Never Mind the Bullocks (37 page)
Read Never Mind the Bullocks Online
Authors: Vanessa Able
34.
A religious ritual, in this case performed in the waters of the sacred river Ganges.
35.
âMandalay'.
36.
âGunga Din'.
Thanks to Akhil Gupta in Mumbai and his assistant Prasad CG, without whom the journey would not have been possible.
And then to everyone who made a donation to the Nano Diaries project: Mum and Dad, Steve and Hannah Shellswell, Jon Meldrum, Dom Goodman, Olly Lambert, AOMAC, Charles Strasser, Robb Ellender, Ljilja Lainovic, Dijana and Dobrica Vukcevic, Mike and Jean Barnes, Dorothea Evans, Chris Gothard, Sacha Lainovic, Jason Sanchez, Can Esenbel, Balamurugan Manoharan, Jan Pearse, Richard Norman and Vamsi Mohun.
Another big shout-out to my agent Sherna Khambatta and the team at Nicholas Brealey, as well as the very talented Hiromi Suzuki Asakura who drew that lovely map on the front cover.
Thank you to the friends who softened the blows of long-distance travel and who provided support and advice, or allowed me to share their homes and the delights of creature comforts. Special big-ups to the Korgaonkar family, as well as Reuben, Petra, Hénoc, Marion, Hadleigh and Paul.
I'm grateful to Ratan Tata and to the folks at Tata Motors who have shown encouragement and cooperation, and who have refrained from filing any legal action against me.
Thanks to my parents and my husband Thor for all their support and patience in the face of my refusal to get a proper job.
Thanks to everyone in India. You truly deserve your title as the most hospitable nation on earth, as well as the mantle of the country of the craziest drivers. Yes, you lot who drive like your pants are on fire: just take care and watch how you go.
N
ICHOLAS
B
REALEY
P
UBLISHING
Intimate Journeys through
Modern India
Sally Howard
Sally Howard, a self-confessed child of the Western Sexual Revolution, sets out on a âsexploration' through modern India, travelling by train, plane and auto-rickshaw.
From the heat of anti-rape protest on the streets of New Delhi to the cool hills of Shimla, playground of the Raj; from a Gujurati retirement home for gay men and eunuchs to a busy sex clinic in Chennai; from patriarchs to matriarchs; GIGs (Good Indian Girls), BIGs (Bad Indian Girls) and the flesh-pots of Bombay, she â accompanied by feisty Delhi girl Dimple â lifts the bed sheets on India's sexual revolution.
And it's a revolution that's full of fascinating surprises and contrasts; for India â the land that gave us that exuberant guide to sexual pleasure, the Kama Sutra â is also the land where women remain cloistered in purdah while teenage girls check out porn online; where families bow down to a conjoined phallus and vagina, the âShivaling', while couples fear to hold hands in public; and where the loveless arranged marriage is still the norm.
Colourful and compelling,
The Kama Sutra Diaries
reveal what India has to tell us about modern-day love, sex and sexuality.
Paperback ISBN 978-1-85788-589-7
eISBN 978-1-85788-960-4
PB £9.99 UK / $16.95 US
www.nicholasbrealey.com
N
ICHOLAS
B
REALEY
P
UBLISHING
Monisha Rajesh
“A promising debut from a writer to watch.”
âGiles Foden,
Condé Nast Traveller
“Crackles and sparks with life like an exploding
box of Diwali fireworks.ӉWilliam Dalrymple
To understand India you have to see it, hear it, breathe it and feel it. Living through the good, the bad and the ugly is the only way to know where you fit in and where India fits into you.
In 1991 Monisha uprooted from Sheffield to Madras in the hope of making India her home. Fed up with soap-eating rats, severed human heads, paying bribes, and the creepy colonel across the road, she returned to England with a bitter taste in her mouth. But twenty years later, she turns to a map of the Indian Railways and takes a page out of Jules Verne's classic tale, embarking on an adventure around India in 80 trains, covering 40,000 km, the circumference of the Earth.
Indian trains carry over twenty million passengers every day, plowing through cities, crawling past villages, climbing up mountains and skimming along coasts. Monisha hopes that 80 train journeys up, down and across India will lift the veil on a country that has become a stranger to her. And with a self-confessed militant devout atheist in tow, her personal journey around a country built on religion isn't quite what she bargained forâ¦
Paperback ISBN 978-1-85788-595-8
eISBN 978-1-85788-948-2
PB £10.99 UK / $17.95 US
www.nicholasbrealey.com
