"IT professional seeks Hindi-speaking homely girl with US citizenship who can cook and make chai. Career girls acceptable. Please send biodata and photo." This indispensable guide may offer answers to some of those questions plaguing single Indian women everywhere: - Does this sari make my marriage photo look fat? - If I drink a cup of chai, but no Indian sees me, did I still become more marriageable? - What's the difference between dhania, coriander, and cilantro? - How can I prevent the writer of the above matrimonial from showing up on my mandap?
In Bengalaru, a law student falls in love as the nation’s highest courts decide whether his love is legitimate. In Mumbai, a film star and a parent discuss their own journeys of "coming out" as advocates of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender movement. In rural Kerala, two girls row a small boat and feel their hearts opening.
These are the lives of queer Indians today: poignant, gripping, and occasionally even hilarious. Through their original and unforgettable stories, penned by the community’s master storytellers as well as emerging writers, Out! offers a glimpse beyond the closet doors - and into the lives and dreams of India’s most misunderstood minority.
Goa, south India. A beautiful holiday hideaway where hippies and backpackers while away the hours. But beneath the clear blue skies lies a dirty secret…
Simran Singh is desperate for a break and some time away from her busy job as a social worker-come-crime investigator. And so the unspoilt idyll of Goa seems just the place - white beaches, blue seas and no crime.
But when a disturbing video appears on her phone, featuring a young girl being attacked by a group of men, she realises that a darkness festers at the heart of this supposed paradise. And when she discovers out that the girl is Liza Kay, a British teenager who has gone missing, she knows she must act in order to save her.
But first Simran must break through the web of lies and dark connections that flourish on these beaches. Everyone, it seems, knows what has happened to the girl but no one is prepared to say. And when more videos appear, and Simran herself is targeted in order to keep her quiet, the paradise soon becomes a living nightmare.
Kalli Purie has struggled with her weight since childhood and has finally found a weight she is happy with. Mostly. The diets featured here are structured rather like episodes in her life, full of characters, anecdotes and juicy nuggets of weight wisdom from surya namaskars set to Bollywood beats to drastic coconut water diets, from a dark experiment with bulimia to a love affair with the self-concocted champagne diet.
Translated from French by Anne Mathai & Marie-Louise Naville.
Little known, little remembered, this is the story of Begum Hazrat Mahal. The soul of the 1857 War of Independence; orphaned poetess of the Chowk; captivating wife of King Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh; the Rani of Jhansi's contemporary and soul sister: freedom fighter and misunderstood mother illicit lover and intrepid war leader she risked everything only to face the greatest betrayal of all...
Amisha has found her perfect man and is going to marry him, but suddenly feels the need to push the boundaries of their relationship. Akshara is in love with her best friend, but while he will give her benefits, he won’t give her his love. Ladli has had her heart broken, so she runs away, only to find it waiting for her at the other side. Shayna knows what she wants in a man, but the man she wants is nothing like that. And finally, the girl who wants Shayna, actually just needs a friend.
Cold Feet is the story of the strangely entwined lives of five women who live in Mumbai and deal differently with the same thing—love.
For Nivedita Menon, feminism is not about a moment of final triumph over patriarchy but about the gradual transformation of the social field so decisively that old markers shift forever.
From sexual harassment charges against international figures to the challenge that caste politics poses to feminism, from the ban on the veil in France to the attempt to impose skirts on international women badminton players, from queer politics to domestic servants' unions to the Pink Chaddi campaign, Menon deftly illustrates how feminism complicates the field irrevocably.
When Gautam Dogra is found murdered in his study one afternoon in the small hill station of Brooks Town, the police dismiss it as a relatively simple case. But Charlotte Hyde knows well that a murder never happens in a day -- it follows its own timeline. As Kerketta, Charlotte's old retainer, always said, a murder is written into your life at the very beginning. As Charlotte begins telling the story of Dogra's death, it soon becomes clear that his story can only be fully understood in the light of many other stories. Of her estranged daughter, Maddy, of the political climes in which they lived. Of lost hopes and lost loves, of small humiliations and disillusionments and, above all, of the slow incitement to violence that the terror of loss brings into quiet lives.
Two fascinating, strong-willed women deal with the relentless logic forced upon them for survival: Damini, a Hindu midwife, and Anu, who flees an abusive marriage for the sanctuary of the Catholic church. When Sister Anu comes to Gurkot village to open a clinic, their paths cross, each certain they are doing what's best for women. But what do survival, health, education, justice, equality and human rights mean to girls, women and the low caste when a country is marching toward prosperity, growth and nuclearization? If baby girls and women around them are to survive, Damini and Anu must find creative ways to break from sustaining traditions, and change this community from within.
A small band of cats lives in the labyrinthine alleys and ruins of Nizamuddin, an old neighbourhood in Delhi. Miao, the clan elder, a wise, grave Siamese; Katar, a cat loved by his followers and feared by his enemies; Hulo, the great warrior tom; Beraal, the beautiful queen, swift and deadly when challenged; Southpaw, the kitten whose curiosity can always be counted on to get him into trouble? Unfettered and wild, these and the other members of the tribe fear no one, go where they will, and do as they please. Until, one day, a terrified orange-coloured kitten with monsoon green eyes and remarkable powers, lands in their midst?setting off a series of extraordinary events that will change their world forever. More at thewildings.net
A bravura collection of short stories set in locales as varied as London, Sierra Leone, and the American Midwest that captures the yearning and dislocation of young men and women around the world. In 'Lion and Panther in London,' a turn-of-the-century Indian wrestler arrives in London desperate to prove himself champion of the world, only to find the city mysteriously absent of challengers. In 'Light & Luminous,' a gifted dance instructor falls victim to her own vanity when a student competition allows her a final encore. In 'The Scriptological Review: A Last Letter from the Editor,' a young man obsessively studies his father's handwriting in hopes of making sense of his death. And in the marvelous 'What to Do with Henry,' a white woman from Ohio takes in the illegitimate child her husband left behind in Sierra Leone, as well as an orphaned chimpanzee who comes to anchor this strange new family.
Desperate to leave a private tragedy behind, Maya abandons herself to the rhythms of the little village, where people coexist peacefully with nature. But all is not as it seems, and she soon learns that no refuge is remote enough to keep out the modern world. When power-hungry politicians threaten her beloved mountain community, Maya finds herself caught between the life she left behind and the new home she is determined to protect.
Gomathy Puri opens a private window into the lives of two courageous women of very different backgrounds and aspirations. Here is an intimate glimpse into the immigrant experience: the loneliness and sense of dislocation, the shift in values and family relationships and the ensuing conflicts, the struggle to establish a new identity in an unfamiliar world. The intertwined lives of Kamala and Rekha, as they face the challenges of beginning over, make a compelling read. -- Eileen Kernaghan
Shifting the postcolonial focus away from the city and towards the village, this book examines the rural as a trope in twentieth-century South Asian literatures to propose a new literary history based on notions of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia and how these ideas have circulated in the literary and the cultural imaginaries of the subcontinent.