India Is Home To Unique Customs And Traditions Associated With Marriage, And There Is No Place Better Than The Southern Part Of India Where These Have Been Preserved In The Original Glory And Splendour, Almost Uncorrupted By The Modern Influences Of The New Age. These Traditions, Customs And Wedding Practices Make For An Interseting Reading Not Only For The Common Reader But Is An Anthropologists Delight, Especially Those Associated With The South Indian Tribes And Castes.
Kishore Babu, born in 1925, wanders back to his school days, sustaining a head injury due to negligence during his heart bypass surgery in 1997 and starts roaming the streets of Calcutta on foot. This jaywalking transcends all the divisions of time and takes him to the times of his Great Grandfather Ramvilas Babu, to the shared story of a community and a city: The community of Marwaris who like migratory birds left their native desert land for Calcutta of the British Raj.
This is the first book to deal with the culture of Britain and India over the past two hundred years in an integrated way. Previously unavailable texts make this an invaluable resource for all those interested in British and Indian literature.
The Tale Retold is as much about story-telling as it is about finding stories in situations where they may not easily be found. The title story examines with great sympathy the equations between a mother who feels helpless and hopeful in turns, a child who slowly comes to terms with his disability and a society which values soundness above all and makes no space for the differently abled. In Quest of a Story follows a middle-aged, retired man on his obsessive pursuit of a writer in the hope that he will become a subject of her narrative. A mother writes A Letter to Mrs D Souza, the principal of her daughter s school, in which she tries to negotiate some space for herself in a society where anything less than complete devotion to one s children is construed as culpable neglect. Alka Saraogi understands the undercurrents of the human mind and engages easily with the inner worlds of her characters. Her ability to look for the extraordinary within the ordinary and to elegantly shatter seemingly permanent stereotypes makes The Tale Retold an unforgettable collection.
This book explores the gendered contexts of the Indian nation through a rigorous analysis of selected women’s fiction ranging from diverse linguistic, geographical, caste, class, and regional contexts. Indian women’s writing across languages, texts, and contexts constitutes a unique narrative of the post-independence nation. This volume highlights the ways in which women writers negotiate the patriarchal biases embedded in the epistemological and institutional structures of the post-independence nation-state. It discusses works of famous Indian authors like Amrita Pritam, Jyotirmoyee Devi, Mannu Bhandari, Mahasweta Devi, Mridula Garg, Nayantara Sahgal, Indira Goswami, and Alka Saraogi, to name a few, and facilitates a pan-Indian understanding of the concerns taken up by these women writers. In doing so, it shows how ideas travel across regions and contribute towards building a thematic critique of the oppressive structures that breed the unequal relations between the margins and the centre. The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of gender studies, women’s studies, South Asian literature, political sociology, and political studies.
This is the first reference guide to the political, cultural and economic histories that form the subject-matter of postcolonial literatures written in English.The focus of the Companion is principally on the histories of postcolonial literatures in the Anglophone world - Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, South-east Asia, Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific, the Caribbean and Canada. There are also long entries discussing the literatures and histories of those further areas that have also claimed the title 'postcolonial', notably Britain, East Asia, Ireland, Latin America and the United States. The Companion contains:*220 entries written by 150 acknowledged scholars of postcolonial history and literature;*covers major events, ideas, movements, and figures in postcolonial histories*long regional survey essays on historiography and women's histories. Each entry provides a summary of the historical event or topic and bibliographies of postcolonial literary works and histories. Extensive cross-references and indexes enable readers to locate particular literary texts in their relevant historical contexts, as well as to discover related literary texts and histories in other regions with ease.
This book examines how urban narratives explore the complexities of city life, including the diversity of its inhabitants, the challenges of urbanization, and the impact of social and economic disparities. They may delve into such topics as crime, poverty, gentrification, and the struggle for identity and belonging in different bustling metropolis settings like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Benaras, Edinburgh and Glasgow. This monograph provides a lens through which authors and storytellers examine and reflect upon the complexities, challenges, and opportunities of urban life. It seeks to reiterate how the discourse of urban narratives refers to the specific language, themes, and ideas that are commonly found in stories set in urban environments, and encompasses the ways in which urban spaces are portrayed, the issues and conflicts that arise within these settings, and the social, cultural, and political commentary that is often embedded in these narratives.
This volume explores ideas of home, belonging and memory in migration through the social realities of leaving and living. It discusses themes and issues such as locating migrant subjectivities and belonging; sociability and wellbeing; the making of a village; bondage and seasonality; dislocation and domestic labour; women and work; gender and religion; Bhojpuri folksongs; folk music; experience; and the city to analyse the social and cultural dynamics of internal migration in India in historical perspectives. Departing from the dominant understanding of migration as an aberration impelled by economic factors, the book focuses on the centrality of migration in the making of society. Based on case studies from an array of geo-cultural regions from across India, the volume views migrants as active agents with their own determinations of selfhood and location. Part of the series Migrations in South Asia, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of migration studies, refugee studies, gender studies, development studies, social work, political economy, social history, political studies, social and cultural anthropology, exclusion studies, sociology, and South Asian Studies.
The book explores key South Asian writings on cultural theory and literary criticism. It discusses the dynamics of textual contents, rhetorical styles, and socio-political issues through an exploration of seminal South Asian scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The volume examines concepts and methods of critical studies. It also discusses colonial and postcolonial discourses on art, religion, nationalism, identity, representation, resistance, and gender in the South Asian context. The essays are accompanied by textual questions and intertextual discussions on rhetorical, creative, and critical aspects of the selected texts. The exercise questions invite the reader to explore the mechanics of reading about and writing on discursive pieces in South Asian studies. Comprehensive and interdisciplinary, this textbook will be indispensable for students and researchers of South Asian studies, cultural theory, literary criticism, postcolonial studies, literary and language studies, women and gender studies, rhetoric and composition, political sociology, and cultural studies.
