1 Serious Men
Manu Joseph
HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS
Ayyan Mani breaks out of the veil of an invisible man in his ordinary life, to a powerful game of fiction and fame in Mumbai. Tackles several hard questions.

2 The Obscure Logic of the Heart
Priya Basil
RANDOM HOUSE INDIA/ DOUBLEDAY
When a Muslim girl falls in love with a liberal student of architecture, both their worlds come crashing down. This invigorating read keeps one turning page after page with the same intensity.

3 Tiger Hills
Sarita Mandanna
PENGUIN/ VIKING
This debut novel unfolds into an intricate, sometimes over-embellished weave of interconnected histories in the hilly terrain of Coorg.

4 The Kept Woman and Other Stories
Kamala Das
OM BOOKS INTERNATIONAL
Das explores the lives of men and women in Kerala as they knock on memories and cry happy tears under the summer sun.

5 Balloonists
Rajorshi Chakraborti
TRANQUEBAR PRESS
Crisp writing and denim-clad characters make for fun company on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

6 Delhi Calm
Vishwajyoti Ghosh
HARPER COLLINS
A graphic novel about political disillusionment and denial during the Emergency. Visually gorgeous, but the narrative blurs in the textual characterisation. Nonetheless, a moving cri de coeur.

BUSINESS SWEET

Namita Devidayal’s long-awaited Aftertaste takes a keen look at the characters and destinies that make up one tumultuous Marwari dynasty from the heart of Mumbai’s old commercial district, between 1960 and 1984. The author answers our questions:

How did Aftertaste come about?
I wrote the first chapter even before I started The Music Room. Soon after I was done with my musical memoir, I went back to this. The book is based on the many things I have seen and heard growing up in a business family. I decided to detach myself and explore the wonderful madness of a typical bania family, where money often takes the place of love.

Perhaps the most delicious thing about Aftertaste is in how specific it is in recreating an old Mumbai.
The old business centre of Mumbai is, indeed, a really exciting, even if forgotten space. In comparison, the new chrome-and-glass business district is so indistinctive, it could be downtown Manila or Manhattan. This book goes back to the many lovely moments I spent as a child wandering through the bylanes of Kalbadevi with my father, just as he had done many years ago with his grandmother. Through him, I discovered a part of Mumbai that has long gone out of fashion, but it’s a very important Mumbai – for me personally, as it is where our family started its stainless steel business; and for the city, because this is where commercial Mumbai started out.

For a narrative that makes no bones about confronting the uglier emotions head on, it steers admirably clear of sentimentality or nostalgia.
I am not sentimental as a person, so I guess that trait doesn’t creep into my writing. One of my mantras in life is that humour and prayer save one from most things.

What was researching this period like?
I had the best time researching – mostly through the archives of The Times of India and The Illustrated Weekly. Newspapers can be an amazing source of information and colour about different periods, because you get as much from the articles published as you do from the advertisements, movie listings and classifieds that are interspersed in the pages. I found all kinds of quaint things – products like Thermos flasks and Tata’s eau de cologne that were the big hot things of their time.

Can we hope to see non-fiction from you again?
I can’t say what is coming next, but I suspect it will have something to do with the eternally mystifying subject of marriage!

THE QUEER WEB

Shobhna Kumar, entrepreneur and queer activist, recently started Queer-Ink.com, India’s first online LGBTQ bookstore. “The idea of Queer-Ink.com was a realisation of my work within the queer community and personal interests in reading,” she says. “Over the last few years I met people who did not have access to books and did not know of any one platform where they could browse within their own comfort zones.” Reaction so far has been “tremendous, in terms of sales and emails. People are beginning to publish on ‘Writer’s Corner’ and many more have emailed me privately with the hope of publishing their work.” Requests for book club meetings are pouring in, too – a positive sign for a future offline identity? “We would like to have a retail store with the quintessential coffee shop and art gallery,” says Kumar.

We ask her to recommend a title readers should unhesitatingly check out on Queer-Ink.com, and she offers us two: You Are Not Alone by Arun Mirchandani, and Arvind Narrain and Eldridge Marcus’ The Right That Dares Speak Its Name. Where’s that online shopping cart?

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