Sitara said, with awful distinctness, ‘I think I’m going to die’. And that’s how I got stuck with the annual corpse. Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, along with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead. Rushing to Sitara’s aid, Lalli’s niece Sita is distracted by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Why is it monochrome? And what does it have to do with the body on the living-room floor? Such questions are hardly relevant to the police in their hunt for the murderer. But Lalli is a detective who revels in curiosities, and she thinks otherwise. A brisk thriller of deceit and intrigue, The Monochrome Madonna has Lalli at her most astute as she interprets the nuances of a murder without motive.
Specially focused on India, this accessible and timely volume tells us everything we need to know about our body, the food we eat to fuel it, and what we must guard against--and do--so that we keep ourselves, and our children, healthy and energized"--Cover.
Lalli, retired policewoman, intrepid detective, collects curiosities... that inevitably lead to murder. The curiosity of murder unfolds in seven acts. Since Kalpana Swaminathan's first whodunit was published over ten years ago, Lalli--sixty and silver-haired and tough as nails--has been one of the most memorable detectives in Indian fiction. Lalli returns in this brilliant page-turner, a collection of seven stories, to solve some of the strangest, most complex cases of her career. The opening act, in which a face keeps reappearing until a crime committed long ago is revealed, is followed by a murder that could be hypothetical--or a reality (Lalli turns to Schrodinger's Cat to find out). In the third act in this unfolding drama, Lalli and Sita are invited to a book-burning which turns out to be murder most foul. And Lalli turns her skills to the world of high fashion when Sita sits next to a serial killer on a bus--but was he killer or victim? The aptly named Sucide Point in Bombay's suburbs, leads Lalli to a suicide that turns out to be something far more sinister. And an innocuous desk ornament is the clue to a crime most artistically executed. Finally, for connoisseurs of fiction, the curtains come down with a threnody for lost love.
Nobody asked: What was she like? Venus? By daylight? And if they had, what could I have said? For the truth was in my stories, not in what I said I’d seen. All I had seen was a black dot. She had passed me by as she passed by the sun. In Venus Crossing, Kalpana Swaminathan masterfully crafts twelve stories that lay bare the deepest complexities of human relationships. These stories capture the instant of transit, that moment when the impossible—the unthinkable—is absorbed into the fabric of life so that life can be lived again. That moment is everything: revelation, challenge, existence. In the Yellow Dupatta, practical compulsions surmount grief as a young couple takes their dead child home from hospital. A middle-aged nurse finds romance with the most obnoxious of patients in Sister Thomas and Mister Gomes. Two young women shattered by rejection begin the long journey of survival in Fly Away, Peter. Incident at Abu Ghraib finds Sukhi appalled by her mother’s empathy for a disgraced American soldier. Hemant is counselled, in Euthanasia, to opt for the final solution—but will he? Incisive, brilliant and deeply compassionate, Venus Crossing showcases Kalpana Swaminathan’s consummate skill as a storyteller and proves, yet again, the uncompromising vision of her craft.
What did Aunt Lalli do before she retired from something clerkish in the police? The question intrigues us even as the narrator and her aunt Lalli plunge headlong into adventures in each of these engrossing detective stories. Aunt Lalli ingeniously solves each mystery, and we celebrate the emergence of a new sleuth into the world of detective fiction.
Sita, detective Lalli’s niece—and occasional Watson—runs into former classmate Anais at Mumbai airport. Even as the friends catch up, Anais hands over a cardboard box she is carrying to a waiting woman, nonchalantly informing the traumatized lady that the box contains her son’s ashes. Some days later, Anais herself turns up dead in the slimy Mithi River, a pink nylon rope wrapped ritually around her neck. What does the cardboard box with human remains have to do with Anais’s murder? And what significance do the peculiar knots round her neck have? Lalli must find answers, fast, if she is to prevent more deaths
Thrilling To The Psychological Core&What A Corker Of A Book!' Outlook Clarice Aranxa Has Come To Bougainvillea House To Die. But There Will Be No Peace Here, Nor Quiet Surrender, As Long-Forgotten Memories Are Brutally Revived. And Even As Clarice Grows Weaker By The Day From The Ravages Of Motor Neuron Disease, Her Violent Past Is Mirrored In A Series Of Unexplained Deaths.
A dark and affecting tale about the turbulence of growing up, the many worlds we inhabit and the secret lives we live Fifteen-year-old Tenral leads two lives. There is the one she leads with her family and her friends at school—'a skin-of-milk life, easy and forgiving, like five o'clock sunshine'. Into her other, difficult life, move her English teacher, Mrs Alfie, and her dead lover. Tenral recreates their romance, taking her clues from Mrs Alfie's dramatic rendering of poetry, and tries to reconcile the past with the present through her own fairytales. Even as her friends look on, disapproving of her flights of fancy, Tenral's complex imaginary world widens to include the dour Maths teacher, Mr Tilak, and Mrs Alfie's mad mother who spills the secret about Mrs Alfie's navy blue baby . . . Events hurtle towards a frightening climax as Mrs Alfie emerges from Tenral's world of make-believe to reveal the truth. Tenral can reject this truth, and escape into her world of fantasy. Or she can embrace real life with its hardships and disappointments, in the hope that in the end it is all worthwhile, for there is always ambrosia for afters.
With over a thousand entries on health and related topics, this book is planned for quick reference! Symptoms, drugs, diseases and other health-related information is catalogued alphabetically. These entries are reader-oriented, free of jargon and present information that is state-of-the-art at the time of writing.
Sitara said, with awful distinctness, ‘I think I’m going to die’. And that’s how I got stuck with the annual corpse. Half an hour later I stood in an empty flat, along with a stranger who was very recently, and very violently, dead. Rushing to Sitara’s aid, Lalli’s niece Sita is distracted by Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Why is it monochrome? And what does it have to do with the body on the living-room floor? Such questions are hardly relevant to the police in their hunt for the murderer. But Lalli is a detective who revels in curiosities, and she thinks otherwise. A brisk thriller of deceit and intrigue, The Monochrome Madonna has Lalli at her most astute as she interprets the nuances of a murder without motive.
A pup with ESP, a benign elephant, a kidnap and a Secret Service led by the famous Rani of Bandalbaaz! This swift and racy tale of the adventures of Jaldi, a railway puppy with special powers, is set against the backdrop of Bombay's notorious underworld. Recruited for the Secret Service by the elegant and ferocious Rani, Jaldi must use her powers to find JP and BB, the evil duo who want to destroy the historic friendship between the proud Bombay Strays and the humans who share their city. Can Jaldi outwit the killers and the crafty TickTock? With her Uncle Musafir, King Ilango the Elephant, and other assorted friends, Jaldi plunges headlong into mayhem and adventure!
Thrilling To The Psychological Core&What A Corker Of A Book!' Outlook Clarice Aranxa Has Come To Bougainvillea House To Die. But There Will Be No Peace Here, Nor Quiet Surrender, As Long-Forgotten Memories Are Brutally Revived. And Even As Clarice Grows Weaker By The Day From The Ravages Of Motor Neuron Disease, Her Violent Past Is Mirrored In A Series Of Unexplained Deaths.
Nobody asked: What was she like? Venus? By daylight? And if they had, what could I have said? For the truth was in my stories, not in what I said I’d seen. All I had seen was a black dot. She had passed me by as she passed by the sun. In Venus Crossing, Kalpana Swaminathan masterfully crafts twelve stories that lay bare the deepest complexities of human relationships. These stories capture the instant of transit, that moment when the impossible—the unthinkable—is absorbed into the fabric of life so that life can be lived again. That moment is everything: revelation, challenge, existence. In the Yellow Dupatta, practical compulsions surmount grief as a young couple takes their dead child home from hospital. A middle-aged nurse finds romance with the most obnoxious of patients in Sister Thomas and Mister Gomes. Two young women shattered by rejection begin the long journey of survival in Fly Away, Peter. Incident at Abu Ghraib finds Sukhi appalled by her mother’s empathy for a disgraced American soldier. Hemant is counselled, in Euthanasia, to opt for the final solution—but will he? Incisive, brilliant and deeply compassionate, Venus Crossing showcases Kalpana Swaminathan’s consummate skill as a storyteller and proves, yet again, the uncompromising vision of her craft.
A dark and affecting tale about the turbulence of growing up, the many worlds we inhabit and the secret lives we live Fifteen-year-old Tenral leads two lives. There is the one she leads with her family and her friends at school—'a skin-of-milk life, easy and forgiving, like five o'clock sunshine'. Into her other, difficult life, move her English teacher, Mrs Alfie, and her dead lover. Tenral recreates their romance, taking her clues from Mrs Alfie's dramatic rendering of poetry, and tries to reconcile the past with the present through her own fairytales. Even as her friends look on, disapproving of her flights of fancy, Tenral's complex imaginary world widens to include the dour Maths teacher, Mr Tilak, and Mrs Alfie's mad mother who spills the secret about Mrs Alfie's navy blue baby . . . Events hurtle towards a frightening climax as Mrs Alfie emerges from Tenral's world of make-believe to reveal the truth. Tenral can reject this truth, and escape into her world of fantasy. Or she can embrace real life with its hardships and disappointments, in the hope that in the end it is all worthwhile, for there is always ambrosia for afters.
A book that challenges the conventional notion of a slum. Spread over 175 hectares and swarming with one million people, Dharavi is often called 'Asia's largest slum'. But Dharavi is much more than cold statistic. What makes it special are the extraordinary people who live there, many of whom have defied fate and an unhelpful State to prosper through a mix of backbreaking work, some luck and a great deal of ingenuity. It is these men and women whom journalist Kalpana Sharma brings to life through a series of spellbinding stories. While recounting their tales, she also traces the history of Dharavi from the days when it was one of the six great koliwadas or fishing villages to the present times when it, along with other slums, is home to almost half of Mumbai. Among the colourful characters she presents are Haji Shamsuddin who came to Mumbai and began life as a rice smuggler but made his fortune by launching his own brand of peanut brittle; the stoic Ramjibhai Patel, a potter, who represents six generations from Saurashtra who have lived and worked in Mumbai; and doughty women like Khatija and Amina who helped check communal passions during the 1992-93 riots and continue to ensure that the rich social fabric of Dharavi is not frayed. It is countless, often anonymous, individuals like these who have helped Dharavi grow from a mere swamp to a virtual gold mine with its many industrial units churning out quality leather goods, garments and food products. Written with rare sensitivity and empathy, Rediscovering Dharavi is a riveting account of the triumph of the human spirit over poverty and want.
This book discusses women-oriented microfinance initiatives in India and their articulation vis-à-vis state developmentalism and contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. It examines how these initiatives encourage economically disadvantaged rural women to make claims upon state-provided microcredit and connect with multiple state institutions and agencies, thereby reshaping their gendered identities. The author shows how Self-Help Group (SHG)-based microfinance institutions mobilise agency and create channels of empowerment for women as well as make them responsible for alleviating poverty for themselves and their families. The book also brings out the importance of factoring in women’s dissenting voices when they negotiate developmental projects at the grassroots level. Rich in empirical data, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, gender studies, economics, especially microeconomics, politics, public policy and governance.
We show that gender inequality decreases the variety of goods countries produce and export, in particular in low-income and developing countries. We argue that this happens through at least two channels: first, gender gaps in opportunity, such as lower educational enrollment rates for girls than for boys, harm diversification by constraining the potential pool of human capital available in an economy. Second, gender gaps in the labor market impede the development of new ideas by decreasing the efficiency of the labor force. Our empirical estimates support these hypotheses, providing evidence that gender-friendly policies could help countries diversify their economies.
This book describes a participatory case study of a small family farm in Maharashtra, India. It is a dialectical study of cultivating cultivation: how paddy cultivation is learnt and taught, and why it is the way it is. The paddy cultivation that the family is doing at first appears to be ‘traditional’. But by observation and working along with the family, the authors have found that they are engaging in a dynamic process in which they are questioning, investigating, and learning by doing. The authors compare this to the process of doing science, and to the sort of learning that occurs in formal education. The book presents evidence that paddy cultivation has always been varying and evolving through chance and necessity, experimentation, and economic contingencies. Through the example of one farm, the book provides a critique of current attempts to sustain agriculture, and an understanding of the ongoing agricultural crisis.
This issue of Emergency Medicine Clinics focuses on Geriatric Emergencies. Articles include: Recent Trends in Geriatric Emergency Medicine, Resuscitation of the Elderly, Pharmacology in the Geriatric Patient, Trauma and Falls in the Elderly, Sepsis and Infectious Emergencies in the Elderly, Evaluation of the Geriatric Patient with Chest Pain, Evaluation of Dyspnea in the Elderly, Abdominal Pain in the Geriatric Patient, Neurologic Emergencies in the Elderly, Evaluation of Syncope, Altered Mental Status and Delirium, and more!
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