Reference Books - Indian Writers

1. Rabindra Nath Tagore

RAVINDRA NATH TAGORE (1861- 1941) Rabindra Nath Tagore was an Indian poet, short story writer, song composer, playwright, essayist and painter. He was born at Jorasanki in Calcutta. He was sent to several schools of Calcutta but he had not interested in schools. He was sent to England in 1878. He studied at the University of London under Professor Henry Marley. He returned to India in 1881. He learnt Bangla, Sanskrit, English, Science and Music at home. He was much influenced by Kalidas, Dante and Shakespeare. He was highly influenced in introducing Indian Culture to the west and vice versa, and he is generally regarded as the outstanding creative artist of early 20th century India. In 1913, he became the first non European to receive the Nobel Prize for literature. In 1901, he founded an experimental school in rural west Bengal at ‘Shantiniketan’ where he sought to blend the best in the Indian and western traditions. He settled permanently at the school which became Visva Bharti University in 1921. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian Art with contextual modernism. His novels, stories, dance-drama and essays spoke to topics political and personal. ‘Gitanjali’, ‘Gora’, ‘The Home and the World’ are his best known works and his verse short stories and novels were acclaimed for their lyricism, colloquialism, naturalism and unnatural contemplation. His compositions were chosen by two nations as national anthems India’s ‘Jana Gana Mana’ and Bangladesh’s ‘Amar Sonar Bangla’. The Sri Lankan National anthem was inspired by his work. He got the Nobel Prize for his work ‘Gitanjali’ a collection of short poems. Mahatama Gandhi called him ‘Gurudev’. George V, the British king gave him the title of knighthood which he gave up in 1919 in protest against the ‘Jallianwala Bagh’ massacre.

Political views of Ravindra Nath Tagore were somehow at odds with that of Mahatma Gandhi, though the two shared a good relation and a moderate friendship. However, Tagore denounce the Swadeshi Movement in his essay ‘The Cult of the Charka’ in 1925. He continued to support Indian nationalist movement in his own non-sentimental and visionary way. He wrote songs and poems motivating the Indian Independence movement.

Work: Novels: Gura, The Broken Notes, The Home and the World Plays: The Geneus of Valmiki, The Sacrifice, The Post office Short Stories: The Home Coming, The Kabuliwallah, My Reminiscences in his autobiography Other Works: Natir Puja, The Fugitive, Red Oleanders, The Mother’s Prayer, The Gardener, The Child, Golden Boat, Sandhya Sangeet, Prabhat Sangeet, The Ferry, The Crescent Moon

2. Mulk Raj Anand

Mulk Raj Anand: He was an Indian English writer. He was born in Peshawar, British India. He studied at Khalsa College Amritsar and Cambridge University. Anand is well known for his depiction of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. He is admired for his novels and short stories, which have acquired the status of being classical works of modern Indian English literature, noted for their perceptive insight into the lives of the oppressed and their analysis of impoverishment, exploitation and misfortune. His first main novel ‘Untouchable’ was a chilling expose of the day to day life of a member of India’s untouchable caste. It is the story of a single day in the life of Bakha, a toilet cleaner, who accidentally bumps into a member of a higher caste. This simple book was widely acclaimed and Anand won the reputation of being India’s Charles Dickens. The Introduction of this book was written by his friend, E M Forster, whom he met while working on T S Eliot’s magazine ‘Criterion’. Forster writes “Avoiding rhetoric and circumlocution, it has gone straight to the heart of its subject and purified it.

Anand was associated with the Progressive Writers’ movement of India and was one of the moving spirits behind the drafting of its first manifesto. Equally noteworthy was his passion for the arts whose best expression was the issues of ‘Marg’ which he founded and edited for a quarter century. Even, after he withdrew from its editorship, it continued to be the leading art journal of India.

Family tragedy flushed Anand’s career as a writer. One of his aunts committed suicide after being excommunicated by her family for sharing a meal with a Muslim woman. This violent, explicit and personal consequence of Indian’s uncompromising caste system led Anand to write his first prose essay. His first main novel ‘Untouchable’ followed shortly after and is considered a seminal work for its inclusion of Punjabi and Hindustani idioms transliterated into English. A character study of a member of India’s untouchable caste, Untouchable earned Anand the moniker “India’s Charles Dickens.”

He worked for BBC as a scriptwriter during world war-II. There he became a friend of George Orwell. Orwell penned a favourable of Anand’s novel ‘The Sword and the Sickle’. After returning from England, he founded a literary magazine ‘Mang’ and taught in several Universities. He was greatly influenced by Premchand and Tagore. He won the Sahitya Akedmi Award in 1971. He was a recipient of the civilian honour of the ‘Padma Bhushan’.

Anand received the International Peace Prize from the World Peace Council and the Leverhulme Fellowship, among other awards and accolades. Mulk Raj Anand is remembered for his seventy-five-years-long literary career that mirrors the trajectory of India’s search for a just, equitable, and progressive society.

Works: Untouchable – 1935, Coolie – 1936, Two Leaves and a Bud – 1937, The Village – 1939, Across the Black Waters – 1939, The Sword and the Sickle – 1942, The Big Heart – 1945, The Last Child – 1934, The Private Life of an Indian Prince – 1953, The Road – 1961, The Golden Breath – 1933, Introduction to Indian Art – 1956, Kama Kala – 1958, Homage to Khajuraho, Seven Summer – 1951, Morning Face – 1968, Conversations in Bloomsbury – 1981

3. R.K. Narayan

R K NARAYANA: (1906 – 2001) Rasipuram Krishnaswami Iyer Narayan was a famous Indian writer. He was born in Madras, British India in a Brahman family. After completing his schooling in Madras, he got his Bachelor Degree from Maharaja College of Mysore.

He is considered as one of the leading figure of early Indian literature in English. He is the one who made India accessible to the people a window to peep into Indian culture and sensibilities. His writing style is often compared to that of the great American author William Faulkner. Although Narayan’s contribution to the Indian literature is beyond description and the way he grabbed foreign audience’s attention for Indian literature is commendable too but he will always be remembered for the invention of “Malgudi “a semi-urban fictional town in Mysore. This fictional town of Malgudi was first introduced in “Swami and Friends “. His work “The Guide “won the Shitya Akademi Award and adapted for film. His short stories have been compared with those of Guyde Maupassant because of his ability to compress a narrative. Narayan also worked for a Madras based paper called “The Justice “as a reporter. This paper was dedicated to the rights of non Brahmins.

Narayan’s mentor and friend Graham Greene helped him to get publishers in starting years of his literary career. His trilogy of ‘Swami and Friends’ ‘The Bachelor of Arts’ and “The English Teacher “ is very famous. He is also called the “South Indian E M Forster “.

American writer John Updike noticed Narayan’s work and compared Narayan to Charles Dickens. Updike called him a writer of a vanishing breed – the writer as a citizen ; one who identifies completely with his subjects and with a belief in the significance of the humanity.

In his career, Narayan received several awards and honours including Sahitya Akedmi Award in 1958 for The Guide. He received the ‘ Padma Vibhushan ‘ and ‘ Padma Bhushan ‘. India’s third and second highest civilian awards. He was also nominated for Noble Prize in literature several times. He was nominated to the ‘ Rajya Sabha ‘ the upper house of the Indian Parliament. He died in 2001 in Chennai, Tamilnadu.

Works: Novels: Swami and Friends – 1935, The Bachelor of Arts – 1937, The Dark Room – 1938, The English Teacher – 1945, Mr.Sampath -1948, The Financial Expert -1952, Waiting for Mahatama -1955, The Guide – 1958, The Man Eater of Malgudi- 1961, The Vendor of Sweets – 1967, The Painter of Signs – 1977, A Tiger for Malgudi – 1983, Talkative Man – 1986, The World of Nagraj – 1990, Grandmother’s Tale – 1992 Non- Fiction: Next Sunday – 1960, My Dateless Diary – 1960, My Days – 1974, Reluctant Guru – 1974, The Emerald Route – 1980, A Writer’s Nightmare – 1988, A Story Teller’s World – 1989, The writerly Life – 2001 Mythology: Gods, Demons and Others – 1964, The Ramayana – 1973, The Mahabharata – 1978 Short Story Collections: Malgudi Days – 1942, An Astrologer’s Days – 1947, A lawleg Road and Other Stories – 1956, A Horse and Two Goats – 1970, Under the Banyan Tree and Other Stories – 1985

4. Sarojini Naidu

SAROJINI NAIDU (1879 – 1949) Sarojini Naidu was in Indian independence activist and poet. She was born in Hyderabad in a Bengali Hindu family. She was educated in Chennai, London and Cambridge.

Naidu is known as ‘The Nightingale of India’. She was the first Indian woman president of the Indian National Congress. She was the first woman Governor of an Indian state after Independence. She was proficient in multiple languages including English, Bengali, Urdu, Telugu and Persian. She was noted poet. Her collection of poems earned her literary acclaim. In 1905, she published her first book, a collection of poems under the title of ‘Golden Threshold’. A contemporary poet Bappaditya Bandopadhyay quoted ‘Sarojini Naidu inspired the Indian renaissance movement and had a mission to improve the life of Indian women’. Her poetry includes children’s poems, nature poems, patriotic poems and poems of love and death. She also wrote poetry in praise of Muslim figure like Imam Hussain.

Some of other literary works include The Bird of Time: Songs of Life, Death and the Spring, The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring, Muhammad Jinnah: An Ambassador of Unity, The Sceptred Flute: Songs of India, Allahabad: Kitabistan, The Indian Weavers, Feast of Youth, The Magic Tree and The Wizard Mask.Sarojini Naidu was imprisoned multiple times for her long involvement in the nationalist cause as she always marched in Mahatma Gandhi’s footsteps.Sarojini Naidu suffered a heart attack and died on March 2, 1949 at Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.

Naidu reflects her poetic sensibility while painting the character of woman as a bride, as a girl and as a queen of palace in Hyderabad. She is a singer of woman’s pains. Her different poems display the different moods and notes of her sensibility as a woman. Her poetry may be classified thematically into three main groups: poems of personal experience, poems of Indian life and nature poems. Love is the major area with which the poet is concerned with a majority of the poems based on personal experience.

She was an active participant in the struggle for India’s freedom and as one of the leaders of women’s liberation. She has depicted her feminine sensibility in her occasional pieces like “Suttee” or “The Purdah Nashin”. She has attached the unjust social customs with romantic notes that idealize her real self as a woman. As a romantic lover of nature, her nature poems reflect an aesthetic quest for passion for beauty. She loves spring as the basic faith in the joy of life. It is spring which “hastens the seeds of all beauty to birth”, that blossoms in “the roots of delight in the heart of the earth” (The Joy of The Spring Time,). Notably enough, spring is carrier of joy and loneliness, but realizes the sense of loss to a widow in “Vasant Panchami”

Works: The Golden Threshold –1905, The Bird of Time : Songs of life, Death and the Spring – 1912, The Broken Wings–1917, Muhammad Jinnah : An Ambassador of Unity – 1919, The Sceptred Flute: Songs of India – 1943, The Feather of theDawn – 1961, The Indian Weavers – 1971, Palanquin Bearers

Palanquin Bearers

Lightly, O lightly we bear her along, She sways like a flower in the wind of our song; She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream, She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream. Gaily, O gaily we glide and we sing, We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

Softly, O softly we bear her along She hangs like a star in the dew of our song; She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide, She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride. Lightly, O lightly we glide and we sing, We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

5. Toru Dutt

TORU DUTT (1856 – 1877):-Toru Dutt was an Indian poetess. She was born in Calcutta. She came from a family where education, art and linguistics were encouraged. Her father was a linguist himself who published some poems in his life time.

Toru Dutt was well versed in Bengali, French and English. She composed the poem ‘Our Casuarina Tree’ which became a symbol of her childhood memories. She personified the Casuarina Tree with the essence of her dead siblings thus hoping to preserve their memories through her poem. Her book ‘ A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields’ was a compilation of translated French poems that she had been working on with her sister, along with personal observations and anecdotes. She was highly influenced by French Romanticism, French language and literature. ‘Our Casuarina Tree is a splendid Keatsian poem.

She is called the Keats of the Indo-English literature as she died at a very young age of consumption like him and for both of them the end came slow and sad. Her contribution to literature is never ending. Critics describe her as the fragile blossom that withered so fast. The well-known poet and novelist Andre Theuriet showered much praise on ‘A Sheaf Gleaned in French Field’. Her last poem Amon Pere is praised worldwide and is considered faultless. She was proud of her Indian tradition. She was proud of India s cultural heritage, folklores, myths and legends, and its rich classical literature. Though English by education, she was an Indian through and through. E.J. Thompson wrote about her, Toru Dutt remains one of the most astonishing woman that ever lived fiery and unconquerable of soul. These poems are sufficient to place Toru Dutt in the small class of women who have written English verse that can stand.

Though Toru Dutt loved English and French and had embraced Christianity with other members of her family, sub-consciously she felt drawn towards her country and its rich heritage. Her European education did not have the adverse effect of alienating her from her roots on the other hand she returned to it with fresh insights. While Gosse sees her ‘A Sheaf Gleaned In French Fields’ as imperfect though interesting is his prediction that her English poems will be ultimately found to constitute Toru’s chief legacy of posterity has come true. The ballads The Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hidustan form the last and most matured of her countings. The ballads are essentially Indian in genre and outlook and are the poetical attempts to reveal her return to her land. In them are enshrined what she had learnt of her country from books and from her people. She did not anglicise her ideas but kept close to the ethical values of the original tales while her understanding of modern life and dedication to craft has helped her to make these ideas of yore relevant to poterity.

Works: Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan – 1882, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields – 1876, Bianca: The Young Spanish Maiden, Our Casuarina Tree – 1881

6. Nissim Ezekiel

NISSIM EZEKIEL: (1924-2004)- Nissim Ezekiel was an Indian Jewish poet play wright and critic .He was Born in Bombay Maharashtra . His father was a professor and his mother was principal of her own school .He belongs to Mumbai’s Marathi speaking Jewish community known as the Bene Israel.

He is acclaimed as the father of post- independence Indian English verse. He is a trend-setter, who started modernity in Indian English poetry. A group of contemporary IndianEnglish poets follow the simple, conversational style of Ezekiel. Not only in the style but also in the selection of themes one finds the influence of Ezekiel in the contemporary Indian English poets. He showed a much greater tilt towards literature.

As a Man of letters Nissim Ezekiel is a ‘Protean Figure’. His achievements as a poet and playwright are considerable. His versatile genius can be found in his poetry, plays, criticism, Journalism and translation. He is a widely travelled man and delivered lecture in U.S.A, Australia and England as well as given poetry reading in those countries. He worked as a professor and Head of the Department of English at the Mumbai University.

Nissim Ezekiel is also known as the Psychologist and poet of the mind. He shows a marked tendency to probe the human mind, and his poems reveal not only the conscious but also the sub–conscious thoughts and conflicts of human beings, and more particularly, his own thoughts and conflicts. Indeed, his primary concern is with man and man’s mind. The poem entitled ‘Case, Study’ is one of his several attempts at an exploration of his own mind. Here he portrays his own personality and his mind, though he appears here in disguise, making it seems that he is portraying somebody else. Self-exploration is also very much in evidence in the poem entitled ‘London’. Here the protagonist is searching and probing and the innermost recesses of his self. His personal quest goes on relentlessly. ‘Island’ is another of Ezekiel’s poem where we find the same search for the self-leading to a resigned acceptance of his environment. Indeed, Ezekiel may be described as an endless explorer of the labyrinths of the mind. Satyanarain Singh observes that Ezekiel has been called “a pilgrim with a sense of commitment” whose poetry is “a metaphoric journey to the heart of Existence.”

Nissim Ezekiel’s poems are also the embodiments of some views about metaphysics, ethics and principles of life and so a study of these poems can enable one to arrive at what Ezekiel thinks on metaphysical, ethical and such other questions. So far as Ezekiel’s views of man’s relationship with the Supreme Being and man’s place in the Universe are concerned, he seems to believe that a man can know about the Supreme Being only what the Supreme Being reveals to him, and what that the reality is unfathomable.

Ezekiel was an editor of several Journals encouraging writing poetry, plays and criticism. He also asked many writers for translation, affecting the theory and practice for the young poets. He was influenced by writers like Rilke and W.B. Yeats. He treated poetry, as ‘the record of the mind’s growth’. His poetic works indicates his growth as a poet-critic and shows his personal importance.

When he was an M.A student, he topped the University of Bombay in M.A English literature and won the R.K. Lagu Prize for it. He was the secretary of the Indian P.E.N from 1963 to 1966 and from 1968 to 1972. He also edited two P.E.N Conference Volumes. He conducted course in art appreciation for J.J. school of Art and some other institutions during 1969 -72. In 1973, he conducted a series of ten programmed in art appreciation for Bombay Television. In November 1974 he went for a tour of the United States on an invitation from the U. S. Government.

He won SahityaAcademi Award in 1983 for his poetry collection “Latter Day Psalms “. Ezekiel enriched and established Indian English literature moving it beyond purely spiritual and orientalist themes. His poem the “Night of the Scorpion” is used as study material in India and Colombian schools. His poems are used in NCERT and ICSE English textbook. He is often considered the father of Morden Indian English poetry by many critics He was honoured with the Padamshri Award in 1988.

Works: Time to Change – 1952, Sixty Poem – 1953, The Discovery of India – 1956 , The Third – 1959, The Unfinished Man – 1960, The Exact Name – 1960, Snakeskin and Others Poem – 1974 (It is a translation of the Marathi poet Indira Sant), Hymns In Darkness – 1976, Latter – Day Psalms – 1982, Collected Poems – 1989, The Three Plays – 1969 (Play), Do Not Call It Suicide- 1993 (Play), Naipaul’s Indian and Mine – 1992 (An Essay)

Poems: The couple, A Time To Change, For Elkana, Soap , In the Country Cot, Night of the Scorpion , Good Bye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S., Background , Casually , Poet Lover and Bird Watcher , Enterprise, Island , The Professor, Marriage, The Paradise Flycatcher , Entertainment

NIGHT OF THE SCORPION

I remember the night my mother was stung by a scorpion. Ten hours of steady rain had driven him to crawl beneath a sack of rice.

Parting with his poison - flash of diabolic tail in the dark room - he risked the rain again.

The peasants came like swarms of flies and buzzed the name of God a hundred times to paralyse the Evil One.

With candles and with lanterns throwing giant scorpion shadows on the mud-baked walls they searched for him: he was not found. They clicked their tongues. With every movement that the scorpion made his poison moved in Mother’s blood, they said.

May he sit still, they said May the sins of your previous birth be burned away tonight, they said. May your suffering decrease the misfortunes of your next birth, they said. May the sum of all evil balanced in this unreal world

against the sum of good become diminished by your pain.

May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of ambition, they said, and they sat around on the floor with my mother in the centre, the peace of understanding on each face. More candles, more lanterns, more neighbours, more insects, and the endless rain. My mother twisted through and through, groaning on a mat.

My father, sceptic, rationalist, trying every curse and blessing, powder, mixture, herb and hybrid. He even poured a little paraffin upon the bitten toe and put a match to it. I watched the flame feeding on my mother. I watched the holy man perform his rites to tame the poison with an incantation. After twenty hours it lost its sting.

My mother only said Thank God the scorpion picked on me And spared my children.

7. Ruskin Bond

RUSKIN BOND- Ruskin Bond is an Indian writer of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children’s authors. He was born as the son of a British couple when India was under colonial rule, he spent his early childhood in Jamnagar and Shimla.

His childhood was marooned by his parent’s separation and his father’s death. He sought solace in reading and writing and wrote one of his first stories at the age of 16. He then moved to U.K in search of better prospects but returned to India after some years. He wrote short stories and poems for newspapers and magazines. He has written over 500 short stories, essays and novels. His popular novel ‘The Blue Umbrella’ was made into a Hindu film of the same name which was awarded the National Film Award for best children film in 2007. In 1992, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing, for his short stories collection ‘Our Tree Still Grow In Dehra’. He was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ in 1999 for contribution to children’s literature. He now lives with his adopted family near Mussoorie, Uttrakhand.

Works: Children’s Fiction: The Cherry Tree , Ranji’s Wonderful Bat Non-Fiction: A Golf Story : Celebrating 125 Years of the Bangalore Club Other Works: The Room on the Roof – 1956, The Blue Umbrella – 1974, Angry River – 1972, The Eyes Have It – 1953, A Flights of Pigeons – 1978, Time Stops at Shamli – 2018, The Hidden Pool – 1966, Our Tree Still Grow in Dehra – 1991, Delhi is Not Far – 1994, Roads to Mussoorie – 2005, Rain in the Mountains – 2018, Looking for the Rainbow – 2017, The Perfect Murder – 2017

8. Arun Kolatkar

ARUN KOLATKAR (1932 – 2004) Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar was an Indian poet who wrote in English and Marathi. He was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. His father was an officer in education department. He got his early education in Kolhapur.

Arun wrote several poems. His poems found humour in many everyday matters. His first collection of English poetry “Jejuri” won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1977. ‘Jejuri’ is a long poem written in thirty one sections and this is perhaps Kolatkar’s best work. The poem has been considered as ‘the poet’s irreverent Odyssey’ to the temple of Khandoba at Jejuri, a small town in Western Maharashtra. Written in a style which is ironic and humorous the poem has a colloquial flavour which goes well with the level at which life is portrayed. The poem is actually about the spiritual journey of the city bred men to the temple at Jejuri and each of the thirty one sections is a poem in itself and together they make for a pattern of pilgrimage, namely the arrival, the round of visit and the return. ‘The Bus’ is the first poem in the series and describes the arrival of the pilgrim at Jejuri on a rainy down. His Marathi verse collection ‘Bhijki Vahi’ won Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005.

Works: Jejuri – 1976, Kala Ghoda – 2004, Sharpa Sutra – 2004, The Boatride and other poems, Bhikaji Vahi – 2003

9. Anita Desai

ANITA DESAI (Born – 1937) Anita Desai is an Indian novelist. She was born in Mussoorie to a German mother and Bengali father. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English outside the house. Anita’s daughter Kiran Desai is also a writer and she has won Booker Prize.

As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times’. She considers ‘Clear Light of the Day’ her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the same neighbourhood in which she grew up. Booker Prize finalist novel ‘Fasting Feasting’ increased her popularity. Her novel ‘The Zigzag Way’ is set in 20th century Mexico. She now lives in America.

In her novels, children’s books and short stories, Desai focuses on personal struggles and problems of contemporary life that her Indian characters must hold up. She maintains that her primary goal is to discover “the truth that is nine-tenths of the iceberg that lies submerged beneath the one-tenth visible portion we call Reality”. She portrays the cultural and social changes that India has undergone as she focuses on the incredible power of family and society and the relationships between family members, paying close attention to the trials of women suppressed by Indian society.

Desai is praised for her broad understanding on intellectual issues and for her ability to portray her country so vividly with the way the eastern and western cultures have blended there. She has received numerous awards, including the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award for Fire on the Mountain, the first of her novels to be brought to the United States. The story is of a remote, isolated woman and her equally withdrawn great-grand daughter as they are forced together in hills surrounded by violence and fire. In 1983 she was awarded the Guardian Prize for Children’s Fiction for The Village by the Sea, an adventurous fairy tale about a young boy living in a small fishing village in India. She was awarded the Literary Lion Award in 1993, and has also been named Helen Cam Visiting fellow, Ashby fellow, and honorary fellow of the University of Cambridge.

Works: The Zigzag Way – 2004, The Artist of Disappearance – 2001, Fasting Feasting – 1999, Journey to Ithaca – 1995, Diamond Dust and Other Stories – 2000, Baumgartner’s Bombay – 1988, In Custody – 1984, The Village by the Sea – 1982, Clear Light of the Day – 1980, Games at Twilight – 1978, Fire on the Mountain – 1977, Cat on a Houseboat – 1976, Where Shall We Go this Summer? – 1975, The Peacock Garden – 1974, Bye Bye Black Bird – 1971, Voice in the City – 1965, Cry, The Peacock – 1963

In Custody:

This is a novel about a small-town man, Deven, who gets the opportunity to go interview his hero, the great poet Nur, the greatest living Urdu poet. Having always loved Urdu poetry and missed the chance to be an Urdu language professor, he is charmed into going to Delhi the big city. Even though he hesitates at the idea of possibly being exploited by his sharp and selfish friend Murad, the dream of meeting Nur draws him on. So he sets off on a number of adventures on Sundays, the one free day that he should have spent with his wife and son.

What Deven finds at his hero’s house is misery and confusion. Having sunk into a old age, surrounded by fawning sycophants, married to a younger calculating wife who wants to use his glory to win herself fame, Nur is not what he once was. Or perhaps he always was this. Deven, a shrinking and weak man, is somehow drawn to this old poet, wishing to help and protect him even as he cannot defend himself. Perhaps it is the tie of Urdu poetry that he remembers from his treasured times as a child with his father.

10. Shashi Deshpande

SHASHI DESHPANDE- Shashi Deshpande is an Indian writer. She was born in 1938 in Karnataka. Her father was a famous Kannada dramatist and writer. She got education in Mumbai and Bangalore. She studied journalism at the Vidya Bhavan and worked for a couple of months as journalist for the magazine ‘Onlooker’.

She has written four children books, several short stories and novels. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award for the novel ‘That Long Silence’ in 1990 and the ‘Padma Shri’ in 2009. Deshpande creates figures that take her readers through the social strata of urban society, But her interest comes to centre more and more on women of the middle and upper middle classes; well educated women who fight for their own space, for their place in the family and in their society. This setting is the backdrop to her stories, action remains private, even with rape which is, after all private only to a certain degree. In ‘The Dark Holds No Terrors’ she introduce this painful topic that had already been there, as marital rape in one of her early stories ‘The Intrusion’.

The themes and topics, the cultural contexts of her novels seems to reflect Shashi’s own family and its cultural setting. She is one of the eminent novelists of contemporary Indian literature in English.

Works: The Dark Holds No Terrors – 1980, If I Die Today – 1982, Come Up and Be Dead – 1983, Roots and Shadows- 1983, That Long Silence – 1989, The Intrusion and other stories – 1993, A Matter of Time – 1996, The Binding Vine – 2002, Small Remedies – 2000, Moving On – 2004, In the Country of Deceit – 2008, Shadow Play - 2013

Children’s Works: A Summer Adventure, The Hidden Treasure, The Only Witness , The Narayanpur Incident

11. Kamala Das

KAMLA DAS: (1934 – 2009) Kamla Das was an Indian English Poet and leading Malayalam author from Kerala. She is popularly known by her Pen name Madhavi Kutty.She was born in Thrissur Kerala.

She spent her childhood in Kolkata. She grew up in a family of artists, where she felt ignored and unloved. Her mother and uncle were writers.

As a teenager she married an older relative, and the emotional and sexual problems arising that unsatisfying relationship and her young motherhood provided material for her first memoir My Story. Her style and content both departed from 19th century romanticised ideas of love, a choice especially striking for an Indian Hindu women. Das broke with conventions in her personal life. Her open and open treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power and she got hope after freedom, but also marked her as an iconoclast.

She once said “Poetry does not sell in this country (India) “. She was a confessional poet and her poems have been considered at par with those of Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell. In 2009 ‘The Times’ called her “ the mother of modern English Indian Poetry “. She converted to Islam in last years of her life and named herself as Surayya Begum.

She was an iconoclast who has asserted her identity on the firmament of Indian English poetry by her honest and candid poetical lines that breaks to the hypocritical veneer of man –woman relationship in Indian traditional society. Her poetry is a serious break from the former female Indian poets like that of Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, but a celebration of the universal experience of self, love-despair, anguish, failure and disgust against the traditional mode of gender manifestation apprehended through a feminine Indian awareness. Kamala Das may be called the Indian Monroe, just as MarilynMonroe is known as goddess of sex in Hollywood. It is because Kamala Das’s writings titillates and has its leanings on seduction unambiguously look at how she arouses the reading public with an air of exotica as found in her poem ‘Introduction,’

Her poetic works illustrates and explores on the struggle for power and autonomy by the women poets. Her poems have a self-affirming way of life for the female protagonist as an intelligent, self-aware, confident and integrated personality with the aptitude and ability to live life on her own terms. The central idea and action her poetry revolves round an encounter between a seemingly irresponsible female protagonist and the sea in her poem the old play house and other poems. Never before, had any woman in India dared to describe so distinctly about the physicability or longing of a woman as Kamala Das .Her revelation has made the whole Indian society dazed and awesome. It is because of her forceful expression of the problems of women by citing her own sty that she came to be expected as the most daring and controversial poet.

Works: Alphabet of Lust – 1976 (novel), My Story – 1976 (autobiography), A Doll For the Child Prostitute – 1977 (stories), Padamavati the Harlote and other stories – 199

Poems: The Descendants -1967, The Old p Play House And Other Poems -1973, The Strange Time -1977, Collected Poems -1984, Anamalai Poems-1985, Only The Soul Knows How To Singh -1997, My Mother At Sixty -Six 1999, Ya Allah -2001, Tonight, This Savage Rite -1979 (with PritishNandy), Summer in Calcutta -1965, The Sirens – 1964

12. Jayanta Mahapatra

JAYANTA MAHAPATRA (Born – 1928) Jayanta Mahapatra is an Indian poet. He was born in a Christian family in Orisha. He completed his master degree in Physic from Patna University Bihar. He is the first Indian poet to win Sahitya Akademi Award for English poetry. He is the author of such popular poems as ‘Indian Summer’ and ‘Hunger’ which are regarded as classics in modern Indian English literature. He was awarded Padma Shri in 2009. He has also translated from Odia into English simultaneously while he was composing his original poems of seniors as well as young writers of Odisha, of Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

Mahapatra has written several books of poems in Oriya and English. He is also a recipient of the Jacob Glatstein memorial award conferred by Poetry magazine, Chicago. He was also awarded the Allen Tate Poetry Prize for 2009 from The Sewanee Review, Sewanee, USA. He received SAARC literary Award in 2009.

The poetry of Mahapatra describes what he sees around him. They are temples, beaches and the crowded streets of Orissa. His poetic world does not reproduce the incidents that influenced him. His creative mind changes the incidents into poetry. He supplies the aesthetic pleasure as well as the social behaviour of people and the issues which affect them. While dealing with socio-cultural and political issues, he does not sacrifice the artistic quality. Yet, he is more concerned with the survival of man rather than creating a utopian world for the people. His characters are cobbler, hungry street children, slum dwellers, prostitutes and a woman in pain. Like the English Romantics, Mahapatra anchors his poetry in the sights sounds, and experiences of ordinary life and ordinary man. He portrays the people of Orissa and their Hindu religion with all its rituals and beliefs of the ancestors at the same time. He embraced the genre of poetry because of his exploratory nature and beautiful rhyme structure.

He expresses his intimacy with his hometown and its landscape. Though Orissa is endowed with rich natural resources, it becomes necessary for him to examine the poverty scenario and living condition of the people of Orissa. The poet can see the poor families going from door to door, begging for food. Orissa seems to have a large number of destitute who lack either money or material to survive. The poet feels sorry for the sad state of affairs in his state and he indirectly indicts the government’s negligent attitude in resuming the good standards of living condition of the people.

Works: Poetry: Close the Sky Ten by Ten – 1971, Svayamvara and other poems – 1971, A Father’s House – 1976, A Rain of Rites – 1976, Waiting – 1979, The False Start – 1980, Relationship – 1980 Prose: The Green Gardner – 1997 ( short stories ), Door of Paper : Essays and Memoirs – 2006

Relationship

This little book of poetry by Jayanta Mahapatra, which won the 1981 Sahitya Akademi award, is a long poem segmented into 12 parts. The overlaying theme of the poem is loneliness, and an effort to find meanings in relationships. The poems are a curious entangling of crude and finely chiselled images, but both the kinds of images are sharp and powerful. The main imagery is that of Konarka – with the sun, stones, the Mahanadi and myths forming the key metaphors. The images are unexpected, to say the least.

13. Amitav Ghosh

AMITAV GHOSH (Born – 1956) Amitav Ghosh is an Indian writer who has won both Jnanpith Award and Sahitya Akademi Award for his works. He was born in 1956 in a Bengali Hindu family. He grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He studied in Delhi, Oxford and Alexandria. He got first job in Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. He has been a fellow of the centre for studies in social science, Calcutta. Ghosh joined the faculty at Queens College City University of New York, as Distinguished Professor in comparative literature. He has also been a visiting professor at the English Department of Harvard University since 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ in 2007.

Most of his works deals with historical settings, especially in the Indian Ocean periphery. His work ‘The Shadow Lines’ that won him the Sahitya Akademi Award throws light on the phenomenon of communal violence and the way its roots have spread deeply and widely in the collective psyche of the Indian sub-continent. His most recent non-fiction book ‘The Great Derangement : Climate Change and the Unthinkable’ addresses why modern literature has failed to address issues of climate change and how radical transformation due to nature has become unthinkable.

He is finest Indian writer in English who has given Jnanpith Award in 2018. His works ‘The Calcutta Chromosome’ won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 1997 and ‘Sea of Poppies’ was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. He withdrew his novel ‘The Glass Palace’ from consideration for the Commonwealth Writers Prize where it was awarded the best novel in the Eurasian section, citing his objection to the term “Commonwealth” and the unfairness of the English language requirement specified in the rules.

Works: Novels: The Circle of Reason – 1986, The Shadow Lines – 1988, The Calcutta Chromosome – 1995, The Glass Palace – 2000, The Hungry Tide – 2004, Sea of Poppies – 2008, River of Smoke – 201, Flood of Fire – 2015, Gun Island – 2019 Non-Fictional Works: In an Antique Land – 1992, Dancing in Cambodia and at Large in Burma(essays)- 1998, Countdown – 1999, The Imam and the Indian (essays)- 2006, The Great Derangement : Climate Change and the Unthinkable – 2016

The Shadow Lines:

This novel explores the political and economic growth of India through the lives of two families-one Bengali and one English. Opening in 1960s Calcutta, the unnamed 8 years old narrator examines the complex interrelationships of the novel, Tridib, the narrator’s cousin and other members of the two families. Ghosh explores the history and the growth of the city of Calcutta and India from World War-II, through Bloody partition years, the Dhaka and Calcutta riots in 1963 and 1964.

The novel begins in Calcutta and moves to Delhi where the narrator goes to school and ends in London. At the beginning of the novel the 8 years old narrator introduce the two branch of his family, represented by his grandmother, Tha’mma and her sister Mayadevi. Tha’mma, a retired school teacher is strict, practical and no-nonsense, having lived through the gruesome nightmare of the partition of her native Bengal region from India. Her chief ambition is to reunite the entire family, particularly to return her uncle, Jethamoshai from Dhaka.

14. Manju Kapur

MANJU KAPUR (Born – 1948) Manju Kapur is an Indian writer and professor in Delhi University. She was born in Amritsar, Punjab. She graduated from the Miranda House University College for women and took an M.A. at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She earned her M.Phil from Delhi University.

Her first novel ‘Difficult Daughter’ won her the Commonwealth Prize for first novels (Eurasia region ) in 1999 and went on to become a bestseller in India, United State and England. Her other three novels ‘A Married Woman’, ‘Home’ and ‘Custody’ were highly acclaimed and very successful among readers and critics.

Works: Difficult Daughters – 1998, A Married Woman – 2003, Home – 2006, The Immigrant – 2008, Custody – 2011, Shaping the World : Women Writers on Themselves – 2014, Brothers – 2016

15. Arundhati Roy

ARUNDHATI ROY (Born – 1961) Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer and activist. She was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a Keralatic Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father. She spent her childhood in Kerala which she mentions in her autobiographical book ‘The God of Small Things’. The novel is filled with Roy’s childhood memories.

She studied Architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture and worked as a production designer. She has written two screenplays. ‘The God of Small Things’, her first novel won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1997 and has sold over six million copies worldwide. The novel was published in 16 language and 19 countries but caused controversy in India for the description of a love affair between a Syrian Christian and a Hindu untouchable. Set in Ayemenem in Kerala, a rural province in southern India. It is a story of two twins, Estha and Rahel, their reunion after 23 years apart and their shared memories of the events surrounding, the accidental death of their cousin, Sophie Mol in 1969.

She has written several non-fiction books including ‘The Cost of Living’, a highly critical attack on the Indian government for its handling of the controversial Narmada Valley Dam project and for its nuclear testing programme, ‘Power Politics’, a book of essays and ‘The Algebra of Infinite Justice’ a collection of journalism.

She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2006 for her collection of essays on contemporary issues ‘The Algebra of Infinite Justice’ but she declined to accept it in protest against the Indian government toeing the US line by violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarization and economic neo-liberalisation.

Works: Fiction: The God of Small Things – 1997, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness – 2017 Non-Fiction: The End of Imagination – 1998, The Cost of Living – 1999, The Greater Common God – 1999, The Algebra of Infinite Justice – 2002, Power Politics – 2002, War Talk – 2003, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire- 2004, Public Power in the Age of Empire – 2004, The Check book and the Cruise Missile – 2004, The Shape of the Beast – 2008, Listening to Grasshoppers : Field Notes on Democracy – 2010, Broken Republic – 2011, Walking with Comrades – 2011, Kashmir : The Case for Freedom – 2011, The Hanging of Afzal Guru and the Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament – 2013, Capitalism : A Ghost Story – 2014, Things that Can and Can not Be Said – 2016, The Doctor and the Saint – 2017