Sister India
Sister India

Author: Peggy Payne

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2002-02-05

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 1101659963

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The exotic and suspenseful New York Times Notable Book that tells the story of an eccentric guest-house keeper in Varanasi, India, and the passions evoked by her sacred city along the Ganges The Lonely Planet recommends the Saraswati Guest House, and meeting Madame Natraja, "a one-woman blend of East and West," as well worth a side trip. Over the course of a weekend, several guests turn up, shocked to encounter a three-hundred-some-pound, surly white woman in a sari. Then a series of Hindu-Muslim murders leads to a citywide curfew, and they unwittingly become her captives. So begins a period of days blending into nights as Natraja and her Indian cook become entangled in a web of religious violence, and their guests fall under the spell of this ancient kingdom--at once enthralled and repelled by the begging children, the public funeral pyres, the holy men bathing in the Ganges at dawn. This is a traveler's tale, a story about the strange chemistry that develops from unexpected intimacies on foreign ground. And Peggy Payne's extraordinary talent vividly conjures up the smells of the perfume market, the rhythms of holy men chanting at dawn, the claustrophobic feel of this ancient city's tiny lanes, and the magic of the setting sun over the holy Ganges. For anyone who has harbored a secret desire to go to India and be transformed, Sister India, called "mesmerizing" by Gail Harris and "a modern version of E. M. Forster's classic A Passage to India" by Dan Wakefield, takes you on this journey without ever leaving home.

Indian Sisters
Indian Sisters

Author: Madelaine Healey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-08-07

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1317560086

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Health and medicine cannot be understood without considering the role of nurses, both as professionals and as working women. In India, unlike other countries, nurses have suffered an exceptional degree of neglect at the hands of state, a situation that has been detrimental to the quality of both rural and urban health care. Charting the history of the development of nursing in India over 100 years, Indian Sisters examines the reasons why nurses have so consistently been sidelined and excluded from health care governance and policymaking. The book challenges the routine suggestion that nursing’s poor status is mainly attributable to socio-cultural factors, such as caste, limitations on female mobility and social taboos. It argues instead that many of its problems are due to an under-achieved relationship between a patriarchal state on the one hand, and weak professional nursing organisations shaped by their colonial roots on the other. It also explores how the recent phenomenon of large-scale emigration of nurses to the West (leading to better pay, working conditions and career prospects) has transformed the profession, lifting its status dramatically. At the same time, it raises questions about the implications of emigration for the fate of health care system in India. An important contribution to the growing academic genre of nursing history, the book is essential reading for scholars and students of health care, the history of medicine, gender and women’s studies, sociology, and migration studies. It will also be useful to policymakers and health professionals.

Brothers and Sisters in India
Brothers and Sisters in India

Author: G. N. Ramu

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 080209077X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Indian society is rapidly becoming more urban, and while the level of urbanization and the values associated with it have yet to correspond with those of Western societies, the traditional ethos governing sibling relations is becoming increasingly less relevant. G.N. Ramu explores this phenomenon in Brothers and Sisters in India, the first detailed study of adult siblings in contemporary Indian society. Based on sixteen months of field work in the city of Mysore and over three decades of research in this area, Ramu's study focuses on the three types of sibling relationships (fraternal, sororal, and cross-sibling), and examines the frequency of interaction, the level of mutual assistance, and the incidence of conflict and strain between brothers and sisters.

Amen
Amen

Author: Jesmi (Sist̲ar)

Publisher: Penguin Books India

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0143067087

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

On 31 August 2008, Sister Jesme left the Congregation of Mother of Carmel. The authorities repeated attempts to have her declared insane, she says, left her no other option. This book, a first of its kind in India, is an outpouring of her experiences as a nun for thirty-three years. Spirited and fun-loving, from a good family, deeply-rooted in Catholicism, Jesme was drawn to religious life at seventeen after a Retreat at junior college. As a nun, seven years later, she felt distressed at the many ills growing inside the convent and being forced to remain silent about them. There was corruption, by way of donations for college seats; sexual relations between some priests and nuns, and between nuns; class distinctions whereby the cheduthies, or poorer and less-educated sisters, did menial jobs; and a wide gap between comforts and facilities enjoyed by the priests and nuns. Jesme was permitted to complete her doctorate in English Literature, to pursue her passion for literature, cinema and teaching college students. She exposed them to classic films, believing that aesthetics enhances spirituality. But these joys were clouded by the troubles she faced. Searing, sincere, and sensitive, Amen is a plea for a reformation of the Church and comes at a time of its growing concern about nuns and priests. It affirms Jesmeâ¬"s unbroken spirit and faith in Jesus and the Church, living like a nun, but outside the Four Walls of the convent.

My Sister's Big Fat Indian Wedding
My Sister's Big Fat Indian Wedding

Author: Sajni Patel

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1647002834

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A fresh, witty rom-com romp set against the backdrop of a high-profile music competition and a riotous Indian wedding Zurika Damani is a naturally gifted violinist with a particular love for hip hop beats. But when you’re part of a big Indian family, everyone has expectations, and those certainly don’t include hip hop violin. After being rejected by Juilliard, Zuri's last hope is a contest judged by a panel of top tier college scouts. The only problem? This coveted competition happens to take place during Zuri’s sister’s extravagant wedding week. And Zuri has already been warned, repeatedly, that she is not to miss a single moment. In the midst of the chaos, Zuri’s mom is in matchmaking mode with the groom’s South African cousin Naveen—who just happens to be a cocky vocalist set on stealing Zuri’s spotlight at the scouting competition. Luckily Zuri has a crew of loud and loyal female cousins cheering her on. Now, all she has to do is to wow the judges for a top spot, evade getting caught by her parents, resist Naveen’s charms, and, oh yeah . . . not mess up her sister’s big fat Indian wedding. What could possibly go wrong?

Sister of the Bollywood Bride
Sister of the Bollywood Bride

Author: Nandini Bajpai

Publisher: Poppy

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0316705438

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For fans of Morgan Matson's Save the Date comes a charming novel about one teen's summer tackling disasters including, but not limited to, family, romance, and weather—as she plans her sister's Bollywood-style Indian wedding. Mini's big sister, Vinnie, is getting married. Their mom passed away seven years ago and between Dad's new start-up and Vinnie's medical residency, there's no one but Mini to plan the wedding. Dad raised her to know more about computers, calculus, and cars than desi weddings but from the moment Mini held the jewelry Mom left them, she wanted her sister to have the wedding Mom would've planned. Now Mini has only two months to get it done and she's not going to let anything distract her, not even the persistent, mysterious, and smoking-hot Vir Mirchandani. Flower garlands, decorations, music, even a white wedding horse—everything is in place. That is, until a monster hurricane heads for Boston that could ruin everything. Will Mini come through as sister of the bride and save the day?

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters
The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0062645161

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club selection Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows follows her acclaimed America debut with this life-affirming, witty family drama—an Indian This Is Where I Leave You—about three Punjabi sisters embarking on a pilgrimage to their homeland to lay their mother to rest. The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters—Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina—were never close and barely got along growing up, and now as adults, have grown even further apart. Rajni, a school principal is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a thirty-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites. After a trip to India with her mother long ago, Rajni vowed never to return. But she’s always been a dutiful daughter, and cannot, even now, refuse her mother’s request. Jezmeen has just been publicly fired from her television job, so the trip to India is a welcome break to help her pick up the pieces of her broken career. Shirina’s in-laws are pushing her to make a pivotal decision about her married life; time away will help her decide whether to meekly obey, or to bravely stand up for herself for the first time. Arriving in India, these sisters will make unexpected discoveries about themselves, their mother, and their lives—and learn the real story behind the trip Rajni took with their Mother long ago—a momentous journey that resulted in Mum never being able to return to India again. The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a female take on the Indian travel narrative. "I was curious about how different the trip would be if it were undertaken by women, who are vulnerable to different dangers in a male-dominated society," Balli Kaur Jaswal writes. "I also wanted to explore the tensions between tradition and modernity in immigrant communities, and particularly how those tensions play out among women like these sisters, who are the first generation to be raised outside of India." Powerful, emotionally evocative, and wonderfully atmospheric, The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters is a charming and thoughtful story that illuminates the bonds of family, sisterhood, and heritage that tether us despite our differences. Funny and heartbreaking, it is a reminder of the truly important things we must treasure in our lives.

Sameen Rushdie's Indian Cookery
Sameen Rushdie's Indian Cookery

Author: Sameen Rushdie

Publisher: Picador

Published: 2018-05-29

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1250162858

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Drawing together the traditional recipes from different Indian cuisines, Sameen Rushdie’s invitation to share in the pleasures of Indian cookery is irresistible. In Hindustani a good cook is one that ‘has special taste in their hands’, and the author demonstrates her skill, knowledge and love of the food that is prepared and eaten in homes, bazaars and eating houses of the subcontinent. Bearing the needs of the modern cook firmly in mind, she explains her recipes in full, where the dishes originate, how to use spices, how to balance flavor, color and texture and offers suggestions for menus. Sameen offers a marvelous array of meat, poultry and fish dishes, together with vegetable creations which will give heart to cooks at the end of their vegetarian repertoire. She explains where to find fresh ingredients and how to store, prepare and use them, and makes it clear which recipes are most suitable for the end of a busy day. She takes up the cause of the potato with some sumptuous suggestions, describes the intrinsic part daals play in an Indian meal, gives tips for cooking chawal (rice) in pullao and biryani dishes and provides recipes for chapattis, parathas and pooris. There is an excellent introduction to spices; which explains their traditional groupings as well as their medicinal value, and a section on relishes, raitas and chutneys. Meethay—or sweet things—hold a special place in Indian cuisine and recipes for these from the elaborate to the simple are included. There is also a discussion of hot and cold drinks. Whatever your degree of experience in the kitchen, Sameen Rushdie offers not only clearly laid-out recipes, but a grasp of the actual thinking behind different cooking methods. Her menu plans and ideas about color, textures and flavors are a delight, and a meal prepared under engaging instruction will be a revelation to all who enjoy Indian cookery. Covering meat, poultry, and fish, as well as vegetables, chutneys, relishes and sweet dishes, Sameen Rushdie’s book will be a revelation to all those who enjoy Indian cookery.