Literature & Fiction Books

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Laugh and be well!’ exclaimed the great Dr. Johnson, and he never spoke truer words. For, laughter is certainly good medicine, guaranteed to drive away the blues and improve your general well-being. Ruskin Bond declares that he had great fun in putting together this anthology of hilarious stories, humorous articles, and comic verse. The reader will share his enjoyment. You will smile, chuckle, or laugh out loud, whether at an account of a crazy cricket match, or a cheese that smells to high heaven, or a goat that goes berserk in a posh drawing-room.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Ruskin Bond, resident of Mussoorie, is a well-known writer of fiction and a raconteur par excellence. His Tales and Legends from India, Angry River, Strange Men, Strange Places, The Blue Umbrella, A Long Walk for Bina and Hanuman to the Rescue are also available in Rupa paperback. The Ruskin Bond's Children's Omnibus has been a firm favourite with young readers for several years. Ghost Stories from the Raj, The Rupa Book of Great Animal Stories, The Rupa Book of True Tales of Mystery and Adventure, The Rupa Book of Himalayan Tales and The Rupa Book of Great Suspense Stories are some of his recent books for Rupa

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Over a career spanning seven decades, R.K. Narayan, easily one of the most influential and important writers of India, populated the fictional town of Malgudi with a host of unforgettable characters: Swami and his gang of friends, the Talkative Man, Raju the guide and Sampath the printer, among many others. These characters have carved out a place for themselves in popular imagination and live on, still fresh and endlessly entertaining, many decades after they first appeared.
Timeless Malgudi brings together a selection of the best and the most enduring of R.K. Narayan’s fiction and non-fiction. The Guide examines, with wit and irony, how a man becomes a godman. The story ‘A Horse and Two Goats’ describes an attempt at cross-cultural communication which goes haywire, with hilarious consequences. The excerpt from My Days, Narayan’s autobiography, paints a poignant picture of the author’s childhood while the ‘Misguided “Guide”’ is a cynical, sharply written chronicle of the making of the film Guide, based on his novel. Also included in this volume are excerpts from the travelogue My Dateless Diary and a brilliant retelling of the Tamil epic Silappadikaram.
Catering both to Narayan aficionados and to readers who have not yet been introduced to his work, Timeless Malgudi is as much a showcase of Narayan’s writing as it is a celebration of Malgudi, the town which time does not touch.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

R.K. Narayan was born in Madras in 1906. His first novel, Swami and Friends and its successor, The Bachelor of Arts, are both set in the fictional town of Malgudi. Apart from these, Narayan wrote twelve other novels. Narayan has also authored five collections of short stories, two travel books, two volumes of essays, a volume of memoirs, and re-told legends and epics. Narayan, who lived to be ninety-four, died in 2001.

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Unhurried Tales: My Favourite Novellas brings together, for the very first time, Ruskin Bonds favourite (and finest) novellas. The stories in this book include Time Stops at Shamli (written in 1956 and published for the first time in 1987); The Blue Umbrella, which has been a bestseller for the last forty years; Angry River, which was a longer work when it was first written; Bus Stop, Pipalnagar; Night of the Leopard; The Last Tiger and Tales of Fosterganj, his latest novella, which was published in 2013.

These stories speak of a world that has long vanished, but it is a world that has lost none of its power to enchant. Whether we are accompanying Sita on her perilous journey down the angry river or Bisnu as he gets the better of a dangerous leopard, whether we delight in Binyas joy at owning her blue umbrella or are saddened by the fate of the last tiger, whether we laugh uproariously at the antics of the eccentric guests at the 'hotel in Shamli, get involved in the adventures of the boys in Pipalnagar or plunge into the various goings-on in the 'backwater of Fosterganj, we are always entertained, always charmed. All the stories unwind in an unhurried way, even those that are filled with death-defying thrills and spills, and it is this quality that enables us to sink into them and experience to its fullest the magic of the fiction that Ruskin Bond has spun out of the hills and small towns of India for over sixty years.

About the Author: Ruskin Bond

RUSKIN BOND is the author of several bestselling novels and collections of short stories, essays and poems. These include The Room on the Roof (winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), A Flight of Pigeons, The Night Train at Deoli, Time Stops at Shamli, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra (winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award), Angry River, The Blue Umbrella, Delhi Is Not Far, Rain in the Mountains, Roads to Mussoorie, A Little Night Music, Tigers for Dinner, Tales of Fosterganj, A Gathering of Friends and Small Towns, Big Stories.

Ruskin Bond was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India IN 1999, a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi government in 2012 and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

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One strong conviction that governed the idea of this book, and to some extent the choice of writings, is my belief in the power of words. My interest in wildlife is not born of a childhood spent in nature’s lap. I had a very urban upbringing, and my association with wildlife was largely restricted to an occasional visit to Gir, the last refuge of the Asiatic lion. Those days, lions were usually baited with terrified buffalo calves, to lure the feline predator for VIP visitors. The other ‘wild’ encounters-if you can call them that-were visits to zoos and circuses. These excursions-erringly perceived as entertainment and educational pursuits-did little to inspire within me any awe for the natural world. Indeed, I found the concept distasteful, and these visits left, even at an early age, only a sense of shame and guilt. But that is another debate, and I digress. The point I am trying to make is that my passion for the wilds-and it is an emotive affair-has literary roots. I have devoured book after book on the subject, haunting libraries and pavement book-vendors (who had the money for new books?). The first ‘animal* book that piqued my interest was James Herriot’s delightful and thoroughly addictive account of a vet’s life in the English countryside. Not nature writing, strictly speaking. Yet, Herriot had an art of bringing animals ‘to life’. His intricate portrayal of his patients and their idiosyncrasies drew you in, and your involvement in his works was complete. Herriot was the first ‘animal’ writer I encountered, and he set the ball rolling. Next was Gerald Durrell, with his fascinating.

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Time passes, and yet it doesn't pass; people come and go, the mountains remain. Mountains are permanent things. They are stubborn, they refuse to move. . .no matter how hard they try, humans cannot actually get rid of the mountains. That's what I like about them; they are here to stay. Mountains-snow-capped, green, and filled with stories. For decades, Ruskin Bond has lived among them and his writings abound in descriptions of these hills-of life as it is lived here, of animals and birds who sometimes even wander into his room, of the many interesting and eccentric characters who he has met here. From having his roof fly off in a freak storm to becoming the 'writer on the hill', Bond has seen it all. Funny, elegiac and filled with beautiful descriptions of people, animals and places, this collection is for every mountain and nature lover.

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What happens when a clone of Yamraj, the Lord of Death, gets emotional and upsets the power structure in Devlok, the realm of Gods?

Yamraj Number 5003 is the story of one of the thousands of cloned Yamrajs in Mrityuloka. The Yamrajs are supposed to carry out their duties like robots, but by some fluke one Yamraj—code-named #5003—has a ‘manufacturing defect’ by which he can think and feel, making him ‘different’. He begins to question the status quo, shaking the very foundation of the power structure in Devlok, making the divine trinity—Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar—jittery. What happens when they decide to take action against the erring Yamraj? Woven with humour, this multilayered novel will move the readers as well as entertain them. Originally published in Odia and translated into Assamese, this hugely popular novel is being published in English for the first time.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Mrinal Chatterjee writes fiction in Odia and academic papers in English. His first short-story collection Orissa O Ananya Galpa was published in 1991. Up until early 2017, he had six novels, seven short-story collections and four anthologies published. He also translates works from Bengali, English, Hindi and Gujarati to Odia.

A journalist-turned media academician, Chatterjee presently heads Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal, Odisha.

Thirumoy Banerjee is a journalist with a passion for reading and writing. He has worked with some of the leading newspapers of India, such as The Telegraph, The Indian Express and The Times of India. This is his first attempt at translating a novel.

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Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen tells the extraordinary story of Karna, the unsung hero of the Mahabharata, through the eyes of his wife Uruvi, bringing his story to the reader from a unique perspective.

An accomplished Kshatriya princess who falls in love with and dares to choose the ‘sutaputra’ over Arjun, Uruvi must come to terms with the social implications of her marriage and learn to use her love and intelligence to be accepted by Karna and his family. Though she becomes his mainstay, counselling and guiding him, his blind allegiance to Duryodhana is beyond her power to change.
The story of Uruvi and Karna unfolds against the backdrop of the struggle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. As events build up leading to the great war of the Mahabharata, Uruvi is a witness to the twists and turns of Karna’s fate; and how it is inextricably linked to divine design.
A splendid saga from the pages of the Mahabharata, Karna’s Wife: The Outcast’s Queen brings its characters alive in all their majesty.

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

A postgraduate in English Literature from Pune’s Fergusson College, Kavita also has a postgraduation degree in mass communication and journalism from the University of Pune, besides a diploma in French language and literature from the same university. An avid lover of cinema and theatre, she works as a journalist and is currently the features editor of Pune Mirror, a publication of the Times Group. She lives with her family in Pune.