100 books like That Summer in Kalagarh

As a child, I loved—and still love—reading the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and the Hardy Boys.

But my favorite was Feluda, a series of mystery stories or novellas created by ace filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

Ray’s Feluda stories revolve around a fictional detective called Feluda, who travels across India’s vibrant landscapes, from the caves of Ajanta Ellora in the west, to Jaipur in the north, to Chennai in the south, to many more, and outside India too.

Ray’s detective stories are well rooted in Indian culture, very clean, and virtually without any “Adult” content, and only a bit of violence but make for interesting and gripping reading despite it. 

Written originally in Bengali language, it is translated very well. It is eminently suitable for readers of all age groups.  

Just a Train Ride Away is a wonderful, simply written book, a very quick and profound read, and it carries a lot of lucid and clear language.

Kids and adults alike will enjoy the book.

The plot is full of deep insights and comments on Indian society. The plot is straightforward: A boy, Santosh, travels by train, from Mumbai to Kolkata to meet his father.

What happens on the way, and conversations he has, leaves an indelible impression on him.    

Nature and wildlife are something I always enjoyed, and loved from my school days.

Flute in the Forest is a truly memorable story, mesmerizing and beautiful, rooted in the landscape of South India’s forests.

It focuses on Atiya Sardare, a daughter of a forest officer, and her treks into the forest. It is on these treks she hears the sound of a flute playing, and resolves to learn to play it.

Atiya’s flute playing calms a rogue elephant in the forest, Rangappa. I recommend it to anyone who loves a moving story. 

Who among us as, as kids and not so kids, has not dreamt of running away from home? We all have, let’s be frank. 

But in Zai Whitaker’s Andamans Boy, Arif actually does it. Arif is sick and tired of the oppressive and shabby treatment by his aunt and uncle. He is also tired of life in a major city like Mumbai.

One night, he decides to run away, far far away to the deep south city of Chennai, from where he catches a boat to Andaman Islands. These islands are full of a large tribal population, and he quickly discovers nature of tribal society.

Full of frolic and fun, it also asks the fundamental question: what is development and how do we define the word “civilized”? 

As much a love story as a traveller’s tale, the wonderful book is more about the relationship between Mark Shand and his trusty elephant, Tara, as it is about India. A truly heart-warming adventure sees the author buy Tara and ride her 600 miles across dusty back roads, through jungle paths, and along state highways, to the world’s biggest elephant fair in Sonepur. Tara, who found a home at Kipling Camp in Madhya Pradesh is still alive today, which is more than can be said for the poor author, Mark, who died in a freak accident stepping off a sidewalk in New York a few years ago. How strange life can be.

Most people, I think, when they start to understand the world better, they start to see the endless ways that it could be improved. Some of us though, we get stuck in the ideas of improvement, and never figure out how to just get on with it.

Amartya Sen won a Nobel Prize and has other thought-provoking books. But I like this one. The Country of First Boys is a series of essays that are technically about various issues in India, but which are easily extrapolated to depressingly common situations in most other countries. Central to the essays is the theme of not letting the idea of a perfectly just society get in the way of the business of reducing injustice. We can debate utopia until we take our last breath, but in the meantime, Sen inspires us that there is much we can do now to improve the world… show more.

Those who know the field of religious violence may find my choice of Ashis Nandy’s book of essays to be a peculiar one since it deals with a variety of issues besides religious violence. But one of his essays, “The Discrete Charms of Indian Terrorists,” is worth the price of the book. In it, Nandy describes the remarkably civil behavior of young Sikh activists who hijacked an Indian plane in the 1980s. He then goes on to disagree with Gandhi that terrorism necessarily absolutizes a conflict, and he rejects the common perspective, especially in the West, that terrorism is always evil. Though Nandy’s analysis does not fit all, or perhaps most, instances of religion-related terrorism it makes us reconsider our assumptions about the use of violence in certain situations.

As the great Asian renaissance gathers momentum in the 21st century, many young Asians will begin to rediscover their own cultures and civilizations, just as the West did in its first cultural renaissance in the 15th century. Few understand classical Indian civilization as well as Amartya Sen does.

Since Asian cultures are associated with despotism and Western cultures with individual liberties, Sen says, “The claim that the basic ideas underlying freedom and tolerance have been central to Western culture over the millennia and are somehow alien to Asia is, I believe, entirely rejectable.” Living up to the spirit of the title of his book, Sen demonstrates in this book that he’s an argumentative Indian and Asian. Argumentative Asians will eventually win the argument with the West. 

Ruskin Bond is known more for his simple stories about everyday people in the Himalayan foothills (like a North Indian R.K. Narayan). He does throw in the odd story, which seems like a folktale with a surprising ending like A Face in the Night and The Eyes Have It. This livens up the collection more, as you don’t know when you will get one of the unexpected plot twists.

His books ooze with his love for his adopted country, and he writes with such tenderness about young characters that they are wholesome and fulfilling to read.

What I love most about him is that he is one of the most approachable and friendly authors. He spends hours sitting in his hometown’s main bookshop talking with readers and autographing their purchases. 

An exciting, richly layered adventure story of the "long learning of love" set against the backdrop of the rule of the British Raj and the first rumblings of the 1857 Indian Mutiny. I lent the book to a friend and thought I'd lost it forever until I discovered it in her spare bedroom! Our narrator, Laura, has to watch as her cousin marries Charles, the man Laura loves, and is then forced to accompany the young couple on their honeymoon. Not something to be recommended! Their destination is the Kingdom of Oudh and the vast Zemindari estate of Charles's unknown brother, Oliver Erskine. I don't recommend Zemindar because it has won a host of prestigious prizes but because it is a great read.