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Books and Authors

Books and Authors

著者： Hindustan Times - HT Smartcast
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 In this podcast, National Books Editor Manjula Narayan tells you about books, authors and their journeys. This is a Hindustan Times production, brought to you by HT Smartcast アート 文学史・文学批評 社会科学
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  • The ache of a phantom limb

    The ache of a phantom limb
    2025/10/23
    "I have my own history. I was evicted from Kashmir like many thousands of others. But when I went to Bastar and when I looked at other conflicts and what it was doing to other people, my own misery faded in comparison; because even in the worst of my situation, I had not touched the kind of pain and marginalisation I touched while travelling in the hinterland of India"- Rahul Pandita, author, Our Friends In Good Houses, talks to Manjula Narayan about drawing from his journalistic work in his first novel, points of similarity with Neel, the book's protagonist, the vibrance of his female characters including the Maoist guerilla Gurupriya, who stays with the reader long after the book is put away, and how, besides being a study of one man's search for home, this is also a snapshot of contemporary India with its great dreams and unfulfilled yearnings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    53 分
  • Grip of a godman

    Grip of a godman
    2025/10/17
    "In India, we don't use the word 'cult' but the photo of a godman hangs in every other home and it's all placed under the umbrella of culture. Cults go after the most vulnerable, those who are not thinking with their rational mind. That's exactly what happened with my parents. When they saw death, they gravitated towards what gave them most certainty. The majority of people going to such gurus are going for something related to their health; they are going in the hope of getting better. It could be related to disease, addiction or poverty. When you don't get answers from anywhere, you go to someone who gives answers as the guru did in my parents' case. People won't get healed but they are hooked by the continuous promise that if they sustain on this path, things will change. When you become part of a cult, there is manipulation, fear and guilt. In my case, everything got attached to my mother's wellbeing; that if you don't follow the rules, she will lose her life. You start getting manipulated because you don't want her to die. I see my parents as victims too. Within the cult, you are only allowed to do certain things like watch the guru's sermons or listen to his mantras. After a while, from disuse, your brain starts to atrophy and you lose critical thinking because you are not allowed to question anything, These cults may be born from any religion; the thing is they distort the teachings of that religion to suit their own narrative. This is possibly the first book by an Indian about being influenced by a cult. I'm trying to create awareness so people can spot when this happens. You need mental health professionals to deprogram victims because indoctrination changes your brain wiring. There has to be a larger systemic change with the creation of proper programmes so victims can be led back into their lives."- Priyamvada Mehra, author, The Cost of a Promised Afterlife, talks about how her family was drawn into the fold of godman Rampal after her mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour, the blind belief that led to the deterioration of her condition, the proliferation of religious charlatans who prey on those who have lost hope, and the mental abuse that being part of a cult entails Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 2 分
  • Stories from the Seven Sisters+1

    Stories from the Seven Sisters+1
    2025/10/10
    "Life is uncertain, which many of us tend to forget, and there are many things we can't explain; for those things that are inexplicable, we have stories. I was born into conflict, and growing up in Shillong in the 1990s, literature was a lifeline. It allowed us to see that, whatever the past we had inherited, there were other possibilities. Literature gives clarity to the messy parts of life, even if it doesn't have all the answers. Stories tell us to not let life wear us down. A lot of the creative nuances of the storytelling from the northeast come from the oral context, things that are not readily available in print. It influences style and gives the sense that the narrator is talking to you, the reader. Oral traditions have a way, especially with storytelling, of not being fixed, of being fluid. They can move from context to context and generate a new meaning from each of these contexts. This is because they take the reader into account in terms of delivery and register. In the stories from the northeast, orality and print play off each other and what emerges is a hybridised writing where you have both traditions feeding into the new writing. I wanted to represent diverse perspectives; so representation was one of the things that drove me to these stories." - Jobeth Ann Warjri, editor, The Greatest Stories from the Northeast Ever Told, talks to me about the black humour of people from conflict zones, the rich oral traditions of storytelling being threatened by globalisation, and the task of putting together a volume of stories from an area as diverse as the northeast of India, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    57 分
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