If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai
If It's Monday It Must Be Madurai

Author: Srinath Perur

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2018-02-15

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 9351185702

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What is it like to travel with others for adventure, lust and god? This delightful travelogue, in which Srinath Perur embarks upon ten conducted tours, is full of rich experiences: hanging on to a camel in the Thar Desert, joining thousands on a pilgrimage in Maharashtra, crossing living root bridges near Cherrapunji, rediscovering music while on the trail of Kabir, and a lot more. As much about people as it is about places, the book is also a reflection of the nature of popular travel today, which is marked by the packaging of experiences, the formation of tourist economies and compulsive picture-taking. How this influences tourists comes across vividly: in their creation of a mini India on a bus as they race through treasured sights in Europe; in their perfunctory devotion as they hop from temple to temple in Tamil Nadu; and in their ‘enjoying’ with sex workers far away from home. Ironic, and often comic, If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai is an idiosyncratic portrait of India and her people.

Granta 130
Granta 130

Author: Ian Jack

Publisher: Granta

Published: 2015-01-29

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 190588186X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For a long time - too long - the mirror that India held to its face was made elsewhere. 'What writer about the country would you recommend I read?' first-time travellers to India would ask, and in the late twentieth century the answer was still Forster or Naipaul or even the long-dead Kipling. In fiction, that changed with Rushdie. Now it has changed in all kinds of non-fiction. Narrative history, reportage, memoir, biography, the travel account: all have their gifted exponents in a country perfecting its own frank gaze. In this special issue, Aman Sethi's 'Love Jihad' gives us insight into the riots, religious fractiousness, mob mentality and political manipulations that have come to define day-to-day life in Uttar Pradesh; Samanth Subramanian investigates the legacy of postcolonialism among Mumbai's elite at one of the city's oldest exclusive clubs; Raghu Karnad reveals the secret and terrible history of a great Delhi monument; Amitava Kumar brings us with him into a richly detailed world of grief at his mother's funeral pyre on the banks of the Ganges; and Sam Miller follows Gandhi's footsteps through Victorian London. Photographer Gauri Gill and artist Rajesh Vangad take a fresh look at an Indian village and embellish its present with its past, and Katherine Boo introduces the photographs that helped her write Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Hari Kunzru imagines an Indian future where inequality is taken to an all-too-imaginable extreme; the 'English Summer' of 1985 is brought to life in an excerpt from Amit Chaudhuri's Odysseus Abroad; and Anjali Joseph invites us into the mind of an ageing cobbler as he splices together the loose strands of his memories. Granta 130: India features more fiction by Upamanyu Chatterjee, Deepti Kapoor, Kalpana Narayanan, Vivek Shanbhag, Neel Mukherjee; a story by one of India's finest - and unduly neglected - prose writers, Arun Kolatkar; and poetry by Tishani Doshi, Anjum Hasan, Vinod Kumar Shukla and Karthika Nar.

Ghachar Ghochar
Ghachar Ghochar

Author: Vivek Shanbhag

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1101992948

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF VULTURE'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN FICTION “A modern classic.” —The New York Times Book Review A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India. “A classic tale of wealth and moral ruin.” —The New Yorker “Ghachar Ghochar introduces us to a master.” —The Paris Review Named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly Shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award in Prose Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

Ghachar Ghochar
Ghachar Ghochar

Author: Vivek Shanbhag

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-02-07

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 014311168X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOKS OF 2017 ONE OF VULTURE'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN FICTION “A modern classic.” —The New York Times Book Review A young man's close-knit family is nearly destitute when his uncle founds a successful spice company, changing their fortunes overnight. As they move from a cramped, ant-infested shack to a larger house on the other side of Bangalore, and try to adjust to a new way of life, the family dynamic begins to shift. Allegiances realign; marriages are arranged and begin to falter; and conflict brews ominously in the background. Things become “ghachar ghochar”—a nonsense phrase uttered by one meaning something tangled beyond repair, a knot that can't be untied. Elegantly written and punctuated by moments of unexpected warmth and humor, Ghachar Ghochar is a quietly enthralling, deeply unsettling novel about the shifting meanings—and consequences—of financial gain in contemporary India. “A classic tale of wealth and moral ruin.” —The New Yorker “Ghachar Ghochar introduces us to a master.” —The Paris Review Named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, Globe and Mail, and Publishers Weekly Shortlisted for the ALTA National Translation Award in Prose Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award

Infinite Vision
Infinite Vision

Author: Pavithra K. Mehta

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2011-11-07

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1605099791

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Aravind Eye Care System, based in India, is the world's largest provider of high-quality eye care. It is also one of the world's most incredible and revolutionary organizations. This is the first book to explore Aravind's history and the distinctive philosophies, practices, and commitments that are the keys to its success.

Great Minds on India
Great Minds on India

Author: Salil Gewali

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 8184759266

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Indian culture and spiritualism have exerted a strong hold over the world’s greatest intellectuals—from psychologists like Carl Jung to poets like T.S. Eliot, from orators like Swami Vivekananda to philosophers like Sri Aurobindo, from statesmen like Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to writers like H.G. Wells. Compiled by Salil Gewali, Great Minds on India is a remarkable collection of the thoughts and views of these world-renowned opinion-makers on India’s cultural inheritance and glorious legacy.

Truck de India!
Truck de India!

Author: Rajat Ubhaykar

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9386797658

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The share auto I squeeze into next seems unusually vulnerable after a night in the truck - too compact, too low down. Perhaps, these are the usual side effects of prolonged riding with the king of the road, I think to myself. But it is only when I fill in ‘truck’ as my mode of transportation in the hotel ledger at Udaipur does the utter ludicrousness of my endeavour truly hit home" Think truck drivers, and movie scenes of them drunkenly crushing inconvenient people to their gravelly deaths come to mind. But what are their lives on the road actually like? In Truck De India!, journalist Rajat Ubhaykar embarks on a 10,000 km-long, 100% unplanned trip, hitchhiking with truckers all across India. On the way, he makes unexpected friendships; listens to highway ghost stories; discovers the near-fatal consequences of overloading trucks; documents the fascinating tradition of truck art in Punjab; travels alongside nomadic shepherds in Kashmir; encounters endemic corruption repeatedly; survives NH39, the insurgent-ridden highway through Nagaland and Manipur; and is unfailingly greeted by the unconditional kindness of perfect strangers. Imbued with humour, empathy, and a keen sense of history, Truck De India! is a travelogue like no other you've read. It is the story of India, and Indians, on the road.

What's Wrong with You, Karthik?
What's Wrong with You, Karthik?

Author: Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2020-08-07

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 9389109582

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Shortlisted for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing ‘Fun, entertaining, delightful’ — Rahul Dravid ‘A warm, minutely detailed evocation of boyhood . . . textured like life itself’ — Samanth Subramanian A charming tale of a young schoolboy trying to find his place in a changing world. Twelve-year-old Karthik Subramanian has just been granted admission into St George’s, an elite boys’ school in Bangalore that has supported the academic lives of ‘four state cricketers, one India captain, tens of professors, hundreds of doctors, engineers and scientists, thousands of chartered accountants ...’ In this most exalted of institutions, Karthik yearns for recognition as an academic superstar. Rigorously prepped by his parents and grandfather, dutifully offering his prayers to Lord Ganesha, Karthik steps into this new world. But nothing has prepared him for the challenges that lie in wait and he is left to himself to navigate the cruelties of school life, and the transition into adolescence. The less his family learns about his friends, the better. There are threats all around, even violence. Brilliant in its observations of a motley cast of characters, and finely calibrated for humour and sadness, What’s Wrong with You, Karthik? is a poignant, exuberant debut from a writer of rare calibre.

India
India

Author: Diana L Eck

Publisher: Harmony

Published: 2012-03-27

Total Pages: 578

ISBN-13: 0385531915

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In India: A Sacred Geography, renowned Harvard scholar Diana Eck offers an extraordinary spiritual journey through the pilgrimage places of the world's most religiously vibrant culture and reveals that it is, in fact, through these sacred pilgrimages that India’s very sense of nation has emerged. No matter where one goes in India, one will find a landscape in which mountains, rivers, forests, and villages are elaborately linked to the stories of the gods and heroes of Indian culture. Every place in this vast landscape has its story, and conversely, every story of Hindu myth and legend has its place. Likewise, these places are inextricably tied to one another—not simply in the past, but in the present—through the local, regional, and transregional practices of pilgrimage. India: A Sacred Geography tells the story of the pilgrim’s India. In these pages, Diana Eck takes the reader on an extraordinary spiritual journey through the living landscape of this fascinating country –its mountains, rivers, and seacoasts, its ancient and powerful temples and shrines. Seeking to fully understand the sacred places of pilgrimage from the ground up, with their stories, connections and layers of meaning, she acutely examines Hindu religious ideas and narratives and shows how they have been deeply inscribed in the land itself. Ultimately, Eck shows us that from these networks of pilgrimage places, India’s very sense of region and nation has emerged. This is the astonishing and fascinating picture of a land linked for centuries not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims. India: A Sacred Geography offers a unique perspective on India, both as a complex religious culture and as a nation. Based on her extensive knowledge and her many decades of wide-ranging travel and research, Eck's piercing insights and a sweeping grasp of history ensure that this work will be in demand for many years to come.