If you really think about it, there are only two kinds of people: those who spend the week before a trek to the Everest base camp training and eating right, and those who lie in bed agonizing over which book should make it into their backpack.
Would You Like Some Bread With That Book? is about this second group of people. Join the author in bookstore aisles as she fantasizes about falling in love with men who share her love of books or is spat upon by a book-crazed gentleman who is compelled to sell his library. A collection of 14 evocative and laugh-out-loud essays about books and reading, this book speaks to anyone for whom books are not merely words on a page, but sites of adventure, conversation and reverie.
Reaching the Great Moghul, a bilingual edition in English and French, compiles insightful studies on travel writing on India by Swiss and French travellers. These accounts highlight significant observations on the economy, polity, technical know-how, social and cultural mores of India in the 17th and 18th centuries, and more importantly, on the mobility of objects between India and Europe at the time.
Bringing to life engaging accounts of lesser-known travellers, the volume explores new perspectives in the in the field of cultural exchange between India and Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Ragi, which is known by many names - Nachani, Nagli, Kelvaragu, Mutthari, Coracano, or finger millet - is a much neglected wonder food and an indigenous grain that has been grown and consumed in India’s rural areas for centuries. Ragi-Ragini is a collection of ragi recipes-traditional ones, variations of the traditional as well as entirely new innovations. The author believes thatRagi has the potential to take a weak and ailing body and lead it towards health, wisdom and self-realisation, and she infuses her recipes with this faith. The recipes are accompanied by a sparkling little tale about a little girl called Ragini, her life with her genius grandmother Aji and fiesty Masi in a small, coastal Konkan village, and the transcendental ragi grain. Adorning the narrative and recipes are 'ovis' or verses composed by the renowned Maharashtrian poet Bahinabai which have been sung by generations of women while going about their daily chores, and which talk about the life, work and concerns of women in the region. This unusual little book by Anjali Purohit not only offers simple tips to include ragi in your daily diet, but is also a delight to read!
Anjali Purohit is a Mumbai-based artist who also writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in various magazines, journals and anthologies. Her short story, ‘Bitter Harvest’ was a winner in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, 2008–09.
Defying the tide of national and cultural neo-tribalism
sweeping the world from North America and Europe to India
and the Arab countries, Ranjit Hoskote and Ilija Trojanow
argue that the lifeblood of culture is confluence, the
mingling of dissimilar and even contrary elements. No
culture has ever been pure, no tradition self-enclosed, no
identity monolithic.
This condition is organic to a planet knit together by
transcontinental pilgrimages and transoceanic trade routes,
by the motives of war, love, restlessness and inventive
curiosity. Since all cultures grow from the constant merging
of the familiar and the strange, the authors argue, any
attempt to isolate a culture within itself will only damage
that culture.
Reflecting on various societies, religious traditions and
cultural blocs, Hoskote and Trojanow uncover many forgotten
histories of the Other within the Self. Following the
journeys of stories, ideas, people and songs, they trace the
umbilical connections between Europe and Asia,
Zoroastrianism and Christianity, Western revolutionary
thought and the annihilatory politics of Jihad and Hindutva.
Based on ten years of research and travel, Confluences
employs a sophisticated assemblage of approaches, ranging
from the essayistic to the poetic, from rigorous historical
analysis to the playfulness of fiction.
Exhilarating in its historical scope and depth of insight,
Confluences is a primer for all who are committed to leading
lives enriched by diversity. This book also carries urgent
political significance in an era shaped by ideologues of
difference, who divide the world between an Us to be
protected and a Them to be destroyed. It is a salutary guide
to those perplexed by Jihadist violence, the US-led
coalition’s misadventures in the Arab world, the contest
between Islam and Eurocentrism, the turbulent face-off
between reformist and conservative movements in North
Africa, and the confrontation between Hindutva and
liberalism in India.
Ranjit Hoskote is an award-winning Indian poet, cultural
theorist and curator, and the author of Vanishing Acts and
I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded.
Ilija Trojanow is an
award-winning German novelist, essayist and critic, and the
author of Der Weltensammler, translated into English as The
Collector of Worlds. Hoskote and Trojanow have collaborated
on writing and research projects since 2000.
Page Extent: c. 224pp.
Price: c. Rs 295
Size: 7.75"x5"
Binding: Paperback with flaps
ISBN: 978-81-906186-7-0
Subject: Commentary
Rights: Only for Sale in South Asia
In
this impressive new work, Benjamin Zachariah questions the
tendency to regard nationalism as a necessary, inevitable
and natural basis upon which to organise the world. In doing
so, he embarks on a series of reflections on a longstanding
project in Indian historiography which has till today not
reached successful resolution: that of ‘decentring’ the
nation as the central focus of history-writing in and about
India. This outstanding collection presents essays held
together with one common thread: a concern with writing
histories of India that cannot be subsumed within a bland
and obligatory history of Indian nationalism, and a concern
with not writing histories of nationalism while writing
histories of absolutely anything or everything. Claiming to
speak from the perspective of internationalism and
celebrating the rootless cosmopolitanism of the merely
human, Benjamin Zachariah urges historians to begin the
completion of this incomplete yet necessary ‘decentring’
project by placing their own histories, politics, and
‘interests’ before a readership and leaving these open for
scrutiny and comment.
Benjamin Zachariah’s research interests centre on the social
and intellectual history of South Asia, in particular on
interactions between metropolitan and Indian ideas, and on
political culture, political rhetoric and standards of
political legitimacy in colonial and postcolonial India. He
studied history at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and now teaches international
history at the University of Sheffield.
Page Extent: c. 366pp.
Price: c. Rs 495
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback with flaps
Subject: History
New Perspectives on Indian Pasts series
In 1939, young Joan Falkiner’s spirited flight from South Yarra
to princely India and her marriage to the Muslim ruler of a
small state in Gujarat sent shockwaves through the Melbourne
society. Political reverberations were felt throughout the
Raj and - as the kingdoms were about to disappear forever in
the maelstrom of Indian Independence - as high as the
British throne. How did it all come about? Through
conversations about Melbourne, Mumbai and the South of
France, research in the India Official Library in London,
and the author’s personal journey while travelling in modern
India, Suzanne Falkiner traces the course of a most unusual
love story.
Suzanne Falkiner is the author of several fiction and
non-fiction titles such as Rain in the Distance (1986)
and Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson (2001).
She lives in Sydney.
Page Extent: 328pp.
Price: Rs 495
Size: Royal
Format: Paperback
Subject: Histrorical Biography
Trade list
For sale only in South Asia
Knowing India honors the contributions of Thomas R. Trautmann to the fields of anthropology and history by presenting research from leading scholars who are his contemporaries, colleagues, and former students. Divided into four sections, the 17 essays in this volume look at modes of conceptualizing and classifying traditional South Asian society, perceptions of the precolonial past in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aspects of precolonial India's historical development and writing. Contributors include reputed contemporaries of Trautmann such as Madhav Deshpande, David Lorenzen, Romila Thapar, and Sylvia Vatuk, as well as former students like Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Bhavani Raman, and Parna Sengupta who engage with and take off from questions raised by Trautmann. Also containing essays by Michael Dodson, Kenneth Hall, Anne Hardgrove, Judith Irvine, Carla Sinopoli, and Cynthia Talbot, the book ends with three tributes to Trautmann by Tom Fricke, Richard H. Davis and Rama Mantena.
Cynthia Talbot is Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Page Extent: 424pp.
Price: Rs 595
Size: Demy Octavo
ISBN: 978 93 80403 03 8
Binding: Paperback
Series: New Perspectives on Indian Pasts
Interleaves is a paean to the transformative potential of catastrophic life changes. It records the twin journeys in Lata Mani's life in the wake of a head injury she sustained in 1993: her baptism of fire into disability and her spontaneous awakening to Devi, the Divine Mother, in context of this crisis. Through contemplative writing, poetry and cultural criticism of the way society perceives illness, it invites the reader to join her as she witnesses, honors, grieves and celebrates her experience, and in the process radically revises her prior sense of the very meaning, purpose and promise of life.
This
book is the first inter-disciplinary engagement with the
work of Maqbool Fida Husain, arguably India’s most iconic
contemporary artist today, whose life and work are
intimately entangled with the career of independent India as
a democratic, secular and multi-ethnic nation. For more than
half a century, and across thousands of canvases, Husain has
painted individuals and objects, events and incidents that
offer an astonishing visual chronicle of India through the
ages.
The 13 articles in this volume - written by distinguished
artists, curators, anthropologists, historians, art
historians and critics, sociologists and scholars of
post-colonial literature and religion - critically examine
the artistic statement that Husain has presented on the
self, community and nation through his oeuvre. It engages
with the controversies that have erupted around and about
Husain’s work, and situates them in debates around the
freedom of the artist versus sentiments of the community,
between ‘virtue’ and ‘obscenity’, between an ‘elite’ of
intellectuals and the ‘common man’, and between a ‘work of
art’ and a ‘religious icon.’ Correspondingly it considers
how India has responded to Husain: with affection,
admiration and adulation on the one hand, and hostility and
rejection on the other.
This book is more relevant than ever before in light of the
debates that have arisen over Husain’s self-imposed exile
for the last few years following a spate of violent attacks
on his home and exhibitions in India, and his recent
decision to forfeit his Indian citizenship.
It will be of interest to those studying art history,
sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and politics, as
well as to a wide spectrum of readers interested in
contemporary issues of identity and nationhood.
Sumathi Ramaswamy is currently Professor of History
at Duke University, USA. Her publications include The
Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic
Histories (2004) and The Goddess and the Nation:
Mapping Mother India (2010). She is also the co-founder
of ‘Tasveer Ghar’ (www.tasveerghar.net),
a trans-national digital network for South-Asian popular
visual culture.
Page Extent: c. 290pp.
Price: c. Rs 1950
Size: 9.21" x 6.8"
Format: Paperback
Subject: Cultural Studies
For long, aravanis or hijras have been the invisible yet
hypervisible subjects of a societal gaze -- looked at,
talked about, feared, revered, cursed, and imagined. They
have largely stood as metaphors, refused individual
histories, lives, identities and selves by a society that
reduces them to corporeal bodies, stereotypes and objects of
disdain. Yet this gaze has been challenged and subverted
time and time again by a community that refuses to be
ashamed or see itself as the victim. Some of the greatest
victories in recent history in this battle for rights have
been won in Tamil Nadu - the first state in India where the
government recognised many of the rights of the hijra
community. The stories in this volume chronicle many of the
aravanis who were part of this groundbreaking change.
Indeed, in Tamil, these stories were some of the first
narratives of hijra lives told to, written by and produced
entirely by the members of the community themselves.
Appearing in English for the first time, these landmark
narratives still retain the authenticity, simplicity and
rawness of life stories of courage, pain, searching, and
both triumph and despair, told without agenda.
A. Revathi is a writer and Hijra activist.
Page Extent:c.100pp.
Price: c. Rs 150
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Sexualities Series
Rights: Available
With
the landmark Delhi High Court victory in July 2009, sexuality and the law entered
mainstream, legal and public discourse in India inviting both celebration and resistance.
How do we understand this conversation? The July judgement stands on the shoulders of a
much longer history, argue the writers in this contemporary and critical volume on queering
the law. A longer history that shapes, unsettles and challenges both legal and queer histories
and begins new conversations on the intersections between bodies, politics, activism, sexuality,
identity and law. Some playful, some critical and others reflective and irreverent, this unique collection
of pieces brings the life, structures and institutions of law alive and shine with relevance in the contemporary moment.
Arvind Narrain is a human rights activist and lawyer
with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, of which he is a
founder member. He is the author of Queer: Despised
Sexuality, Law and Social Change (2004) and co-editor of
Because I Have a Voice: Queer Politics in India (2005).
Alok Gupta is a lawyer and queer rights activist.
Page Extent: 650pp.
Price: Rs 650
Size: Demy Octavo
Binding: Paperback
Sexualities Series
Rights: Available
If you really think about it, there are only two kinds of people: those who spend the week before a trek to the Everest base camp training and eating right, and those who lie in bed agonizing over which book should make it into their backpack.
Would You Like Some Bread With That Book? is about this second group of people. Join the author in bookstore aisles as she fantasizes about falling in love with men who share her love of books or is spat upon by a book-crazed gentleman who is compelled to sell his library. A collection of 14 evocative and laugh-out-loud essays about books and reading, this book speaks to anyone for whom books are not merely words on a page, but sites of adventure, conversation and reverie.
Reaching the Great Moghul, a bilingual edition in English and French, compiles insightful studies on travel writing on India by Swiss and French travellers. These accounts highlight significant observations on the economy, polity, technical know-how, social and cultural mores of India in the 17th and 18th centuries, and more importantly, on the mobility of objects between India and Europe at the time.
Ragi, which is known by many names - Nachani, Nagli, Kelvaragu, Mutthari, Coracano, or finger millet - is a much neglected wonder food and an indigenous grain that has been grown and consumed in India’s rural areas for centuries. Ragi-Ragini is a collection of ragi recipes-traditional ones, variations of the traditional as well as entirely new innovations. The author believes thatRagi has the potential to take a weak and ailing body and lead it towards health, wisdom and self-realisation, and she infuses her recipes with this faith. The recipes are accompanied by a sparkling little tale about a little girl called Ragini, her life with her genius grandmother Aji and fiesty Masi in a small, coastal Konkan village, and the transcendental ragi grain. Adorning the narrative and recipes are 'ovis' or verses composed by the renowned Maharashtrian poet Bahinabai which have been sung by generations of women while going about their daily chores, and which talk about the life, work and concerns of women in the region. This unusual little book by Anjali Purohit not only offers simple tips to include ragi in your daily diet, but is also a delight to read!
Defying the tide of national and cultural neo-tribalism
sweeping the world from North America and Europe to India
and the Arab countries, Ranjit Hoskote and Ilija Trojanow
argue that the lifeblood of culture is confluence, the
mingling of dissimilar and even contrary elements. No
culture has ever been pure, no tradition self-enclosed, no
identity monolithic.
In
this impressive new work, Benjamin Zachariah questions the
tendency to regard nationalism as a necessary, inevitable
and natural basis upon which to organise the world. In doing
so, he embarks on a series of reflections on a longstanding
project in Indian historiography which has till today not
reached successful resolution: that of ‘decentring’ the
nation as the central focus of history-writing in and about
India. This outstanding collection presents essays held
together with one common thread: a concern with writing
histories of India that cannot be subsumed within a bland
and obligatory history of Indian nationalism, and a concern
with not writing histories of nationalism while writing
histories of absolutely anything or everything. Claiming to
speak from the perspective of internationalism and
celebrating the rootless cosmopolitanism of the merely
human, Benjamin Zachariah urges historians to begin the
completion of this incomplete yet necessary ‘decentring’
project by placing their own histories, politics, and
‘interests’ before a readership and leaving these open for
scrutiny and comment.
Knowing India honors the contributions of Thomas R. Trautmann to the fields of anthropology and history by presenting research from leading scholars who are his contemporaries, colleagues, and former students. Divided into four sections, the 17 essays in this volume look at modes of conceptualizing and classifying traditional South Asian society, perceptions of the precolonial past in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aspects of precolonial India's historical development and writing. Contributors include reputed contemporaries of Trautmann such as Madhav Deshpande, David Lorenzen, Romila Thapar, and Sylvia Vatuk, as well as former students like Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Bhavani Raman, and Parna Sengupta who engage with and take off from questions raised by Trautmann. Also containing essays by Michael Dodson, Kenneth Hall, Anne Hardgrove, Judith Irvine, Carla Sinopoli, and Cynthia Talbot, the book ends with three tributes to Trautmann by Tom Fricke, Richard H. Davis and Rama Mantena.
Interleaves is a paean to the transformative potential of catastrophic life changes. It records the twin journeys in Lata Mani's life in the wake of a head injury she sustained in 1993: her baptism of fire into disability and her spontaneous awakening to Devi, the Divine Mother, in context of this crisis. Through contemplative writing, poetry and cultural criticism of the way society perceives illness, it invites the reader to join her as she witnesses, honors, grieves and celebrates her experience, and in the process radically revises her prior sense of the very meaning, purpose and promise of life.
This
book is the first inter-disciplinary engagement with the
work of Maqbool Fida Husain, arguably India’s most iconic
contemporary artist today, whose life and work are
intimately entangled with the career of independent India as
a democratic, secular and multi-ethnic nation. For more than
half a century, and across thousands of canvases, Husain has
painted individuals and objects, events and incidents that
offer an astonishing visual chronicle of India through the
ages.
For long, aravanis or hijras have been the invisible yet
hypervisible subjects of a societal gaze -- looked at,
talked about, feared, revered, cursed, and imagined. They
have largely stood as metaphors, refused individual
histories, lives, identities and selves by a society that
reduces them to corporeal bodies, stereotypes and objects of
disdain. Yet this gaze has been challenged and subverted
time and time again by a community that refuses to be
ashamed or see itself as the victim. Some of the greatest
victories in recent history in this battle for rights have
been won in Tamil Nadu - the first state in India where the
government recognised many of the rights of the hijra
community. The stories in this volume chronicle many of the
aravanis who were part of this groundbreaking change.
Indeed, in Tamil, these stories were some of the first
narratives of hijra lives told to, written by and produced
entirely by the members of the community themselves.
Appearing in English for the first time, these landmark
narratives still retain the authenticity, simplicity and
rawness of life stories of courage, pain, searching, and
both triumph and despair, told without agenda.
With
the landmark Delhi High Court victory in July 2009, sexuality and the law entered
mainstream, legal and public discourse in India inviting both celebration and resistance.
How do we understand this conversation? The July judgement stands on the shoulders of a
much longer history, argue the writers in this contemporary and critical volume on queering
the law. A longer history that shapes, unsettles and challenges both legal and queer histories
and begins new conversations on the intersections between bodies, politics, activism, sexuality,
identity and law. Some playful, some critical and others reflective and irreverent, this unique collection
of pieces brings the life, structures and institutions of law alive and shine with relevance in the contemporary moment.