among
India’s best-known and most widely read authors
and journalists. He was founder-editor of Yojana,
and editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India, National
Herald and the Hindustan Times. He published
six novels—Train to Pakistan, I Shall Not Hear the
Nightingale, Delhi: A Novel, The Company of Women,
Burial at Sea and The Sunset Club as well as several
books of short stories which were published
together as The Portrait of a Lady. Among his other
books are 99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction, Poetry
& Humour, The Freethinker’s Prayerbook, A History of
the Sikhs; an autobiography, Truth, Love & a Little
Malice; a biography, Ranjit Singh: Maharaja of the
Punjab; and a book of non-fiction, The Return of
Indira Gandhi. In addition, he published translations
of Hindi and Urdu novels, short stories and poetry.
Khushwant Singh was a member of the Rajya
Sabha from 1980 to 1986. He was awarded the
Padma Bhushan in 1974; he returned the award
in 1984 to protest the siege of the Golden Temple
by the Indian army. In 2007, he was awarded
India’s second highest civilian honour, the
Padma Vibhushan.
Khushwant Singh died on 20 March 2014. He
is survived by his son, Rahul Singh, daughter, Mala
Dayal, and granddaughter, Naina Dayal.
Author photograph: Courtesy Mala Dayal
Cover design: Bena Sareen
‘Early this summer a strange phenomenon was seen in some
villages in the Himalyas. One night the people were disturbed
in their sleep by a noise of hissing, and nightmares that their
homes and fields were overrun with snakes. When they woke
up, they discovered to their horror that the terrifying dreams
of the night before had turned to reality. There were snakes
everywhere: in the gutters, on the footpaths, around the wells,
even hanging down from the trees.’
`499
Grand Delusions: A Short Biography of
Kolkata
INDRAJIT HAZRA
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-28-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The First Firangis: Remarkable Stories of
Heroes, Healers, Charlatans, Courtesans, &
Other Foreigners Who Became Indian
JONATHAN GIL HARRIS
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-63-7
Territory: World
India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the
21st Century
IRA TRIVEDI
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-62-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Freethinker’s Prayer Book
KHUSHWANT SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-81-923280-4-1
Territory: World
The Small Wild Goose Pagoda
IRWIN ALLAN SEALY
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-83064-48-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
99: Unforgettable Fiction, Non-fiction,
Poetry & Humour
KHUSHWANT SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 699
ISBN: 978-93-83064-75-5
Territory: World
Three-Quarters of a Footprint: Travels in
South India
JOE ROBERTS
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-84067-52-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
-------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
non-fiction
Portrait of a Serial Killer khushwant singh
uncollected writings
Portrait of a Serial Killer is an
unforgettable celebration of India
and Indians by one of our most
beloved writers. Published on the
hundredth anniversary of Khushwant
Singh’s birth, none of the essays in this
collection has been published in book
form before. A chilling account of
the serial killer Raman Raghav rubs
shoulders with an extraordinary portrait
of Jawaharlal Nehru followed by an
exuberant encounter with Dev Anand,
as well as nearly twenty other profiles
of saints, charlatans, writers, godmen,
singers, politicians and other arresting
characters. Another section of the book
contains vivid sketches of various parts
of the country—an unspoilt tribal village
in Bihar, the fire of a gulmohar forest
in Bokaro, the strange goings-on in the
expat community in Darjeeling, a small
community in the hinterland that is
terrorized by a sudden invasion of snakes,
and a bittersweet paean to Delhi, among
others. There are also essays that provide
insights into familiar characteristics of
India—obnoxious VIPs, violence against
women, corruption, amiable lunatics,
idiot lawyers, stud bulls, Indian men
and much else besides. Elegiac, witty
and compelling, this is a book that will
delight Khushwant Singh’s numerous
fans as well as anyone with an interest in
contemporary India.
Portrait of a Serial Killer and Other
Uncollected Writings
KHUSHWANT SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-82277-76-7
Territory: World
134
The Book of Aleph Backlist
135

‘Forget Kathmandu combines passion with insight to describe a complex and
troubled country. Written in clear, vigorous prose, it is one of the most
important books on not just Nepal but also contemporary South Asia.’
—Pankaj Mishra
In June 2001, the king of Nepal and almost his entire family were massacred.
Unrest, simmering over the previous decade, boiled over, and pushed the
nation into free fall. In 2005, the dead king’s brother reinstated monarchy,
crushing any hope that parliamentary democracy would flourish in Nepal.
A period fraught with uncertainty and intense turmoil ensued: the Maoists
waged a bloody People’s War; the monarchy mounted a bloodier counterinsurgency
effort; political parties bickered and fought endlessly; and the
citizens bore the brunt of it all.
Wide-ranging in scope—the book spans the beginning of the monarchy,
through the early democratic movements, to the present—Forget Kathmandu
is many things: history, memoir, reportage, travelogue, analysis. But, above all,
it is an unflinching, clear-sighted attempt to make sense of the ‘bad politics’
that plagued—and continues to plague—the country. It remains as worryingly
relevant to present-day Nepal as it was when first published in 2005.
‘[Forget Kathmandu is] reminiscent of the late great W. G. Sebald’s non-fiction
as an engaging detective story.’—Hindustan Times
Cover design and calligraphy by Nikheel Aphale
`325
‘Activities in Nepal, especially those that set a good example...do not often breach
the international consciousness. [A Boy from Siklis] does just that, narrating
Nepal’s revolutionary approach to protected areas in a fluent and personalized
manner.’—Himal Southasian
In late September 2006, Chandra Gurung organized an event in remote Ghunsa
village in Eastern Nepal to celebrate a landmark in the country’s conservation
history: the handing over of ownership of forest areas by the government to
local inhabitants. The handover also marked the apex of Chandra’s career as an
environmentalist. On the way back from Ghunsa, the helicopter ferrying Chandra
and others crashed, killing everyone aboard.
A Boy from Siklis traces Chandra’s Gurung’s remarkable life—his birth in the tiny
village of Siklis; his education in Nepal and abroad; his work, first with the King
Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation and then as head of the World Wildlife
Fund Nepal—and his meteoric rise as he became one of the keystones of natureconservation
efforts in Nepal.
A compelling story of a life lived with verve and an honest desire to make lasting
difference, A Boy from Siklis is also a valuable and illuminating history of nature
conservation in Nepal, caught up in the country’s thorny politics.
Cover design and calligraphy by Nikheel Aphale
`325
Written with style and sophistication, also honesty
and emotion…a must-read.—Outlook
Me, The Jokerman: Enthusiasms, Rants &
Obsessions
KHUSHWANT SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-51-9
Territory: World
Perpetual City: A Short Biography of Delhi
MALVIKA SINGH
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-24-8
Territory: World
Talking of Justice: People’s Rights in Modern
India
LEILA SETH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-96-5
Territory: World
non-fiction
Manjushree
Thapa
An Elegy for Democracy
Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 325
ISBN: 978-93-82277-00-2
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Manjushree Thapa
Of Birds and Birdsong
M. KRISHNAN
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-64-4
Territory: World
non-fiction
Manjushree Thapa
The Life and Times of Chandra Gurung
‘This is how heroes should be judged—not only by what they achieved in their
own lifetimes, but also in their continuing influence.’—Nepali Times
A Boy From Siklis: The Life and Times of
Chandra Gurung
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 250
ISBN: 978-93-82277-50-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Manjushree Thapa
Birds in my Indian Garden
MALCOLM MACDONALD
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-84067-40-3
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Lives We have Lost: Essays and Opinions
on Nepal
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-52-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
136
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137

Filomena’s Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage,
a Family & a Culture
MARIA AURORA COUTO
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-04-0
Territory: World
Korma, Kheer & Kismet: Five Seasons in Old
Delhi
PAMELA TIMMS
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-14-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Subcontinental Drift: Four Decades Adrift in
India and Beyond
MURRAY LAURENCE
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-25-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Kingdom at the Centre of the World:
Journeys into Bhutan
OMAIR AHMAD
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-01-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay
NARESH FERNANDES
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-82277-20-0
Territory: World
Chanakya’s New Manifesto
PAVAN K. VARMA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-09-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Degree Coffee by the Yard: A Short Biography
of Madras
NIRMALA LAKSHMAN
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-82277-15-6
Territory: World
Butterflies on the Roof of the World
PETER SMETACEK
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-05-7
Territory: World
138
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139

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary
History of Nepal
PRASHANT JHA
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-99-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Punjab: A History from Aurangzeb to
Mountbatten
RAJMOHAN GANDHI
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-83064-08-3
Territory: World
Unladylike: A Memoir
RADHIKA VAZ
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-17-5
Territory: World
Prince of Gujarat: The Extraordinary Story
of Prince Gopaldas Desai (1887-1951)
RAJMOHAN GANDHI
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 500
ISBN: 978-93-83064-06-9
Territory: World
Picturing Time:
The Greatest Photographs of Raghu Rai
RAGHU RAI
Format: Oversized Royal
Price: Rs 1,999
ISBN: 978-93-84067-18-2
Territory: World
Understanding the Founding Fathers:
An Enquiry into the Indian Republic’s
Beginnings
RAJMOHAN GANDHI
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-24-3
Territory: World
People: His Finest Portraits
RAGHU RAI
Format: Oversized B HB
Price: Rs 999
ISBN: 978-93-83064-13-7
Territory: World
The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary
Identities through History
ROMILA THAPAR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-83064-01-4
Territory: World
140
The Book of Aleph Backlist
141

how cricket defines India, You Must Like
Cricket? and All That You Can’t Leave
Behind, were published to international
acclaim. His novel, If I Could Tell You, was
a finalist for the the Hindu’s Best Fiction
Award 2010. He is also the author of the
fatherhood memoir, Dad’s the Word. He
was a Granta New Voice in 2008. His writing
has been published in the New York Times,
the Guardian, the Independent, the New
Statesman, Wisden, ESPNcricinfo, and the
Sydney Morning Herald. He is the editor of
the Hindustan Times, Mumbai.
Front cover photograph: Kunal Patil/ Hindustan Times
Back cover photograph: Vipin Kumar/ Hindustan Times
Author photograph: Oishi Bhattacharya
`495
Indian cricket has the most exciting batting
line-up in the world today. Virat Kohli,
Shikhar Dhawan, Cheteshwar Pujara,
Rohit Sharma and Ajinkya Rahane, led by
their captain, M. S. Dhoni, have routinely
destroyed international bowling attacks.
While the young bowlers in the team lack
the burgeoning reputation of the batsmen,
they have shone in flashes at home and
abroad. The current and future brilliance of
the members of this team is all the more
remarkable when you consider their youth,
relative inexperience and the fact that they
are following in the footsteps of the golden
generation—Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav
Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman
and Anil Kumble.
This book takes as its point of departure 14
November 2013, the date on which the last
member of the golden generation—Sachin
Tendulkar—retired from all forms of cricket.
It covers the highlights of Tendulkar’s last
Test, as also the careers of the Fab Five
before delving deep into the stories and
exploits of the new stars of Indian cricket,
as well as the one man who straddles both
generations—Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the
finest finisher in one day cricket today,
and, statistically speaking, the most
successful Indian captain of all time. The
first major account of the future of Indian
cricket, After Tendulkar is written with a
novelist’s eye and an eloquence that will be
enjoyed by all those who love memorable
writing about the game.
The Public Intellectual India in India
ROMILA THAPAR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-38-0
Territory: World
India Shastra: Reflections on the Nation in
our Time
SHASHI THAROOR
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 695
ISBN: 978-93-84067-28-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Being the Other: The Muslim in India
SAEED NAQVI
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-84067-22-9
Territory: World
1962: The War that Wasn’t
SHIV KUNAL VERMA
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 995
ISBN: 978-93-82277-97-2
Territory: World
The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The
Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy
SALIL TRIPATHI
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-82277-18-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Subhas and Sarat: An Intimate Memoir of the
Bose Brothers
SISIR KUMAR BOSE
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-83064-14-4
Territory: World
Accidental India: A History of the Nation’s
Passage through Crisis and Change
SHANKKAR AIYAR
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 695
ISBN: 978-81-92328-0-89
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Soumya Bhattacharya’s books about
non-fiction
After Tendulkar
Soumya Bhattacharya
After
Tendulkar
THE NEW STARS
OF INDIAN CRICKET
Soumya Bhattacharya
A writer whose work we will read for years to come.
After Tendulkar: The New Stars of Indian
Cricket
SOUMYA BHATTACHARYA
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-83064-72-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
—Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games
142
The Book of Aleph Backlist
143

Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in
Search of the Sacred and the Sublime
STEPHEN ALTER
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-86021-56-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
a matter of rats: a short biography of patna
Amitava kumar
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-22-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Mystical World of Kahlil Gibran’s The
Prophet: A Relaxing Colouring Book for
Adults
SUJAYA BATRA
Format: A4 PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-84067-58-8
Territory: World
Exotic Aliens: The Lion and the Cheetah in
India
VALMIK THAPAR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-82277-55-2
Territory: World
Spell of the Tiger: The Man-eating Tigers of
Sundarbans
SY MONTGOMERY
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-82277-41-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Wild Fire: The Splendours of India’s Animal
Kingdom
VALMIK THAPAR
Format: Oversized Royal HB
Price: Rs 2, 995
ISBN: 978-93-83064-68-7
Territory: World
Askew: A Short Biography of Bangalore
T. J. S. GEORGE
Format: A format HB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-84067-21-2
Territory: World
Winged Fire: A Celebration of Indian Birds
VALMIK THAPAR
Format: Oversized Royal HB
Price: Rs 2, 995
ISBN: 978-93-83064-69-4
Territory: World
144
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145

Chetan Raj Shrestha was born in 1978
in Gangtok, Sikkim. He is a trained architect,
specializing in conservation architecture.
He has lived in Darjeeling, Bengaluru,
Mumbai and Sydney, and is currently
working in a collaborative architectural
practice in Gangtok.
`350
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve,
in a village above the Rangeet river in
Sikkim, a woman called Kamala hacks
her husband, Police Constable Puran,
into forty-seven pieces, then walks to the
nearby police station and turns herself
in. At first, the murder seems an openand-shut
case to Dechen, the tough,
foul-mouthed, prickly lady cop in charge
of the investigation. But as she begins to
delve into the lives of Kamala and Puran,
she discovers a world of lies, deceit and
love gone wrong, where the past, including
her own, constantly shadows the present,
nothing is as it seems, and the guilt of
murderers is difficult to establish.
On a day of endless rain, a man emerges
from thirty-two years of isolation to meet
his king, whom he owes a share of the
harvest from his fields. Journeying across
leech-infested forests and forbidding
valleys, he tells his children the story of his
life—one that has been full of drama and
magic. But the biggest miracle of all awaits
him in Gangtok, where he will speak to
the absent king.
These two novellas, united by their strong
sense of place, showcase Chetan Raj
Shrestha’s enormous gifts as a storyteller.
Magical, gritty, nerve-wracking and stylish in
equal measure, this is an exceptional debut.
Saving Wild India: A Blueprint for Change
VALMIK THAPAR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-37-3
Territory: World
FICTION
A Pleasant Kind of Heavy and Other Erotic
Stories
AMRITA NARAYANAN
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-10-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Living with Tigers
VALMIK THAPAR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-84067-50-2
Territory: World
The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told
Edited by Arunava Sinha
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-82277-74-3
Territory: World
Courage and Conviction: An Autobiography
GENERAL V. K. SINGH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-82277-57-6
Territory: World
Cover illustration by Kalyani Ganapathy
Cover design by Bena Sareen
© S.T. Gyatso
fiction
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The King’s Harvest
chetan raj shrestha
The King’s Harvest
chetan raj shrestha
~
two novellas
~
~
The King’s Harvest
CHETAN RAJ SHRESTHA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-83064-05-2
Territory: World
On Hinduism
WENDY DONIGER
Format: Royal HB
Price: Rs 995
ISBN: 978-93-82277-0-71
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer
CYRUS MISTRY
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-35-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
146
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147

`295
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
Cover photograph ©Lalie Sorbet 2012 | Cover design by Bena Sareen
Passion Flower: Seven Stories of
Derangement
CYRUS MISTRY
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-17-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
fiction
‘A novel of feeling as
well as of ideas, and a
delightful and thoroughly
satisfying one.’
—Scotsman
‘Brings the art of grand
narrative back to the
Indian novel.’
—India Today
‘In the best sense, he knows
how to tell a good story.’
—Independent on Sunday
‘Davidar’s writing is a joy.’
—Glamour
‘David Davidar is one
of the most remarkable
people in publishing.’
—Scotland on Sunday
www.alephbookcompany.com
‘We do not know what to do with one of our
most precious resources, solitude, and so we fill
it up with noise and clutter...’
Suffocating in the small-town world of his parents,
Vijay is desperate to escape to the raw energy of
Bombay in the early 1990s. His big chance arrives
unexpectedly when the family servant, Raju, is
recruited by a right-wing organization. As a result
of an article he writes about the increasing power
of sectarian politicians, Vijay gets a job in a small
Bombay publication, The Indian Secularist.
There he meets Rustom Sorabjee—the inspirational
founder of the magazine who opens Vijay’s eyes to
the damage caused to the nation by the mixing of
religion and politics.
A year after his arrival in Bombay, Vijay is caught up
in violent riots that rip through the city, a reflection
of the upsurge of fundamentalism everywhere in the
country. He is sent to a small tea town in the Nilgiri
mountains to recover, but finds that the unrest in the
rest of India has touched this peaceful spot as well,
specifically a spectacular shrine called The Tower of
God, which is the object of political wrangling. He
is befriended by Noah, an enigmatic and colourful
character who lives in the local cemetery and quotes
Pessoa, Cavafy and Rimbaud but is ostracized by
a local elite obsessed with little more than growing
their prized fuchsias. As the discord surrounding
the local shrine comes to a head, Vijay tries to alert
them to the dangers, but his intervention will have
consequences which he could never have foreseen.
The Solitude of Emperors is a stunningly perceptive
novel about modern India, about what motivates
fundamentalist beliefs, and what makes someone
driven, bold or mad enough to make a stand.
THE SOLITUDE OF
EMPERORS
DAVID
DAVIDAR
‘Unflinching. Unsentimental. Deeply moving. I loved it.’
—Kiran Desai
‘A master storyteller.’—Time
‘Davidar skilfully mixes the
political with the personal to
create an engrossing read.’
—Daily Mail
THE
SOLITUDE OF
EMPERORS
DAVID
DAVIDAR
‘[An] ambitious disturbing novel…[As] this book hurtles towards its dramatic
denouement, it offers us quite a white-knuckle ride…Davidar has a keen eye for
detail, and an elegant turn of phrase. This is (a) daring novel that engages with Indian
realities: it looks sectarian violence and intolerance in the eye, and does not turn away.’
—Independent
The Solitude of Emperors
DAVID DAVIDAR
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-95-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Radiance of Ashes
CYRUS MISTRY
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-74-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces:
Extraordinary Short Stories from the 19th
Century to the Present
Edited by David Davidar
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-82277-29-3
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Arctic Summer
DAMON GALGUT
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-82277-25-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Adventures of Amir Hamza
GHALIB LAKHNAVI & ABDULLAH BILGRAMI
Translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-12-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The House of Blue Mangoes
DAVID DAVIDAR
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-94-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey
HANSDA SOWVENDRA SHEKHAR
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-32-3
Territory: World
148
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149

Shilappadikaram
ILANGO ADIGAL
Translated by Alain Daniélou
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-83064-19-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Swimmer Among the Stars
KANISHK THAROOR
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-84067-34-2
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Collected Poems
JEET THAYIL
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 978-93-84067-43-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
A Town Like Ours
KAVERY NAMBISAN
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-00-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Em and The Big Hoom
JERRY PINTO
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-31-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Black Hill
MAMANG DAI
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-23-1
Territory: World
Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader
KALIDASA
Edited & translated by Mani Rao
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-82277-75-0
Territory: World
Tilled Earth
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 250
ISBN: 978-93-82277-51-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
150
The Book of Aleph Backlist
151

Nilanjana Roy spent most of her
adult life writing about humans
before realizing that animals were
much more fun. Her first novel, The
Wildings, was widely praised and
shortlisted for the Commonwealth
Book Prize and the Shakti Bhatt
First Book Prize. Her column
on books and reading for the
Business Standard has run for over
fifteen years; she also writes for
the International Herald Tribune on
gender. Her fiction and journalism
have appeared in several journals and
anthologies, including The Caravan,
Civil Lines 6, Guernica, The New York
Times’ India blog, Outlook and Biblio.
Some of her stories for children have
been published in Scholastic’s Spooky
Stories, Science Fiction Stories and Be
Witched. She is the editor of A Matter
of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian
Food Writing. Nilanjana lives in Delhi
with two cats and her husband, and
on Twitter @nilanjanaroy.
In the sequel to her critically acclaimed,
bestselling novel, The Wildings, Nilanjana
Roy takes us back to the Delhi
neighbourhood of Nizamuddin, and its
unforgettable cats—Mara, Southpaw, Katar,
Hulo and Beraal. As they recover slowly
from their terrible battle with the feral cats,
they find their beloved locality changing
around them. Winter brings an army of
predators—humans, vicious dogs, snakes,
bandicoots—along with the cold and a
scarcity of food... Unless Mara can help
them find a safe haven, their small band
will be wiped out forever.
With the assistance of a motley group of
friends—Doginder, a friendly stray; Hatch,
a cheel who is afraid of the sky; Thomas
Mor, an affable peacock; Jethro Tail, the
mouse who roared; and the legendary
Senders of Delhi—Mara and her band
set out on an epic journey to find a place
where they can live free from danger.
With all the brilliance and originality
of its predecessor, The Hundred Names of
Darkness brings the story of Mara and the
enormously appealing cats of Nizamuddin
to a breathtaking conclusion.
`495
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
An independent publishing firm
promoted by Rupa Publications India
Seasons of Flight
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 250
ISBN: 978-93-82277-49-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Wildings
NILANJANA ROY
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-48-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Tutor of History
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-82277-02-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Hundred Names of Darkness
NILANJANA ROY
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-77-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
©Kavi Bhansali
fiction
www.alephbookcompany.com
All of Us in Our Own Lives
MANJUSHREE THAPA
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-82277-11-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Tagore for the 21st Century Reader
RABINDRANATH TAGORE
Edited & translated by Arunava Sinha
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-82277-27-9
Territory: World
Between Clay and Dust
MUSHARRAF ALI FAROOQI
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-30-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Tales of Fosterganj
RUSKIN BOND
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-47-7
Territory: World
152
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153

`599
`399
Author of Tiger Hills
‘mandanna is a gifted and evocative writer who can tell a story stirringly well.’—the hindu
‘mandanna has an easy style and a knack for making her characters come alive.’—hindustan times
At the outset of the Great War, James
Stonebridge, a patrician New England
Yankee and Obadaiah Nelson, gumbo
ya-ya Louisiana native, volunteer with
the French Foreign Legion in Paris. They
are among the handful of Americans who
did so at the time, young men filled with
idealism and lured by romantic notions
of adventure. Despite their different
backgrounds, the two form a deep and
unexpected friendship that helps them
endure the brutal reality of the trenches,
a bond that is tested to breaking point
by the horrors of war.
Fourteen years after the war has ended,
Major James Stonebridge is a haunted
recluse. A black mirror, a souvenir from
France, hangs on the wall of his Vermont
farmhouse, his pale, leached reflection in
it hinting at all that he has suffered. The
impact of this unspoken burden is felt
most of all by his son, Jim. It is only when
privileged, spirited Madeleine enters their
lives and encourages the Major to join the
World War I veterans agitating for their
unpaid bonuses in Washington that Jim
finally begins to understand the man his
father once was, and all that the war
took from him. Meanwhile the 1930s
are drawing to a close and another
war looms...
From pre-war Paris to the trenches of
Europe and the apple orchards of Vermont,
Good Hope Road is a powerful and
mesmerizing story of the legacy of war, the
search for redemption and the strength of
the human spirit.
STORIES—SELECTED
MAJOR WORKS
eriods of darkness, but now
h as an encounter with an old
n a little longer. I hope you,
renewing your bond with this
s much as I have enjoyed
ily, these are my favourite
y writer’s dream) they will
fe.’
uskin Bond
age-old; the scents, sights
e have rarely been captured
’—National Herald
tly simple and immensely
love and reverence for life’
Statesman
writers.’
A GATHERING of FRIENDS ruskin bond
‘One of the best storytellers of contemporary India.’ —The Tribune
The twenty-one stories in the book
are the greatest pieces of fiction
written by Ruskin Bond. Chosen by
the author himself, from a body of
work built over fifty years (starting
with his award-winning first novel,
The Room on the Roof, and ending
with Tales of Fosterganj), this collection
includes well-known masterpieces
like ‘The Night Train at Deoli’, ‘The
Woman on Platform 8’, ‘Rusty Plays
Holi’ (from The Room on the Roof),
‘Angry River’, ‘The Blue Umbrella’,
‘The Eyes Have It’, ‘Most Beautiful’
and ‘Panther’s Moon’, as well as
newer stories like ‘An Evening at the
Savoy with H. H. ’ (from Maharani)
and ‘Dinner with Foster’ (from Tales
of Fosterganj). Taken together, the
stories in A Gathering of Friends show
why Ruskin Bond has long been
regarded as one of the pillars
of Indian literature.
~
A Gathering of Friends: My Favourite Stories
RUSKIN BOND
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-79-3
Territory: World
Shadow Play
SHASHI DESHPANDE
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-19-4
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Upon an Old Wall Dreaming: More of My
Favourite Stories and Sketches
RUSKIN BOND
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-84067-47-2
Territory: World
The Competent Authority
SHOVON CHOWDHURY
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-60-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Escape from Baghdad!
SAAD Z. HOSSAIN
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-84067-53-3
Territory: India only
Murder with Bengali Characteristics
SHOVON CHOWDHURY
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-82277-79-8
Territory: Indian subcontinent
the mantel
ain of brass.
e marked it
but was not
al feature.
ry clear, silverce
of the mirror
ian black, like
in and pushed up
the egg, perhaps,
t-winged bird...
lass absorbed
ts opacity
images flatter,
ees framed in
f the barn just
—all as if diluted
rror, sundered
d the depth of
GOOD HOPE ROAD
SARITA MANDANNA
‘The clouds lift. The road glints,
white as bone. Eyes forward,
itchy finger, trigger happy. Shadow,
mirror image world.’
Good Hope Road
SARITA MANDANNA
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 978-93-84067-20-5
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Patna Manual of Style: Stories
SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY
Format: B Format HB
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 978-93-83064-77-9
Territory: Indian subcontinent
fiction
fiction
154
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155

`195
`495
ALEPH BOOK COMPANY
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promoted by Rupa Publications India
City of Spies
SORAYYA KHAN
Format: B Format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-83064-78-6
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Taliban Cricket Club
TIMERI N. MURARI
Format: Demy PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-33-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
escape artist sridala swami
Sridala Swami’s Escape Artist maps
the dilemmas of the bodied self, and
offers a diviner’s eloquent testimony
to survival in a world of dissolving
certitudes, precarious relationships,
transcontinental mobility and political
cataclysm. Poised, subtle, luminous,
Swami’s poetry clothes the ephemera
of everyday life in an intimate
tangibility and secures them against
the insistent attritions of history and
nature. The finely gauged frame is
Swami’s chosen instrument. Through
it, she effects surprising juxtapositions
of myth and contemporary experience,
investigates whether the finality of
extinction is preferable to the selfparody
of repetition, revisits Paul
Celan’s cryptic notations, Odilon
Redon’s enigmatic images, Abbas
Kiarostami’s deceptively quotidian
cinema, and pays homage to that
re-discoverer of lost myths, Giorgos
Seferis. At the core of Escape Artist is
a visceral awareness of what words
can do: they can induce ‘temporary
insanity’, voice ‘inaudible stories’, and
remind us that ‘the measure of love
is not loss but residue’.
Escape Artist
SRIDALA SWAMI
Format: B Format PB
Price: Rs 195
ISBN: 978-93-82277-98-9
Territory: World
Taj: A Story of Mughal India
TIMERI N. MURARI
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-82277-34-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
In the Jungles of the Night: A Novel about Jim
Corbett
STEPHEN ALTER
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 978-93-83064-67-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
Chanakya Returns
TIMERI N. MURARI
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 495
ISBN: 978-93-83064-02-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
These Circuses that Sweep through the
Landscape
TEJASWINI APTE-RAHM
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-84067-56-4
Territory: World
GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
read English Literature at
St Stephen’s College, Delhi. A former
administrator and diplomat, he has
authored a novel, Refuge, a play in
English verse, Dara Shukoh, and has
translated A Suitable Boy by Vikram
Seth into Hindustani. He is currently
Distinguished Professor at
Ashoka University.
Cover design by Bena Sareen
The Tirukkural has been admired as literature, venerated
as secular gospel, and translated times without number
into the world’s different languages. This new version
recreates the beauty of Tiruvalluvar’s masterpiece for
the twenty-first-century reader.
Verse 1
As ‘A’ is of every alphabet the primordial letter
So is god the world’s very fount and progenitor
Verse 80
Life is life when lover and loved both live it together
Loveless men are but—what shall I say—
bones clad in leather
Verse 391
Learner, learn your learning full well and fault free
And then make your learning with life’s living
truths agree
classics
www.alephbookcompany.com
tiruvalluvar
the tirukkural
GOPALKRISHNA
GANDHI
A new English version of a beloved Tamil classic.
The Tirukkural (honoured Kural) is one of the world’s
greatest literary and philosophical masterpieces.
Composed in Tamil by Tiruvalluvar sometime
between 2 BCE and 5 CE, its succinct couplets seek
to explain and guide the reader through life’s various
situations: political, spiritual, domestic and social.
Not much is known about Tiruvalluvar—he is believed
to have been one or more of the following: a weaver,
an ascetic, a teacher, a minister, a seafarer or even a
king. What is indisputable, as Gopalkrishna Gandhi
says in the preface, is that he was ‘a clear thinker’, ‘a
sharp observer of life’ and ‘a master of his language
and…complex poetic forms’.
‘Kural’, in Tamil, means ‘short’. Each of the Tirukkural’s
1,330 verses holds its meaning tightly, gives its message
in something like telegraphese. Often called the
universal book of principles, the work is organized
into 133 chapters and three books. ‘Book I: Being
Good’ is aimed at householders and sets out the
principles of leading an ethical life. ‘Book II: Being
Politic’ is a manual for rulers and statesmen on the
qualities and duties of leaders, aspects of governance,
military strategies, and methods to acquire wealth
honestly. ‘Book III: Being in Love’ is a poetic
exposition on love. It is presented from the points
of view of both the man and the woman in different
situations—from the moment of falling in love,
through the pain of separation to the joy
of reconciliation.
Talking about our classics, the philosopher and
statesman Dr S. Radhakrishnan said as they ‘constitute
the essential spirit of our culture, are a part of our
very being, they should receive changing expression
according to the needs and conditions of [a particular]
time.’ Gopalkrishna Gandhi’s retelling of the Kural,
in keeping with that philosophy, showcases the great
beauty and wisdom of Tiruvalluvar’s masterpiece for
the twenty-first-century reader.
The Tirukkural
TIRUVALLUVAR
A new English version by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Format: B format HB
Price: Rs 295
ISBN: 978-93-83064-70-0
Territory: World
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157

A Suitable Boy
VIKRAM SETH
Format: Royal PB
Price: Rs 999
ISBN: 978-93-83064-12-0
Territory: Indian subcontinent
ABOUT US
Aleph Book Company is an independent publishing company founded in May
2011 by David Davidar in partnership with R. K. Mehra and Kapish Mehra of
Rupa Publications India.
Summer Requiem
VIKRAM SETH
Format: Demy HB
Price: Rs 399
ISBN: 978-93-84067-42-7
Territory: Indian subcontinent
The Bhagavad Gita
VYASA
Translated by Winthrop Sargeant
Format: B format PB
Price: Rs 299
ISBN: 978-93-83064-15-1
Territory: Indian subcontinent
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Rupsha Ghosh and Shorya Bhutani).
The Book of Aleph: Volume Six was designed by Bena Sareen.
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The Book of Aleph

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