Hotel California by Krishna Ahir


Book Description

The book’s yellowed pages seemed to tell a story of years gone by, yet there was a feeling of timelessness in the air. Awakening with a pounding headache, Shivam finds himself on a bus, disoriented and surrounded by unfamiliar scenery. A conversation with the enigmatic bus driver leads to revelations about a convention, a missing briefcase, and a wrecked car. Offered shelter in the mysterious Hotel Havard, Shivam grapples with memory lapses, a throbbing headache, and the hotel owner’s unsettling offer. As he contemplates the truth behind his journey, Shivam must decide whether to embrace the enigma within the hotel’s walls or pursue the unraveling mysteries of his past. Unfold a suspenseful narrative where reality blurs, and every answer reveals new questions.




The Wrestler's Body


Book Description

The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology. Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline.







HCI International 2020 - Posters


Book Description

The three-volume set CCIS 1224, CCIS 1225, and CCIS 1226 contains the extended abstracts of the posters presented during the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2020, which took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July 2020.* HCII 2020 received a total of 6326 submissions, of which 1439 papers and 238 posters were accepted for publication in the pre-conference proceedings after a careful reviewing process. The 238 papers presented in these three volumes are organized in topical sections as follows: Part I: design and evaluation methods and tools; user characteristics, requirements and preferences; multimodal and natural interaction; recognizing human psychological states; user experience studies; human perception and cognition. -AI in HCI. Part II: virtual, augmented and mixed reality; virtual humans and motion modelling and tracking; learning technology. Part III: universal access, accessibility and design for the elderly; smartphones, social media and human behavior; interacting with cultural heritage; human-vehicle interaction; transport, safety and crisis management; security, privacy and trust; product and service design. *The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter "“Developing an Interactive Tabletop Mediated Activity to Induce Collaboration by Implementing Design Considerations Based on Cooperative Learning Principles” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Caste System, Untouchability, and the Depressed


Book Description

Several Japanese Scholars Address Vital Issues Relating To India Like, The Origin Of Social Discrimination, Link Between The Concept Of Pollution Or Sin And Social Discrimination, The Position In This Regard In Ancient And Medieval India, The Reality Of Social Discrimination In Medieval India, The Problems Inherent In The Transformation Of Untouchability Under British Rule And The Development Of Modern Liberation Movements.




God Speaks


Book Description

An explanation of the theme of creation and its purpose, by the founder of a new religion.




The Nakshatras


Book Description

This book shows you how to access the wisdom of the Nakshatras in your personal life and for society. Through it the modern reader can understand the energies of their stars and learn how to utilize these to bring their lives into harmony with the great forces of the universe. This book is must reading not only for any students of astrology but for anyone interested in self-development or spiritual growth.




The Life of a Text


Book Description

The Life of a Text offers a vivid portrait of one community's interaction with its favorite text—the epic Ramcaritmanas—and the way in which performances of the epic function as a flexible and evolving medium for cultural expression. Anthropologists, historians of religion, and readers interested in the culture of North India and the performance arts will find breadth of subject, careful scholarship, and engaging presentation in this unique and beautifully illustrated examination of Hindi culture. The most popular and influential text of Hindi-speaking North India, the epic Ramcaritmanas is a sixteenth century retelling of the Ramayana story by the poet Tulsidas. This masterpiece of pre-modern Hindi literature has always reached its largely illiterate audiences primarily through oral performance including ceremonial recitation, folksinging, oral exegesis, and theatrical representation. Drawing on fieldwork in Banaras, Lutgendorf breaks new ground by capturing the range of performance techniques in vivid detail and tracing the impact of the epic in its contemporary cultural context.




The Prickly Rose


Book Description

Click this link to read a review of The Prickly Rose. Dancer, choreographer and renowned teacher, Viola Farber performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for thirteen years. The Viola Farber Dance Company toured the United States and Europe from 1968-1983. Director of the National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers for three years and the recipient of many awards, Farber became the chairperson of the Dance Department at Sarah Lawrence College in 1987, and held that position until her sudden death in 1998. Written for dancers by her ex-husband and dance partner, The Prickly Rose offers excerpts from her letters and journals, reviews, articles regarding her work, interviews with dancers who worked with her, interviews with family members, and more. Viola Farber's legacy still lives on in the muscles of every dancer who was fortunate enough to study with her.




Police Matters


Book Description

Police Matters moves beyond the city to examine the intertwined nature of police and caste in the Tamil countryside. Radha Kumar argues that the colonial police deployed rigid notions of caste in their everyday tasks, refashioning rural identities in a process that has cast long postcolonial shadows. Kumar draws on previously unexplored police archives to enter the dusty streets and market squares where local constables walked, following their gaze and observing their actions towards potential subversives. Station records present a textured view of ordinary interactions between police and society, showing that state coercion was not only exceptional and spectacular; it was also subtle and continuous, woven into everyday life. The colonial police categorized Indian subjects based on caste to ensure the security of agriculture and trade, and thus the smooth running of the economy. Among policemen and among the objects of their coercive gaze, caste became a particularly salient form of identity in the politics of public spaces. Police Matters demonstrates that, without doubt, modern caste politics have both been shaped by, and shaped, state policing. Thanks to generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, through The Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.