Manali Desai

LoveAngle

Gayatri Kulkarni: A gen Z girl who has always lived under the shadow of her elder brother Sharad; so much so that she even chose her degree and college following in his footsteps. Although she doesn’t regret it, she wishes her parents would understand her dream to pursue her one true passion - DANCE. Varun Agarwal: A millennial who believes there are no shortcuts in life. He has learned the hard way that being born into a wealthy family comes with more cons than the world would ever understand. She belongs to a Maharashtrian middle-class family from the suburbs. He hails from an affluent family in South Bombay. The only common point between them - being Mumbaikars. How do their paths cross in this city of dreams? Gayatri believes it’s because of Abhi Agarwal, Varun’s younger brother, who also happens to be her brother’s batchmate and close friend. But Varun has harboured a crush on her long before they exchanged hellos and phone numbers. Their story is a meeting of two generations and families, who are poles apart. Is there drama involved? Gayatri is often called a drama queen by those who know her. But after Varun’s entry into her life, she’s transformed from Miss Melodrama to Miss Mellowed Drama. Find out all about that transition in this much-awaited spin-off from Manali Desai’s debut novel, Love (Try) Angle, Love & (Mellow) Drama (Love Trials-II).

Love & (Mellow) Drama

Parama Roy

Piya Chatterjee

In the last couple of decades, violence as an analytic category has loomed large in the historical, literary, and anthropological scholarship of South Asia. The challenge of thinking violence in its gendered incarnations fully and in all its complexity is not only theoretical or critical but also irreducibly ethical and political, given the proliferation of civil wars, pogroms and riots, fundamentalist movements, insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, and new technologies of violence and injury. All of these simultaneously feature and help constitute gendered actors and gendered scripts of violence. States of Trauma seeks to examine this terrain by staging a set of questions. How are we to think about the moral charge that accrues to violence? What is the relationship between violence and non-violence? In considering the moral and affective economy of violence, how may we speak of the seductions of the idioms and practices of militarism and sexualized violence for women? How are these seductions/pleasures distinct from those proffered to men, if indeed they are distinct?

Gender and Violence in South Asia

States of Trauma

Ayesha has just moved to the� City of Dreams� with her parents. She befriends the charming Viren, who helps her find her footing in Mumbai. Though she is slowly adjusting to her new life, what Ayesha is most excited about is pursuing B.A. (Hons.) Political Science from a reputed college. Things don�t go as smoothly as she had thought though. Because Abhi, her senior, seems hell-bent on making her life on the campus difficult from day one. Just when things seem settled, Viren joins the college as an Ad-Hoc lecturer. Is there more to Ayesha�s friendship with Viren, and her frenemity with Abhi? It seems there�s a love triangle blooming around the corner or will it be a Love (Try) Angle? Because Ayesha is not sure if it�s love at all.

Love (Try) Angle

Cedric de Leon

Cihan Tuğal

Do political parties merely represent divisions in society? Until now, scholars and other observers have generally agreed that they do. But Building Blocs argues the reverse: that some political parties in fact shape divisions as they struggle to remake the social order. Drawing on the contributors' expertise in Indonesia, India, the United States, Canada, Egypt, and Turkey, this volume demonstrates further that the success and failure of parties to politicize social differences has dramatic consequences for democratic change, economic development, and other large-scale transformations. This politicization of divisions, or "political articulation," is neither the product of a single charismatic leader nor the machinations of state power, but is instead a constant call and response between parties and would-be constituents. When articulation becomes inconsistent, as it has in Indonesia, partisan calls grow faint and the resulting vacuum creates the possibility for other forms of political expression. However, when political parties exercise their power of interpellation efficiently, they are able to silence certain interests such as those of secular constituents in Turkey. Building Blocs exposes political parties as the most influential agencies that structure social cleavages and invites further critical investigation of the related consequences.

Manali Desai

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