In our 23rd episode, Padmini Mongia reads from her short-story collection, 'Baby Looking Out and Other Stories', published by Yoda Press in 2018.

Padmini Mongia teaches literature in English at Franklin & Marshall College. She is a teacher and scholar, a writer and painter. In this special episode, she recites the second chapter of the book, titled "The Bat and His Kite", where a bat named Pond/Chipku, learns to fly a kite.

Stay tuned for future readings from the author!

The book is available online, as well as in independent bookstores across India: https://www.amazon.in/Baby-Looking-Out-Other-Stories/dp/9382579230

Arpita Das on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/arpitayodapress

Yoda Press on Instagram: @yodapress

A special thank you to Devansh Mathur for providing the background score for this episode!

The opening/closing song is 'Typewriter' by Eric Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

This episode has been edited and produced by Tara Mathur.

Our 22nd episode is a special one, where Arpita Das, Founder-Publisher of Yoda Press, moderates a panel between three of our authors, as part of the 2025 Ananke Literature Festival. She talks to Arshi Javaid, author of Yaadgah: Memories of Srinagar; Neeta Kolhatkar, author of The Feared: Conversations with 11 Political Prisoners; and Namita Waikar, author of Farmers Protest! A Movement for Our Times.

The theme for this year's festival was 'Speaking Truth to Power', which we believe each of these titles epitomise, through their powerful words; of hope, of resistance. The panel was originally recorded and uploaded in April 2025.

Each of the aforementioned titles are available on Amazon through the links attached below, as well as in independent bookstores.

Yaadgah: https://amzn.in/d/gG6ZobE

The Feared (with Simon & Schuster): https://amzn.in/d/gG6ZobE

Farmers Protest!: https://amzn.in/d/h0wPWv5

Yoda Press on Instagram: @yodapress

Arpita Das on X (formerly Twitter): @arpitayodapress

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Eric Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

This podcast has been edited and produced by Tara Mathur.

For our 21st episode, the last of 2024, we have Naima Rashid reciting a few of her poems from Sum of Worlds, published by Yoda Press in September 2024.

Naima Rashid, an author, poet, and literary translator, deals with themes of migration, motherhood, and living between different cultures, places, and languages. In Sum of Worlds, Rashid questions the nature of the self as it is shattered and put together again.

Sum of Worlds is available worldwide on Amazon using the following link: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9382579974

Yoda Press on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

Arpita Das on X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/arpitayodapress

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Eric Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

This podcast has been produced and edited by Tara Mathur.

In our 20th episode (in our 20th year!), Founder-Publisher Arpita Das is in conversation with environmental lawyer and legal scholar, Arpitha Kodiveri. Arpitha Kodiveri is the author of 'Governing Forests: State, Law and Citizenship in Indian Forests'. Among other topics, the two discuss the centring of forest-dwelling communities in environmental law, how Dalit and Adivasi communities tackle judicial and State oppression, and the extraction of consent from these communities.

Arpitha Kodiveri is an environmental and justice scholar and assistant professor of political science at Vassar College. Her work focuses on the role of law in redressing climate harms faced by South Asian indigenous communities. She has previously worked as an environmental lawyer to support Adivasi and forest-dwelling communities in India.

In Governing Forests, she describes how these communities bear the cost of both rapacious mining development and increasing pressure for forest land to be set aside for environmental conservation. Despite these challenges, Kodiveri shows how the traditional owners

Buy the South Asian edition here: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9382579958

Internationally available here: https://www.mup.com.au/books/governing-forests-paperback-softback

Follow Yoda Press on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

Arpita Das' Twitter/X: https://x.com/arpitayodapress

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Eric Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

This podcast has been produced and edited by Tara Mathur.

In the 19th episode of The Yodakin Podcast, Publisher Arpita Das is in conversation with queer activist and writer Maya Sharma. Maya Sharma is the author of two pathbreaking LGBTQIA titles, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India (2006) and Footprints of a Queer History: Life-Stories from Gujarat ( 2022). Among other things, the two talk about queer identities, the importance of listening to queer narratives, lived realities and experiences of marginalised people, and claiming space.

Footprints of a Queer History is a simple narrative of queer stories marked by personal journeys, political consciousness, socio-legal struggles, friendships, and love; it puts on record, within the larger historical backdrop, our humdrum and unexceptional acts of everyday-living that are pierced with the pain of stigma and silence.

Stories capture the voices of the marginalized, the rarely heard, and only stories can truly and fully capture their day-to-day reality. They transcend the limitations of defining human experiences and show the impossibility of telling the whole truth, arousing the imagination for that un-tellable tale and leaving room for the inarticulate to attempt those spillages of reality that can only be sensed.

As you turn the pages in this book, you can hear the untold and the unstated in the stories—both unique and universal, you may find footprints that echo some parts of your journey in the everydayness of our human lives.

Buy it here: https://www.thedogearsbookshop.com/shop/books/non-fiction/hobbies/footprints-of-a-queer-history-life-stories-from-gujarat/

Arpita Das's Twitter: https://twitter.com/arpitayodapress

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Marc Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

This episode has been produced by Srishti Khare and edited by Srishti Khare and Arsh Kabra.

In this episode of The Yodakin Podcast, Publisher Arpita Das is in conversation with renowned historian, Prof. Chinnaiah Jangam. Prof. Jangam translated Gabbilam:A Dalit Epic by Gurram Jashuva from the Telugu into English. Among other things, the two talk about the legendary poet Gurram Jashuva, importance of Dalit narrative traditions, significance of the word 'epic' and the recent reproduction and restructuring of the history of the nation.

Gabbilam presents a Dalit man as the hero and protagonist perhaps for the first time in the classical verse-epic tradition of Indian poetry, and is the earliest text to highlight the oppression, exclusion, and dehumanization of untouchables in casteist Hindu society. It occupies a pre-eminent position in the Telugu literary sphere, not just for the depiction of Dalit suffering but also for bringing the language of ordinary people into the classical medium. In its English translation for the first time, this Dalit epic can now be read and relished by a global audience.

Buy it here: https: https://www.amazon.in/Gabbilam-Dalit-Epic-Chinnaiah-Jangam/dp/9382579362

Arpita Das's Twitter: https://twitter.com/arpitayodapress

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Marc Taboel via Epidemic Sound.
This episode has been produced and edited by Srishti Khare.

In this episode of the Yodakin Podcast, Publisher Arpita Das is in conversation with renowned Malayalam author B.M. Zuhara about her book ‘Dreams of a Mappila Girl’ and Fehmida Zakeer, a brilliant translator. Among other things, the three talk about Zuhara’s childhood and her childhood home, what it means to grow up as a woman who asks many questions, the familial critique and backlash Zuhara had to face when publishing her literary works as well as the intoxicating cooking smells engulfing the air in her childhood home.

Buy it here: https://www.amazon.in/Dreams-Mappila-Girl-Memoir/dp/9354792804

Arpita Das's Twitter: https://twitter.com/arpitayodapress

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Marc Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

In this episode, Arpita Das, publisher and founder of Yoda Press, is in discussion with Lisa Björkman, Assistant Professor of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville, Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, and the author and editor of the book Bombay Brokers. Among other things, they discuss how the idea for the book originated, the gendered aspect of the 'brokers', and the paradox of brokers being indispensable and celebrated as well as being moralized by society. Lisa also reads her favorite extracts from the book.

Bombay Brokers collects profiles of thirty-six 'brokers' whose behind-the-scenes expertise and labor are often invisible and yet have an intrinsic role in the city's functioning and can be indispensable for navigating everyday life in Bombay. Written by anthropologists, artists, city planners, and activists, these character sketches bring into relief the paradox that these brokers’ knowledge and labor are simultaneously invisible yet essential for Bombay’s functioning.

Links to buy the book:

Arpita Das’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/arpitayodapress

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yodapress/

The opening song is 'Typewriter' by Marc Taboel via Epidemic Sound.

In this episode of the Yodakin Podcast, Arpita Das and graphic novelist and researcher Samarth discuss the experiences that led to the creation of the graphic novel Suit. Samarth talks about how he chose the theme of manual scavenging for his novel, the field trips for research, the influence of comic books while growing up and how he chose the graphic novel as the medium to tell this story. 

Suit is set in a Mumbai of the near future, when Safai Karamcharis have been provided with safety equipment, including a full body safety suit which gives them the moniker of Suitwalas. The story explores stigma, social change and mobility through the eyes of Vikas, a young "Suitwala".

The book makes the reader question whether anything has changed in reality or is the suit just a cover? The book speculates what change could look like in a profession so steeped in exploitation and exclusion, where the persistent stigma infuses every step towards betterment with a bitter aftertaste.

In this episode, Kanchana Viswanathan reads some extracts from Chellammal's Journal: A Woman's Memoir of a Joint Family in Twentieth-Century India. Chellammal’s Journal records the journey of a woman in an upper-caste joint family in early twentieth-century Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu. It excavates the complex familial relationships within the walls of the house, and the interplay of love, hurt, affection, disappointment, anger and control which thwart the aspirations of a young woman.

Buy it here: http://yodapress.co.in/chellammal-s-journal. This episode has been produced by Tanya Singh and edited by Chitraksh Ashray. Opening song is 'Typewriter' by Marc Taboel via Epidemic Sound.