June fiction: Six new fiction titles by Indian writers that probe the unseen of everyday life
All information sourced from publishers.
Tiger Lessons, Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy, translated from the Telugu by Narasimha Kumar
A young man trained to be an engineer finds himself herding his family's sheep up in the hills one summer and trying to survive the jungle. Ravi comes from a golla family but his father and brother have worked to make sure he does not have to live the sheep-herding life. The physical labour is hard on Ravi but the menace of the wild is harder. He is terrified of the forest and its denizens. Sleep eludes him at night, every little sound a tiger lurking nearby, every root or vine a slithering python. He freezes on the spot when a hyena attacks the sheep, offering his neck to the animal without a fight. Everything he knows and believes is violently put to the test when a tiger begins to hunt his herd.
Nowhere People, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by Anchita Ghatak
Nowhere People chronicles the lives of people living in squatter settlements. They are there and not there. Some have fathers, but no mothers. Some have mothers, but no fathers. And some have neither. And then, some have both, but who are absent from their lives.
As if they live only to perish one day. Their only occupation is to somehow stay alive. Some drive rickshaws, some run errands, some collect scrap, some wash glasses at a hooch shop, and some scale fish at the fish market.
Many uprooted, penniless, vulnerable people, like rickshaw driver Nobo and his friends, live at the Jadavpur station. It is on this heartless soil that delicate saplings spring sometimes.
Nobo's life takes an unexpected turn when he spots an infant abandoned at the station. Although his friends occasionally lend a hand, it falls to Nobo to take care of the baby.
This is Nobo's story.
The Fantastic Affair of Despair, Doorva Devarshi
As a newborn India wails into existence, a silent woman labours away in the cramped copy editorial department of a postcolonial magazine. Her days are fraught with the chauvinism of her male colleagues, sanctioned by the founder, Chief, who fancies himself a revolutionary. In the evenings, she returns to a near-peaceful cohabitation with her widowed, opium-addled landlady. But her monotonous life is suddenly interrupted by an act of extreme violence.
Unable to continue living as she had been, the woman enters a self-imposed exile – first in the city of frescoes, and then in a Himalayan dharamshala. Here, she befriends Leela, the pregnant child-bride of an unremarkable godman. Intimately familiar with violence, she notices how it has seeped into every crevice of this valley haunted by the discord between humankind and nature. Even as a fierce storm razes an entire village and a man-eating leopard prowls the ruins by night, political leaders remain occupied with grand ideas of national development, ignoring the victims' plight.
All this while, the call of the wild emanating from the heart of the valley grows louder, and she cannot help but embark upon a treacherous trek across the mountainous expanse to answer it. What new twist of fate awaits the woman when she comes face to face with the beast?
Cracks in the Wall, Neera Kashyap
Cracks in the Wall is a collection of short stories that deal with attempts to heal. It reveals multi-faceted struggles – mental, familial, societal – individuals confront as they navigate their fears, traumas and desires through their lives. It gives readers a window into the tumult that such a process entails, with insightful but often difficult revelations. Be it a working woman in an abusive marriage who finally finds the courage to seek help, a mother who has to choose between the government and rebels to keep her child safe, a wife who must come to terms with lost motherhood or a marriage stifled by megalomania, these stories mirror deep-rooted fractures both at a personal and social level.
Death of a Gentleman, Riva Razdan
Yuvraaj Khanna is on the brink of the stupendous success he has dreamt about his whole life. His grocery delivery startup has just secured 900 million dollars in valuation, and he is engaged to the beautiful Sanjanaa Gandhi, a doctor from Tony Malabar Hill.
And then, the death of his wealthy father disrupts everything. The father who had abandoned him when he was a child.
A murder investigation unfolds, throwing the spotlight on Yuvraaj and revealing deep-rooted rivalries and unresolved tensions, laying bare the brutal lengths people will go to in their quest for success and social standing.
Saraswati, Gurnaik Johal
Centuries ago, the myths say, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Northern India. But when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he is astonished to find water in the long-dry well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river and build a gleaming new city on its banks, and Satnam – adrift from his job, girlfriend and flat back in London – soon finds himself swept up in this ferment of nationalist pride.
As the river alters Satnam's course, so it reveals buried ties to six distant relatives scattered across the globe – from an ambitious writer with her eye on legacy to a Kenyan archaeologist to a Bollywood stunt double – who are brought together in a rapidly changing India.
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Mint
a day ago
- Mint
My mother, the family's memory-keeper
After a great-aunt died, my mother read a little tribute I wrote for her and said wistfully, 'You're the writer in the family. Perhaps you'll write something like that for me after I am gone. Why don't you write it now so I can read it?" I rolled my eyes and said, 'The feeling won't come now." In the last few weeks as my mother struggles with a slew of sudden health issues, the feeling still hasn't 'come" but when I see her lying in a hospital bed, confused and shrunken, I feel perilously close to it. I didn't grow up in a family that said 'I love you" easily. That was too western, like in a Hollywood movie. 'Have you eaten?" is the way we said 'I love you." When I lived in America, my mother would call and ask if I had eaten. Sometimes I made up dishes to avoid telling her I had cereal for dinner because I had been too tired to cook. It was a love lie. Years later when I returned to India, a middle-aged man, my mother still decided the household's daily menu. She watched cooking shows on television and wrote down recipes 'in rough" on pieces of scrap paper. The ones that got passing grade were transferred to her 'fair" recipe book. At dinner, if we failed to appreciate the dish adequately, she would be miffed. Just as she showed love through food, she expected to be shown love through our appreciation of it. In her own ill health though, she is liberated from the need for such niceties. After my sister made chocolate pudding for her, she asked grumpily, 'Is this pumpkin?" Also read: How we have steadily devalued the book review At meal times she still presided over the division of food. Everyone got exactly the same number of prawns, the chicken drumsticks were reserved for the youngest members and the potatoes and potol (pointed gourd) divided fairly though she would complain she was tired of divvying up potatoes and potol all her life. But she still did it, not because the rest of us could not do it, but because it is the last semblance of control a matriarch has over her grown family. This year she ceded that role to my sister. But she would still subject it to eagle-eyed scrutiny saying, 'That piece of mutton is a little small. I am just trying to be helpful." It was my sister's turn to roll her eyes but that too was mother's love, even if it felt measured out by the millimetre. 'Mother, have the marrow bone from the mutton curry yourself today," we would tell her. But she refused. Self-sacrifice is ingrained in the Bengali mother. She would serve herself the smaller prawn but also make sure we knew what she had done. Again cue the children's eye-roll. I am the stereotypical mother's boy. My mother could always be counted on to regale visiting guests with stories of some debating prize or good conduct medal I had won in school. It didn't matter that several decades had elapsed and the boy hero of her story was now a balding middle-aged man. My school medals were kept in a locker not because they were worth much but mother was afraid a burglar might think they were. Yet I know nobody will give me such unreserved (and often undeserving) love ever again. She read everything I wrote, twice over, corrected me if I got an anecdote wrong, complained if it was too complicated, then neatly cut the newspaper clippings and saved them in a folder. Once she observed slyly, 'Oh I seem to feature in many of your articles." I cringed yet again. But every time I tried to actually interview her about something, she would demur, 'What do I really understand besides aloo-potol?" That wasn't true. Mother had studied mathematics in college. She had become a dancer when respectable Bengali women didn't do such things. I have a black-and-white picture of my mother caught in motion on the stage of the New Empire theatre in Kolkata. She had gentlemen friends, some from pedigreed families but in the end she settled for a sight-unseen arranged marriage with a solid Bengali engineer. They were together happily for over 40 years till he passed away. His job with British Rail allowed them to travel all over Europe by train. I marvel at pictures of her in a sari in a restaurant in Paris or at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. At her age I had not been to most of those places myself. She would get carsick, airsick, seasick but still travelled everywhere. 'I've thrown up everywhere," my mother says with some pride. Yet sometimes I cannot help but wonder if my mother, the dancer, did not dream of the life not led. Like many women of her generation, she became 'homemaker". As a boy I came home from kindergarten and once told her, 'Ma, don't go to work like Swapan's mother next door. I want you to be home when I come home." My mother would often tell that story fondly much to my mortification. She was both fan girl and friend of some of the biggest names in Kolkata's music and dance scene, from singers like Hemanta Mukherjee and Suchitra Mitra to dancers like Prahlad Das. She remembers waiting at a bus stop and a Morris Minor, licence plate number 6706, stopping in front of her. 'Hop in," said Hemanta Mukherjee. 'Which way are you going?" she replied. 'Why are you worrying? Whether I am going to Tala or Tollygunge I will take you home." She would tell us that story over and over again. We would get exasperated because we knew it by heart. Now I realise she was telling herself as well, reminding herself that she was more than aloo-potol. Perhaps that's why my mother, much to my minimalist sister's exasperation, is a hoarder. It's as if she saves everything she thinks might be of value in a life without the usual markers of achievement—postgraduate degrees, high posts, honours and accolades. Her drawer groans with old chequebooks, birthday cards, perfume bottles. She saves plastic bags, sorted by quality. Duty-free bags are premium. She lives for the day when one of us will sheepishly ask for a 'good plastic bag". In a throwaway world, my mother saves. I came home from a trip to find that there had been a shaving foam accident while I was away. The bottom of my canister of shaving foam had rusted away. My mother found foam everywhere in the bathroom, halfway up to the ceiling, covering the sink, all over the washing machine. She had carefully saved two takeout containers worth of foam, slightly grimy now. 'It's of no use now, isn't it?" she said mournfully. It was not, but in retrospect in a world of waste it meant something. Also read: How social media posts overshadowed the Pahalgam tragedy As a hoarder, she is also the family's memory-keeper. Mother is the person my sister and I go to when we want to check whether something happened in 1985 or 1986. She can triumphantly bring out her diary and tell us. She can remember what sari she wore at a wedding 30 years ago. Her own age though is a state secret. 'Don't tell anyone till I am gone," she instructs us. Now suddenly and unexpectedly, she is a shadow of her former self. She gets confused and scared. She resents new indignities like diapers and attendants. But as she sits in bed, exasperated with a body that does not cooperate, confused about the time of the day, demanding her slippers so she can go to the bathroom on her own, my sister notices she's still fixing her hair in the mirror. And I know the mother I knew is still there, still reassuring herself that it wasn't just all about aloo-potol. 'Your mother is talking about some dance school in Park Circus," her doctor tells me perplexedly. 'She is disoriented. But it's a true story," I tell him. 'She is telling you a story of the woman who was a dancer." I might be the writer in the family but she is its storyteller. 'Cult Friction' is a fortnightly column on issues we keep rubbing up against. Sandip Roy is a writer, journalist and radio host. He posts @sandipr.
New Indian Express
a day ago
- New Indian Express
Learning three languages essential for cognitive growth
Languages are the lens through which we look at the world and navigate our lives. Without them, it is impossible for a child to cross the river of education. And with the increasing porosity of borders—both within nations and beyond— global citizenship is not just a distant vision, but a reality. It may not be possible to make good of it without multilingualism. The National Education Policy 2020 made a bold and futuristic statement when it provided for multilingual education through a variety of interventions. They include learning in Indian languages from K12 to PhD, learning more than one language in school, bilingual textbooks, setting up a National Institute of Translation and Interpretation, having departments of translation and interpretation in higher education, promotion of classical languages including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and the use of technology for learning and translating. The NEP's provisions for language study in schools are further detailed in the National Curriculum Framework 2023 (NCF), which gives a roadmap for implementation. Note that the NCF uses the short forms R1, R2 and R3 to indicate the hierarchy of language learning. At the foundational stage (three years of pre-school and grades 1-2), only one language, R1 or the language used as the medium of instruction, is to be taught. This language is the choice of the state, but preferably should be the language the child is most familiar with. The child is learning to read at this stage, to be able to read to learn by the preparatory stage. In the preparatory stage (grades 3-5), a second language is introduced—R2, which can be any other language including English. Most schools in most states and Union territories are already following this.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
Ludhiana: Telugu camp concludes amid mixed reaction from teachers
Aimed at promoting cultural exchange between Punjab and Andhra Pradesh The week-long Telugu language classes held across Punjab government schools under the Bharatiya Bhasha Summer Camp wrapped up on Thursday, but not without raising eyebrows among educators and experts. While the initiative, driven by the Union ministry of education, aimed to promote cultural exchange between Punjab and Andhra Pradesh, many teachers believe the focus should have been on strengthening Punjabi skills, especially for migrant students who continue to lag. According to Punjab School Education Board results for 2024-25, over 1,500 students from Class 10 and 386 from Class 8 across the state, did not qualify Punjabi exam, despite it being their primary language. The concern, teachers say, isn't about resisting multilingualism, but prioritising basics before diversifying. Dharamjeet Singh Dhillon, district president of the Lecturer Cadre Union, questioned the timing and relevance of teaching Telugu. 'Migrant children struggle with Punjabi. They live and work here, why not focus on their proficiency in the state's language first? Instead of a central gimmick, we needed classes that strengthen academic foundations,' he said. Still, not everyone echoed this sentiment. Charanjeet Kaur Ahuja, principal of Government Senior Secondary School, Cemetery Road, called the programme 'refreshing and insightful'. She said, 'Teachers learnt Telugu via video modules and brought those lessons alive in classrooms. Students not only learnt greetings and songs, but even prepared Andhra cuisine, it truly brought cultural learning to life.' The students also seemed enthusiastic. 'We made Telugu charts, sang songs and interacted in a new language, it was fun and different,' said a Class 8 student. Another student shared how the experience transported them into the heart of Andhra Pradesh in just seven days. Responding to concerns about Punjabi proficiency, Ahuja added that the government's Mission Samrath initiative is already addressing this gap, helping underperforming students, particularly migrants, strengthen their language skills. District education officer (secondary) Dimple Madan did not respond despite several attempts.
