The Wedding Wallah

The Wedding Wallah
Author: Farahad Zama
Publisher: Abacus Fiction
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Dating services
ISBN: 9780349122687

Mr Ali's flourishing marriage bureau seems to have chalked up another success when his niece Pari receives a surprise proposal from a rich, handsome aristocrat. But why is the boy's family so keen to get him married to Pari - an orphan, a widow, and now a single mother?

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People
Author: Farahad Zama
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2009-06-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101060158

Bored with retirement, Mr. Ali sets up a desk, puts up a sign, and waits for customers for his new matchmaking business. Some clients are a mystery. Some are a challenge. Mr. Ali's assistant, Aruna, finds it a learning experience. But without a dowry, Aruna has no expectation of a match for herself. Then again, as people go about planning their lives, sometimes fate is making other arrangements.

Story-Wallah

Story-Wallah
Author: Shyam Selvadurai
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2005
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780618576807

"Writers of South Asian descent have been garnering more and more success, acclaim, and attention. Story-Wallah gathers the finest South Asian voices in fiction for the first time in a single volume." "In this book, some of the world's best fiction writers hawk their wares from different parts of the South Asian diaspora - Sri Lanka, India, the United States, Great Britain, Guyana, Malaysia, Trinidad, Fiji - creating a virtual map of the world with their tales. These stories explore universal themes of identity, culture, and home, and Story-Wallah includes a rich array of experiences: a honeymoon in Sri Lanka, the trials of a Bangladeshi refugee in England, life on a sugar plantation in Trinidad, the attempts of an Indian family to arrange a marriage for their rebellious daughter."--Book jacket.

Teak-Wallah

Teak-Wallah
Author: Reginald Campbell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1951
Genre: Thailand
ISBN:

The Deoliwallahs

The Deoliwallahs
Author: Joy Ma
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2020-01-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1529048869

Humanly compelling, beautifully told ... brings to light a forgotten chapter of Indian history, one we need to remember in these troubled times' PRATAP BHANU MEHTA '[Joy Ma and Dilip D'Souza] have seamlessly woven together historical facts with personal stories about how the Chinese- Indians lost the country of their birth' YIN MARSH The untold account of the internment of 3,000 Chinese-Indians after the 1962 Sino-Indian War. Just after the Sino-Indian War of 1962, about 3,000 Chinese-Indians were sent to languish in a disused World War II POW camp in Deoli, Rajasthan, marking the beginning of a painful five-year-long internment without resolution. At a time of war with China, these ‘Chinese-looking’ people had fallen prey to government suspicion and paranoia which soon seeped into the public consciousness. This is a page of Indian history that comes wrapped in prejudice and fear, and is today largely forgotten. But over five decades on, survivors of the internment are finally starting to tell their stories. As several Indian communities are once again faced with discrimination, The Deoliwallahs records these untold stories through extensive interviews with seven survivors of the Deoli internment. Through these accounts, the book recovers a crucial chapter in our history, also documenting for the first time how the Chinese came to be in India, how they made this country their home and became a significant community, until the war of 1962 brought on a terrible incarceration, displacement and tragedy.

Funny Boy

Funny Boy
Author: Shyam Selvadurai
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-01-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1551997193

In this remarkable debut novel, a boy’s bittersweet passage to maturity and sexual awakening is set against escalating political tensions in Sri Lanka, during the seven years leading up to the 1983 riots. Arjie Chelvaratnam is a Tamil boy growing up in an extended family in Colombo. It is through his eyes that the story unfolds and we meet a delightful, sometimes eccentric cast of characters. Arjie’s journey from the luminous simplicity of childhood days into the more intricately shaded world of adults – with its secrets, its injustices, and its capacity for violence – is a memorable one, as time and time again the true longings of the human heart are held against the way things are.

India’s Middle Class

India’s Middle Class
Author: Christiane Brosius
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2012-06-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136704841

This book is one of the first ethnographic studies to examine the complexities of lifestyles of the the upwardly mobile middle classes in India in the new millennium. It reveals an original theory on cosmopolitan Indianness and urbanisation in the age of globalisation.

Mrs Ali's Road To Happiness

Mrs Ali's Road To Happiness
Author: Farahad Zama
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2012-05-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0748116524

Mrs Ali's much loved home is suddenly under threat - a road widening scheme threatens to destroy both it and the family business, the Marriage Bureau for Rich People. Meanwhile, Mrs Ali's niece, Pari, a young Muslim widow, adopts a destitute Hindu boy, and this unorthodox arrangement offends both Muslim and Hindu in the sleepy eastern Indian town of Vizag. The Ali family are plunged into crisis, threated by police action, social boycott and excommunication. There is one plan that might just keep Pari and her son together, and the home Mr and Mrs Ali have shared for many years intact, but it's a desperate gamble. Do they risk everything for a small chance of success? But can they afford not to?

99 Nights in Logar

99 Nights in Logar
Author: Jamil Jan Kochai
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525559205

“Funny, razor-sharp, and full of juicy tales that feel urgent and illicit . . . the author has created a singular, resonant voice, an American teenager raised by Old World Afghan storytellers.” —New York Times Book Review “More than well crafted; it’s phenomenal. . . . Kochai’s book has a big heart.” —The Guardian A dog on the loose. A boy yearning to connect to his family's roots. A country in the midst of great change. And a vibrant exploration of the power of stories--the ones we tell each other and the ones we find ourselves in. Twelve-year-old Marwand's memories from his previous visit to Afghanistan six years ago center on his contentious relationship with Budabash, the terrifying but beloved dog who guards his extended family's compound in the rural village of Logar. But eager for an ally in this place that is meant to be "home," Marwand misreads his reunion with the dog and approaches Budabash the way he would any pet on his American suburban block--and the results are disastrous: Marwand loses a finger, and Budabash escapes into the night. Marwand is not chastened and doubles down on his desire to fit in here. He must get the dog back, and the resulting search is a gripping and vivid adventure story, a lyrical, funny, and surprisingly tender coming-of-age journey across contemporary Afghanistan that blends the bravado and vulnerability of a boy's teenage years with an homage to familial oral tradition and calls to mind One Thousand and One Nights yet speaks with a voice all its own.

Homeless Bird

Homeless Bird
Author: Gloria Whelan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0061975826

The National Book Award-winning novel about one remarkable young woman who dares to defy fate, perfect for readers who enjoyed A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park or Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. Like many girls her age in India, thirteen-year-old Koly faces her arranged marriage with hope and courage. But Koly's story takes a terrible turn when in the wake of the ceremony, she discovers she's been horribly misled—her life has been sold for a dowry. Can she forge her own future, even in the face of time-worn tradition? Perfect for schools and classrooms, this universally acclaimed, bestselling, and award-winning novel by master of historical fiction Gloria Whelan is a gripping tale of hope that will transport readers of all ages.