Hindi

Premchand is the most famous Hindi novelist and Godaan is Premchand’s most celebrated novel. Economic and social conflict in a north Indian village are brilliantly captured in the story of Hori, a poor farmer and his family’s struggle for survival and self-respect. Hori does everything he can to fulfill his life’s desire: to own a cow, the peasant’s measure of wealth and well-being. Like many Hindus of his time, he believes that making the gift of a cow to a Brahman before he dies will help him achieve salvation. An engaging introduction to India before Independence, Godaan is at once village ethnography, moving human document and insightful colonial history.

Nithalle Ki Diary by Harishankar Parsai is from Rajkamal Prakashan, a noted publishing house of Hindi literature.

Raghuvar Prasad teaches mathematics at a mofussil town college. He travels to work by jitney, cramming into the little spaces left by other passengers, their milk cans, vegetable baskets and the like. Sometimes, these jitneys have not the slightest gap he can squeeze into, and Raghuvar Prasad must find other ways to commute. And that’s how, on the day his newly-wed bride arrives in town, Raghuvar Prasad happens to come home riding an elephant. She imagines elephants are a part of his regular lifestyle. A Window Lived in the Wall delicately peels back the many layers of Raghuvar and Sonsi’s beautiful marriage. While there is the grandeur of an elephant outside, there is also the minimalism of their home. Their possessions are meagre, their one-room rental barely accommodates a bed and some kitchen utensils. But beyond the window of their one room is a magical place that sustains Raghuvar Prasad and Sonsi's spirit. At a time when critics have announced a crisis of imagination in Hindi literary fiction, Vinod Kumar Shukla continues to dazzle us with his investigations of the hidden magic in ordinary things. A work of deceptive simplicity from one of the finest writers of our times.

वर्तमान भारतीय समाज का अभिजात नागर मन दो हिस्सों में विभाजित है—एक में है पश्चिमी आधुनिकतावाद और दूसरे में वंशानुगत संस्कारवाद। इससे इस वर्ग के भीतर का द्वन्द्व पैदा होता है, उससे पूर्णता के बीच रिक्तता, स्वच्छन्दता के बीच अवरोध और प्रकाश के बीच अन्धकार आ खड़ा होता है। परिणामतः व्यक्ति ऊबने लगता है, भीतर ही भीतर क्रोध, ईर्ष्या और सन्देह जकड़ लेते हैं उसे, अपने ही लिए अजनबी हो उठता है वह, और तब इसे हम हरबंस की शक्ल में पहचानते हैं—हरबंस इस उपन्यास का केन्द्रीय पात्र, जो दाम्पत्य सम्बन्धों की सहज रागात्मकता, ऊष्मा और अर्थवत्ता की तलाश में भटक रहा है। हरबंस और नीलिमा के माध्यम से पारस्परिक ईमानदारी, भावनात्मक लगाव और मानसिक समदृष्टि से रिक्त दाम्पत्य जीवन का यहाँ प्रभावशाली चित्रण हुआ है। अपनी पहचान के लिए पहचानहीन होते जा रहे भारतीय अभिजातवर्ग की भौतिक, बौद्धिक और सांस्कृतिक महत्त्वाकांक्षाओं के अँधेरे बन्द कमरों को खोलनेवाला यह उपन्यास हिन्दी की विशिष्टतम कथाकृतियों में गण्य है

In the idyllic university town, young women daydreamed as they lay on the grass and gazed up at the clouds. Young men took morning walks at Alfred Park. Hot summer afternoons were for drinking sherbet and eating watermelons, and evenings were meant for reading poetry. It was also a time of stifling social mores, and love was an unattainable ideal seldom realized. Allahabad of the 1940s is the serene backdrop to the turbulence of Chander s love for his professor s daughter Sudha. Driven by his passionate belief in the transcending purity of their love, Chander persuades Sudha to marry another man, to devastating consequences. Unhinged by his separation from Sudha and consumed by a restless desire to make sense of love Is it really about sex? Is the purity of love a lie? Chander spirals into a destructive affair with the seductive Pammi. Immensely popular since its publication more half a century ago, Chander & Sudha continues to seduce readers with its potent mix of tender passion and heartbreaking tragedy.

KING Yes. I shall release you - SAKUNTALA When? KING When? When, like a bee, I kiss the bud of your unbruised lip And flood my thirsting mouth with nectar. Kalidasa's play about the love of King Dusyanta and Sakuntala, a hermitage girl, their separation by a curse, and eventual reunion, is the supreme work of Sanskrit drama by its greatest poet and playwright (c.4th century CE). Overwhelmingly erotic in tone, in peformance The Recognition of Sakuntala aimed to produce an experience of aesthetic rapture in the audience, akin to certain types of mystical experience. The pioneering English translation of Sakuntala in 1789 caused a sensation among European composers and writers (including Goethe), and it continues to be performed around the world. This vibrant new verse translation includes the famous version of the story from the Mahabharata, a poetic and dramatic text in its own right and a likely source for Kalidasa. The introduction discusses the play in the aesthetic and cultural context of ancient India.