Books to read: How Gujarat 2002 changed India forever

New fiction and non-fiction you must read, from a memoir on the 2002 Gujarat violence that took the life of thousands, to a new novel by the author of Fight Club

New fiction and non-fiction you must read (Source: Amazon.in, Speaking Tiger Books)

(Source: Amazon.in)

Missy (Rs 699, Penguin) by Raghav Rao is the story of a 17-year-old girl who has grown up in a Madras convent, an orphan, and dreams of a life beyond what her peers are destined: one of nunnery and domestic service. One night, she escapes the convent with a man she loves and reemerges decades later in America under a new name — Missy. She is now a business owner, a mother of two, the epitome of the American Dream. But the arrival of a doctor upsets this idyllic life, threatening the solitude she has constructed by forgetting the past.

Lucky Ones

Lucky Ones (Rs 699, Westland) by Zara Chowdhary is a memoir about the 2002 Gujarat violence that claimed the lives of thousands, a majority of whom were Muslim, after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire. Told through the eyes of a young Muslim teenager who was supposed to take her board exam but ends up caged at home, watching a savage violence unfold across Ahmedabad, it is quiet yet fiery, determined to not let the perpetrators flee into the pages of history. Also part of the story are Chowdhary’s love for Indian Muslim textile traditions and the insights of her sister as they look back on a nation once known for its secular credentials.

(Source: Simon and Schuster)

Not Forever, But For Now (Rs 799, Simon and Schuster) by Chuck Palahniuk is in the vein of what the Fight Club author has always been known for — sexual depravity, male angst, lots and lots of violence. It’s a story about two young boys who belong to a family of murderers responsible for many disasters in history. They are being nudged to join the family business but may not quite be up to the task, and are battling demons of their own — with tutors who like to mutilate sex dolls, parents who disappear without explanation and have drug addictions, and convicts and other threats who keep showing up to the door at unmaintainable frequency.

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(Source: Amazon.in)

Madwoman (Rs 499, HarperCollins) by Chelsea Bieker is about a letter that rips through a life. Clove is a young woman, mother of two, married to a finance man, living the life possible through credit cards, small talk and organic grocery. Then, one day, she gets a letter from her mother, someone she abandoned to prison decades ago after she was convicted of murdering her father, asking to help in her exoneration because she was one of the only eyewitnesses of what really happened. She recoils, feeling her former life of abuse and neglect crashing down around the life she has spent years building into a porcelain palace.

Tripping Down the Ganga

Tripping Down the Ganga (Rs 799, Speaking Tiger) by Siddharth Kapila is an interrogation of faith by a former believer. Having grown up visiting sites along river Ganga with his devout mother, the author decided, in 2015, to travel its length from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, meeting sadhus, pilgrims, skeptics and kawariyas along the way. The journey took seven years and allowed him to experience Hinduism as it is by millions of believers every day, away from the politics and economics that define it on the national stage.

Bihar SIR: Voter list shrinks by 6% after 3-month revision, nearly 50 lakh names dropped

Political Pulse34 min ago

The Election Commission has removed 50 lakh names from Bihar's voter list, resulting in a 6% decrease in the total number of electors. The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, which was criticized for resembling a citizenship check, resulted in 3.5 lakh deletions and 21 lakh additions.

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