Some years ago the author of this book was struck by the contrast between the beauty of Hindi film heroines and the ugliness of Hindi film heroes. After researching the matter the author concluded that the explanation was straightforward: leading men in Hindi films were ugly because they were Indian men and Indian men were measurably uglier than Indian women ... While this observation was accurate and the data gathered was reliable, the author made the mistake of attributing the ugliness of the Indian male to nature. He knows now that Indian men aren't born ugly: they achieve ugliness through practice. It is their habits and routines that make them ugly. If the author were to be schematic, he would argue that Indian men are ugly on account of the three Hs: hygiene, hair, and horrible habits ... Why are Indian men like this? How do they achieve the bullet-proof unselfconsciousness that allows them to be so abandonedly ugly? The author thinks it comes from a sense of entitlement that's hard-wired into every male child that grows up in an Indian household. That, and the not unimportant fact that, despite the way they look, they're always paired off with good-looking women.

'You watch, drifting, surrounded by the thing. It's like living underwater.' Men in White describes the experience of living with cricket in a country consumed by the game. Mukul Kesavan is keen on cricket in a non-playing way. With a top score of 14 in neighbourhood cricket and a lively distaste for fast bowling, his credentials for writing about the game are founded on the assumption that distance brings perspective. The book recalls the 'Pandara Park' cricket of Kesavan's childhood, examines the current health of Test cricket, the problem of chucking, the growing influence of technology on the game and, as he puts it, the wickedness of the ICC. In-between, he profiles his cricketing heroes and denounces modern cricket's villains. First published in 2007, this updated edition includes a profile of M.S. Dhoni, 'India's first adult captain since Pataudi', a celebration of the freakishly talented Muttiah Muralitharan and a chronicle of the 'Symonds Affair' which revealed more about the racism of the Indian fan than we wanted to acknowledge. Written with a novelist's talent for making things vivid and a fan's unwinking commitment to his team, Men in White is an indispensable book for cricket lovers everywhere.

The great philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist masterfully offers his fascinating outline of Aesthetics Theory. Drawing on the art, literature, and social sciences involved, Santayana discusses the nature of beauty, form, and expression.

At The Close Of The Twentieth Century, A Young Photographer On A Train To Lucknow Suddenly Finds Himself In The Deep End Of 1942. Adrift In The Final Years Of The Raj, He Improvises A Life, And Is Caught Up In The Fates Of Ammi, Forever Waiting For A Vanished Husband; Masroor, Desperate To Stall A Hindu Vs Muslim Cricket Match; Chaubey, A Rebel Turned Repertory Star; Parwana, Who Starts Life As An Orphan And Nearly Ends It As An Ersatz Widow On A Make-Believe Pyre; Gyanendra, A Pioneering Pornographer; Carrick, A Parson Worried About The Millions Starving In Bengal; And The Narrator S Own Grandmother, Whom He Personally Cremated Not So Long Ago. But Hindsight Tells Him That Partition Will Destroy This World. And In His Desperate Struggles To Avert The Inevitable, We Discover, Often With An Almost Unbearable Poignance, How The Possibilities In India S Past Were Squandered, Some Wantonly, Others Accidentally.

There are three basic themes in Ralph Borsodi's This Ugly Civilization a critique of modern industrial civilization, achieving personal economic independence, and maximizing individual potential. Borsodi advocates a lifestyle of self-reliance and decentralized power, and outlines how it can be realized either by one man or by all. The logical steps are given for moving beyond a "victory garden" so that each of us may cultivate a human-scale existence compatible with nature and the pursuit of the good life.Received with great interest upon release in 1929, This Ugly Civilization offered a course of action for those who were soon facing the Great Depression. The book again found an audience during the rationing and instability of World War II. This Ugly Civilization and Borsodi's subsequent Flight from the City (1933) became "bibles" to many in the successive "back-to-the-land" movements that occur every generation. His ideas gained further momentum among young people looking for answers in the 1960s and 70s. The indefatigable Mildred Loomis, the greatest advocate of Borsodi's work, even garnered the nickname "grandmother of the counterculture." Within another decade, the punk-inspired DIY movement would rail against centralizing authority and encourage the creation of a new culture of self-determination-although such radical ideas were hardly new, as Borsodi's book shows.This Ugly Civilization rejects the reign of quantity over quality in both man and machine, along with the concomitant rise of consumerism and groupthink. Above and beyond mere self-sufficiency, Barsodi champions an appreciation of beauty, uniqueness and craftsmanship over the factory conformity being imposed in every sector of life. He has written a pragmatic, poetic and philosophical work that will speak to every thoughtful nonconformist. It represents an early seed of the Green Revolution that continues to promote health, comfort and independence. It is about living a whole, organic life and developing the potential of the individual, the family and the surrounding community.

Thirteen original essays explore the qualities and challenges of urban life (in Europe, Asia, and the Americas) from a variety of disciplinary perspectives that illustrate the aesthetic, cultural, and political roles of bodies in the city streets.