Memories from another time
Aniruddha Bahal has spelt trouble for the Establishment for as long as he can even remember. As a boy of barely 15, he ran away from home, all the way from Allahabad to Bombay – returning a week later, chastened and penniless, but with valuable lessons learnt. As a journalist, he transformed the definition and boundaries of reporting with the risks he took and the stories he chased down, and he paid the price for it. As a writer, his first novel won him international recognition – as well as the Bad Sex in Fiction Award, handed to him by no less a personage than Sting. As an entrepreneur, he went against the grain in setting up an investigative news portal at a time when speaking truth to power was no longer on the agenda of media houses. Over the years, this restless, mischievous boy from a village in Uttar Pradesh has come to epitomize the rough and tumble of political journalism in New Delhi.What does such a man see and remember when he looks back? Of people, incidents, turning points, the disappointments and the triumphs, both personal and professional? Some memories, Bahal says, are better left buried, but A Taste for Trouble brings together those that continue to keep him anchored in the present and hopeful about the future.*
Before his experiments with truth
MK Gandhi’s autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, is famously incomplete, stopping abruptly in 1920. But while he gave up writing his memoirs, Gandhi continued to speak and write about his life, family, work, colleagues, those who opposed and venerated him, his hopes, anxieties, challenges, fasts, many jail stints, enthusiasms, and disappointments. When knitted together, these autobiographical observations scattered over several pages of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi as well as in some works that were published in his lifetime under his gaze, make for a gripping and powerful story. ‘Restless as mercury’ is how his only sister Raliyat described the young Mohandas and her stunningly accurate characterization of her brother provides the title of this work, which Gopalkrishna Gandhi has reconstructed from Gandhi’s own words. Restless as Mercury is a candid and unflinching account of the struggles experiences and philosophies that informed and influenced the young Mohandas. It also shows how Gandhi kept, not without stumbling, his love of family in step with his sense of his public duties. *
Of empathy, humanity and humour
{{/usCountry}}Of empathy, humanity and humour
{{/usCountry}}Amma is unable to live without Seemaatti, her beloved buffalo. Kumaresu has found success in business, but he has never been able to overcome rejection by his childhood sweetheart. Every day, Murugesu hides in a neem thicket, where he extorts money from young couples. Mocked all her life for her dark skin, Saraswati is kept going by her burning private passion for a movie star. From one of India’s most acclaimed and beloved modern writers, Four Strokes of Luck is a collection that will delight every admirer of Perumal Murugan, and introduce new readers to his hallmark empathy, humanity and humour. These stories of lives on the margins, of loners and outcasts seeking meaning and happiness, are tender, heartbreaking and always surprising. *
*All copy from book flap.