HT Picks; New Reads

Episodes from the Ramcharitmanas This week’s pick of interesting reads includes a selection of some of the most renowned episodes of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, a collection of hyper-real stories by leading Bengali writer Mashiul Alam, and a series of conversations on the psychology of war and peace. 175pp, ₹399; Harvard University Press Tulsidas’s Rāmcharitmānas, written in the sixteenth century in a literary dialect of classical Hindi, has become the most beloved retelling of the ancient Ramayana story across northern India. * Holding up a mirror to Bangladeshi society 260pp, ₹499; Westland In the village of Modhupur, the new mother Julekha’s breasts dry up, but to everyone’s consternation, her little baby finds a dog to suckle on; Allah’s angel gives little Khobir 50 takas to buy sweets but his gambling father snatches the money away; Modhu, a penniless farmhand, leaves for Dhaka to drive a rickshaw two weeks a month, while his wife is actively wooed and seduced by his neighbour; Aminul Islam gets slaughtered at a butcher’s shop in broad daylight on protesting the spiking of pure lamb meat with sheep and goat-meat. Bordering on hyper-reality, leading Bengali writer Mashiul Alam’s stories hold up a mirror to Bangladeshi society.