India Booked

‘Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines’ is a rigorous investigation and a personalized narrative by Amandeep Sandhu about the matters of Panjab, an account on the recovery from its past and the discovery of its present.

This episode of India Booked is illuminating and comprehensive, much like the book itself, which brings an alternative outlook to the pre-existing perspectives on Panjab by discussing the impacts of militancy, separation, farm bills and egalitarianism, underlining the contrasts of a Panjab that was and a Panjab that exists now.

This conversation between Ayushi and Amandeep spans across the representation of Panjab in political and entertainment media and details into the concerns of drug addiction and the laws regarding it, agrarian havoc caused by political mismanagement during the green revolution, and the reality of rampant exodus in Panjab and much more.

Tune in to understand all in all, the events, issues and contributions of the state that shaped the Panjab we know today!

Writer, literary translator, book critic and a literary podcast (Desi Books) host herself, Jenny Bhatt speaks to Ayushi Mona how the themes of Dhumketu’s books resonated with the short stories of her own, prompting her to bring out her debut literary translation, ‘Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu’.

In this hour-long episode on short stories and translations, Jenny describes, through brilliant metaphors, how a short story differs from a novel and why it is unfair to expect authors with different skillsets to master both, and about the commercial pressures on writers in the publishing industry.

Recommending works by other luminaries in the field, Jenny talks about how regional translations break stereotypes and create a better understanding of diverse cultures, and touches upon the deficit representation of Indian literature in school curriculums and of Gujarati literature being translated in comparison to other regional languages. Tune in now!

‘Twilight in a Knotted World’ is the third novel by journalist and historian Siddhartha Sarma that uncovers the many layers of the Phansigar problem and a hierarchy of stranglers through the investigations of Captain William Henry Sleeman, unearthing mysteries and bleak, uncomfortable truths about India.

In the 18th episode of India Booked, discussing the period of colonial India, host Ayushi Mona and Author Siddhartha Sarma unravel the aspects of history and the gaps that are filled by fictionalizing it.

The podcast delves into the reasons for bringing out the book and the solid portrayal of major female characters in it, the construction of conversations between them and the thoughts that went into vivifying the untold stance of the characters in history.

Tune in now to discover the underlying facets of the colonial rule and a list of historical fiction recommendations that will get you absolutely hooked into the genre, if you aren’t already!

‘Bhairavi- The Runaway’, written by Shivani aka Gaura Pant, a pioneer of women’s fiction in India, is the story of a woman's life, her resilience, her moral and mental strength, and about the restraints and choices women have in the society.

In this episode of India Booked, the translator of ‘Bhairavi’ and Chitra Mudgal’s ‘Giligadu’, Priyanka Sarkar talks to Ayushi Mona about her experience translating the books, the scope and depth of women’s literature, about bringing alive a concept to an unaware audience and as she says, ‘translating the untranslatable’.

The discussion in this episode spans from the reactions women receive from the society for writing bold books to the inclusion of glossaries in translations to spirituality and sensuality in mythology and the aspect of humanizing the characters in it. Priyanka takes us into the world of ‘Bhairavi’ through significant excerpts from the book, both in Hindi and English, while pulling out comparisons between them and explaining the nuances of translation. Tune in now!

Stoned, Shamed, Depressed’ is an alarming reality check of the struggles faced by the teens of India, dealing with the evident but deliberately denied issues of substance abuse, social media and gaming, bullying, body shaming and the frailty of mental health. Renowned journalist and author Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava traces the difficult journey from teenage to adulthood, where children easily give into temptations without realizing the repercussions and dangers of the virtual world and bad habits. 

In this episode of India Booked, Jyotsna talks to host Ayushi Mona about the eye opening accounts that materialized the book and the incidents that confirm the ignorance and denial of parents on the mental health issues and habits of their children. 

The conversation addresses the concerns of drugs, consent and self-harm, of how children get caught up in the web of conforming to the expectations of their family against the pressure from their peers and much more. 

Tune in now to hear Jyotsna Mohan Bhargava dig beneath the charades of everyday lives of the Indian teenager in both cyberspace and the modern-day school life in urban India.

‘The ‘Other’ Shangri-La: Journeys through the Sino-Tibetan frontier in Sichuan’ is a narrative  travelogue based on author Shivaji Das and his wife’s journey which explores the region’s history  and the lives and cultures of the people inhabiting these remote lands in detail. 

In this episode of India Booked, Shivaji Das and Yolanda Yu recount their journey to Tibet as writers  and more significantly as travellers, embellishing it with quirky incidents and fascinating anecdotes.  

The travel enthusiasts and companions share with Ayushi Mona the highlight of their trip with  surprisingly different approaches, one recounting how they got entangled in the unfolding of a love  triangle, while the other underlines the realities of them travelling on rugged roads fraught with  danger.  

The podcast narrates the adventures of travelling into lands far away, the edge of touring as a  couple, the culture and habits of migration amongst the Tibetans and the dangerous journeys they  undertake that “make men out of boys”, as Shivaji puts it. 

Tune in to hear them discuss elements of nature that are worth going back to and draw parallels  between the two diverse cultures of India and China. This episode is for writers and travellers alike,  as it explores the routines they follow as writers and the thrills they experience as travellers on a  journey!

In the 14th episode of India Booked, author Anukrti Upadhyay takes us through the deserts of Rajasthan and the hot springs of Japan through her novel Kintsugi. In the same conversation, she connects contrasts betweenthe cultures of Jaipur and Japan and creates a delightful echo, all of her own. 

Anukrti Upadhyay is also the author of the twin novellas Daura and Bhaunri, which have been commended for its independent characters and fresh narrative, and a short story collection in Hindi called Japani Sarai, making her one of the few bilingual writers in India. 

Tune into this episode to hear her and host, Ayushi Mona discuss her inspiration for writing and her thoughts on how books belong more to the readers than the authors themselves. She paints a picture of the striking visual differences in the aesthetics of Japan and India, calling both the cultures “perfect foils to each other” and expresses how people, despite differences in cultures and traditions, are not very different from each other after all. 

Tune in for a descriptive treat of an excerpt from the novel Kintsugi by the author herself, as she brings to life the people and the lanes of the Johri Bazar of Jaipur.

For centuries, Rajasthan has been a gold mine of oral traditions and histories, with Padma Shri Vijaydan Detha being one of the foremost storytellers of all time. His stories, collected from the common folk of Rajasthan, mark an important intervention in 20th century Rajasthani literature. 

Giving a new lease of life to his writings, Timeless Tales from Marwar is a handpicked collection of folk tales from the everlasting works of Detha’s celebrated Batan ri Phulwari meaning ‘Garden of Tales’. Collected and written over the span of nearly fifty years, this fourteen-volume assortment of Rajasthani folk stories earned him the moniker-the Shakespeare of Rajasthan.

On this episode of India Booked, Ayushi Mona talks to Vishes Kothari, a financial consultant, native of Sadulpur in Rajasthan with a keen interest in the oral and musical traditions of his state.

 He has been associated with UNESCO-Sahapedia on projects focussed on the musical traditions of women in Rajasthan, and as a language expert with the Jaipur Virasat Foundation.

Bringing in the 12th episode of India Booked on a high note! Shantanu Datta, in his 30-year-long journalism career, has interviewed such global icons as Roger Waters (Pink Floyd), Ian Anderson and Martin Barre (Jethro Tull), Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), Usha Uthap, Dilip Balakrishnan, and several, several more. He has written about it in the Speaking Tiger-published, Calling Elvis.

Host Ayushi Mona has an hour-long chat with Datta about this journey of seeing the consumption of western music change in India, his own relationship with music and musicians ("When I spoke to them, the names on vinyl records came alive," says Datta), how music reporting has changed and how its increased availability impacted how to write about it, his own introspection on what makes their tunes timeless, K-pop, and much, much more!

As a bonus, hear tunes from Datta's own CD collection of Indian rock from the 80s!

#purplepencilproject #indiabooked #indianrock #rockstars #pinkfloyd #jethrotull #direstraits #callingelvis #speakingtigerbooks

A prolific translator, the Books Editor at Scroll.in, and professor of creative writing and literary journalism; Arunava Sinha is one of India’s most important literary figures.

In this episode of India Booked, Ayushi Mona and Sinha discuss Bengali literature and how he came to translation (part awareness, part accident, part design), the city of Calcutta (“The theatre of the vast drama of human life” as Sinha puts it) in the literary imagination of readers and writers both in Bengali and English, how the city’s literary, political, and sporting culture has directly or indirectly influenced so many of our writers, the "shrinking of our literary and artistic arcs" and much more.

Tune in now.