Author: A Selection
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143027956
Description
This eclectic collection contains irreverent takes on just about everything, from arranged marriage to Vedanta, as well as tales told with heartfelt sincerity on being adopted, being female or being Muslim in today's India.
'Black, White and Various Shades of Brown' is the print debut of Sulekha.com, the largest online community for Indians worldwide. Selected by the Sulekha community from nearly 1200 writings published on the site since 1999, these essays depict what it is to be the international Indian : as comfortable eating bagels in Boston as bhelpuri in Bandra. This eclectic collection contains irreverent takes on just about everything, from arranged marriage to Vedanta, as well as tales told with heartfelt sincerity on being adopted, being female or being Muslim in today's India.
From the delicately subversive humor of a Kolkata based industrialist to the sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious angst of engineers in California, from the anarchic world of dotcom entrepreneurs to the forgotten world of Anglo-Indians, Black, White and Various Shades of Brown takes you on the global cultural ride of a lifetime.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
What emerges in all these writings is that elusive but all-pervading quality of "Indian-ness" which goes beyond ethnicity, religion, language, behavior, lifestyles…
- Shyam Benegal
This impressive new publication may well serve as a springboard for a new generation of writers from South Asia
- Amitav Ghosh, author of 'The Glass Palace'
An uplifting read.
- Dileep Padgaonkar, Managing Executive Editor, The Times of India
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Marriage Are Made in Heaven
So who Speaks Hindi?
On a Wing and a Prayer
Inheritance
Black, White and Various Shades of Brown
Happiness, Just a Battle Away
Madana’s Call
The Witness
Dance, Mathematics, Happiness, Vedanta
Forced Choices
The Moon
Dolphin’s Day
The Desi Professor and the Italian Mafia
Mirrors
Mine
Chandra
The Roma and the Persistence of Memory
Fathima and the Alchemists
An Insurgent Day
Women in India Want to Be Men
Damn
e-illusions
A Sigh to Remembers
Neruda’s Head
Train Window Bars
Taxi Wallah
Subbian Govindaraj, Where Are You?
Listen to the Background Music
Unwanted
On Turning 40
Real Words from Unreal People
How Do You Say It in ‘Indian’?
Of One Night and Its Day
Agnus Dei
Desi Bonsai
Pillow Talk
Long-Distance Romance
The Zamindar’s Wife
Winter Garden
Mist Once Upon a Flight
On Your Wedding Day, Sincerely