Tag Archives: India

In My Hands Today…

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Beneath a Marble Sky – John Shors

Journey to dazzling seventeenth-century Hindustan, where the reigning emperor, consumed with grief over the tragic death of his beloved wife, commissioned the building of a grand mausoleum as a testament to the marvel of their love. This monument would soon become known as the Taj Mahal—a sight famous around the world for its beauty and the emotions it symbolizes.

Princess Jahanara, the courageous daughter of the emperor and his wife, recounts their mesmerizing tale, while sharing her own parallel story of forbidden love with the celebrated architect of the Taj Mahal. Set during a time of unimaginable wealth and power, murderous sibling rivalries, and cruel despotism, this impressive novel sweeps you away to a historical Hindustan brimming with action and intrigue in an era when, alongside the brutalities of war and oppression, architecture and the art of love and passion reached a pinnacle of perfection.

2105 Week 44 Update

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Surprisingly this week went by faster than I thought it would. Work-wise, it’s still the same. I don’t have enough work to fill the eight hours at work. The day I have something to occupy my time for atleast half the day, I am happy! I’ve realized it’s far more difficult to pretend to be busy and do work than to actually do something….

Tomorrow is Diwali, the festival of lights and probably the most important festival in the Hindu calendar for the year. I’ve been busy preparing sweets and savories and have over-extended myself this year. Hopefully by the end of the day, I actually finish making all that I have planned for…

Beofre the festival, people clean and if possible, renovate and decorate their homes. The festival is celebrated slightly differently in North and South India. What’s common is the creation of beautiful rangolis or patterns made from coloured flour outside homes and decorated with lamps. The lamps are kept lit throughout the night so as to invite Goddess Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth into your home. People also wear new clothes across the country on Diwali and burst fire crackers outside.

In South India, Diwali is celebrated as the day Lord Krishna defeated the evil demon Nakasura and is called Naraka Chaturthi. Here, traditionally, especially in Tamil Brahmin homes, if the festival falls on a new moon, everyone wakes up super early and the lady of the house first takes a bath and lights the lamp. Then one by one, family members come and sit in front of the lamp where the lady of the house will put some gingelly oil which has been prepared the previous evening on them. They then have a bath and come and prostate before the Lord, after which they get their new clothes. Before they start the feating which is typical of the festival, they are also given a medicinal legiyam which sort of helps digest all the fried food and sweets which you eat throughout the day.

In North India, the festival is celebrated as the day Lord Rama, from the epic, Ramayana was welcomed back home to Ayodhya in present day Uttar Pradesh along with his wife Goddess Sita and brother Lord Lakshmana after a 14 year exile. Lamps are lit to welcome the trio. Prayers are also said to Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth in the evening of Diwali.

Certain communities also welcome their new year on the last day of the celebrations.

Here’s wishing all of you a very Happy Diwali! May the festival of lights light up your lives and bring you happiness and abundant prosperity….

In My Hands Today…

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Narcopolis – Jeet Thayil

Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid’s opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.

Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.

Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.

In My Hands Today…

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Lajja: Shame – Taslima Nasrin

The Duttas – Sudhamoy, Kironmoyee, and their two children, Suranjan and Maya – have lived in Bangladesh all their lives. Despite being part of the country’s small Hindu community, that is terrorized at every opportunity by Muslim fundamentalists, they refuse to leave their country, as most of their friends and relatives have done. Sudhamoy, an atheist, believes with a naive mix of optimism and idealism that his motherland will not let him down…

And then, on 6 December 1992, the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India is demolished by a mob of Hindu fundamentalists. The world condemns the incident but its fallout is felt most acutely in Bangladesh, where Muslim mobs begin to seek out and attack the Hindus… The nightmare inevitably arrives at the Duttas’ doorstep – and their world begins to fall apart.

In My Hands Today…

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The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery – Amitav Ghosh

From Victorian lndia to near-future New York, The Calcutta Chromosome takes readers on a wondrous journey through time as a computer programmer trapped in a mind-numbing job hits upon a curious item that will forever change his life. When Antar discovers the battered I.D. card of a long-lost acquaintance, he is suddenly drawn into a spellbinding adventure across centuries and around the globe, into the strange life of L. Murugan, a man obsessed with the medical history of malaria, and into a magnificently complex world where conspiracy hangs in the air like mosquitoes on a summer night.