Bloomsbury Book Of Great Indian Love Poems

From the ancient land of India which has given the world, Kamasutra-a treatise on love, Great Indian Love Poems, selected and edited diligently by master anthologist Abhay K., brings you the fragrant wine of Indian love poetry spread across three millennia, written in multiple languages by gifted poets like -Kalidasa, Mirabai,Bhratrihari, Jayadeva, Silhana, Surdas, Bihari, Muddupalani, Bhavabhuti, Venmaniputti, Vidyapati, Bilhana to just name a few. Sip it slowly, one poem at a time, to savour its richness, to relish its aroma and flavour, depth and finesse. This intoxicating book shows you many facets of love-affectionate, playful, sensuous, erotic, unconditional, pining, aching, among others-leaving you with unforgettable experiences and lasting impressions. A cornucopia of delights, this book is a must read for one and all.

According to the Kama Sutra, the erotic handbook written two thousand years ago, when the wheel of ecstasy is in motion “there is no textbook at all, and no order.” Indian Love Poems is a unique gathering of poems from across more than two and a half millennia that attempts to catalog the disordered ecstasies of love, ranging from the Kama Sutra and earlier works up to present-day India and the poets of the Indian diaspora. Indian Love Poems features works from the classical languages of Sanskrit and Tamil and such later languages as Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, and English. Emerging from many Indian cultures and eras, the poems collected here reflect a variety of erotic and spiritual passions, and celebrate the powerful role of desire–both male and female–in the intricate dance of existence. From the twelfth-century female poet Mahadeviyakka to the twentieth-century Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore to such contemporary poets as Kamala Das and Vikram Seth, this glittering tapestry of lyric voices beautifully and sensually evokes the transfiguring force of love.

A unique initiative of poet-diplomat Abhay K., The Bloomsbury Anthology of Great Indian Poems, offers a treasury of poems, selected from over 3000 years of Indian poetry in 28 languages. It brings forth the richness and diversity of poetry that exist in India's myriad languages and dialects. There is an abundance of light, irony, sensuousness and spirituality in these poems, which delight our senses invoking distinct tastes, smells, colours and moods of India.

A wonderful anthology of wedding poems, filled with surprising, curious, unorthodox and charming poems about love and the public commitment to love For the many thousands of readers who have been delighted by Laura Barber's earlier anthologies, this wonderful new book is filled with surprising, curious, unorthodox and charming poems about love and the public commitment to love. It is a book to be referred to constantly and, like Penguin's Poems for Love, it belongs on the short shelf of truly essential anthologies. For the many thousands of readers who each year go through the complex mix of thrill and trauma that is the planning of a marriage ceremony, Laura Barber's anthology is the answer to a prayer, with a wonderfully generous and unusual selection of poems suitable for reading out loud and which celebrate and encapsulate in all our bewildering diversity how we wish to express our deepest feelings.

Bridging divisions of Hindu and Muslim, classic and contemporary, including poems in many of India's cornucopia of languages, Abhay K. gives us 100 Indian poems that from the 'stale chapati' of Dilip Chitre to the literate parrots of Basavanna, the 'clay shivalingam' of Eunice de Souza to the 'tiny sweat' of Mir Taqi Mir, give us tangible reminders of how we think, feel, and love. "Abhay K. Is a master anthologist who is superb at picking accessible poems that will reach the general reader." Nicholas Birns, New York University

This story is a cameo set against the backdrop of Partition - a decision taken by political leaders in Britain and India that shattered the lives of ordinary people like the family in this narrative who at that time were living in Quetta, Baluchistan. Viewing victims of the Partition of Punjab in the light of post traumatic stress has been long overdue. The narrator's mother's method of coping with the traumatic present was to escape into the past by reliving her memories of Quetta and her beloved Pathans along with the mundane, insignificant little details of the women's daily lives. Her recall hinges on the drama of the trivial, on food,rituals, clothes, religious practices and neighbourhood bonding. It was a syncretic culture, of multilinguism - Urdu,Punjabi and Seraiki, Persian and Sanskrit, of multiple identities through the biradaris - caste,mohalla and religion. The author's grandmother kept the Guru Granth Sahib at home, her mother and sisters practiced Hindu rituals, while her husband was an agnostic. And everyone made pilgrimages to Sufi pirs.