Ode to Lata

Ode to Lata
Author: Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla
Publisher:
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2002
Genre: Bisexuality
ISBN:

Now his mother's messages ramble on his answering machine when he wants no one but his one obsession, Richard, to call. Passionate and unflinchingly honest in its narrative, Ode to Lata scavenges the depths of one man's misguided search for love in a world of emotionally-void encounters and tangled memories. All the while, Ali's story is intertwined with the unraveling of his parents' own doomed relationship and the film music of Bollywood's eminent singer Lata Mangeshkar (Diva of Indian film music and the namesake of the book's title).

The Two Krishnas

The Two Krishnas
Author: Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla
Publisher:
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781936833009

"Pooja Kapoor, a betrayed wife and mother, is forced to question her beliefs and marriage when she discovers that her husband, Rahul, has fallen in love with Atif, a young Muslim man. Bereft and desperate for divine intervention, she is compelled to confront painful truths about the past, the duality in God and husband, and the secrets that threaten to destroy everything in their wake."--P. [2] of cover.

On Stage with Lata

On Stage with Lata
Author: Mohan Deora
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-02-10
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9352643178

INTRODUCTION BY LATA MANGESHKAR Lata Mangeshkar's life and career are widely known, and yet there is an aspect that remains largely unrecorded: her life on the international stage. Beyond the confines of a recording booth, or as the voice of generations of actresses, she was an accomplished and magnetic performer on stage. She attracted vast audiences of Indian origin who have made their home in many countries, including the US and Canada. Mangeshkar transformed how the Indian film music concert was perceived in the West by refusing to be part of the low-key song-and-dance performances that were held earlier in community halls, schools and colleges. She insisted that she and her colleagues would sing only in mainstream auditoriums - this was an unheard-of demand because Indian film artistes had never performed on those stages at that time. In ON STAGE WITH LATA, Mohan Deora - co-promoter and co-organizer of Lata Mangeshkar's international tours from 1975 to 1998 - allows us to journey with her and the top male playback singers, including Mukesh (who tragically died during a Detroit tour), Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar. Deora and Shah write about the participation of big-name stars including Amitabh Bachchan and Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman and Farida Jalal. Mangeshkar is described here in her interactions with musicians, colleagues and friends as she meticulously prepared to sing on stage. The tours led to planning and glitches, camaraderie and tension, and anecdotes galore. They also provided the authors with a unique opportunity to observe the clarity of thought with which Lata Mangeshkar approached her work, and to see a great artiste at the height of her powers. A fine eye for detail makes the book a delight to read as Mohan Deora and Rachana Shah record an important slice of India's cinematic and cultural history.

On Balance

On Balance
Author: Leila Seth
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780143101390

A Delightful Read The Hindu The First Woman Chief Justice Of A High Court In India, The First Woman Judge Of The Delhi High Court, The First Woman To Top The Bar Examinations In London: Leila Seth Has Led A Full Life. In This Autobiography, Leila Talks About Its Joyous As Well As Its Difficult Moments. Figuring Prominently Are Her Early Years Of Homelessness And Struggle, Her Straying Into Law While In England With Her Husband Premo, And Later Practising In Patna, Calcutta And Delhi; And Her Happy Marriage Of Over Fifty Years, Including The Experience Of Bringing Up Three Remarkable Children: Writer Vikram, Zen Buddhist Dharmacharya Shantum And Film-Maker Aradhana. Intertwining Family Life With Professional, Leila Movingly Describes The Years After Her Father S Premature Death When As Children They Were Obliged To Live With Friends. There Are Also Delightful Vignettes: Premo And Her Turning An Old Mansion Into A Splendid Home In Patna, Vikram S Writing Of The Novel A Suitable Boy, Shantum S Ordination As A Buddhist Teacher By Thich Nhat Hanh And Aradhana S Marriage To Peter, An Austrian Diplomat, And Work As Art Director On Films Like Earth And Water. Intimate, Intricate, Charming And Often Amusing, On Balance Presents A Rich And Heart-Warming Portrait Of An Exceptional Woman, Her Family And Her Times.

A Country for Dying

A Country for Dying
Author: Abdellah Taïa
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1609809912

An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature" WINNER OF THE 2021 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE Paris, Summer 2010. Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona. Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira. Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future."

Hidden Treasure

Hidden Treasure
Author: Elly MacKay
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0762463023

A stunning story about a girl who notices all the treasures around her. From award-winning author-illustrator Elly MacKay comes a story exploring the little treasures we find in everyday places. When a young treasure hunter goes to the beach for a day of playing in the surf, she dives deep under the waves to find treasures of all kinds. Some treasures have stories to tell and others are too precious to keep. It seems treasure is everywhere, but nothing could make her feel more like a queen than a perfect day at the beach with her grandfather and furry best friend.

Dilip Kumar

Dilip Kumar
Author: Dilip Kumar
Publisher: Hay House, Inc
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2014-07-28
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9381398968

An authentic, heartfelt and compelling narrative – straight from the horse’s mouth – that reveals for the first time numerous unknown aspects of the life and times of one of the greatest legends of all time who stands out as a symbol of secular India. Dilip Kumar (born as Yousuf Khan), who began as a diffident novice in Hindi cinema in the early 1940s, went on to attain the pinnacle of stardom within a short time. He came up with spellbinding performances in one hit film after another – in his almost six-decade-long career – on the basis of his innovative capability, determination, hard work and never-say-die attitude. In this unique volume, Dilip Kumar traces his journey right from his birth to the present. In the process, he candidly recounts his interactions and relationships with a wide variety of people not only from his family and the film fraternity but also from other walks of life, including politicians. While seeking to set the record straight, as he feels that a lot of what has been written about him so far is ‘full of distortions and misinformation’, he narrates, in graphic detail, how he got married to Saira Banu, which reads like a fairy tale! Dilip Kumar relates, matter-of-factly, the event that changed his life: his meeting with Devika Rani, the boss of Bombay Talkies, when she offered him an acting job. His first film was Jwar Bhata (1944). He details how he had to learn everything from scratch and how he had to develop his own distinct histrionics and style, which would set him apart from his contemporaries. After that, he soon soared to great heights with movies such as Jugnu, Shaheed, Mela, Andaz, Deedar, Daag and Devdas. In these movies he played the tragedian with such intensity that his psyche was adversely affected. He consulted a British psychiatrist, who advised him to switch over to comedy. The result was spectacular performances in laugh riots such as Azaad and Kohinoor, apart from a scintillating portrayal as a gritty tonga driver in Naya Daur. After a five-year break he started his ‘second innings’ with Kranti (1981), after which he appeared in a series of hits such as Vidhaata, Shakti, Mashaal, Karma, Saudagar and Qila.

Thankful

Thankful
Author: Elaine Vickers
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2021-09-07
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1534477357

Stunning, diorama illustrations bring to life this “wonderfully evocative” (BookPage) lullaby of a picture book about celebrating everyday things that make life wonderful. I am thankful for a home where I am safe and warm. Thankful for parents who read me stories and comb my hair gently, gently. Who whisper the same poem every night when they tuck me in. When the first snow falls, a little girl writes down the things she’s thankful for on strips of paper and links them together. As one idea leads to another, her chain grows longer. There’s so much good in her life: a friend, things that are warm, things that are cold, color, things that can be fixed. This beautiful story is a much-needed reminder to observe and honor life’s small joys.

Heart on Pluto

Heart on Pluto
Author: Karl Jones
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 19
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 0593096304

Love is everywhere, even in the fartherst reaches of the Solar System. On NASA's first-ever mission to Pluto, the New Horizons satellite discovers that even when you're far from home, you are loved. New Horizons was the first NASA satellite to visit and take close-up images of Pluto. And though the journey was long and challenging, New Horizons discovered a message of love in the heart-shaped nitrogren ice lake on Pluto's surface.

The End of the Poem

The End of the Poem
Author: Giorgio Agamben
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 1999
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0804730229

This book, by one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking--nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante. The author presents "literature" as a set of formal or linguistic genres that discuss or develop theological issues at a certain distance from the discourse of theology. This distance begins to appear in Virgil and Ovid, but it becomes decisive in Dante and in his decision to write in the vernacular. His vernacular Italian reaches back through classical allusion to the Latin that was in his day the language of theology, but it does so with a difference. It is no accident that in the Commedia Virgil is Dante's guide. The book opens with a discussion of just how Dante's poem is a "comedy," and it concludes with a discussion of the "ends of poetry" in a variety of senses: enjambment at the ends of lines, the concluding lines of poems, and the end of poetry as a mode of writing this sort of literature. Of course, to have poetry "end" does not mean that people stop writing it, but that literature passes into a period in which it is concerned with its own ending, with its own bounds and limits, historical and otherwise. Though most of the essays make specific reference to various authors of the Italian literary tradition (including Dante, Polifilo, Pascoli, Delfini, and Caproni), they transcend the confines of Italian literature and engage several other literary and philosophical authors (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Boethius, the Provençal poets, Mallarmé, and Hölderlin, among others).