Bücher veröffentlicht von Aleph Book Company

M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916-2004), who was popularly known as MS, was one of India's greatest classical musicians. Born into a humble devadasi home, her talent and dedication to her art made her one of India's most critically acclaimed classical singers. She was the first Indian musician to receive the Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, in addition to numerous other awards. Jawaharlal Nehru called her 'a Queen of Music' and Sarojini Naidu dubbed her 'the Nightingale of India'. Her fellow musicians were no less generous in their praise. Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan said she was Suswaralakshmi (the Goddess of the Perfect Note) while Kishori Amonkar said she was Aathuvansur or music's 'Eighth Note' (there are only seven notes that are basic to all musical forms). MS's genius had principally to do with her exquisite voice, her extraordinary range and her unequalled command of all the material she worked with, whether it was Carnatic music, Hindustani music or devotional music such as bhajans.In this, the definitive biography of the musician (previously published as MS: A Life in Music), award-winning biographer T. J. S. George traces her journey from her beginnings as a singer in Madurai, through her breakthrough performance at the prestigious Madras Music Academy in 1932, to her carving out a place for herself as a cultural icon. Besides exploring MS's genius, the author describes the musical and social milieu that she was part of, and the various barriers she was instrumental in breaking in the course of her journey to superstardom. He covers her stint as an actress and looks at how her career was helped by various mentors and sponsors, including C. Rajagopalachari, India's last governor general. He pays particular attention to the role of her husband, T. Sadavisam, in the creation and burnishing of MS's reputation. He examines the various controversies that surrounded her origins, and also underlines her essential humility and generosity. Told with a music connoisseur's passion and understanding, M. S. Subbulakshmi: The Definitive Biography is an enthralling portrait of a musical legend.

During the chaos of partition in 1947, something dreadful happened in the city of Jalandhar in Punjab. As a result of this, Salman Rashid's family fled Jalandhar for Pakistan, the newly created country across the border. They were among the nearly two million people uprooted from their homes in the greatest transmigration in history. Besides those who fled, other members of the family became part of a grimmer statistic: They featured among the more than one million unfortunate souls who paid with their lives for the division of India and creation of Pakistan. After living in the shadow of his family's tragedy for decades, in 2008, Rashid made the journey back to his ancestral village to uncover the truth. A time of madness tells the story of what he discovered with great poignancy and grace. It is a tale of unspeakable brutality but it is also a testament to the uniquely human traits of forgiveness, redemption and the resilience of the human spirit.

A wildly original and humorous account of growing up as an Indian woman. Unladylike is a memoir that spans four decades of the author's life. From stories about a childhood spent wishing she could change everything about her life (including her parents), to her chronically delayed puberty, and the self-esteem issues that accompany a flat chest, Vaz doesn't pull any punches. She takes us through her college years, where under the vigilance of Catholic nuns she grappled with a major decision-to have or not have pre-marital sex as well as the discovery that the female body is capable of some very strange sounds at very inappropriate times. Out of respect for various ex-boyfriends, she will dwell on just one man-her wheat-eating, milk-drinking Jat husband. From their extra-long courtship (that he didn't tell his mother about), to their wedding day and beyond, there are lessons for every girl who has ever thought 'one day I'd like to be married'. The lesson is: 'Don't say you weren't warned

Arun Ferreira is from the East Indian community, the original Mumbaikars, whose villages became the localities of a sprawling metropolis. He graduated from the prestigious St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and has been an activist since his student days.Ferreira is also a cartoonist whose drawings on social and political issues have appeared in various publications, as well as in student and worker magazines. Since his release in 2012, he continues to actively engage with issues of political prisoners, prison reforms and democratic rights. He is presently pursuing a degree in law and researching the history of the democratic rights movement in Mumbai

Poignant, witty, melancholic and intense, this is the best of four decades of prose from one of India's masters of the written word. The worst thing about being a human being is being a human being. 'I wish I was bird', as the railway clerk in Nissim Ezekiel's poem says. But if I were, the worst thing about being a bird would be being a bird. Welcome to the world of Adil Jussawalla, poet, columnist, critic. The essays and entertainments collected in this volume take in everything from language to poetry, from ethics to model aero planes, from death and addiction to travel and alienation. In these pages, you will meet poets, novelists, construction labourers, gamblers and, most startlingly, Jussawalla himself as a boy who lost himself at the movies as the acned adolescent on a ship watching a storm at sea as the flaneur of South Mumbai. Poignant, witty, melancholic and intense, this is the best of four decades of prose from one of India's masters of the written word.

India is battling an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions. Half of the country'sStandard 5 students cannot read a Standard 2 level text in their native language. Seventy-sixper cent of Indian students don't make it to college.

The idea of heroism in women is not easily defined. In men the notion is often associated with physical strength and extravagant bravery. Women's heroism has tended to be of a very different nature, less easily categorized. All the women portrayed-Draupadi, Radha, Ambapali, Raziya Sultan, Meerabai, Jahanara, Laxmibai and Hazrat Mahal-share an unassailable belief in a cause, for which they are willing to fightto the death if need be. In every case this belief leads them to confrontation with a horrified patriarchy.In the book we meet lotus-eyed, dark-skinned Draupadi, dharma queen, whose story emerges almost three millennia ago; the goddess Radha who sacrificed societal respectability for a love that transgressed convention; Ambapali, a courtesan, who stepped out of the luxurious trappings of Vaishali to follow the Buddha and wrote a single, haunting poem on the evanescence of beauty and youth.

For thousands of years, the Indian subcontinent has proved a fertile ground for the world's most captivating erotic love poetry, and the genius of its devotional writing harnesses great energy and mystical insight. It is in fact often hard to tell whether the poets are offering poems of spiritual longing using the garments of love poetry or writing erotic pieces in the guise of devotion. Perhaps, in a land where erotic sculptures routinely ornament its many temples and gods are known for their explosive sexuality, this question has little meaning to these remarkable writers. In their devotional traditions, eroticism and mysticism seem inseparable.This collection spans 2,500 years and includes work originally sung or recited by well-known bards: Kabir, Mirabai, Lal Ded, Vidyapati and Tagore. There are also poems from the Upanishads, ancient Sanskrit poetry and Punjabi folk lyrics. The poets have largely emerged from the ranks of the dispossessed: leather workers, refuse collectors, maidservants, women and orphans. Their vision is of a democratic society in which all voices count. Often they faced persecution for speaking candidly, or daring to speak of spiritual matters at all. The notes include profiles of these legendary lives. Several of these poets simply vanished, absorbed into a deity, or disappeared in a flash of purple lightning. A few produced miracles-most of them are surrounded by clouds of mystery. Andrew Schelling has drawn on the work of twenty-four translators, including A. K. Ramanujan, Arun Kolatkar, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Deben Bhattacharya, Dilip Chitre, Gieve Patel, Ezra Pound and Robert Bly to build the finest anthology of India's erotic and spiritual poetry ever assembled for the general reader.

Unhurried Tales: My Favourite Novellas brings together, for the very first time, Ruskin Bond's favourite (and finest) novellas. The stories in this book include Time Stops at Shamli (written in 1956 and published for the first time in 1987); The Blue Umbrella, which has been a bestseller for the last forty years; Angry River, which was a longer work when it was first written; Bus Stop, Pipalnagar; Night of the Leopard; The Last Tiger and Tales of Fosterganj, his latest novella, which was published in 2013. These stories speak of a world that has long vanished, but it is a world that has lost none of its power to enchant. Whether we are accompanying Sita on her perilous journey down the angry river or Bisnu as he gets the better of a dangerous leopard, whether we delight in Binya's joy at owning her blue umbrella or are saddened by the fate of the last tiger.

Lucknow's famous Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb-a melding together of influences-is seen in its art, architecture, dance and music. But nowhere is this tehzeeb better represented than in its food, redolent with the tastes of Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan, and infused with the flavours of Sindhi, Parsi, Punjabi, Nawabi, Mughlai and British food.When Sunita Kohli's parents, Chand and Inder Prakash Sur, first settled in Lucknow after having to leave Lahore following Partition, they brought with them only the memories of home. In The Lucknow Cookbook Sunita Kohli and Chand Sur bring together the taste and smells of home in these 150 well-loved dishes from their kitchens and from the kitchens of family and friends. These delectable kebabs and soups, biryanis, pulaos and raitas, mutton, chicken and fish dishes, paranthas and rotis, vegetables, sweets and puddings, cocktail snacks, chutneys and pickles are a taste of the fabled Lucknowi tradition of hospitality.A celebration of the tehzeeb of Lucknow as well as its nazaakat (elegance) the book is also a portrait of the city and its storied history.

Nearly one in every twelve humans is a young Indian for whom meaningful education is of critical importance. A good education will not only help our youth get jobs and build fulfilling careers, it will also lead to the widening of our collective imagination and the shaping of the way we think; for all these reasons it ought to be an important concern of our time.Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a lack of infrastructure, adequate funding and genuine autonomy within educational institutions, departments within those institutions, and individuals who teach in those departments. And this is not all. There is also the question of the nature of knowledge that is relevant to our rapidly modernizing country that needs to be dealt with.If knowledge is the core of education and if education lays the very foundation of a nation, the author argues that it is of critical importance that the plight of educational institutions and the need to generate knowledge appropriate to India are addressed without any delay.Original and profound, this book offers a clear picture of the mistakes that have been committed in the past, confronts the present decline of knowledge and education in the country and offers a vision for the future.

A fresh and very readable translation of the world's greatest Sanskrit writer, Kalidasa""Kalidasa(circa fourth century CE) is widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. Not much is known with certainty about his life and though many are aware of his timeless Sakuntalam and Meghadutam, very few have actually read him, even in translation. The aesthetics of poetry may have changed over 1500 years - we no longer compare women's faces to lotuses or their figures to vines - but it is difficult not to be moved by the sheer beauty and lyricism of Kalidasa's description of the exiled yak?a beseeching a cloud to carry his message across the mountains to his lover, or his evocative narration of the meeting of doomed lovers in the forest.""""Mani Rao's supple, contemporary translation removes the distance between Kalidasa and the modern reader, she helps 'read' the poetry for us while remaining loyal to the text. """"Selections from all seven of the great poet's works (which are considered by Sanskrit scholars to be authentically his creations) are included in this volume- Meghad?tam, Kumarasambhavam and ?tusa?h?ram, he heroic exploits narrated in Raghuva?sam which gives us a remarkable picture of ancient India, as well as the celebrated dramas Abhijnãna Sakuntalam, Vikramorvasiyam and Malavikagnimitram. This is a translation that belongs to today, Kalidasa renewed""

A fanatical collector of beetles finds out too late where his passion has led him. A woman out on a shopping spree in a glitzy mall finds she can't go home again. A servant girl experiences a cruel loss of innocence when she eats something that wasn't meant for her. In the sweltering heat of Bombay, a schoolgirl finds the ground slipping beneath her feet except when she's watching Star Trek. Four friends meet for drinks one evening, only to find that their friendship is not what it seems. And, in the extraordinary title story, a student who has worshipped his teacher for decades comes to a terrible realization about him. Meanwhile, his old mentor is planning a cunning legacy of his own.