Bambi, Chops and Wag: How three dogs trained a family

Bambi, Chops and Wag: How three dogs trained a family
Author: Ranjit Lal
Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2013-07-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 8174368663

Bambi, Chops and Wag: A madcap story of how three dogs trained a family is a first-person account of author Ranjit Lal's love for his three pet dogs and how the family cared for the two Boxers and a Labrador. A book for everyone from age 10 to 100, this is a fun, easy-to-read book that will keep the readers hooked to their antics, and their different personalities. At times funny and at times touching the core of your heart, this book celebrates the family's commitment to the three adorable dogs: Bambi, Chops and Wag.

Mr Splash!

Mr Splash!
Author: Ranjit Lal
Publisher: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2023-05-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9394657002

What’s life like when you’re a drop of water like Mr Splash? Well for one, you travel the world, you can get very dirty and sick, you can be a nasty killer or a lifesaver, you can be flushed down the toilet, pass through disgusting intestines, be a part of that great natural spectacle: the monsoon, and share great power with the oceans! All that and much more. Mr. Splash has been there and done it all plus a lot more as he recounts his roller-coaster life adventures to his two new friends, Rashika and Rohan.

How Weird is That?

How Weird is That?
Author: Ranjit Lal
Publisher: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 8179935809

Daddies that are Mummies mummies that eat Daddies shrimps that could knock you out with one punch touch-me-not frogs a wildcat that hypnotizes with its ears and brings down flying birds gluttons that eat themselves up non-vegetarian plants bottoms-up babies that parasail around the world – meet and share the adventures of all these weird and wacky creatures in the wonderful mummy-eat-daddy world of nature’s bizarre!

Parul: A Love Story

Parul: A Love Story
Author: Harsha V. Dehejia
Publisher: Roli Books Private Limited
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2013-06-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9351940306

Praful is a Professor, a dyed-in-the-wool academic who is shaped by the life-denying philosophy of Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta. Parul, on the other hand, is a sensual, earthy woman who believes in the veracity of love and the reality of the many beautiful things that life offers. A chance meeting between the two leads not only to a romantic relationship spread over eleven purnimas, but becomes a dialogue between two philosophical systems, the Advaita of Shankara and the Madhurya of the Bhagvata Purana. As romantic moments between the two unfold, intellectuality interacts with sensuality, questioning the validity of each, and as Chaitra moves to Magh, a transformation takes place. As Harsha Dehejia weaves this romantic story, where meetings by the Parijataka and conversations underneath the Champa, are not only moments of shringara but introspections on the meaning of life, we hear and feel the sensuality of love as it merges seamlessly with the intellectuality of a philosophic discourse. In this heart-throbbing romantic relationship, there is the spiritual quest of ultimate reality along with the pleasures of the sound of the wind and the song of a bird. Metaphysical thoughts and tender feelings, evocative colours and resonant sounds, intoxicating aromas and patterned textures, myths and metaphors, intermingle in the hushed conversations of two people in love.

Kafka's Zoopoetics

Kafka's Zoopoetics
Author: Naama Harel
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-05-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0472902091

Nonhuman figures are ubiquitous in the work of Franz Kafka, from his early stories down to his very last one. Despite their prominence throughout his oeuvre, Kafka’s animal representations have been considered first and foremost as mere allegories of intrahuman matters. In recent years, the allegorization of Kafka’s animals has been poetically dismissed by Kafka’s commentators and politically rejected by posthumanist scholars. Such critique, however, has yet to inspire either an overarching or an interdiscursive account. This book aims to fill this lacuna. Positing animal stories as a distinct and significant corpus within Kafka’s entire poetics, and closely examining them in dialogue with both literary and posthumanist analysis, Kafka’s Zoopoetics critically revisits animality, interspecies relations, and the very human-animal contradistinction in the writings of Franz Kafka. Kafka’s animals typically stand at the threshold between humanity and animality, fusing together human and nonhuman features. Among his liminal creatures we find a human transformed into vermin (in “The Metamorphosis”), an ape turned into a human being (in “A Report to an Academy”), talking jackals (in “Jackals and Arabs”), a philosophical dog (in “Researches of a Dog”), a contemplative mole-like creature (in “The Burrow”), and indiscernible beings (in “Josefine, the Singer or the Mouse People”). Depicting species boundaries as mutable and obscure, Kafka creates a fluid human-animal space, which can be described as “humanimal.” The constitution of a humanimal space radically undermines the stark barrier between human and other animals, dictated by the anthropocentric paradigm. Through denying animalistic elements in humans, and disavowing the agency of nonhuman animals, excluding them from social life, and neutralizing compassion for them, this barrier has been designed to regularize both humanity and animality. The contextualization of Kafka's animals within posthumanist theory engenders a post-anthropocentric arena, which is simultaneously both imagined and very real.

Songs in the Key of Z

Songs in the Key of Z
Author: Irwin Chusid
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2000-04-01
Genre: Music
ISBN: 156976493X

Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. This book profiles dozens of outsider musicians, both prominent and obscure—figures such as The Shaggs, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Harry Partch, and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy—and presents their strange life stories along with photographs, interviews, cartoons, and discographies. About the only things these self-taught artists have in common are an utter lack of conventional tunefulness and an overabundance of earnestness and passion. But, believe it or not, they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality. A CD featuring songs by artists profiled in the book is also available.

Empires of the Imagination

Empires of the Imagination
Author: Alec Worley
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 698
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476611831

The warlocks and ghosts of fantasy film haunt our popular culture, but the genre has too long been ignored by critics. This comprehensive critical survey of fantasy cinema demonstrates that the fantasy genre amounts to more than escapism. Through a meticulously researched analysis of more than a century of fantasy pictures--from the seminal work of Georges Melies to Peter Jackson's recent tours of Middle-earth--the work identifies narrative strategies and their recurring components and studies patterns of challenge and return, setting and character. First addressing the difficult task of defining the genre, the work examines fantasy as a cultural force in both film and literature and explores its relation to science fiction, horror, and fairy tales. Fantasy's development is traced from the first days of film, with emphasis on how the evolving genre reflected such events as economic depression and war. Also considered is fantasy's expression of politics, as either the subject of satire or fuel for the fires of propaganda. Discussion ventures into the subgenres, from stories of invented lands inhabited by fantastic creatures to magical adventures set in the familiar world, and addresses clashes between fantasy and faith, such as the religious opposition to the Harry Potter phenomenon. From the money-making classics to little-known arthouse films, this richly illustrated work covers every aspect of fantasy film.

The acrolect in Jamaica

The acrolect in Jamaica
Author: G. Alison Irvine-Sobers
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018
Genre: English language
ISBN: 3961101140

An ability to speak Jamaican Standard English is the stated requirement for any managerial or frontline position in corporate Jamaica. This research looks at the phonological variation that occurs in the formal speech of this type of employee, and focuses on the specific cohort chosen to represent Jamaica in interactions with local and international clients. The variation that does emerge, shows both the presence of some features traditionally characterized as Creole and a clear avoidance of other features found in basilectal and mesolectal Jamaican. Some phonological items are prerequisites for “good English” - variables that define the user as someone who speaks English - even if other Creole variants are present. The ideologies of language and language use that Jamaican speakers hold about “good English” clearly reflect the centuries-old coexistence of English and Creole, and suggest local norms must be our starting point for discussing the acrolect.