This memoir is a chronicle of the ups and

downs of the movement, a blueprint for

younger Indian Americans and other immigrant

groups raising their voices in the United States,

and a deeply personal family story.

For more information, Read On…….

Born in 1921 in Mysore, Laxman had no formal training

in cartooning but the work he put out over decades was

sheer genius. He began by drawing for local papers, and

illustrating the stories of his famous elder brother,

novelist R K Narayan, while still at college.

After stints at various publications and even a film

studio after his graduation, he came to Mumbai in the

1940s. After a brief spell at the Free Press Journal, he

came to the Times group in 1947 and stayed there for the

rest of his glittering career.

The recipient of numerous awards, among them the

Padma Bhushan, Padma Vibhushan and Magsaysay

Award, Laxman's fan base ran into millions. He never let

them down, drawing two cartoons a day, always

brilliant, with consummate ease. His Common Man,

created in 1957, was the symbol of India's ordinary

people, their trials and tribulations, their little joys and

sorrows, and the mess they found themselves in thanks

to the political class and bureaucracy. But despite the

sobering reality of this, there was never any rancour in

Laxman's cartoons. His humour was always delightful,

and no one could hold a candle to his brushstrokes.

Laxman continued cartooning for the Times till 2010,

even after suffering a stroke in 2003 which paralysed his

left side. In 2010, he suffered another stroke which

robbed him of his speech. Ill-health forced him to stop

cartooning for the Times but he continued drawing till

the very end.

I knew someone was bound to come up with that idea. He is saying, 'English is essential,

I admit — but ways and means should be found to teach it in regional languages...'!

Indian cartoonist R.K. Laxman draws himself drawing his iconic character, The Common Man.

Laxman 's political cartoons cover India's first 60 years of independence.

Credit:

(c) R. K. Laxman, India. Courtesy of Dr. Dharmendra Bhandari

2013 commemorative stamp issued by the Indian Postal Service.

Credit:

Courtesy: Rajeev Prasad

With This Brand of Men’s Suit, You Become the Complete Man. And Then What?

Robert browning, an eminent 19th

century poet, said that perfection was a state of being, not

of becoming. In today’s lingo, it is work-in-progress. The write-up suggests that mission

statements of organisations tend to set-up a target state. It proposes that putting a question like

‘then what’ around these target states is a good way to stay relevant or, to not stagnate.

Don’t sales messages make statements as well?

Forget the Mission Statement. Ask the Mission Question – BusinessWeek

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-28/forget-the-mission-statement-dot-ask-the-

mission-question

Contribution to the monthly E-letter, NM College

Ms. Shashi S.

Assistant Professor

Dept. of Business Communication

The Literary Quest Editorial

This month, the English department’s bulletin focuses

on Indian Literature. In this month’s bulletin, we have

focused on Indian Literature, famous Indian Authors

and the Jaipur Literature festival.

Happy Reading!

- Siddhant Bhide.

Book of The Month

'Go to any party, in any country, on any moonlit terrace of

the world, the best dressed man is always the one from

Patna. ' In this set of interlinked stories we meet the not so

quintessential Patna man Hriday Thakur, Literature junkie,

aspiring writer, inveterate lover of women and rain, Jishnu

da, his acquaintance from Delhi University, who is now an

'importer of blondes', Sadaf Khan Abdali, who loves the

smell of Listerine early in the morning and 'Sophia Loren',

dream girl of many schoolboys, now a mother of two.

Unsentimental to a fault, SiddharthChowdhury's stories deal

with relationships that are intimate and sensuous and

sometimes hard to define, taken together, they are an

affectionate nod to an idealist generation, insulated in a

world of publishing, academia, gin-soaked brunches and

Marxist philosophy.

Jaipur Literature Festival 2015

The Jaipur Literature Festival is an annual literary

festivaltaking place in the Indian city of Jaipur since

2006.Asia's biggest literary festival,it was described by Miranda

Seymour in the Mail on Sunday of 10 August 2008 as "the grandest literary Festival of them all". The festival gained international

media attention in 2012, because of a number of events related to

Salman Rushdie and the Satanic Verses controversy. In recent years it faces media criticism and lampooning due to its

perceived elitism, irrelevance, commercialization of literature

and dependence on celebrities. The Diggi Palace Hotel serves as

the main venue of the festival. It is held each year in Jaipur,

Rajasthan during the month of January, usually in the Hall of

Audience and gardens of the Diggi Palace in the city centre, and

celebrates excellence in Rajasthani, Indian and International

writing.

The festival directors are the writers NamitaGokhale and William

Dalrymple and is produced by Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Productions.

The Festival is an Initiative of the Jaipur Virasat Foundation

founded by Faith Singh, originally as a segment of the Jaipur

Heritage International Festival in 2006, and developed into a

free-standing festival of literature standing on its own feet in

2008. JVF's Community Director Vinod Joshi is its regional

advisor. All events at the festival are free and not ticketed.

Author of the Month

Rabindranath Tagore

Speakers This Year

- Amish Tripathi

-Anupama Chopra

- Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

- Sudha Murthy

-VikasKhanna

-V S Naipaul

-Vishal Bharadwaj

Scheduled from

21st January 2015 to

25th January 2015.

Jaipur Literature Festival

Genre Literary festival

Dates 21-25 January 2015

Location(s) Diggi Palace, Jaipur, India

Years active 2006 – present

Website

http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org/

Known as the Father of Indian literature, Gurudev needs no

introduction. Born on 7th May, 1861, he became the first non

European to win the Nobel prize for literature.

The Original national

anthem of Sri Lanka

was composed and

tuned by

Rabindranath

Tagore.

He released his first substantial

poems at the age of 16.

His works

Gitanjali – 1912 – English

The Spirit of Japan – 1916- English

Jivansmriti – 1940 – Bengali

ValmikiPratibha – 1881 – Bengali

Sonar Tari – 1894 – Bengali

The Literary Quest Editorial

The English Department of NM College is back with the

first edition of The Literary Quest for the Academic Year

2015-16. The theme for this month is Indian English

literature.

Hope you enjoy reading this bulletin. Your valuable

feedback is always welcomed.

Happy Reading!

- Siddhant Bhide.

Book of The Month

Ram Rajya. The Perfect Land.But perfection has a price. He paid that

price.3400 BCE. INDIA

Ayodhya is weakened by divisions. A terrible war has taken its toll. The

damage runs deep. The demon King of Lanka, Raavan, does not impose his

rule on the defeated. He, instead, imposes his trade. Money is sucked out of

the empire. The Sapt Sindhu people descend into poverty, despondency and

corruption. They cry for a leader to lead them out of the morass. Little do

they appreciate that the leader is among them. One whom they know. A

tortured and ostracised prince. A prince they tried to break. A prince called

Ram.

He loves his country, even when his countrymen torment him. He stands

alone for the law. His band of brothers, his Sita, and he, against the darkness

of chaos.

Will Ram rise above the taint that others heap on him? Will his love for Sita

sustain him through his struggle? Will he defeat the demon Lord Raavan

who destroyed his childhood? Will he fulfil the destiny of the Vishnu?

Begin an epic journey with Amish’s latest: the Ram Chandra Series.

Indian English Literature English is a foreign language but since the British came to India the language has had

an impact on several fields—in education, literary effort and as a medium of

communication.

Indian English Literature refers to that body of work by writers from India, who

writes in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one

of the numerous regional and indigenous languages of India. English literature in

India is also linked with the works of writers of the Indian diaspora born in India but

residing elsewhere.

A pioneer of this literature was Raja Rammohan Roy whose prose works is

noteworthy. There were poets who are considered the first of the Indian English poets:

Henry Vivian Derozio, Madhusudan Dutt, Aru and Toru Dutt, and Manmohan Ghose.

Indian literature in English actually dates back to the 1830s to Kashiprasad Ghosh,

who is considered the first Indian poet write in English.

Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction. In the beginning, however,

political writing in the novel or essay format was dominant, as can be seen in Raja

Rammohan Roy’ works. An outstanding Indo-Anglian writer was Aurobindo Ghose

whose poetic magnum opus is Savitri an epic. In prose his most effective work is The

Life Divine outlining his metaphysics in a rich language.

Some of Rabindranath Tagore’s works were originally written in English Sadhana

Personality and The Religion of Man Yet another Indian writer in English was

Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India’, who rendered familiar things with an

essence of colour and romance. The Golden Threshold, The Bird of Time and The

Broken Wing are her important works. Jawaharlal Nehru’s prose works, The

Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, are famous.

In the genre of novel, three early writers made a mark. Mulik Raj Anand’s Coolie,

Untouchable, The Big Heart and other novels are about the underprivileged in India.

R.K. Narayan has become famous for creating the imaginary ‘Malgudi’ as the locale

for most of his novels. He has a humorous manner and an eye for the comic in the

world around him. His works include Swami and his Friends.

The Dark Room, the Guide, Waiting for the Mahatma and The Man Eater of Malgudi

Raja Rao is a good short story writer and has written only four novels but they are

significant. They include Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope, and The Cat and

Shakespeare. Besides the legendary and hugely venerated Indian English literary

personalities like Rabindranath Tagore or R K Narayan, later novelists like Kamala

Markandaya (Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury A Silence of Desire, Two Virgins),

Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant

Drum, Combat of Shadows, The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devil’s

Wind), Anita Desai (Clear Light of Day, The Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain,

Games at Twilight) and Nayantara Sehgal, have ceaselessly captured the spirit of an

independent India struggling to break away from the British and establish a distinct

identity. Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Bhabani Bhattacharya (So Many

Hungers, He Who Rides Tiger, Music for Mohini) are other Indian novelists famous

for their writing in English.

In the recent past, we have had a crop of fresh talent. During the 1980s and 1990s,

India had emerged as a major literary nation. Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children

had become a rage around the world, winning the Booker Prize. Other Indian English

literature novelists of repute of the contemporary times include V.S. Naipaul, Shobha

De (Selective Memory), G.V. Desani, M. Ananthanarayanan, Arun Joshi, O.V.

Vijayan, Allan Sealy (The Trotternama), Shashi Tharoor (Show Business, The Great

Indian Novel) and Amitav Ghosh (Circle of Reason, Shadow Lines). Vikram Seth

wrote a novel in verse. The Suitable Boy, which is equally famous for the stupendous

advance he got from his publishers. Upamanyu Chatterjee (English August) has made

a name for himself as a foremost modern novelist.

These authors make use of Indian phrases alongside English words and have tried to

reproduce a blend of the Indian and the Western cultures. While Indian poets,

novelists, essayists, dramatists have been making momentous and considerable

contributions to world literature since the pre-Independence era, the past few years

have witnessed a thriving of Indian English writing in the global market. The works of

Indian authors writing in English are often to be found on the best-seller list. They are

also incurring and earning an immense amount of critical fame.

Recent news in the field of literature

Indore man endeavours to conserve books of multi-

faceted Raja Bhoj

TNN | Jun 18, 2015, 03.46 PM IST

INDORE: He was a revolutionary engineer who designed a wooden aircraft which could

fly with the help of mercury. This environmentalist built and connected twelve lakes in

Dhar for watershed management. Raja Bhoj was a prominent ruler of Parmar Dynasty

whose reign from 1010 to 1055 AD was not only marked by presence of a majestic ruler

who won battles, but also a connoisseur of art, culture and spirituality whose roots were

embedded in Indian civilization. Founder of intellectual accommodations Bhoj Shalas

and a ruler of Dhaara Nagri, with hundred percent literacy, he was not only an able

administrator but also an erudite who penned 84 books on various subjects such

architecture, aeronautics, language, finance, dramatics and medicine.

Deependra Sharma, a resident of Dhar, decided to conserve this invaluable knowledge by

collecting rare publications of his works. Director of Bhoj Shodh Sansthan, an NGO

working towards researching and conserving invaluable heritage left by Raja Bhoj, owns

nine publications of books written by him. Bhoj Prabhanda, a publication among these

yellowing, fragile pages dates back to 1832! "After the end of Parmar Dynasty because of

annexation by Delhi Sultanate, most of the literature of the time was destroyed. Out of

the 84 documentations by Raja Bhoj, about 22 are known to have survived" he said.

These nine books include Prabhand Chintamani (a book on beautification of language),

Shringar Prakash (a book on grammar), Bhoj Naamvalika (a finance book), and Bhoj

Prabhanda (a book on administration), Samrangan Sutradhar (a popular book on civil

engineering), Champu Ramayana (spread across five chapters of prose and poetry),

Rajmragank (a book on Ayurveda) and Parijaat Manjari (a play). An interesting read

among these is Raj Martanda, a medicinal encyclopedia on treatment of human and

animal diseases. This book also contains a chapter dedicated to poisonous animals, and

treatment for leprosy, which was not found even in Charak Sahita, an important book of

Ayurveda.

Author of the Month

Amish Tripathi

Described as India’s first literary pop star, by world - renowned film director Shekhar

Kapur, Amish’s unique combination of cracking story-telling, religious symbolism,

and profound philosophies has made him an overnight publishing phenomenon, with

spiritual guru Deepak Chopra hailing Amish’s book as “archetypal and stirring”.

Amish’s Shiva Trilogy – The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The

Oath of the Vayuputras – has sold over 2.2 million copies in print with grss retail sales

of over Rs. 60 crores, making it the fastest selling book in Indian history. His books

have been translated into 14 Indian and international languages. His next book titled

Scion of Ikshvaku, the book 1 of Ram Chandra series, is expected to release on 22nd

June 2015.

Forbes magazine has titled Amish amongst 100 most influential celebrities in India, 3

years in a row. He has also received the Society Young Achievers Award for literature

in 2013, Man of the Year by Radio City, Communicator of the year by PR Council of

India and Pride of India award (literature). Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower

Fellow, a prestigious American programme for outstanding leaders from around the

world.

Amish is a graduate of IIM Calcutta and worked for 14 years in the financial services

industry before turning into full time writing. He lives in Mumbai with his wife Preeti

and son Neel.