Star Crossed India

1. Unending Quest 2. Gangotri of Gangrene 3. Values versus Power 4. The Gods Who Failed 5. If the "Emergency" had Lasted Longer 6. A New Kind of Leader? 7. Two Bogeys 8. An Abode for Rama 9. Gujarat2002 10. Foreign Policy: First Fifty Years 11. Soft State Syndrome 12. The Israeli Connection 13. Water Management 14. Corruption Incorporated 15. Punishing the Corrupt? 16. The Caste System 17. Jharkhand and its Sisters 18. Terrorist Jitters 19. The Kashmir "Problem" 20. The Kargil 'War' 21. Politics of Presidential Election Epilogue Index

This volume critically analyses and theorises Asian interventions in the expanding phenomenon of Global Shakespeare. It interrogates Shakespeare’s ‘universality’ from Asian perspectives: how this has been modified or even replaced by the ‘global bard’ as a recognisable brand, and how Asian Shakespeares have contributed to or subverted this process by both facilitating the worldwide dissemination of the bard’s plays and challenging and resisting the very templates through which they become globally legible. Critically acclaimed Asian productions have prominently figured at premier Western festivals, and popular Asian appropriations like Bollywood, manga and anime have created new kinds of globally accessible Shakespeare. Essays in this collection engage with the emergent critical issues: the efficacy of definitions of the ‘local’, ‘global’, ‘transnational’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ and of the liminalities and mobilities in between. They further examine the politics of ‘West’ and ‘East’, the evolving markers of the ‘Asian’ and the equation of the ‘glocal’ with the ‘Asian’; they attend to performance and archiving protocols and bring the current debates on translation, appropriation, and world literature to speak to the concerns of global and transnational Shakespeare. These investigations analyse recent innovative Asian theatre productions, popular cinematic and manga appropriations and the increasing presence of Shakespeare in the Asian digital sphere. They provide an Asian standpoint and lens in rereading the processes of cultural globalisation and the mobilisation of Shakespeare.

Sometimes even destiny needs a little bit of help . . . When childhood sweethearts Justine (Sagittarius and serious skeptic) and Nick (Aquarius and true believer) bump into each other as adults, a life-changing love affair seems inevitable—to Justine, anyway. Justine works at the Alexandria Park Star, and Nick—she now learns—relies on the magazine's astrology column to guide him in life. Looking for a way to get Nick's attention, Justine decides to make a few small alterations to the Aquarius copy before it goes to print. But, of course, Nick is not the only Aquarius making important life choices according to what is written in the stars, and the doctored horoscopes end up reverberating throughout the lives of the column's devoted readers as well as those who cross their diverted paths. Spanning a year—as Earth moves through all twelve star signs—and charting the ripple effects of Justine's astrological meddling, Star-Crossed is a delicious, intelligent and affecting love story about fate, chance and how we all navigate the kinds of choices that are hard to face alone.

A new historical approach to Indian English literature Mary Ellis Gibson shows that poetry, not fiction, was the dominant literary genre of Indian writing in English until 1860 and that poetry written in colonial situations can tell us as much or even more about figuration, multilingual literacies, and histories of nationalism than novels can. Gibson re-creates the historical webs of affiliation and resistance that were experienced by writers in colonial India—writers of British, Indian, and mixed ethnicities. Advancing new theoretical and historical paradigms for reading colonial literatures, Indian Angles makes accessible many writers heretofore neglected or virtually unknown. Gibson recovers texts by British women, by nonelite British men, and by persons who would, in the nineteenth century, have been called Eurasian. Her work traces the mutually constitutive history of English-language poets from Sir William Jones to Toru Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore. Drawing on contemporary postcolonial theory, her work also provides new ways of thinking about British internal colonialism as its results were exported to South Asia. In lucid and accessible prose, Gibson presents a new theoretical approach to colonial and postcolonial literatures.

If life is a journey then second chances are like trains that come your way every now and then. The trick is to identify the ones that will actually take you to your destination. Adah and Avyan are two star-crossed lovers stranded on the desolate island of life, waiting to get back home. Avyan's quest to reach his haven results in his encounter with Adah and Adah's constant battle with fate finally helps her meet Avyan. Struck by cupid, Avyan decides to make the first move unaware of the fact that his revelation would further open a can of worms that Adah has been keeping safe in her heart's closet. Star-crossed and lovelorn in their own ways, these two protagonists take you on a journey called life.Revolving around the themes of love, hope, loss, second chances and closure, Star-crossed is a story that will touch your heart and linger long after it has been devoured.

Religious nationalists and women’s activists have transformed India over the past century. They debated the idea of India under colonial rule, shaped the constitutional structure of Indian democracy, and questioned the legitimacy of the postcolonial consensus, as they politicized one dimension of identity. Using a historical comparative approach, the book argues that external events, activist agency in strategizing, and the political economy of transnational networks explain the relative success and failure of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women’s movement rather than the ideological claims each movement makes. By focusing on how particular activist strategies lead to increased levels of public support, it shows how it is these strategies rather than the ideologies of Hindutva and feminism that mobilize people. Both of these social movements have had decades of great power and influence, and decades of relative irrelevance, and both challenge postcolonial India’s secular settlement – its division of public and private. The book goes on to highlight new insights into the inner dynamics of each movement by showing how the same strategies - grassroots education, electoral mobilization, media management, donor cultivation - lead to similarly positive results. Bringing together the study of Hindu nationalism and the Indian women’s movement, the book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Religion, Gender Studies, and South Asian Politics.

As various nations wrestle with issues of immigration, integration, and pluralism, second-generation immigrants are exploring new ways to make sense of who they are and where they belong in the face of competing cultural demands. Dreaming in Canadian turns the spotlight on the role of Bollywood cinema in the production of cultural, religious, and national identities among South Asian youth in Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa. By documenting the voices of these young adults and how they draw on media in the formation of uniquely hybrid identities, this book interrogates the realities that underpin media portrayals of diaspora, nationalism, and multiculturalism.

Star-crossed is a novel about the world of Tamil cinema minus theglamour. It takes a keen look at the lives of filmmakers, technicians,producers and actors. Turning the spotlight on the fringes of theentertainment world, Ashokamitran exposes the daily trials andtribulations of a cast of character none too familiar to those who equatethe world of celluloid with the proverbial dream factory.The story revolves around the several minor cogs in the wheels thatmake film production in the studios of Madras go round. An elaborate,albeit chaotic, machinery consisting of people, services and equipment,goes into action everyday, based on a flimsy foundation of ad hocfinancing and superstitions peculiar to the industry. The whole situationis a tragicomedy of people with dreams in their eyes and hearts, andtheir manipulation by the forces of commerce and greed.The novel starts with Natarajan, a production manager in aKodambakkam studio, organising a team of people for a stint of outdoorshooting in the early hours of a typical Madras morning. Reddiar andRama Iyengar, film producers both, Sampat, an errand boy; Rajgopal, awannabe manager of sorts; Chitti, an editor's assistant; Manickaraj, asupplier of stock shots to film-makers and Somanathan, an aspiringscreenplay writer are among several bit players whose ordinary livesprovide a stark contrast from the magic they help create on scren.The story abounds in action and we see people running about doingtheir jobs, but, as the novel proceeds, we realise all the sound and furysignify nothing in the lives of so many that depend on the film industryfor their livelihood. We move from one climax to the next, one anticlimaxto another. To quote one of the characters in the novel, There are nopermanent or temporary jobs in cinema. Every job is permanent. Andtemporary! The hype, the uncertainties and the personality cult thatsurround Indian cinema are brought to life in this realistic tale lacedwith humour and compassion.The original Tamil title, Karainda Nizhalgal, conveys the tragedy anduncertainty inherent in the lives of these providers of mass entertainment,whose fortunes rise and fall or sink altogether with the making of a film.Simply told, the novel provides poignant expression to Ashokamitran'sempathy for his flesh and blood characters, based no doubt on his ownexperience in the film world.