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Deftly combining social satire with political critique, Taunsvi anticipates Manto's Partition fiction, written after 1948… The Sixth River is a most welcome addition to the burgeoning personal narratives on Punjab's and India's partition.' -Ayesha Jalal, Mary Richardson Professor of History, Tufts UniversityThe Partition of India in 1947 left millions displaced amidst indiscriminate murders, rapes and looting. The Sixth River, originally published as Chhata Darya, is an extraordinary first-person account of that violent time. Born Ram Lal Bhatia in the town of Taunsa Sharif, then in the Punjab, Fikr Taunsvi left for the cosmopolitan city of Lahore in the 1930s. Here he worked with various newspapers, wrote poetry and articles, and became a part of the intellectual circle. But when independence was announced, Fikr was faced with a new reality-of being a Hindu in his beloved city, now in Pakistan.The Sixth River is the journal Fikr wrote from August to November 1947 as Lahore disintegrated around him. Fikr is angry at the shortsightedness and ineptness of Radcliffe, Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah. In the company of likeminded friends such as Sahir Ludhianvi, he mourns the loss of the art and culture of Lahore in the bloodlust and deluded euphoria of freedom; and derides the newly converted, who adopted stereotypical religious symbols. He is bewildered when old friends suddenly turn staunch nationalists and advise him to either convert or leave the country. And the deep, unspeakable trauma millions faced during Partition reaches Fikr's doorstep when his neighbour murders his daughter, and when he is eventually forced to migrate to Amritsar in India. Powerful, ironic and deeply harrowing, The Sixth River is an invaluable account of the Partition. This brilliant translation by Maaz Bin Bilal makes the classic available in English for the first time.

The extraordinary story of an Englishwoman who became Indian; a person born and raised at the heart of Empire who went to jail because she believed in a free India; a Christian girl who became a world renowned Bhiksuni, a Buddhist nun. From the moment she married a handsome young Sikh at a registry office in Oxford in 1933, Freda Bedi, née Houlston, regarded herself as Indian, even though it was another year before she set foot in the country. She was English by birth and upbringing-and Indian by marriage, cultural affinity and political loyalty. Later, she travelled the world as a revered Buddhist teacher, but India would remain her home to the end. The life of Freda Bedi is a remarkable story of multiple border crossings. Born in a middle-class home in provincial England, she became a champion of Indian nationalism, even serving time in jail in Lahore as a Satyagrahi. In Kashmir in the 1940s, while her husband B.P.L. Bedi drafted the 'New Kashmir' manifesto, she assisted underground left-wing Kashmiri nationalists, and joined a women's militia to defend Srinagar from invading Pakistani tribesmen. In 1959, she persuaded Nehru to give her a role coordinating efforts to help Tibetan refugees who came with the Dalai Lama and immersed herself in the project, setting up a nunnery and a school for young lamas. Some years later, she became the first western woman, and possibly the first woman ever, to receive full ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist nun. This meticulously researched and superbly written biography does perfect justice to Freda Bedi's extraordinary life. By interviewing her children and friends, and delving into the family's extensive archives of letters and recordings-as well as official records and newspaper archives-Andrew Whitehead paints a compelling picture of a woman who challenged barriers of nation, religion, race and gender, always remaining true to her strong sense of justice and equity.

‘She brought into the ambit of Urdu [writing] the hitherto forbidden terrain of female sexuality…she changed the complexion of Urdu fiction.’—Mushirul Hasan, OutlookIn the two bold and gripping novellas brought together in this volume, the inimitable Ismat Chughtai writes of subversive women—subversive in unexpected ways—as they experience romantic and sexual desire, defy societal restrictions, struggle, scheme and sometimes court tragedy.Obsession (Saudai), deals with one of Chughtai’s favourite themes, the ‘master-servant’ romance—in this case, two brothers, sons of a feudal household, in love with the same orphan girl. And Wild Pigeons (Jungli Kabutar)—based on the experiences of a famous Bollywood personality—probes the theme of infidelity, dissecting the emotions not only of the partner who is betrayed but also the one who betrays.In Chandni and Abida, the main protagonists of the novellas, Chughtai gives us two of the strongest women in Indian fiction—clever, self-willed, flawed and, in the end, far braver than the men in their lives.

He also discusses the songs of other greats, like Shailendra and Sahir Ludhianvi; his favourite music directors, like SD and RD Burman, Hemant Kumar and AR Rahman; and playback singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Mohammed Rafi, Asha Bhosle, Vani Jairam, Jagjit Singh and Bhupinder Singh.

This is the first comprehensive attempt to portray the life of the actor in all its facets. It traces Soumitra's initial years of searching for identities to the final decades when he reached the pinnacle of his career as an actor and an artist.

Was it a love affair gone wrong, geo-political intrigue, or corporate rivalry which led to Vats' death? Arjun finds that Vats might have been looking into illegal wildlife trafficking and zoonotic diseases like SARS. Increasingly, it appears that the answer to the mystery might lie in China.

The second part of the book contains two poignant first-person accounts of working among the CICL by Kalpana Purushothaman, a trained psychologist and a member of a Juvenile Justice Board in Karnataka, and Puneeta Roy, who translates her skills in expressive arts into offering tools to interned children for self-empowerment and healing.

He exhorted them to set aside old superstitions. And he led them in armed confrontations with the mighty British police forces.The extraordinary life of this great leader comes alive for a new generation of readers in this biography that is as engaging as it is inspiring.

She faced incredible opposition to her work when people attacked her not just with words but even with stones and dung. But nothing could stop her.This is the enduring story of a woman who looked at age-old injustices and prejudice in the eye, and overcame them with courage and the power of learning.

But the controversy also took this remarkably frank and sensitive exploration of love and desire to many thousands of readers. It became, and remains to this day, one of the most celebrated works of contemporary Hindi literature.

tracing his poetic arc from the deeply personal to the political, from chronicles of private joys, sorrows and everyday epiphanies to the poetry of witness that gazes unflinchingly at the realities that haunt the Northeast, his native land.

Keki Daruwalla uncommon responsiveness to the natural world, and the rare immediacy of his language.

On the broader canvas of India, other events are playing out. Indira Gandhi declares an Emergency; a new party, the Jana Sangh is formed.

The individual stories of these women converge and diverge as they claim the right to their own lives.

As she rebuilds her identity now in the big city, she wonders what it would be like to start a new life based on love and respect with Ramrao, a trade union leader who shares her ideologies and dreams.

Combining immaculate scholarship with extraordinary storytelling, Swapna Liddle has produced an outstanding book of narrative history-on a great city in transition, and on early modern India-that will be read and discussed for decades.

`The Nayika in her different moods animates ancient and medieval art, poetry and dramä Her desire for physical union with the lover is as strong as her anguish due to separation from him. Her passion is both generous and intense; she knows how to give pleasure, and she knows how to take it.¿ In this lovely book, a celebrated scholar of Indian art, aesthetics and pre-modern sexuality presents a selection of images that show the Nayika-the ideal romantic heroine of classical Indian literature.

`Until recent centuries-when Indian society turned prudish and hypocritical-the sexual sensibilities of society were derived from the kamashastras, which give sexuality pride of place in human experience¿ And in the kamashastras, it appears that adultery is considered almost a prerequisite for good, uninhibited sex that satisfies both partners.¿ In this delightfully mischievous book, a celebrated scholar of Indian art, aesthetics and sexuality brings us a selection of images from pre-modern India of men and women engaged in sex that is most probably adulterous: married men and women-and courtesans-having quick or leisurely secret liaisons. With a brilliant introduction providing the context, Alka Pande gives us thrilling visual evidence of secret, subversive love.

Twenty-two-year-old Wendy Doniger arrived in Calcutta in August 1963, on a scholarship to study Sanskrit and Bengali. It was her first visit to the country. Over the coming year--a lot of it spent in Tagore's Shantiniketan--she would fall completely in love with the place she had till then known only through books.The India she describes in her letters back home to her parents is young, like her, still finding its feet, and learning to come to terms with the violence of Partition. But it is also a mature civilization which allows Vishnu to be depicted on the walls in a temple to Shiva; a culture of contradictions where extreme eroticism is tied to extreme chastity; and a land of the absurd where sociable station masters don't let train schedules come in the way of hospitality. The country comes alive though her vivid prose, introspective and yet playful, and her excitement is on full display whether she is telling of the paradoxes of Indian life.

Hema, once half of a perfect couple, is widowed and bereft, wallowing in misery.Avanti, who seemed to have it all, is divorced and fantasizing about gruesome ways in which her ex might suffer. Jeroo, struggling with infertility, swings wildly between hope and despair and gains a reputation for being somewhat unstable. The dignified forbearance and saintly self-sacrifice that is expected of women of their station is nowhere in sight. Instead, they have fallen spectacularly and gracelessly apart.As they clumsily struggle to piece their lives back together―negotiating challenges that range from quirky children to unsavoury men, meddling relatives to endless unsolicited advice.

Ashok Kumar (1911-2001), fondly known as Dadamoni, is one of the great icons of Hindi cinema. This warm, intimate biography traces his remarkable journey, from reluctant actor to Bollywood's first superstar and, in his later years, a much-loved presence on national television. Born in Bhagalpur (then in the Bengal Presidency), Ashok Kumar was enthralled by the 'bioscope' as a child. In his twenties, he quit his law studies and came to Bombay to become a film director. But life--rather, Himanshu Rai, the founder of Bombay Talkies--had different plans for him. Despite the director's reservations, he was cast in the lead role opposite Devika Rani in the 1936 film Jeevan Naiyya when the original hero went missing. The same year, Ashok Kumar was paired with Devika Rani again in Achhut Kanya, which was a blockbuster.