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Independence (इंडिपेन्डन्स)
१९४६ चा भारत. बदलाचं वारं घेऊन आलेला. अशा भारतातल्या बंगालमधील राणीपूरमध्ये राहणाऱ्या डॉ. नंदकुमार यांच्या तीन मुलींची ही गोष्ट. प्रिया, जामनी आणि दीपा यांची. फाळणीच्या दंगलीत डॉ. नंदकुमार यांची हत्या होते. आणि तिघींचं आयुष्य पार बदलून जातं. प्रियाचं डॉक्टर होण्याचं स्वप्न एका दृढ निश्चयात परिवर्तित होतं, तर दुसरीकडे जामनी आणि दीपा आपल्या आईला रजाई बनवण्यात हातभार लावून घर सावरतात. त्याचवेळी दीपा मुस्लिम लीगच्या रजाच्या प्रेमाने झपाटून जाते आणि घरदाराला अंतरते. रझासोबतच्या प्रवासात तिचा देशही सुटतो. या सगळ्यात जामनी मात्र आईचा आधार बनून राहते. पण तरीही फाळणीची झळ तिला सुखानं जगू देत नाही. या लाटेत तिन्ही बहिणींचं आयुष्य हेलकावे खात राहतं. या तीन बहिणींची गोष्ट वेगवान कथानकासोबत आणि अंगावर शहारे आणणाऱ्या घटनाक्रमाने अचंबित करत राहते.
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Independence
THREE SISTERS. THEIR UNBREAKABLE BOND. AND A NATION ABOUT TO BE BORN. Here is a river... Here is a village... Here is a grand old mansion... Here is the country that contains them all... India. August, 1946. Everything is about to change. Priya, Jamini and Deepa, Dr Nabakumar Ganguly's daughters, live in Ranipur, Bengal, safe from the rising turbulence in the country. When their father is killed on Direct Action Day, their world turns upside-down. Priya, the youngest, intelligent and idealistic, is determined to follow in her father's footsteps and become a doctor, no matter how difficult. She is fortunate to have the support of zamindar Somnath Chowdhury, her father's best friend. Jamini, devout, dutiful and talented, helps her mother stitch kanthas to make ends meet. Hungering for affection even as she is resentful of her sisters, she nurses a secret desire. Beautiful Deepa, the eldest, all set to marry well, falls in love with Raza, Youth Leader at the Muslim League, and must face the consequences. When India is partitioned, the sisters find themselves separated from one another, afraid of what will happen to not only themselves, but also each other. It is only then that they understand what it means to be independent, and the price one has to pay for it. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's powerful new novel is a moving story of loyalty and love, nationhood and sisterhood, set against India's independence movement, at once exhilarating and devastating. -- 'A spellbinding saga of the decolonization and partition of the Indian subcontinent, with a cast of vividly drawn, compelling characters.' AMITAV GHOSH 'A national movement unsettles a country. Only a powerful imagination can recreate how profoundly it changes three women's lives.' NAYANTARA SAHGAL
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The Last Queen
An unforgettable story about the fearless, much-feared queen whom history seems to have forgotten.' Shabana Azmi Daughter of the royal kennel keeper, the beautiful Jindan Kaur went on to become Maharaja Ranjit Singh's youngest and last queen, his favourite. She became regent when her son, Dalip, barely six years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, passionate, and dedicated to protecting her son's heritage, Jindan fought hard to keep the British from annexing Punjab. Her power and influence were so formidable that the British imprisoned and exiled the rebel queen. But that did not crush her indomitable will. An exquisite love story of a king and a commoner, a cautionary tale about loyalty and betrayal, and a powerful parable of the indestructible bond between mother and child, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's unforgettable novel brings alive one of the most fearless women of the nineteenth century, an inspiration for our times.
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An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Nara
Sudha Kulkarni was forging a career as TELCO’s first woman engineer when she met the serious, idealistic and brilliant Narayana Murthy, and they fell in love. For the first time comes the story of their early years – from their courtship to Infosys’s founding years, from their marriage to parenthood – told by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. What drew them together and kept them bound tightly through the challenges and loneliness they faced? What was it like to create a startup during the license raj, when there were no VCs, and entrepreneurship was regarded as a dirty word? How did Sudha Murty balance being a career woman, a mother and a startup wife? How did Narayana Murthy’s obsession affect himself and his family? Taking us deep inside the minds, hearts and values of the Murthys, with exclusive access to them, Divakaruni tells their story with emotional depth, bringing them and their worlds vividly alive. This book is about the sacrifices it takes to forge a powerful and lasting marriage, about the early story of Infosys and Indian business before liberalization, and most of all about two icons before they became the legends that transformed the fields of business and philanthropy.
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Sister of My Heart A Novel
From the award-winning author of Mistress of Spices, the bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart. Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite those differences, since the day on which the two girls were born, the same day their fathers died--mysteriously and violently--Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates as well as their hearts were merged. But, when Sudha learns a dark family secret, that connection is shattered. For the first time in their lives, the girls know what it is to feel suspicion and distrust. Urged into arranged marriages, Sudha and Anju's lives take opposite turns. Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household. Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. When tragedy strikes each of them, however, they discover that despite distance and marriage, they have only each other to turn to. Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and exotic, seducing readers from the first page with the lush prose we have come to expect from Divakaruni. Sister of My Heart is a novel destined to become as widely beloved as it is acclaimed.
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The Forest of Enchantments
The Ramayana, one of the world's greatest epics, is also a tragic love story. In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita's version. The Forest of Enchantments is also a very human story of some of the other women in the epic, often misunderstood and relegated to the margins: Kaikeyi, Surpanakha, Mandodari. A powerful comment on duty, betrayal, infidelity and honour, it is also about women's struggle to retain autonomy in a world that privileges men, as Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills. While the Ramayana resonates even today, she makes it more relevant than ever, in the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, 'Enough!'
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Before We Visit The Goddess
Beautiful, powerful new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices about three generations of moth-ers and daughters who must discover their greatest source of strength in one another a masterful, brilliant tale of a family both united and torn apart by ambition and love. The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single, unforgiveable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover, but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined. As the marriage crumbles and Bela is forced to forge her own path, she unwittingly imprints her own child, Tara, with indelible lessons about freedom, heartbreak, and loyalty that will take a lifetime to unravel. In her latest novel, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores the complex relation-ships between mothers and daughters, and the different kinds of love that bind us across generations. Before We Visit the Goddess captures the gorgeous com-plexity of these multi-generational and transcontinental bonds, sweeping across the twentieth century from the countryside of Bengal, India, to the streets of Houston, Texas an extraordinary journey told through a sparkling symphony of voices.
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Oleander Girl
Orphaned at birth, seventeen-year-old Korobi Roy has enjoyed a privileged childhood with her adoring grandparents in Kolkata. But she is troubled by the silence that surrounds her parents’ death and clings to her only inheritance from them: the unfinished love note she found hidden in her mother’s book of poetry. The young woman dreams of one day finding a love as powerful as her parents’, and it seems her wish has come true when she meets the charming Rajat, the only son of a high- profile business family. On the night of their engagement party, Korobi’s grandfather dies of a sudden heart attack. His death reveals the family’s financial problems as well as a dark secret. This secret will shatter Korobi’s sense of self and will take her out of her sheltered Kolkata life into a search, in the company of an attractive stranger, across America, a country that she finds at once dangerous, unwelcoming and alluring. What she discovers at the end will force her to make the most difficult choice of her life. No one tells such heart-stopping stories with as much color and emotion as Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Oleander Girl is the writer at her very best.
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The Mistress Of Spices
Tilo, an immigrant from India, runs an Indian spice shop in Oakland, California. While she dispenses the classic ingredients for curries and kormas, she also helps her customers to gain a more precious commodity: whatever they most desire. For Tilo is a Mistress of Spices, a priestess of the secret, magical powers of spices.nnThrough those who visit and revisit her shop - Ahuja’s wife, caught in an unhappy, abusive marriage; Jagjit, the victim of racist attacks at school; the noisy bougainvillaea girls, rejecting the strict upbringing of their tradition-bound Indian parents; Haroun who drives a taxi and dreams the American dream - we get a glimpse into the life of the local Indian expatriate community. To each Tilo dispenses wisdom and the appropriate spice: coriander for sight; turmeric to erase wrinkles; cinnamon for finding friends; fenugreek to make a rejected wife desirable again; chillies for the cleansing of evil. But when a lonely American comes into the store, a troubled Tilo cannot find the right spice, for he arouses in her a forbidden desire, and following her own desires will destroy her magical powers.nnCompelling and lyrical, full of heady scents and with more than a touch of humour, this novel explores the clash between East and West even as it unveils the universal mysteries of the human heart. About the Author Born in India, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni lives near San Francisco with her husband and two children. She teaches creative writing at a local college, and is the coordinator for a helpline for South Asian women. She is the author of several award-winning volumes of poetry, as well as Arranged Marriage, her acclaimed collection of short stories, a bestseller in America and winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Prize for fiction, an American Book Award, and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award for fiction. She is also the author of two novels, The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My Heart. Table of Contents A splendid novel, beautifully conceived and crafted','A marvellous combination of myth and romance, social critique and poetry','A dazzling tale of misbegotten dreams and desires, woven with poetry and storyteller magic','Fascinating stuff…appealingly flavoured and colourful','Divakaruni's magic [is] her ability to craft such a complex tale written so exquisitely without overwhelming her reader'
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The Palace Of Illusions
Be taken back to a time that is half-history, half-myth, and wholly magical... Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the five Pandava brothers, The Palace of Illusions finally gives a woman's take on the timeless tale that is the Mahabharata. Tracing Panchaali's life from fiery birth and lonely childhood, where her beloved brother is her only true companion; through her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna; to marriage, motherhood, and her secret attraction to the myste-rious man who is her husbands most dangerous enemy, it's a deeply human story about a woman born into a man's world. About The Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's books include the bestselling novels The Mistress of Spices, Queen of Dreams and Sister of My Heart, the prize-winning story collections Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, and the Conch Bearer series for children. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and divides her time between Houston and the San Francisco Bay area.
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The Vine Of Desire
The beloved characters of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s bestselling novel Sister of My Heart are reunited in this powerful narrative that challenges the emotional bond between two lifelong friends, as the husband of one becomes dangerously attracted to the other.Anju and Sudha formed an astounding, almost psychic connection during their childhood in India. When Anju invites Sudha, a single mother in Calcutta, to come live with her and her husband, Sunil, in California, Sudha foolishly accepts, knowing full well that Sunil has long desired her. As Sunil’s attraction rises to the surface, the trio must struggle to make sense of the freedoms of America–and of the ties that bind them to India and to one another.
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Arranged Marriage
Beautifully told stories of transformed lives . . . Both liberated and trapped by cultural changes on both sides of the ocean, these women struggle fiercely to carve out an identity of their own.