A revealing memoir about the director and his films, by his first assistant for fifty years.

Somsundar And Manju Wait For Life To Fall Into Place, As Kolkata Waits For Rain Kolkata In The Early Seventies. The City Is Besieged By The Naxalite Movement, Which Holds Its Genteel Middle Class In A Thrall Of Terror. Caught In The Crossfire Between The Destructive Power Of The Naxalite Insurgency And The Brutal Backlash Of The Police Force S Counter-Attacks, Peace-Loving Citizens Don T Know Which Way To Turn. The First Post-Independence Generation Of Bengalis Has Barely Come Of Age, Only To Face Crippling Poverty, Unemployment, Disillusionment And Despair. As This Lost Generation Hurtles Headlong On A Sure Course To Self-Destruction, The City Is Caught In The Throes Of A Torrid, Parched, Disabling, Seemingly Endless Summer. Nerves Are On Edge As Kolkata Waits For Rain And Relief & Waiting For Rain Is Sahitya Akademi-Winner Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay S Finely Etched And Evocative Novel About Kolkata As It Was Before It Changed Forever. It Is A Kolkata Seen Through The Eyes Of Somsundar, Young, Unemployed And Despondent, A Past-His-Prime Boxer Who Must Wrestle With Reality When His Elder Brother, Suspected Of Being A Naxalite, Disappears. It Is Also The Kolkata Of Manju, Who Must Break Out Of The Cocoon Of Her Wealthy Family Background And Her Engagement To The Handsome And Successful Adri When The Tumult Of The Times Catches Up With Her. Like Thousands Of Other Kolkatans, Somsundar And Manju Must Make Sense Of Their Own Lives Before They Can Come To Terms With The Strange Times They Live In. Available For The First Time In English In A Superb Translation, This Is A Book That Is Sure To Grip The Reader With Its Riveting Narrative, Its Sharply Observed Cast Of Characters, And Its Compelling Portrayal Of A Great City In Shambles.

The book paints a picture of air force life in the 40s, 50s & 60s, including the period when the Cold War nearly became the opposite. ""One of the Wellingtons had begun an overshoot, but as the engines reached full power the nose had shot skywards, the aircraft had climbed for a moment then stall-turned into the ground and burned. As they started the overshoot, the instructor had taken the backthrust from the elevators, and his backrest had broken away under the strain, sending him over backwards, still holding the wheel. That was all that it had taken to kill three men."" ""A manoeuvre to practise in the simulator was the escape. They would need to be five miles away at bomb-burst and running away from the pressure wave but some had not thought it through. Survival required an instant tight, diving turn while closing the bomb doors and pushing the aircraft to its limiting speed. Less imaginative captains would ask how far away they were at bomb-burst and I would reply "Three-quarters of a mile."

In this rich and insightful collection of essays, leading anthropologist Ghassan Hage brings together academics across political science, philosophy, anthropology and sociology for an examination into the experience of waiting. What is it to wait? What do we wait for? And how is waiting connected to the social worlds in which we live? From Beckett's darkly comic play Waiting for Godot, to the perpetual waiting of refugees to return home or to moments of intense anticipation such as falling in love or the birth of a baby, there are many ways in which we wait. This compelling collection of essays suggests that this experience is among the essential conditions that make us human and connect us to others.

Clouds drift and float. They move above Earth. Sometimes they are white and puffy. Sometimes they are dark and cover the sky. What happens when the weather is cloudy? Read this book to find out! Learn all about kinds of weather in the What’s the Weather Like? series - part of the Lightning Bolt BooksTM collection. With high-energy designs, exciting photos, and fun text, Lightning Bolt BooksTM bring nonfiction topics to life!

The author profiles real tornadoes and severe weather patterns over six thousand miles of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska, known as Tornado Alley.