What prompts common people to kill a guard and rob an office they thought had some tickets for a Test match? Why does a scholar of medieval Bengali literature remark, 'Had life been a sport, it would be cricket'? Who do journalists vindicate by promoting cricket, the imperial game par excellence, as the lifeforce of the ordinary Indian? This book pursues these threads of the people's uncanny attachment to cricket, seeking to understand the sport's role in the making of a postcolonial society. With a focus on Calcutta, it unpacks the various connotations of international cricket that have produced a postcolonial community and public culture. Cricket, it shows, gave the people a tool to understand and form themselves as a cultural community. More than the outcomes of matches, the beliefs, attitudes and actions the sport generated had an immense bearing on emerging social relationships.

Rivers pulse through the heart of India. The stories, essays and poetry in Waterlines reflect the presence of rivers in our lives: from film music to metaphysics, we turn to rivers to imagine and express our desires. As rivers shape our worlds and we shape theirs, landscapes and lives melt into one. This anthology celebrates this shared creation and also sheds light on the turbulence around rivers today. Waterlines combines classic works with the best of contemporary writing. Here is Rabindranath Tagore s brilliant tale of a young widow s passion. Agyeya recounts his aunt s courageous battle against the Beas. Cobras and otters and other river creatures meet crocodile-man Ron Whitaker. Arundhati Roy and Advaita Mallabarman offer river stories with dark currents. Mukul Sharma traces the travails of Biharis living in the shifting diara lands. Nita Kumar s lyrical account of the pleasures of Banaras ghats includes bhang-induced latrine . Anand Pandian presents early twentieth century Tamil verse honouring Pennycuick, the British engineer who dammed the Periyar. Ruchir Joshi pays homage to the Hooghly and Howrah Bridge. A.K. Ramanujan and A.K. Mehrotra, the Ganga, the Narmada, the Kaveri they are all here. With its unexpected bends and delightful views, Waterlines is a tribute to rivers that you will enjoy dipping into.

This book presents a historical understanding of contemporary society by examining beliefs, attitudes, and practices generated by cricket. It examines how cricket reflects twenty-first-century shifts in nationalism, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and authoritarianism, and explores how identities derived from the sport impact global identity politics.

An elite community in India, neither Anglicized nor traditional, shaped instead by diaspora and capitalist enterprise, is the subject of Anne Hardgrove's research.