Sketches from Memory

Laxmibai Tilak singularly championed the cause of girls’ education in Maharashtra in the early twentieth century. Sketches from Memory is her autobiography, tracing as it does her relationship with her scholar husband through his conversion to Christianity and her selfeducation.

Time Out
(Mumbai ISSUE 21 Friday, June 15, 2007)

The best-known of the classic conversion stories, Laxmibai Tilak’s Sketches From Memory has just been published in a new translation by Louis Menezes, a Jesuit priest now at St Xavier’s School in Mumbai. Unlike the OUP translation titled I Follow After, published in 1950, this translation is from the abridged Marathi version prepared by Laxmibai’s son D N Tilak, and published by Popular Prakashan in 1994. The original autobiography appeared in serial form in Marathi in the late 1930s.

Sketches From Memory is a compelling narrative and unexpectedly humorous. When she is to be “viewed”, Laxmibai consoles herself by thinking that, while her looks and complexion were “truly moderate”, it helped that her nose and eyes, “even if they weren’t proportionate, ...were all in the right place”. Her father had a mania amounting to madness about purity, and insisted everything brought into the house be washed, including salt and sugar. Of course, the concern for purity had its appalling side as well. The father performed rituals for 25 years because a Mahar had accidentally let a drop of water fall on him, and thrashed everyone at home for the slightest breach. Laxmibai’s father-in-law was just as appalling – burning his wife’s poems as soon as she wrote them, and virtually kicking her to death.

The core of the book is Laxmibai’s relationship with her husband, very different from that of her parents and her in-laws. She had a mind of her own, and when Tilak became a Christian she didn’t plan to become one too. But she has her own moments of truth. “Did god make castes,” she thinks, “or did man?” She then decides to “eat and drink from everybody’s hand”.

She attended Tilak’s prayer sessions, and began to like the prayers. “It was a new kind of joy, praying this way, to the god who dwelt within our hearts.” Eventually she too was baptised, but refused to be baptised by a foreigner. Only a fellow Indian would do.

- Eunice de Souza

The Author

Laxmibai Tilak

The Translator

Louis Menezes

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Geeta Dharmarajan
Cover Painting: Jagannath Panda
Category: Katha Non-Fiction/Autobiography
Statistics: 5.5" X 8" 408 pages
ISBN 97881-89020-73-6 [PB]
Price: Rs 350 [India and the subcontinent only]

Buy now!

Kamleshwar's Book Launched

New Delhi, March. 25 (PTI): A translated collection of short stories by renowned Hindi writer Kamleshwar that deals with subjects like prostitution, politics, love, marital discord, pride and passion was released here, on 23rd March 2007.

In the 15 stories that are compiled into "Not Flowers of Henna" -- translated into English by Jai Ratan and published by Katha -- Kamleshwar stresses on positive lessons for mankind to reconstruct the society and its norms.

The book was released on Friday by well-known Hindi fiction writer Krishna Sobti.

After the release, writers and critics remembered Kamleshwar as a great author whose stories "depicted trials and tribulations of a fast changing society that looked for new values in the wake of collapse of the old value system". "Not Flowers of Henna" includes Kamleshwar's most famous story "Kitne Pakistan?"

Kamleshwar -- Sahitya Akademi award winner in 2003 -- and Sobti are among more than 30 authors whose works are featuring in the five-day Paris Book Fair that began on Friday.

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Ayoni and other stories

From dark dilemmas to sharp wounds. That is what this unique collection by writers spanning a century can be summed up as. The stories, unflinching in style and content, focus on women’s issues like abortion, rape, dowry and beyond. Each piece is reflective of a path-breaking vision that has altered the Telugu literary scene – in form, style and content.

The First City
(February, 2002)

“The stories focus on highlighting the problems that women face in their everyday lives.”

The Authors

Abburi Chaya Devi
Gurazada Apparao
Kanuparti Viswanathareddy
Kuppili Padma
Rachakonda Viswanathasastry
Sivaraju Subbulakshmi
Vivina Murthy
Chalam
Indraganti Janakibala
Kavanasarma
Kodavatiganti Kutumbarao
P Sathyavathi
Ranganayakamma
Sripada Subrahmanyasastry
Volga

The Translators & Editors

Alladi Uma and M Sridhar

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Oroon Das
Cover Painting: T Vaikuntam
Category: Katha Telugu Library/Short Fiction
Statistics: 5.5" x 8" 208 pages
ISBN 81-87649-00-3 [PB]

Rs Price: Rs 200 [India and the subcontinent only]

The Life and Times of Pratapa Mudaliar

Katha presents the first Tamil Novel, originally published more than 125 years ago.

The New Indian Express
(May 21, 2006)

It was 1879 when Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai, retired district magistrate of the South Indian town of Mayuram, wrote the first Tamil novel, Pratapa Mudaliar Charithiram: The life and adventures in Tamil of Pratapa Mudaliar. And though, over the past century, the book has proved to be a best-selling, enduring classic, it's only 140 years later that it has finally been fully translated into English.

This delay is one that the novel's translator Meenakshi Tyagarajan - great grand-daughter of famous writer and social reformer A Madhaviah - finds quite bewildering. "It's definitely very strange that it's not been translated so far. Ashokamritram said precisely this at the launch of the book. The first Telugu and Kannada novels' translations emerged immediately after they were written, in a few years. Also, it's not difficult to translate."

But it's an interest that caught her only six decades after she first read the book. "I first read it in my early teens, but if you read anything for an exam, it kills your enthusiasm," she explains. "But now, after I translated Padmavati (by A Madhaviah), this seemed to be the logical thing to do."

The novel is a humorous and satirical account of the escapades of its lead character, Pratapa Mudaliar, (and, since Pillai was an impassioned believer in women's rights, Mudaliar's wiser wife, Gnanambal). It can't really be considered an authentic, realistic account of the times in which it was produced; it is more in the tradition of escapist folk tales, anecdotes and parables, with its homespun wisdom and humour, and is similarly studded with morals.

This was due to Vedanayagam Pillai's intention of using his prose work as a medium for advocating and bringing about social reform. Far from being a straightforward storyteller, Pillai was rather more concerned with moral precepts, such as his conviction in women's emancipation, since he regarded the "degradation" and "slavery" to which he saw they were subject was one of the "crying evils of the land."

What Pillai also pioneered in his prose (and previous works of poetry, also in a moralistic vein) was a simpler, more colloquial idiom, which the public easily understood. This was a far cry from the high-flown, elevated verse in praise of divinity to which they were accustomed. And though this verse had a certain rarefied beauty, Pillai thought that its arcane vocabulary was one that wasn't even to be found in dictionaries, nor held any practical value to the common public. This was why his novel employed the tale-within-a-tale format "with large chunks of lecturing," says Thyagarajan. "He tuned it to appeal to the public, and it combined his passion for the Tamil language with his desire to entertain and teach."

So, with Pillai's penchant for proselytising, it's understandable why, as Thyagarajan says, "Modern readers would like this book only as a curiosity, or light entertainment." Though she does concede that "there is contemporary applicability of some of his ideas, such as on the judiciary and welfare state."

The Hindu
(1885)

"The book has ... rare merits and its popularity has been so great that the first edition of a large number of copies ran out in a few months ..."

The author

Mayuram Vedanayagam Pillai

The translator

Meenakshi Tyagarajan

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Netra Shyam
Cover Painting: Vijay Belgave
Category: Katha Tamil Library/Novel
Statistics: 5.5" x 8" 272 pages
ISBN 81-89020-42-0 [PB]
Price: Rs 295 [India and the subcontinent only]

Sleepwalkers

A story of migration, oblivion and strange forgetfulness, Sleepwalkers is a moving tale of shifting identities and locales. Revolving around the two cities, Lucknow and Karachi, it depicts the predicament and misery of post-Partition refugees, uprooted from their homeland.

This is Lucknow ...tilting their caps in the Lucknavi style, several street converge upon the square ... the mohajirs had transported an entire city within the folds of their hearts ... Who knows what remains at the spot where this city had earlier stood! Here it has acquired such splendour that any visitor to Karachi repeatedly asked, "Have you seen Lucknow in Karachi?"

So starts this much-acclaimed novella about migration. Simple, suggestive, subtle, Joginder Paul's Sleepwalkers makes for a satisfying read.

The Hindu
(June 7, 1998)

"Throughout this amazing tale of the real and the imaginary, what is and what was, paradise lost and paradise regained only to be lost again, there is a compassion, a sense of complete empathy with these troubled, night-walking souls. Joginder Paul has obviously trod similar ground and experienced at first hand the bewildering uncertainty of the migrant sensibility. Reading the novels in English one feels truly in a world transported, not created or re-created as most translations attempt to do."

The Statesman
(1 June, 1998)

"This collection is multifaceted and worth buying. The translators give the reader a taste of the richness of Urdu literature."

The author

Joginder Paul

The Translators

Sunil Trivedi and Sukrita Paul Kumar

The Editor

Keerti Ramachandra

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Geeta Dharmarajan
Cover Painting: Sanjay Bhattacharya
Courtesy: Neera and Rakesh Malhotra
Category: Katha Urdu Library/Novel
Statistics: 5.25" x 7.5" HB 128 pages
ISBN 81-87649-14-3
Price: Rs 120 [India and the subcontinent only]

The Master Carpenter

When the winds blow wild snuffing out the flames, it is the Master Carpenter who takes up the challenge. Some quick calculations later he raises a stone slab, and the lamp burns steady. When his own heart plays games, the games of desire, once again he triumphs. But how does a father react, who knows that his son has far surpassed his talent, and fallen short of his heritage?

The legend of Perumthachan, the Master Carpenter is recreated vividly from a popular folk tale by MT Vasudevan Nair, the Jnanpith, Sahitya Akademi and Padma Bhushan award winning writer.

The Hindu
(Sunday, November 6, 2005)

ONCE again, thanks to Gita Krishnankutty, readers the world over can enjoy M.T. Vasudevan Nair's exquisite prose in The Master Carpenter. Set in the caste sensitive brahminical society of Kerala, the story of the master carpenter or Perumthachan is a powerful story of love, arrogance, restrictions of caste and the close, almost cloistered life, at the illam.

Everybody has heard of the great skill of the Perumthachan. He is not merely a carpenter, he is a sculptor and an architect too.

The screenplay begins at dusk with an old ambalavasi trying to light a stone lamp. But the wind is strong and the lamp is extinguished. A man lying in the tanner pandal close by gets up and strategically places a stone slab in such a way, breaking the path of the wind. He wears a sacred thread and he is mistaken for a namboodri. But he tells the ambalavasi that he is a carpenter who has been presented with the thread because he built a temple. Immediately the ambalavasi recognises that this is no ordinary carpenter but the Perumthachan. News spreads that the Perumthachan is in town.

He is summoned by Unni thamburan to the kovilakkam and is soon assigned the task of carving an idol for the temple. Perumthachan is irresistibly drawn to Bhargivi thamburatti. And in a minute of misunderstanding, he is not allowed at the consecration of the idol he so lovingly fashioned with the facial features of the thamburatti.

Years pass, and Perumthachan trains his son Kannan in the art and soon Kannan's fame spreads. He is considered as skilful, if not more so, than his father. Perumthachan is at times upset at his son's arrogance, his ability to unduly influence his clients and at times even a strain of avarice.

It is the Perumthachan's wish that he should be the one to build a Saraswati mantapam that Bhargivi thamburatti wanted. But with her long dead, would the young Kunhikkavu thamburatti agree to have it built? Because it was her mother's wish, she agrees and it is Kannan, not Perumthachan, who is called to do the work. Once again, as in the previous generation, there is an undercurrent between Kunhikkavu and Kannan. Unlike the Perumthachan, Kannan does not acknowledge his place in social hierarchy. He finds this stifling and refuses to succumb to it. So much so it leads to disastrous results and it is up to Perumthachan to restore the honour of the kovilakkam.

M.T. Vasudevan Nair has told this legendary story of the master carpenter with finesse, bringing to mind the old rituals and traditions and a world long since forgotten. He systematically builds up the suspense until ultimately the ending comes upon you surprisingly, almost shockingly, leaving you cold and unbelieving.

The Little Magazine

"...one of the best loved writers in Malayalam."

Outlook

"...MT is a versatile genius who has mastered the art of fiction."

The author

M T Vasudevan Nair

The Translator

Gita Krishnankutty

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Geeta Dharmarajan
Cover Paintng: G R Iranna
Category: Katha Malayalam Library/Screenplay
Statistics: 5.5" x 8" 248 pages
ISBN 81-89020-23-4 [PB]
Price: Rs 200 [India and the subcontinent only]

Separate Journeys

A unique collection demonstrating the vitality and versatility of Indian writing today. "It is sheer serendipity that the stories all happen to be by women."

The Telegraph
(April 24 1998)

"A splendid showcase of short stories by Indian women writers."

Times Literary Supplement

"Her selection reveals a pattern of echoes, resonances and related trajectories pointing to the common concerns of modern Indian writers, and it highlights what some see as women's determination to shed the confining garments of decency in which they have been clothed by male critics."

The Statesman
(May 25 1998)

"After reading Separate Journeys one feels that the very diversity that differentiates the stories also loops them together, sensuously, delicately. It's like some bright colours cajoled into each and every fibre by varying hands and minds."

Indian review of Books

"The fifteen stories in this collection are of such high standard that it is difficult to choose a few to mention in a short review ... the translations are excellent ..."

The authors

Mahasweta Devi
Anupama Niranjana
T Janaki Rani
Anita Desai
Mamoni Raisom Goswami
Ashapurna Devi
Urmila Pawar
Mrinal Pande
Kamala Das
Viswapriya L Iyengar
Qurratulain Hyder
Jeelani Bano
Rupavati
Rajee Seth
Varsha Das

The translators

Mahua Bhattacharya
Tejaswini Niranjana
Vakati Panduranga Rao
Pradipta Borgohain
Rimli Bhattacharya
Asha Damle
Mrinal Pande
Kamala Das
Qurratulain Hyder
Geeta Dharmarajan
Jai Ratan
Varsha Das

Publishers: Katha with Garutman
Cover Design: Geeta Dharmarajan
Cover Paintng: T Vaikuntam
Category: Katha Asia Library/Short Fiction
Statistics: 5.5" x 8" 216 pages
ISBN 81-85586-79-9 [PB]
Price: Rs 250 [India and the subcontinent only]

Mapping Memories

Mapping Memories bring together writers from India and Pakistan. The powerful Urdu short stories written by eminent writers, after 1960, reflect the common sensibility evolved through a shared linguistic and cultural heritage.

The Statesman
(June 29 1998)

"All the stories in the collection, from the serious to the light-hearted, the poignant to the bizarre, the surreal to the frightening, are welletched vignettes that transcends all caste creed, language barriers to create a language of their own."

The Pioneer
(June 13 1998)

"Katha's Mapping Memories ... in the fiftieth year of Independence, appears as a timely panacea for the divisive ills festering in the nuclear heat of the current political imbroglio. This exquisitely produced collection of fifteen Urdu short stories has been fastidiously and lovingly put together in accordance with the laudable editorial principle of capturing the 'human predicament in the subcontinent' and telling 'the tale of the shared cultures nourished by India and Pakistan.' Perhaps the signal achievement of the collection is that it opens windows to a vista hitherto closed to non-Urdu speaking readers ... With apparent effortlessness, the translators have accomplished a marvellous job in capturing the idiosyncratic resonances of the spoken language. In becoming the vehicle for the message of peace and harmony, these stories acquire a 'godly' character and, as a body, take on the appearance of a welcome 'bridge over troubled waters.' ''

The Authors

Anwar Qamar
Bano Qudsia
Enver Sajjad
Farkhanda Lodhi
Gyas Ahmed Gaddi
Intizar Husain
Jeelani Bano
Joginder Paul
Mohammad Mansha Yad
Qurratulain Hyder
Salim Agha Qazilbash
Surendra Prakash
Syed Muhammed Ashraf
Umrao Tariq
Zaheda Hina

The translators

Rashmi Govind
Tahira Khan
Shobhana Bhattacharji
Neshat Quaiser
Krishna Paul
Naghma Zafir
GIllian Wright
Rashid
Qurratulain Hyder
Atanu BHattacharya
Sara Rai
Saleem Kidwai
Anupama Prabhala Kapse, P L Narasimhan
Ayesha Sultana

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Roma Sinai Mukherji
Cover Detail: Detail from Sheba Chhachi's cleave/to, photo-text-sculpture installation
Courtesy: Eicher Gallery
Category: Katha Urdu Library/Short Fiction
Statistics: 5.5" x 8" Pb 234 pages
ISBN 81-85586-76-4
Price: Rs 175 [India and the subcontinent only]

Water!

A modern classic, Water, set in the summer of 1969 in the middle of the worst drought seen in Chennai, portrays the daily struggle of ordinary people trying to survive the crisis. Water, or the lack of it, is the recurrent metaphor in this realist-impressionist novella. An entire landscape of thirst is masterfully conjured up by the story’s locus on a single street whose very existence (and near destruction) revolves around the everyday quest for water.

The Indian Express
(January 20, 2002)

“It is a simple story, told simply, written simply and woven as a simple yarn. Yet Water holds one’s attention in the first few lines itself.”

- Prarthana Gahilote

First City Magazine
(February, 2002)

“The writer has been described as someone ‘who can bring out the strength of simplicity, who can make the everydayness of life speak’. The novel is well written, Ashokamitran has an interesting narrative style and water is a recommended read.”

The Sunday Statesman
(20 January, 2002)

The vision of women’s empowerment which emerges in Water is nothing short of remarkable, advocating as it does, freedom of choice, the mark of liberation in the true sense of the term. Were it not for Holmstrom’s translation of this work into English from the original in Tamil, Water would have remained confined to a select readership. We owe her however, a greater debt of gratitude for the quality of her translation. The transition from the source to the target language is so effortlessly achieved as to make us forget that the English version of Water is not the original one.

Nepalnews.com
(Kathmandu, Sunday, February 24, 2002)

“Water is a lyrical novella, and the best kind of literary translation: it gives readers a chance to enter the imaginative world of another language while also enjoying themselves. It also lets readers re-discover the novella form, which is common in regional language literature, but unusual in English. This book is so refreshing, it almost tempts me to re-read my collection of Katha Prize Stories anthologies."

The author

Ashokamitran

The translator

Lakshmi Holmstrom

Publishers: Katha
Category: Katha Trailblazer Series/Novel
Cover Painting: Shamshad Hussain
Statistics: 5.25" x 7.5", 160 pages
ISBN 81-87649-13-5 [HB]
Price: Rs 150 [only in India and the subcontinent]

Tale of Two Novellas

The Financial Express
(New Delhi, Sunday, June 24, 2001)

“Coconut Palms, hot, sizzling dosas or political banter - he is at ease with all of these. Paul Zacharia, one of the best known Malayali writers of today, is known for his dedicated sense of writing. His political columns have often spruced up controversies.”

- Excerpts from Paul Zacharia's interview with Prachi Raturi

The Book Review
(6 June, 2001)

“I am not alone to experience this author-ruling-over-his-text phenomenon. Seemingly, Katha’s Geeta Dharmarajan also realizes it, at least that is what the beautiful cover of the book proves to be. Look at it. The title is written in tiny, almost invisible letters, while the author’s name appears prominently, in large, bright letters, underscoring the importance of the author in relation to his book.”

“But Praise the Lord is different. It is a work that the readers hold close to their heart. I for one have already read the original version two or three times, and yet I sat through the English version at a stretch, more often than not re-reading several passages. And to my surprise, I found that reading could still be a pleasure.”

“The book Praise the Lord and What News Pilate published by Katha holds testimony to this dual role Paul Zacharia plays with remarkable virtuosity. The two novellas do not in any way reflect any political or ideological issues that call for urgency. These are pure narratives tinged with pungent humour. The story seems to be simple, but what makes it fascinating is architecture, its characters and above all its language.”

“This book is undoubtedly the best example of Kerala’s overgrown contemporary fiction that we could show the world."

- M. Mukundan

The Financial Express
(New Delhi, Sunday April 22, 2001)

“Faithful Translation.”

“The first English translation of Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award winner, Paul Zacharia, is indeed refreshing. In the first of the two novellas in this edition, Zacharia captures, in simple sentences, the nuances of life in a rubber plantation in the humid climes of Kerala.”

The Indian Express
(New Delhi, Sunday, May 20, 2001)

“Paul Zacharia’s novellas, Praise the Lord and What News, Pilate?, illustrate in the Rushdiean age of clever writing how simple prose can be used to describe powerful emotions. Despite the brevity of the book (another blessing in this age of fast forward) the issues that it raises stay with you long after you have finished reading it.”

- Ashwin Ahmed

The Asian Age
(Sunday, 3 June 2001)

“The pungent humour, the sharp wit, the exacting eye for detail, athe absurd. All counched in the best of words.”

India Today
(May 7, 2001)

"The man doesn’t write novels, preferring to stick to the genre of the short story, or at times a novella, condensing his whimsical messages into a curtailed amount of prose. Usually his stories are decoctions of multiple tastes, often divergent with each other, variations of meaning and introspections. And the poniard of a subtle sensuality is always thrust into nodal points of the narration, proving Zacharia a maestro of super-suggestion. In many ways, it is also extraordinary hallmark."

- Ravi Shankar profiling Paul Zacharia

The Outlook Weekly News Magazine
(June 4, 2001)

“If Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the best writer in Malayalam, then Gita Krishnankutty’s translation proves that Malayalam reads much better when written in English. These stories explore the logic of deception, which animates the vocative.”

- Sanil V

The Telegraph, Calcutta
(Friday 4 May, 2001)

“Krishnankutty’s Translation is sensitive; she has retained several vernacular suffixes, but succeeded in keeping the text from becoming unwieldy or incomprehensible. Two novellas is certainly a stimulating read.”

- Cyril Arijit Ghosh

Frontline
(July 20, 2001)

“A decade later, however, the writers came to their own and the genre began to exhibit great variety in themes, styles and worldviews. One of the finest writers to emerge from the movement was Paul Zacharia - Known only as ‘Zacharia’ to Malyalam readers- seldom prolific, but ever careful and innovative. What makes Zacharia different is his vision that alternates between the tragic and the comic and his tenderness kept intact even in the most sarcastic of moods, without at the same time falling prey to sentimentality that is the bane of many compassion- driven writers.”

First City Magazine
(May 2001)

“Translated by Gita Krishnankutty, this wonderfully written book secretes a sort of superadhesive, gluing the book to your hands till you have read each and every word of it.”

“Though the book has a very basic plot, the way it has been written is enough to keep even the most meandering of minds enraptured.”

The Pioneer
(Saturday May 12, 2001)

“Praise the Lord is a rare work of art in terms of translation. Credit must go to Gita Krishnankutty for not letting linguistic limitations inhibit translation of even a typical Malayali slangl. Her rendition of Zacharia is almost perfect.”

“This is a work worth reading for two reasons. First, it is a fine work of literature by a master story-teller from God’s Own Country. Second, it is an even more superb work of translation of a remarkable portrayal of an ordinary life caught in even more ordinary events that, ironically, is what makes life what it is.”

The Author

Paul Zacharia

The Translator

Gita Krishnankutty

Publishers: Katha
Cover Design: Geeta Dharmarajan
Cover Painting: K S Kulkarni
ISBN 81-87649-10-0 [HB]
Price: Rs 120 [In the Indian subcontinent]