The story is among the all-time literary classics penned by the legendary Hindi litterateur Munshi Premchand, which succinctly captures the crumbling socio-economic fabric of the Indian state during the last days of the Nawabs of Awadh during the mid-nineteenth century. With the weakening of the central leadership of the Mughals in Delhi, the regional satraps and the nobility characterized by the nawabs and kings became lazy with heavy indulgence in luxury and vices. Civic administration a...

The story is a light-hearted comedy that chronicles an affluent yet eccentric animal lover's desperation to win recognition for his animal husbandry skill at any cost. Adding frenzy to the madness is the opportunist yet dedicated suitor who wants to marry the rich man's only daughter, overcoming the barrier of his low disposable income - a demerit as flagged off by the rich man. The hilarious yet counter-intuitive proposition paves the way to a concoction of hearty laughter and a battle of...

Gulli Danda is the story of the annals of time that reverberates in our deep consciousness, where both joy and sadness of the bygone days nurture our memories of the time spent well and its association. Humans outgrow their past, but that past remains rooted in their psyche and keeps drawing them back into its fold as their hearts try to reclaim the magical touch of the moments well past.In this story, legendary litterateur Munshi Premchand, with his characteristic empathetic writi...

One of the leading lights among the Bengal intellectuals of that era, Rajshekhar Basu alias Parashuram (or, Parashurama / Parshuram), served us well with his characteristic humor-coated sarcasm that made fun of the irrationality and deep superstitions that were plaguing the Bengali society of the yore and its people. Yet his writings ring as foresight even in this age of information overflow.This collection of 12 of Parashuram's greatest short stories is a veritable collector's ite...

Love is a fascinating aspect of human emotions that embalms withered souls with new hope and zest for life. Yet love manifests in myriad shades ranging from caring to conjugal, physical to psychological, empowering to escorting. Often love follows good humor, and together these two human instincts trigger the highest form of hedonistic pleasures in human minds. Still, sorrows and despair bring souls together to a new spring of togetherness at times to present a contrarian realization of hu...