A Childhood In Malabar


Book Description

It Is The Second World War And Kamala And Her Brother Are Removed From Their Parents Home In Calcutta To The Safer Environs Of Their Village In Northern Kerala. At Once An Outsider And An Integral Part Of Her Ancestral Home, Kamala Struggles To Fathom The Intricacies Of Class, Caste And Language. But Surrounded By People Like Her Adoring Ammamma, The Servant Sankaran Who Promises To Teach Her The Crow-Language, And Valli Who Tells Her Stories Of Yakshis Whose Breasts Are As Big As Jackfruits, Kamala Soon Discovers The Joys Of Growing Up As The Centre Of Everyone S Universe. As Calcutta Fades From Her Mind Like An Old Dream, While The Thudding Of The Drums At The Para Festival, The Roar Of The Velichappadu As He Becomes Possessed And The Songs Of The Parayankaali Dancers Become Absolute Realities Of Life.




Wild Game


Book Description

On a hot July night on Cape Cod, at the age of 14, Brodeur became a confidante to her mother's affair with her husband's closest friend. Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help, but when the affair had calamitous consequences for everyone involved, Brodeau was driven into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. In her memoir she examines how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. -- adapted from jacket




The Love Queen of Malabar


Book Description

An astonishing adventure into the heart of one of India's most controversial writers.




Malabar to Malaya


Book Description

Book description: The British rubber plantations in Malaya (now Malaysia) created a huge migration of indentured labour from India. My grandpa joined the wave to start a spice business and lost it all. That plunged my generation below the poverty line!I I was born in a plantation house (not a hospital) and my birth certificate was "processed" in a police station. That is how I arrived earth in 1965. Grew up in the rubber plantation, soon to become unpaid underaged labour helping my parents tap rubber trees starting at 04:30 in the morning amongst the mosquitoes and snakes while smacking into spider webs between the trees.Our meals starts on a perfect dining table after pay day and dwindles into lack of food by end of the month. The vicious cycle seems to never end year after year. In the years to come I became a Chemical Engineer and that changed this "fate" by placing food on our table consistently. As I set sail on my career, my life took various positive turns that brought me to being a Company Director occasionally signing cheques with six digits in them. This book shares a part my journey that took me through pain, gain, glory and gratification. Author: Author is a 53 yeard old, third generation Malaysian of Indian descent. Graduated with a honours Degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Malaya and held various management positions in multinationals. Currently working as General Manager in the Dubai Head Office of a UK-based shipping company. Fluent in English, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Tamil and Malayalam.




My Story


Book Description

First published in Malayalam in 1973, My Story, Kamala Das' sensational autobiography, shocked readers with its total disregard for mindless conventions and its fearless articulation of a subject still considered taboo. Depicting the author's intensely personal experiences in her passage to womanhood and shedding light on the hypocrisies that informed traditional society, this memoir was far ahead of its time and is now acknowledged as a bona fide masterpiece.




The Living Great Lakes


Book Description

The author provides an account of his experiences as a crew member on a tall-masted schooner during a six-week voyage through the Great Lakes, and discusses his other explorations of the lakes, looking at their history, geology, and environmental disaster and rescue.




A Murder at Malabar Hill


Book Description

A legally-minded sleuth takes to the streets of 1920s Bombay in a fascinating new mystery.




Maximum City


Book Description

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs, following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse, opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood, and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks. As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.




Monsoon Islam


Book Description

Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, a distinct form of Islamic thought and practice developed among Muslim trading communities of the Indian Ocean. Sebastian R. Prange argues that this 'Monsoon Islam' was shaped by merchants not sultans, forged by commercial imperatives rather than in battle, and defined by the reality of Muslims living within non-Muslim societies. Focusing on India's Malabar Coast, the much-fabled 'land of pepper', Prange provides a case study of how Monsoon Islam developed in response to concrete economic, socio-religious, and political challenges. Because communities of Muslim merchants across the Indian Ocean were part of shared commercial, scholarly, and political networks, developments on the Malabar Coast illustrate a broader, trans-oceanic history of the evolution of Islam across monsoon Asia. This history is told through four spaces that are examined in their physical manifestations as well as symbolic meanings: the Port, the Mosque, the Palace, and the Sea.




The Sleeping Dictionary


Book Description

From an award-winning novelist, a stunning portrait of late Raj India—a sweeping saga and a love story set against a background of huge political and cultural upheaval. YOU ASK FOR MY NAME, THE REAL ONE, AND I CANNOT TELL. IT IS NOT FOR LACK OF EFFORT. In 1930, a great ocean wave blots out a Bengali village, leaving only one survivor, a young girl. As a maidservant in a British boarding school, Pom is renamed Sarah and discovers her gift for languages. Her private dreams almost die when she arrives in Kharagpur and is recruited into a secretive, decadent world. Eventually, she lands in Calcutta, renames herself Kamala, and creates a new life rich in books and friends. But although success and even love seem within reach, she remains trapped by what she is . . . and is not. As India struggles to throw off imperial rule, Kamala uses her hard-won skills—for secrecy, languages, and reading the unspoken gestures of those around her—to fight for her country’s freedom and her own happiness.