Marieke's Art of Living

Annotated Bibliography + Filmography

Guide Books and Books of General Interest:

India Handbook pub. Trade & Travel Handbooks -one of the best

Lonely Planet: Travel Survival Kit to India pub.
M.Coxall and S.Singh: “Rajasthan” - an excellent specific guide from Lonely Planet

Christine Niven et al "South India", pub Lonely Planet

"Guide to the Monuments of India Vols 1 & 11" pub. Penguin

V.S. Naipaul :
An Area of Darkness
India: A Wounded Civilization
India: A Million Mutinies

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre: Freedom at Midnight Harper Collins….A must! This is a riveting account of the background history of and events leading to Independence.

“The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947-1997” Edited by Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West Pub. Vintage. This was an outstanding compilation of modern Indian writing to commemorate 50 years of Indian Independence. A superb introduction to the immense and surprising talent of Indian writers.

Francis Watson: India: A Concise History pub. Thames & Hudson

"Jaipur" an exquisite new photographic essay by Aman Natt, pub. India Book House

J.C. Harle: Art and Architecture of the Indian Sub Continent pub. Yale - Pelican History of Art series

Granta #57: India! The Golden Jubilee pub. Penguin. An outstanding introduction to India and her writers

Gayatri Devi & Santha Rama Rau: "A Princess Remembers. The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipur", Pub. Century Evocative, romantic, moving account of an era now lost.

Norman Lewis: A Goddess in Stones. Pub. Jonathan Cape. A brilliant account of travelling the least visited byways of India in the Sates of Bihar and Orissa.

Royina Grewal: In Rajasthan pub. Lonely Planet Journeys. Evocative encounters with tribal villages and palaces, holy men and princes, politics and cooking.

Percival Spear: Delhi, Its Monuments & History: A British historian's comprehensive guide to Delhi's historic sites

Pauline van Lynden: Rajasthan pub. Assouline, New York, 2003. The most dazzling and ravishing of all and any phot essays on Rajasthan

Anne Garde and Sylvie Raulet:Maharaja's Palaces pub. Philip Wilson. A sumptuous insight into an era now lost.

Modern Fiction and Non-Fiction

From personal experience I can vouchsafe that Indian writers and writing about India can become addictive, even obsessive, but with good reason. Indian writers are amongst the most interesting of contemporary writers with compelling voices, ideas, a poetic, sometimes quirky, sometimes anachronistic command of English and the concept of India demands deeper and deeper scrutiny. If your interest develops then this web link will keep you up to date on what Indian Writes> http://www.indiawrites.org/index.html

Top 10: Non-Fiction Books in India in 2007

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 William Dalrymple Penguin Viking
In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India Edward Luce Little Brown
Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, his People and an Empire Rajmohan Gandhi Penguin-Viking Kama Sutra: The Art of Making Love to a Woman Pavan K. Varma Roli Books
Life Lessons from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari Robin S. Sharma Jaico
In the Name of Honour Mukhtar Mai A Virago Original
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found Suketu Mehta Penguin
Trees of Delhi Pradip Krishen Delhi Tourism
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming The American Dream Barack Obama Crown
Making Globalization Work: The Next Steps to Global Justice Joseph Stiglitz Penguin Allen Lane

Amartya Sen: The Argumentative Indian a brilliant new book of essays from the 1998 winner of Nobel Prize for Economics. Highly recommended.
Sen, a former master of Trinity College, Cambridge, argues spiritedly for a "capacious view of a broad and generous Hinduism, which contrasts sharply with the narrow and bellicose versions that are currently on offer, led particularly by parts of the Hindutva movement", convinced that this large inclusive idea of India is in danger of being enticed by parochial ideologies and worldviews with narrow emotional appeals. The eponymous essay begins with these celebratory lines: "Prolixity is not alien to us in India. We are able to talk at some length. Krishna Menon's record of the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations (nine hours non-stop), established half a century ago (when Menon was leading the Indian delegation), has not been equalled by anyone from anywhere. Other peaks of loquaciousness have been scaled by other Indians. We do like to speak."
This is not a new habit, Sen points out in "The Argumentative Indian," and quotes extensively from epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, scriptures and secular texts, ancient and modern, to underline the centrality of dialogue to the evolution of intellectual life of the country.

Sunil Khilnani: The Idea of India pub. Penguin 1997 + 2004 Delhi-born, Cambridge-educated, politics teacher at London University, Khilnani’s timely essays bring modern India to life in this illuminating, witty and compassionate disquisition on India’s democracy, economy, cities and identity. A scholarly, perceptive and spirited analysis of contemporary India and its identity and evolution since independence.

Vikram Seth: A Suitable Boy, a modern marathon classic first published 1993. Set in newly independent India, Nehru's early 1950's, this adipose saga counterbalances a book of social manners--the marrying off of a well-to-do educated young woman, Lata Mehra--with a historical account (even at the level of transcribed parliamentary debate) of the subcontinent trying to find its societal bearings vis-a-vis language, religion, and the redistribution of estate-lands taken off the hands of the elite. Set mainly in Brahmpur, the story encompasses four well-off families, with a focus mostly on the younger members--poets, academics, playboys, newlyweds--who stitch a pattern of peccadillo through their elders' expectations

Rudyard Kipling: "Kim" pub. Penguin

E.M. Forster: "A Passage to India" pub. Penguin

Novels by Paul Scott (Raj Quartet), M.M. Kaye, Ruth Prawer Jhabuala,

Arundhati Roy: The God of Small Things, essential for those travelling south. Steamy evocative, moody and wonderfully written semi-autobiography set in Kerala, this was Roy’s first novel for which she won the Booker in 1997. Roy, unabashedly outspoken and fearless in her views was born to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother, the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali Hindu father, a tea planter by profession. She spent her childhood in Kerala, and went to prestigious schools then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard DaCunha. Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and became involved in film-making under his influence. The God of Small Things is the only novel written by Roy. She has since devoted herself solely to non-fiction and politics, publishing more collections of essays, the brilliant The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Public Power in the Age of Empire and the An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire and as well as working for social causes. She is a figure-head of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She also criticizes India's nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron's activities in India.
In 2002,she won the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize

Rohinton Mistry: A Fine Balance pub. Vintage. Dickensian in scope, this passionate book captures magnificently the cruelty and corruption, the heroism and dignity of India. Also Family Matters- Warm, humane, tender and bittersweet are not the words one would expect to describe a novel that portrays a society where the government is corrupt, the standard of living is barely above poverty level and religious, ethnic and class divisions poison the community. Yet Mistry’s compassionate eye and his ability to focus on the small decencies that maintain civilization, preserve the family unit and even lead to happiness attest to his masterly skill as a writer who makes sense of the world by using laughter, as one of his characters observes.

Vikram Chandra: Red Earth and Pouring Rain pub. 1995 Faber and Faber. Spellbinding storytelling set epically in 19thC India. Setting 18th- and 19th-century Mogul India against the open highways of contemporary America and fusing Indian myth, Hindu gods, magic and mundane reality, this intricate first novel is a magnificent epic example of magical realism with an Asian American twist. A monkey shot by a young man in Bombay turns out to be the latest reincarnation of a 17th-century poet and adventurer. The gods promise to spare the monkey's life if he tells a story, and his stirring tale of warriors and poets blends with the young man's account of three college students making their way across America.
Also: Love and Longing in Bombay 1998, 7 short stories
Sacred Games pub. 2007 is a novel as big, ambitious, multi-layered, contradictory, funny, sad, scary, violent, tender, complex, and irresistible as India itself. Steep yourself in this story, enjoy the delicious masala Chandra has created, and you will have an idea of how the country manages to hang together despite age-old hatreds, hundreds of dialects, different religious practices, the caste system, and corruption everywhere. The Game keeps it afloat.
There are more than a half-dozen subplots to be enjoyed, but the main events take place between Inspector Sartaj Singh, a Sikh member of the Mumbai police force, and Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children: two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment at which India became an independent nation--are switched in the hospital. The infant scion of a wealthy Muslim family is sent to be raised in a Hindu tenement, while the legitimate heir to such squalor ends up establishing squatters' rights to his unlucky hospital mate's luxurious bassinet. Switched babies are standard fare for a Hindi film, and one can't help but feel that Rushdie's world-view--and certainly his sense of the fantastical--has been shaped by the films of his childhood. But whereas the movies, while entertaining, are markedly mediocre, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece, brilliant written, wildly unpredictable, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Banned before publication in India, no book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvellously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta ("for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies") and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie's powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner.

William Dalrymple: The Age of Kali pub. Flamingo. An engrossing book that uses a biography/interview with an interesting identity to explore the character and nature of each of India's States and the myriad depths of her soul.
ALSO all highly recommended
The City of Djinns - a brilliant essay on Delhi. Pub. Flamingo. This book conveys contemporary life in the City as well as illuminating a complex, turbulent and fascinating history.
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in 18th C India. Another compelling book for Indiaphiles that tells a sweeping and epic tale.
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 pub. Blomsbury. His latest historical and deeply empathetic account of and lament for the lost world of the Mughals that was a cultural synthesis of Indian and Islamic traditions. The Indian mutiny of 1857 ended Zafar’s reign.

Gita Mehta: Karma Cola pub. Penguin. Witty, satirical, irreverent and fun. A wry take on the marketing of the mystic East.
Raj pub. Mandarin. A rich historical saga about traditional ideals undergoing tumultuous change.
Snakes and Ladders. pub. Minerva. An unflinching assessment of modern India and all her conundrums.

Elisabeth Bumiller: May You Be the Mother of One Hundred Sons: An interesting analysis of the position of women in Indian society, based on interviews with women from all walks of life.

Susuan Kurosawa: Coronation Talkies Famed The Australian Travel editor's charming comic debut novel of love, lust and lies in 1930s India ...

Sarah Macdonald: Holy Cow. Australian radio correspondent Macdonald's rollicking memoir recounts the two years she spent in India when her boyfriend, Jonathan, a TV news correspondent, was assigned to New Delhi.

James O'Reilley Travellers' Tales India: True Stories weaves a tapestry of sensory images, profound transformations, and compelling history and includes 49 stories and dozens of sidebar anecdotes covering the sprawling canvas of the country, from the high Himalayas to the dense jungles teeming with wildlife, to the chaotic inner cities and deceptively slow-paced villages.

Christopher Kremmer: Inhaling the Mahatma, Pub: Flamingo, from the famed author who also wrote “Behind the Bamboo Palace” and “Carpet Wars”. ABC Correspondent for years in the Middle East and the Sub Continent, this truly marvellous MUST READ book is an account of the Birth of Modern India, experienced first hand. In the searing summer of 2004, Christopher Kremmer returns to India, a country in the grip of enormous and sometimes violent change. As a young reporter in the 1990s, he first encountered this ancient and complex civilisation. Now, embarking on a yatra, or pilgrimage, he travels the dangerous frontier where religion and politics face off. Tracking down the players in a decisive decade, he takes us inside the enigmatic Gandhi dynasty, and introduces an operatic cast of political Brahmins, 'cyber coolies', low-caste messiahs and wrestling priests. A sprawling portrait of India at the crossroads, Inhaling the Mahatma is also an intensely personal story about coming to terms with a dazzlingly different culture, as the author's fate is entwined with a cosmopolitan Hindu family of Old Delhi, and a guru who might just change his life.

Gregory David Roberts: Shantaram One of the most compelling intelligent and addictive reads in a long time. The pulse and smells of India jump off the pages. 'With the grand sweep and scale of a Bollywood movie, Shantaram is unlike any other Australian novel for quite some time … this is a rip-roaring read. At 933 pages the book stands out, but it is all the more remarkable because it is based on second-to-none first-hand experience. Full of jail-house philosophy, human frailty and resilience, Sufi wisdom and street-fighting tactics, Shantaram is by turns inspiring, hair-raising and poignant. This warts-and-all Indian epic details the myriad struggles, triumphs, heartbreaks and joys of life on the subcontinent—expect it to become a must-read for backpackers and long-haul airline passengers….'

Paramahansa Yogananda: Autobiography of a Yogi - After half a century in print, this widely acclaimed autobiography is enduringly popular because it introduces millions of readers to Eastern spiritual thought. Yogananda's masterly storytelling epitomizes the Indian oral tradition with its wit, charm, and compassionate wisdom. The yogi begins by showing how his childhood experiences in turn-of-the-century India produced a spiritual youth in search of an enlightened teacher, continues with an account of his years of training in the hermitage of a revered master, and concludes with the highlights of a period, beginning in 1920, during which he lived and taught in America. Yogananda sensitively interprets not only his own spiritual evolution but also his relationship with elements of the West's spiritual tradition, such as the story of Adam and Eve, providing a penetrating look at the ultimate mysteries of human existence.

Culinary Titles

Jennifer Brennan: Curries and Bugles, A Cookbook of the British Raj pub. Viking
A charming Anglo-Indian account of family life, picnic expeditions, and entertainment protocols during the Raj.

David Burton: The Raj at Table pub. Faber and Faber. Entertaining, amusing, delightful with a treasure trove of insights.

Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookbooks - several

K.T. Adiaya: Indian Food. A Historical Companion pub. Oxford U.P. India

Murdoch Books: The Food of India. Lovely photos, authentic recipes, careful research, instructive step by step photos. Commendable and collectible.

Joyce Westrip: Moghul cooking - India's Courtly Cuisine, written by an Indian born Australian living in Perth with a passion for her culinary heritage.

Digvijaya Singh: Cooking Delights of the Maharajas, available in India

Monisha Bharadwaj The Indian Kitchen, available in India

FILMS

“Deepa Mehta has become the voice of a new India, but India has a difficult time accepting what she has to say. Born in Amritsar in 1950, Ms Mehta moved to Canada in 1973. An NRI (Non Resident Indian) in India and an emigrant in Canada, she says that she refuses to choose whether she is Indian or Canadian. She is Deepa Mehta, a concerned moviemaker and storyteller.
Her bicultural roots may have helped her become one of India's most controversial and taboo-breaking filmmakers. It is said that women salute her, but that men often despise her. “I am going to shoot you, madam,” one of them screamed in 1996 after the première screening of Fire, the first movie to explore lesbianism in contemporary India.
In Earth (1998), Ms. Mehta showed the religious intolerance and violence that erupted among Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus during the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The movie was better accepted by the Indian community, in large part because it was set in the past and because it investigated the effects of colonialism. Blaming the British is always a safe bet.
But Water, the final film in Ms Mehta's trilogy on the elements, sparked controversy even before filming started. The shooting was supposed to take place in the holy city of Varanasi in 2000, but violence from local political parties and Hindu extremists forced Ms Mehta to retreat. Shooting resumed only years later in Sri Lanka. Even there, the movie had to be shot under a false working title.
Told through the eyes of a six-year old widow (yes, six-year old), Water tells the story of Indian women who are labelled as worthless because their husbands have disappeared. Forced to live in a house of confinement, they often turn to prostitution to survive. Ms Mehta chose Varanasi as the location of her film because “widow houses” still exist there.
Ms Mehta's trilogy first explored the taboo of female homosexuality in Fire, then the taboo of religious extremism in Earth. Now comes Water, which attacks the taboo of social humiliation of women. Let’s hope that Ms Mehta’s movies make a difference.”

MYSTIC INDIA, - the journey of an 11 year old Yogi through India during the 18th century. The film takes the viewer on a journey to some of the most spiritual sites and temples in India, and highlights how yogis use yoga to sustain themselves against the harsh elements of their environment, even in sub-zero temperatures in snow! The photography is spectacular. The film was produced by BAPS - an internationally recognized NGO in consultative status with the United Nations. Founded in 1907, BAPS promotes educational, ecological, cultural and humanitarian values. It has hosted nine International Cultural Festivals in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. All actors, production crew were volunteers. Peter O'Toole narrates the story. Extract from official website - “Over two shooting schedules in March – May 2003 and Jan-Feb 2004, the Mystic India production team travelled to more than 100 different film locations in India, at times shooting in hostile conditions at a height of 13,000 feet, re-creating the adventures of Neelkanth in the astonishing detail of large format. Capturing dazzling images and scenes on a scale never seen before in large format, this film transports the audience to some of India's most sacred and treasured destinations.

Mira Nair was born in Rourkela[1], Orissa, where her father (having his roots in Punjab) was employed. She was the youngest of three children from a middle-class family. Her father was a civil servant and her mother a social worker. Mira did her early schooling at Catholic schools, including Tara Hall in Shimla. She studied sociology in Delhi University, where she became involved in political street theatre and performed for three years in an amateur drama company. She left for the US at age 19 with a scholarship at Harvard, where she met her first husband Mitch Epstein, as well as Sooni Taraporevala.

At the beginning of her career as a film artist, Nair directed four documentaries. India Cabaret, a film about the lives of strippers in a Bombay nightclub, won the award at the American Film Festival in 1986.

Salaam Bombay! (1988), screenplay by Sooni Taraporevala, was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film, and won many other awards. It is today considered a groundbreaking film classic, and is standard fare for film students.
The 1991 film Mississippi Masala starred Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury that profiled a family of displaced Ugandan-Indians living and working in Mississippi. The screenplay was also by Sooni Taraporevala.
My Own Country starring Naveen Andrews, was produced for HBO films, adapted from the novel by Abraham Verghese by Sooni Taraporevala.
Nair's most popular film to date, Monsoon Wedding (2001), a film about a chaotic Punjabi Indian wedding with a screenplay by Sabrina Dhawan, was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion award at the Venice film festival.
Her 2004 version of Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair, starred Reese Witherspoon.
Her latest film, The Namesake, premiered in the fall of 2006 at Dartmouth College where Ms. Nair was presented with the Dartmouth Film Award. The Dartmouth Film Award, established in 1979, honours outstanding contributors to film and filmmaking. Previous winners have included Johnny Depp, Robert Redford, Liv Ullman, Ken Burns, Ang Lee, Glenn Close, and Meryl Streep. Another premiere was held in fall 2006 with the Indo-American Cultural Council in New York. The Namesake, adapted by Sooni Taraporevala from the novel by Pulitzer prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri, was released in March of 2007. Cultural assimilation is a specialty for Mira Nair, the India-born, Manhattan-based director who found the right balance in Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding and soars with this film version of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake . In Calcutta, circa the 1970s, Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) and Ashima (Tabu) agree to an arranged marriage and to starting their new lives in Manhattan. It's a struggle. The birth of their son, Nikhil, who is given the pet name Gogol, after the Russian author Ashoke reveres, intensifies the cultural clash. The grown Gogol, played with ferocity and feeling by Kal Penn, of Harold and Kumar fame, turns his back on everything Indian, and not just by taking up with a blond socialite (Jacinda Barrett). Gogol has identity problems, not solvable when he leaves the blonde for the Bengali beauty Moushumi (a zesty Zuleikha Robinson). It takes a family tragedy to give Gogol a sense of himself and his namesake.

Her latest project is Maisha, a film lab to help East Africans and South Asians learn to make films. Maisha is headquartered in Nair's adopted home of Kampala, Uganda.
In fall of 2007, Nair will begin production on the big-budget Johnny Depp-starred Shantaram in India, the U.K. and possibly Australia.

Satyajit Ray, (1921-1992), an Indian filmmaker and among the dozen or so great masters of world cinema, is known for his humanistic approach to cinema. He made his films in Bengali, a language spoken in the eastern state of India - West Bengal. And yet, his films are of universal interest. They are about things that make up the human race - relationships, emotions, struggle, conflicts, joys and sorrows.

Satyajit Ray, the master storyteller, has left a cinematic heritage that belongs as much to India as to the world. His films demonstrate a remarkable humanism, elaborate observation and subtle handling of characters and situations. The cinema of Satyajit Ray is a rare blend of intellect and emotions. He is controlled, precise, meticulous, and yet, evokes deep emotional response from the audience. His films depict a fine sensitivity without using melodrama or dramatic excesses. He evolved a cinematic style that is almost invisible. He strongly believed - "The best technique is the one that's not noticeable".

Though initially inspired by the neo-realist tradition, his cinema belongs not to a specific category or style but a timeless meta-genre of a style of story telling that touches the audience in some way. His films belong to a meta-genre that includes the works of Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Chaplin, David Lean, Federico Fellini, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Ingmar Bergman, Jean Renoir, Luis Bunuel, Yasujiro Ozu, Ritwik Ghatak and Robert Bresson. All very different in style and content, and yet creators of cinema that is timeless and universal.

Impressive Oeuvre

Satyajit Ray's films are both cinematic and literary at the same time; using a simple narrative, usually in a classical format, but greatly detailed and operating at many levels of interpretation.

His first film, Pather Panchali (Song of the little road, 1955) established his reputation as a major film director, winning numerous awards including Best Human Document, Cannes, 1956 and Best Film, Vancouver, 1958. It is the first film of a trilogy - The Apu Trilogy - a three-part tale of a boy's life from birth through manhood. The other two films of this trilogy are Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959).

His later films include Jalsaghar (The Music Room, 1958), Devi (The Goddess, 1960), Teen Kanya (Two Daughters, 1961), Charulata (The Lonely Wife, 1964), Nayak (The Hero, 1966), Asani Sanket (Distant Thunder, 1973), Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players, 1977), Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), Ganashatru (An Enemy Of The People, 1989) and Shakha Prashakha (Branches Of The Tree, 1991). Agantuk (The Stranger, 1991) was his last film.