Aimless in Banaras

Aimless in Banaras PDF Author: Bishwanath Ghosh
Publisher: Tranquebar
ISBN: 9789389152005
Category : Vārānasi (Uttar Pradesh, India)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Aimless in Banaras

Aimless in Banaras PDF Author: Bishwanath Ghosh
Publisher: Tranquebar
ISBN: 9789389152005
Category : Vārānasi (Uttar Pradesh, India)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Banaras

Banaras PDF Author: Diana L. Eck
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307832953
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The sacred city of Banāras on the River Ganges is one of the oldest living cities in the world—as old as Jerusalem, Athens, and Peking. It is the place where Shiva, the Lord of All, is said to have made his permanent home since the dawn of creation. There are few cities in India as traditionally Hindu and as symbolic of the whole of Hindu culture as Banāras. In this eloquent, finely observed study, Diana Eck shows how the city over the centuries has become a lens through which the Hindu vision of the world is precisely focused. She reveals the spiritual and historical resonance of this holy place where great sages such as the Buddha and Shankara were taught, where ashrams, palaces, and universities were built, where God has been imagined and imagined in a thousand ways. She describes the rites of its temples, the busy life of its riverfront, and the exuberance of its festivals. She tells how people travel from all over India to Banāras for the privilege of dying a good death here, for they believe that on the banks of the River Ganges where “the atmosphere of devotion is improbable in its strength,” it is possible to be released from the earthly round forever. In her account of the sacred history, geography, and art of the city, its elaborate and thriving rituals, its myths and literature, and its importance to pilgrims and seekers, Diana Eck uses her wealth of scholarship to make the Hindu tradition come powerfully alive so that we come to understand the meaning of this sacred city to the millions of believers who have been coming here for over 2,500 years.

The City of Good Death

The City of Good Death PDF Author: Priyanka Champaneri
Publisher: Restless Books
ISBN: 1632062542
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Priyanka Champaneri’s transcendent debut novel brings us inside India’s holy city of Banaras, where the manager of a death hostel shepherds the dying who seek the release of a good death, while his own past refuses to let him go. Banaras, Varanasi, Kashi: India’s holy city on the banks of the Ganges has many names but holds one ultimate promise for Hindus. It is the place where pilgrims come for a good death, to be released from the cycle of reincarnation by purifying fire. As the dutiful manager of a death hostel in Kashi, Pramesh welcomes the dying and assists families bound for the funeral pyres that burn constantly on the ghats. The soul is gone, the body is burnt, the time is past, he tells them. Detach. After ten years in the timeless city, Pramesh can nearly persuade himself that here, there is no past or future. He lives contentedly at the death hostel with his wife, Shobha, their young daughter, Rani, the hostel priests, his hapless but winning assistant, and the constant flow of families with their dying. But one day the past arrives in the lifeless form of a man pulled from the river—a man with an uncanny resemblance to Pramesh. Called “twins” in their childhood village, he and his cousin Sagar are inseparable until Pramesh leaves to see the outside world and Sagar stays to tend the land. After Pramesh marries Shobha, defying his family’s wishes, a rift opens up between the cousins that he has long since tried to forget. Do not look back. Detach. But for Shobha, Sagar’s reemergence casts a shadow over the life she’s built for her family. Soon, an unwelcome guest takes up residence in the death hostel, the dying mysteriously continue to live, and Pramesh is forced to confront his own ideas about death, rebirth, and redemption. Told in lush, vivid detail and with an unforgettable cast of characters, The City of Good Death is a remarkable debut novel of family and love, memory and ritual, and the ways in which we honor the living and the dead. PRAISE FOR THE CITY OF GOOD DEATH “In Champaneri’s ambitious, vivid debut, the dying come to the holy city of Kashi to die a good death that frees them from the burden of reincarnation…. In sharp prose, Champaneri explores the power of stories—those the characters tell themselves, those told about them, and those they believe. . . . This epic, magical story of death teems with life.” —Publishers Weekly “Brimming with characters whose lives overlap and whose stories interweave, Champaneri’s exquisite debut delves into the consequences of the past, and how stories that are told can become reality even when they contain barely a shred of truth. As Pramesh discovers, the bitterness of past wounds can bring hope for redemption and life.” —Bridget Thoreson, Booklist “Lush prose evokes the thick, close atmosphere of Kashi and the intricate religious practices upon which life and death depend. Rumor and superstition hold sway over even the most level-headed people, twisting what’s explainable into something extraordinary—with tragic consequences. . . . The City of Good Death is a breathtaking, unforgettable novel about how remembering the past is just as important as moving on.” —Eileen Gonzalez, Foreword Reviews, Starred Review "Champaneri’s Kashi is teeming and vivid . . . the book frequently charms, and it's as full of humor, warmth, and mystery as Kashi’s own marketplace." —Kirkus Reviews “The City of Good Death is the debut novel of Priyanka Champaneri but it has the confidence of a master storyteller. Drawing on the rich literary traditions of Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy, Champaneri’s epic saga will satisfy armchair travelers thirsty for adventure, and sick of looking out their windows.” —Chicago Review of Books "In intricate detail and with remarkable skill, Champaneri writes a powerful tale about the pull of the past and our aching need to understand the mysteries and misunderstandings that thwart our relationships. An atmospheric and immersive debut with a rich cast of characters you won’t soon forget." —Marjan Kamali, author of The Stationery Shop

Tamarind City

Tamarind City PDF Author: Bishwanath Ghosh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789357767774
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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About the Book A WITTY, OBSERVANT AND PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY OF A REMARKABLE CITY-CHENNAI From moody, magical Madras to bursting-at-the-seams, tech-savvy Chennai, the two aspects of the city are inseparable. As Bishwanath Ghosh tells us, while Chennai is usually known as conservative and orthodox, almost every modern institution in India-from the army to the judiciary; from medicine to engineering-traces its roots to Madras. Today the city once again figures prominently on the global map as 'India's Detroit', a manufacturing giant and a hub of medical tourism. There have been sweeping changes since Independence, but even as Chennai embraces change, its people hold its age-old customs and traditions close to their hearts. It is this city that Bishwanath Ghosh explores, delving into its past, roaming its historic sites and neighbourhoods, and meeting a wide variety of people-from a top vocalist to a top sexologist, from a yoga teacher to a percussionist, from a yesteryear film star to his own eighty-five-year-old neighbour. What emerges is an evocative portrait of this unique city, drawn without reservation-sometimes with humour, sometimes with irony-but always with love. About the Author Bishwanath Ghosh, an Indian writer and journalist, best known for his literary travelogues which describe the essence of India. In 2009 he published the bestselling Chai, Chai: Travels in Places Where You Stop but Never Get Off, which The Telegraph (Kolkata) called "a delightful travelogue with a difference." He is also the author of Longing, Belonging (2014), which is a portrait of present-day Kolkata, Gazing at Neighbours (2017) and Aimless in Banaras.

Benares, the Sacred City

Benares, the Sacred City PDF Author: Ernest Binfield Havell
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Benares (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Longing Belonging

Longing Belonging PDF Author: Bishwanath Ghosh
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789384030605
Category : Kolkata (India)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Chai Chai

Chai Chai PDF Author: Ghosh, Bishwanath
Publisher: Tranquebar Press
ISBN: 9789380032863
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Bishwanath Ghosh had alighted from his train at Itarsi station to stretch his legs and grab a glass of tea before he resumed his journey.

Return Of The Aryans

Return Of The Aryans PDF Author: Bhagwan Gidwani
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 9351184579
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1469

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Book Description
A sweeping saga of ancient india Return of the Aryans tells the epic story of the Aryans – a gripping tale of kings and poets, seers and gods, battles and romance and the rise and fall of civilizations. In a remarkable feat of the imagination, Bhagwan S. Gidwani takes us back to the dawn of mankind (8000 BC) to recreate the world of the Aryans. He tells us why the Aryans left India, their native land, for foreign shores and shows us their triumphal return to their homeland... Vast and absorbing, the novel tells the stories of characters like the gentle god, Sindhu Putra, spreading his message of love; the physician sage Dhanawantar and his wife Dhanawantari; peaceloving Kashi after whom the holy city of Varanasi is named; and Nila who gave her name to the river Nile... Richly textured and with a cast of thousands, the epic adventure of the Aryans come gloriously alive in the hands of the bestselling author of The Sword of Tipu Sultan.

Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India

Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India PDF Author: Mytheli Sreenivas
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295748850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Open-access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295748856 Beginning in the late nineteenth century, India played a pivotal role in global conversations about population and reproduction. In Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India, Mytheli Sreenivas demonstrates how colonial administrators, postcolonial development experts, nationalists, eugenicists, feminists, and family planners all aimed to reform reproduction to transform both individual bodies and the body politic. Across the political spectrum, people insisted that regulating reproduction was necessary and that limiting the population was essential to economic development. This book investigates the often devastating implications of this logic, which demonized some women’s reproduction as the cause of national and planetary catastrophe. To tell this story, Sreenivas explores debates about marriage, family, and contraception. She also demonstrates how concerns about reproduction surfaced within a range of political questions—about poverty and crises of subsistence, migration and claims of national sovereignty, normative heterosexuality and drives for economic development. Locating India at the center of transnational historical change, this book suggests that Indian developments produced the very grounds over which reproduction was called into question in the modern world. The open-access edition of Reproductive Politics and the Making of Modern India is freely available thanks to the TOME initiative and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries.

An Indian Englishman

An Indian Englishman PDF Author: Jack Gibson
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1435734610
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
John Travers Mends (Jack) Gibson was born on March 3, 1908 and died on October 23, 1994 at the age of 86.In some ways, Jack was the last Indian Englishman. He came ten years before independence and stayed on 47 years after it, rendering dedicated service to the country of his adoption for 57 years. Jack's journey started as a school teacher at The Doon School. He was the last English Principal of Mayo College and the last English President of the Himalayan Club. He was the last, and for most of the time the only English resident of Ajmer. He must have been just about the last Englishman to have been honored by both the British and Indian Governments.Brij Sharma is a journalist based in Bahrain. He spent much of his childhood and youth in Dehra Dun, and while not a product of The Doon School, he has known its campus, the surroundings of the city and much of the mountainous terrain described in Gibson's letters.http://www.jtmgibson.com