A story of triumph
Sumitra watches as a priest chants the final mantras over her father’s body. Her mother slips away unnoticed, climbs to the terrace and jumps to her death. In a single, shattering moment, the little girl s world is irrevocably altered, creating a fracture that runs through generations.
Years later, Sumitra’s youngest daughter watches in horror as her mother swings between mania and depression, wrenching taps from the wall, running half-naked through the streets and trying to hang herself from the fan. Shubha believes she might have escaped the family’s inheritance until she discovers she hasn’t.
Traitor in the House is a searing account of growing up in a family shaped by bipolar disorder, and also of what it means to inherit not just a condition, but a way of seeing and surviving the world. Unflinching and honest, the memoir traces Shubha s journey through childhood, caregiving, denial, diagnosis and understanding. But this is not only a story of hardship; it is a story of triumph.*
A cultural and social history of Bharatanatyam
One of India’s most important dance forms, Bharatanatyam was created in the 20th century by selectively re-fashioning the dance traditions that preceded it. The generations of women from professional dance communities who carried the dance into the modern era, gesture by beguiling gesture, are largely forgotten today.
{{/usCountry}}One of India’s most important dance forms, Bharatanatyam was created in the 20th century by selectively re-fashioning the dance traditions that preceded it. The generations of women from professional dance communities who carried the dance into the modern era, gesture by beguiling gesture, are largely forgotten today.
{{/usCountry}}What explains the importance of these traditional dancers in the great South Indian temples and courts, streets and even countryside? How have some of the most recognizable features of the dance, like its half-sitting, open-kneed stance and its wrenching love songs travelled miraculously intact down the centuries? Why were traditional dancers, who came to be known as devadasis, stigmatized, and how did they weather social ostracism and moral outrage? How did this dance become an upper and newly emerging middle class pursuit?
Justin McCarthy, a practitioner and teacher of Bharatanatyam, teases out these fascinating stories in this book that is at once a cultural and social history. He brings alive celebrated figures from myth, fiction and history. There is the celestial Urvashi, dancing through ancient lore. There is the court dancer Madhavi, the anti-heroine of Tamil epics. There is Muddupalani, an 18th century dancer and author of a shockingly erotic poem. There is Rukmini Devi, one of the first non-hereditary dancers. There is Balasaraswati, virtually the only hereditary dancer to sail brightly through the dance as it changed names and hands.
But what about the anonymous dancer we see sculpted in stone, one hip slightly out to the side, a candid look on her face? Or the nameless dancer in early studio photography, staring at the camera with apprehensive defiance? This is also very much their story.*
Lost, confused and looking for love
India’s digital revolution, which led to an unprecedented proliferation of apps, created a new and emphatic opening up of traditional ideas of love, sex and relationships. The people you will encounter in Buying Love in India capture precisely this tectonic shift in India’s dating scene, frequently felt and whispered about but never presented in narrative form.
Drawn from real-life cases that Aili Seghetti witnessed while working as an intimacy and sex coach, this book is a deep dive into the innermost desires of modern Indians who are trying to make sense of a rapidly changing terrain of intimacy and pleasure. The individuals in this book, primarily men, often find themselves lost and confused as they struggle to redefine masculinity, while failing to express their sexual and emotional needs in a healthy manner.
Uncovering fundamental urges that get shrouded in puritanical secrecy and shame, Seghetti foregrounds the desires of Indian men, who seek paid encounters or emotional connection from a wide array of sexualities, relationships and desires. In telling their stories, she also encourages conversations around rampant abuse, hetero-patriarchal domination and violence, which adversely affect women, minorities and even men.
At its core, Buying Love in India speaks to the male loneliness epidemic. It is a humbling testimony to the fact that despite good sex toys, sex workers and apps, there truly is no substitute for basic human empathy and good communication.*
*All copy from book flap.