CONTENTS
Publisher's Note xi
Epistle Naiyer Masud 1
Scenes from an Executive Life Anurag Mathur 14
The Teacher's Story Gita Mehta 24
The Fig Tree Aubrey Menen 46
Ancient Promises Jaishree Misra 64
The Faying Guests Rohinton Mistry 74
Mosquito Premendra Mitra 94
God's Mischief M. Mukundan 103
Children of the Lion Carl Muller 109
Taj Timeri N. Murari 114 Ravan and Eddie Kiran Nagarkar 120
Azadi Chaman Nahal 129
Ladies Coupe Anita Nair 137
The Demon Seed and Other Writings M.T. Vasudevan Nair 141
The Scent of Pepper Kavery Nambisan 152
Twelve Ways of Looking at a Giant Suniti Namjoshi 164
A Horse and Two Goats R.K. Narayan 170
La]) a Taslima Nasrin 187
No Onions nor Garlic Srividya Natarajan 191
Transplanted Man Sanjay Nigam 200
The Girl Who Could Make People Naked Manjula Padmanabhan 207
My Own Witness Mrinal Pande 221
The Collector's Wife Mitra Phukan 229 The Thakur's Well Premchand 232
Death Toll Neel Kamal Puri 236
The Insider P.V. Narasimha Rao 246
The River Is Three-Quarters Full Ranga Rao 257
Khagam Satyajit Ray 270
A Village Divided Rahi Masoom Reza 285
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 291
Haroun and the Sea of Stories Salman Rushdie 307
Tarn as Bhisham Sahni 317
Chowringhee Sankar 332
Om Phallus Vilas Sarang 339
We Weren't Lovers Like That Navtej Sarna 352
Mongrel Ambarish Satwik 365 The Day in Shadow Nayantara Sahgal 371
Funny Boy Shyam Selvadurai 378
Six Acres and a Third Fakir Mohan Senapati 391
A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth 401
In the City by the Sea Kamila Shamsie 421
The Last Song of Dusk Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi 426
Banana-Flower Dreams Bulbul Sharma 435
Raag Darbari Shrilal Shukla 441
Ice-Candy-Man Bapsi Sidhwa 447
Nihal Singh Khushwant Singh 453
Dangerlok Eunice de Souza 469
The Twentieth Wife Indu Sundaresan 476
Ambrosia for Afters Kalpana Swaminathan 486 A Grain of Sand Rabindranath Tagore 491
Three Hundred Rupees Manjushree Thapa 496
The Great Indian Novel Shashi Tharoor 506
No God in Sight Altaf Tyrewala 513
An Evensong Krishna Baldev Vaid 521
Beach Boy Ardashir Vakil 525
The In-Between World of Vikram hall M.G. Vassanji 533
After the Hanging O.V. Vijayan 540
Hangman's Journal Shashi Warrier 547
Radha. Only Radha. Paul Zacharia 559