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Rebirth
By Jahnavi Barua.
Penguin.
 Pages 203. Rs 250.

REBIRTH is the story of Kaberi, a young woman coming to grips with an uncertain marriage. It is also an intimate portrait of the passionate bond between a mother and her unborn child. Moving between Bangalore and Guwahati, the novel weaves together Kaberi’s inner and outer worlds as she negotiates the treacherous waters of betrayal and loss — an unfaithful husband, a troubled relationship with her parents and the death of a childhood friend.

With characterisitic restraint and disarming honesty, Jahnavi Barua lays bare the disquieting predicaments of contemporary urban life and reveals the timeless and redemptive power of love, friendship and self-renewal.

Sleeping with Movie Stars
By Gitanjali Kolanad.
Penguin.
Pages 175. Rs 225.

This collection of eight short stories traces the life of a dancer through the years. In the seventies, she is sent, as a teenager, from Canada to study dance in India, away from the corrupting influence of the west. She finds, instead, a world of sensuality beyond anything previously experienced. She meets a movie star, goes on bike rides with boys she doesn’t know, and learns about the perils of falling in love from the plight of an older, revered man. Time and again, she comes back to India, as a wife and a mother, to rediscover the earthiness and passion of her youth.

The writer transforms fragment sof life into stories of love, infidelity and betrayal with grace, elegance and effortless ease of a classical dancer.

The Comical Saga
By Mayuresh Pokharankar.
Frog Books.
Pages 148. Rs 150.

Bryan, Somu and Vicky have screwed up their school life due to the company they kept with Varun Bhai. The misery of their life continues as each of them falls in love with the same girl: Pooja Kapoor.

Passing exams, satisfying parents’ expectations, impressing the girlfriend, amking an impact on the would-be in-laws … all these seem to be a big question for Bryan, Somu and Vicky.

Can they pass their exams? Can they stand up to their parents’ expectations? Can they succeed in making an impact on their in-laws? Who amongst them will pooja fall in love with? Do they succeed in their endeavour or do they mess up the whole thing?

The book is an answer to all these questions and more.

Chanakya’s Chant
By Ashwin Sanghi.
Westland.
Pages 448. Rs 195.

Cold, calculating, cruel and armed with a complete absence of accepted morals, he becomes the most powerful political strategist in Bharat and succeeds in uniting a ragged country against the invasion of the army of that demigod: Alexander the Great.

History knows him as the brilliant strategist Chanakya.

But history, which exults in repeating itself, revives Chankaya two-nad-a-half millennia later, in the avatar of Gangasagar Mishra, a Brahmin teacher in smalltown India, who becomes puppeteer to a hos tof ambitious individuals, including a slumchild, who grows up into a beautiful and powerful woman. Modern India happens to be just as riven as ancient India by class ahtred, corruption and divisive politics — and this landscape is Gangasagar’s feasting ground. Can this wily pandit bring about a miracle of united India?

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