Title : Single in the City
Author : Sunny Singh

All the buzz about women's liberation is no longer just a bare structure. It finally seems to be taking a concrete shape and more so with the advent of such books as is the one under consideration.

Single in the City is one such book which draws upon the experiences of single women across the length and breadth of India. The author covers a comprehensive gamut of lives spanning those of the spinsters, divorcees and widows as well. It seeks to act as a guide for single women.The book covers a range of subjects including: "Power, promotions and passions at work-place", "How to ensure safety in the house and on the road", "Being single among couples" and so on.

These transcripts also double up as a commentary on the modern urban society in the present day India and as the author states it is "an illuminating read to empower yourself."

Title : Spring in my Backyard
Author : Debroti Dhar

India's population is incessantly on the rise. Despite the numerous problems that this situation has created, it surely has to offer certain advantages as well. Primary amongst these would be the bag full of talent that is forever there for all to marvel at.

Our country surely has produced geniuses in various fields including that of literature. The book in question here, Spring in my Backyard is a proof of our credentials in the literary field. To be fairer, the credit is due to the author, Debroti Dhar.

Debroti is a debutante novelist and she has surely taken a safe route on her first journey by choosing to write on the theme of romance. This novel is a foray into the world of candy-floss and dreams. It seeks to view the situation from all perspectives.

To put it simplistically, Spring in my Backyard is all about love and longing from a first-time novelist and it is for the reader to decipher whether he finds the story as intimate and nostalgic as the title.

"Viewing the present and the days of yonder,
It makes one stop and ponder -
The literary soil is bountiful and rich,
In this field too India has carved a niche."

On A Rambling Note:

From the first novel in English, Rammohan's Wife by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee which was published in 1864 to the current crop of writers such as Kiran Desai, one of the latest to jump on to the literary cart, Indian literature has travelled a long journey since then.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee thereafter shifted to Bengali writing and there was a lull for a while. In the 1920s and 1930s there was the great Indian trio of Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and RK Narayan. It is to their credit that all of them have books that have virtually remained in print till today. Mulk Raj had Coolie and Untouchable while Raja Rao had Kanthapura and Serpent and the Rope. But, Narayan takes the cake in terms of the copies sold and his famous book, Malgudi Days being made into a television series.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee thereafter shifted to Bengali writing and there was a lull for a while. In the 1920s and 1930s there was the great Indian trio of Raja Rao, Mulk Raj Anand and RK Narayan. It is to their credit that all of them have books that have virtually remained in print till today. Mulk Raj had Coolie and Untouchable while Raja Rao had Kanthapura and Serpent and the Rope. But, Narayan takes the cake in terms of the copies sold and his famous book, Malgudi Days being made into a television series.

Thus, they were the first flashes, the pioneers. Between then and the 1980s there were a number of great writers - GV Desani, Kamla Markandaya, Attiya Hussain, Ruth Jhabvala and Manohar Malgaonhar to name a few.

The next turning point came in 1981 with Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children which was a book of a different genre except Desani's All About H Hatterr to which it owed a debt. Midnight's Children defined an Indian vision in terms of time, place and characters. It was unlike the "heat and dust" fiction where India's exoticism was stressed. This novel was an open declaration that English was a distinctive, organic and integral part of our country. Indians too could use this language as well as anyone else

Thereafter, the volcano had burst. Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Rohington Mistry were ruling the roost. Seth's literary life seems to be a planned path - comic verse a big saga, 19th century novel, travelogue and now his meditation on music with his An Equal Music. Mistry has a collection of short stories and two novels, A Fine Balance and Such A Long Journey to his credit. Other writers who have been tremendously appreciated include Vikram Chandra, Bharti Mukherjee, Amit Chaudhari, Amitav Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee, Shashi Tharoor and Alan Sealy especially for his Trotternama.

Though many would like to believe that there has been a boom in the 1990s, it must be remembered that the likes of Vikram Chandra and Arundhati Roy started their careers as novelists a decade before that in 1980s.

A critical factor that has ruled the Indian literary scene has been the cargo cult type of hype when we waited for the white man to say, "this is good" and then leaped for that text. But it is no longer so. With the growth of a discerning readership the "aping" phenomenon is over. However, though the domestic market has grown by as much as five times, the attraction of getting acceptability in the west also exists. More so because of exchange rates and the super-stardom attached to it which the writer possesses then in the home country. The list of those who got truly big advances includes Kiran Desai, Rajkamal Jha, Pankaj Mishra and Sukata Mehta.

So, definitely "we can light candles", as a character in Jhumpa Lahiri's, "A Temporary Matter" (from The Interpreter of Maladies) stated in order to celebrate the progress and growth of the Indian literary scene. Moreover, there would be a burgeoning of non-fiction books. Poetry in English too is on the up swing with the native culture alive in it.