The Dance Of Faith, R Seshasayee
Mesmerised by the vibrance of classical dance, young Zaheer yearns to be a Bharatanatyam dancer. Yet, in his small but multi-cultural village community, he finds encouragement only in his aunt, Anandhi, and faces ridicule from his immediate family and extended social circle. In the course of his struggle, as he transitions from being a member of a conservative Muslim family that is outraged by his unusual interest into becoming a part of the charming world of a classical dance form that imposes its own religious typecasting, he encounters different facets of faith.
The novel explores the legitimacy of the space that Zaheer wishes to carve out for himself beyond stereotypes of black and white, amidst gaping social disparities, and in between Hinduism and Islam. Interwoven with his narrative is one of Andal, the Vaishnavite savant poetess who rebels against the orthodoxy of her faith and creates her own idiom of devotion.
The Education of Yuri, Jerry Pinto
At 15, Yuri Fonseca of downmarket Mahim gets lucky. He finds a friend, Muzammil Merchant of upmarket Pedder Road. Then he loses him, and almost finds him again. In between, he learns something about jealousy, shame, desire, and guilt. He stumbles into his first sexual encounter, and he thinks he has fallen in love. He understands how one can hurt and be hurt, and how one can give and find unexplained happiness. He struggles to write poetry, worries if he will ever get and hold a job, and flirts briefly with Naxalism.
Over five years in the strange crucible of Elphinstone College in 1980s’ Bombay – the vast and throbbing city that both claims and disowns him – young Yuri tries to make sense of himself.
The Monkey’s Wound and Other Stories, Hajra Masroor, translated from the Urdu by Tahira Naqvi
The Monkey’s Wound and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen short stories by Hajra Masroor that are illustrative of her uncompromising tone, her piercing portrayals of the bitter realities of life, and the wounds and traumas of the inner lives of women. The stories, translated from the original Urdu, are sourced from her well-known collection of stories, Sab Afsanay Meray.
Death on Diagonal Lane, Pashupati Chatterji
More than a neighbourhood, the fittingly titled Diagonal Lane is a circus of characters with the most comically absurdist approaches to life. But even for a locality that has come to expect the unexpected, the death of the local gossip, Mr Reddy, comes as a complete shock. Friendly neighbour, Mr Murthy, attempts to keep the police out of it. But another friendly neighbour, Mr Shetty, bungles it up.
Not only do the police get involved, but they also declare Mr Reddy’s death a homicide. To top it all, the police officer in charge of the investigation turns out to be Mr Murthy’s old school chum: Sub-Inspector Rathindranath ‘Ratty’ Gowda. A stroke of good fortune? Not really. Eager to earn a promotion by any means possible, Ratty proceeds to put the denizens of Diagonal Lane through the wringer.
It takes all of Mr Murthy’s tact and diplomacy to prevent his childhood buddy from putting all the leading lights of the lane behind bars. But meddling in murky police affairs can sometimes backfire, and it does not take Mr Murthy long to recognise the veracity of the old adage: policemen have no friends.
A Case of Indian Marvels: Dazzling Stories from the Country’s Finest New Writers, edited by David Davidar
A Case of Indian Marvels brings together the very best work of authors belonging to the millennial generation (born between 1981 and 1996) and Generation Z (born between the late 1990s and early 2010s). The forty stories in the volume explore various aspects of contemporary Indian society and others set in the future or the ancient past.
The anthology features writers like Kanishk Tharoor, Madhuri Vijay, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Meena Kandasamy, Prayaag Akbar, Samhita Arni, Neel Patel, and Avinuo Kire among others.
Border Less, Namrat Poddar
Dia Mittal is an airline call-center agent in Mumbai searching for a better life. As her search takes her to the United States, Dia’s checkered relationship with the American Dream dialogues with the experiences and perspectives of a global South Asian community across the class spectrum-call-center agents, travel agents, immigrant maids, fashion designers, blue and white-collar workers in the hospitality industry, junior and senior artists in Bollywood, hustling single mothers, academics, tourists in the Third World, Afro-Asian refugees displaced by military superpowers, Marwari merchants in the Thar Desert and trade caravans of the Silk Road, among others.
Border Less features border-crossing characters in their quest for belonging and a negotiation of power struggles, mediated by race, class, gender, nationality, age, or place.
Rajinder Singh Bedi: Selected Short Stories, translated from the Urdu and edited by Gopi Chand Narang and Surinder Deol
The collection curates some of the best work by the Urdu writer, whose contribution to Urdu fiction makes him a pivotal force within modern Indian literature. Born in Sialkot, Punjab, Rajinder Singh Bedi (1915-1984) was a venerated screenwriter for popular Hindi films and a winner of both the Sahitya Akademi as well as the Filmfare awards. Considered one of the prominent progressive writers of modern Urdu fiction, Bedi was an architect of contemporary Urdu writing along with writers such as Munshi Premchand and Saadat Hasan Manto.
Written between 1940 and 1975, the fifteen short stories included in this collection comprise favorites like ‘Garam Coat’ (Woollen Coat), ‘Lajwanti’, ‘Apne Dukh Mujhe De Do’ (Give Me Your Sorrows), ‘Rahman ke Joote’ (Rahman’s Shoes) and others. Bedi’s stories dissect human emotions with grim precision as he navigates the everyday lives of men and women, exposing social inequities and financial hurdles.
