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In her first book of poems, science and fiction writer Kamla Dutt shows us the landscapes of longing and memory-the geographies of love, nostalgia, regret and consolation. With extraordinary sensitivity, combining frank emotion with clinical observation, she explores public and private realities: complex family ties; heart-ease and heartbreak; the aftermath of Punjab''s Partition; alienation in the country of one''s birth; the immigrant''s imperfect sense of belonging. As poet and novelist Nirupama Dutt notes in her preface, ''The reader will roam freely through these pages as if through a familiar garden, moving from one poem to another guided by the quiet strength and wisdom of someone who has truly lived.''  

DescriptionThree bullets were shot into the chest of Mahatma Gandhi by a certainNathuram Godse on the evening of 30 January 1948. His true motivations,however, are today actively obscured, and his admirers sit in the Indianparliament as members of the ruling establishment. This book is a timelyeffort to remind us that Gandhi''s killing was not a random act of a mindlesskiller. It was the culmination of a cold-blooded conspiracy.The men who stood trial for the murder of Gandhi claimed that they wereacting for a stronger, more united, India. Their 78-year-old peace-loving target,they felt, was the single biggest impediment to achieving that goal. They accusedhim of dishonesty and treachery; he was blamed for the Partition of India, for''appeasing'' Muslims; and condemned for ''fail[ing] in his duty'' to the people ofthis nation. To them, Gandhi had to die because ''there was no legal machineryby which such an offender could be brought to book''. Do any of the accusationshave any claim to truth whatsoever? If not, what, then, was the actual intentionthat these arguments made by Godse were attempting to hide? And was V.D.Savarkar, among others, involved in the conspiracy?Ashok Kumar Pandey''s Why They Killed Gandhi, translated from the celebratedHindi original, lays bare the facts of the murder, and offers a passionatedefence of the Mahatma and his politics, while simultaneously delivering atrenchant polemic against the ideology of bigotry and perpetual violence thatkilled him.

DescriptionThe Madras Presidency, 1911. It is 10:35 a.m., the appointed hour. A boy barely intomanhood, a British officer for the Crown, and a loaded pistol will create a moment inhistory, the echoes of which are still faintly heard today.Vanchinathan, a young boy from a poor Tamil family living in Shenkottai,at the foothills of the western ghats, defies his family and goes far away toattend college. Carried away in the rising tide of anger against colonial rule,he finds himself drawn to one of the militant traditionalist groups opposedto the British Raj. He is recruited, trained to be an assassin and tasked with asecret mission: he must kill Robert Ashe, a British officer who has earned theire of Vanchi''s mentors by suppressing a riot and jailing its leader. Buffeted byself-doubt and ideological misgivings, Vanchi finds himself on a knife-edge. AsAshe''s luxury train waits at an isolated station, will Vanchi raise his gun andshoot?Drawing upon a true story, Stuart Blackburn weaves together history, legendand narratives from South India''s colonial past to deliver a gripping yetnuanced novel.

DescriptionWhen Swadesh Deepak-celebrated Hindi playwright and short-story writer-arrives at PGI, Chandigarh, after having tried to set himself on fire, the doctorsdon''t know if he belongs in the burns unit or in the psychiatric ward. He''s living a''curse''. A dangerous seductress-his Mayavini-is taking revenge for his insultingrebuff at her wish to visit with him the famous lovers'' palace in Mandu. She comesto him at night, sometimes with three white leopards, and she leaves the smell ofher body in his nostrils. When he tries to kill himself, she tells him he will not die.He is firmly in her clutches, but he will tolerate anything for her, from humiliationat the hands of acquaintances to carnivorous worms under his skin.This fractured, shattering narrative-among the most unusual books everpublished in India-records Deepak''s descent into madness and his brief,uncertain recovery. Shortly after it was published, he left home for a walkone morning and never returned. As the translator, Jerry Pinto, writes in hisintroduction: ''[Deepak''s] words carry all the scars of who he was and what hisillness had made of him... His voice echoes from the bottom of a well.''

DescriptionWhen they first met in 2002 at a literary festival, Nayantara Sahgal was a veteranof more than twenty books; her debut work, the memoir Prison and ChocolateCake, was published in 1954. Kiran Nagarkar had published his first novel, SaatSakkam Trechalis, in Marathi in 1974, and his first work in English, Ravan andEddie, twenty years later. Sparks didn''t fly at that first encounter. It was only in2014, when Nagarkar wrote to Sahgal about Mistaken Identity and other books ofhers that he had read, that she invited him to lunch at her home in Dehradun-and thus began a correspondence that lasted until Nagarkar''s death in 2019.As they discussed each other''s work, their almost daily exchange of emails grewinto a sharing of concerns: Nagarkar''s chronic ill-health, Sahgal''s grief on the deathof her 23-year-old grandson, Zum, and through it all, their distress at the rise ofviolent majoritarianism and the loss of democratic ideals in their beloved country.Emails don''t, observes Sahgal, ''have the prestige of letters, but they havean immediacy that letters can''t have. Our mails made for the sense of apresence nearby with whom it became natural to share views, feelings anddaily doings''. United by their love of books and their politics, separated bydistance-Nagarkar in Mumbai, Sahgal in Dehradun-this immediacy wasthe key to a friendship that remains an enigma to an outsider. For Sahgal, theemotions appear to be those of a friend, albeit a close and loving one. ForNagarkar, 72 to Sahgal''s 87 when the correspondence began, the feelings rundeeper; he misses her constantly, and proclaims his love.This collection of mails is a rare and poignant document, an intimate glimpseinto the life and times of two extraordinary writers who drew strength fromeach other in their personal and political battles.

DescriptionThe war with Pakistan in December 1971 lasted barely two weeks. Itconcluded on 16 December with a victory for India and the formationof Bangladesh. But there is a lesser known side to this epic militaryconfrontation-that of the western front, namely Jammu and Kashmir. Whilemany contests on this side of India''s border were won, some battles were illfated.The heroic battle at Daruchhian in the Poonch Sector was one of them.A cone-shaped feature, approximately 1,000 metres in height, Daruchhianwas of great tactical significance. The fierce clash on its slopes on the night of13 December, however, could not ensure its capture. Many Indian soldierswere martyred, and the survivors taken prisoner, including Brigadier (thenMajor) Hamir Singh, VrC. Heavily injured in battle, he underwent a prolongedrecovery at the Command Military Hospital, Rawalpindi, followed by aninternment at the POW camp in Lyallpur. Hamir Singh''s eyewitness account,recorded by the author, his son Maj Gen Vijay Singh, narrates in riveting detailwhat took place on that fateful night and what followed.From battle plans that were too perfect to succeed, to soldiers who didn''tgive up, enemies who honoured each others'' professionalism, Pakistanisnostalgic about pre-Partition India, and the shared sorrow and joy thatdissolve boundaries of nation and religion, POW 1971 gives us a view of war,valour and humanity that is as heart-wrenching as it is moving.

DescriptionA magnificent stone frieze-built up into curves and flourishes, peacocks andcurving vines and trailing leaves-runs like a thread through this gripping, sweepingsaga that spans a period of two hundred years between two invasions of Dilli-thatof Muhammed of Ghur in 1192 CE, and Taimur in the winter of 1398. For whomwas it carved, and what happened to it as family fortunes and dynasties rose and fell?Ten-year-old Madhav comes to Dilli after his world is torn apart by the battlein which Prithviraj Chauhan loses his throne and his life, paving the way for theDelhi Sultanate. In the teeming city, Madhav starts a career as a stone carver, andthe craft becomes a manifestation of his very being. It eventually inspires him tocreate his masterpiece, a stone frieze that he calls the Garden of Heaven.Running parallel to Madhav''s story is that of another family of stone carvers-Nandu, his arrogant daughter Gayatri, and Gayatri''s daughter, Jayshree, whobefriends an unusual, headstrong young woman who wears the clothes of a manand one day leads her army into battle as Razia Sultan. A gentle courtier namedAmir Khusro also plays a part in this grand drama, as does Ibrahim, whoseforbidden love for Chhoti brings two families together. And then there is poorand lonely Shagufta, who rescues Nasiruddin, a wounded Timurid soldier, and todistract him from his agony, tells the story of her city and herself....A richly human, layered and dramatic narrative about Delhi on the thresholdof a new phase in its long and eventful history, The Garden of Heaven holds thereader in thrall till the end.

DescriptionAnna-Marie Souza lives in Horton, a suburb on the hem of London, a farcry from the city of Bombay from which her parents had arrived one coldDecember day in 1989, two Goans in search of a new life. Born in this landof their dreams, raised in a broken home, Anna-Marie has grown up into astate of constant and indefinable yearning. She belongs to the sisterhood ofswans seeking to pair for life, curving their necks to entwine with the perfectmate. Only, she has realized, her species is fated to disappointment. Herdisastrous choice in men is fuelled not just by a chaotic childhood but by a lossof sexual agency as she embarks on a series of doomed relationships.Set against a cast of intriguing female characters-Anna-Marie's Indian-hatingIndian mother; her best mate, Sujata, haunted by thoughts of suicide; andJassie, the sharp-tongued beautician at Bollywood Style Salon-is an ensembleof men who are serial philanderers or, worse still, token brown Conservativeparty members. In this shaky world, Anna-Marie navigates through the pain ofa troubled coming of age, while trying to find her place as a second-generationIndian immigrant.

DescriptionHarekrishna Deka, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award and one of Assam''sforemost writers, is renowned for his short stories that are as incisive as theyare moving. In this selection of his finest short fiction, Deka gives us a searingvision of the human condition, even as he brings alive the unique landscape ofAssam in unforgettable images.In the title story, an old woman, the only eyewitness to a crime, is forced toconfront her own role in a long-forgotten murder, and the guilt that has laindormant in her for years rears its monstrous head. ''The Temple'' examines howsociety and religion create the ''other'', and what happens when the marginalizedrefuse to lurk at the edges. ''The Captive'' takes the reader through the forestsand small hamlets that were once the refuge of militants as it tells the story of akidnapped man and his unfathomable empathy with his captor.Startling, insightful, and original in tone and form, Guilt and Other Storiespresents a world that is both tender and painful. Through the collection runsa vein of rich, dark humour along with a deep, inimitable understanding ofAssamese society, culture and history. Brilliantly translated by Mitra Phukan, acelebrated writer herself, these stories will live in the reader''s mind long afterthe last page has been turned.