Shala
About this ebook
Mukund Joshi is fourteen and newly in love. He attends the same private tuitions as his classmate, Shirodkar, just for a glimpse of her, and follows her back home every day. Sadly, she has not a clue that he is pining away for her, because in their society, boys and girls don't interact freely, much less talk about love. When he's not negotiating the tricky alleys of love, Mukund sits around the school field or loafs about town with his close friends, Surya, Chitre and Phawdya, railing against the education system, and debating ideas such as discipline and Bohemianism. Set in a small Maharashtrian town during the Emergency of 1975, Shala is a heart-warming, nuanced novel about the adolescent struggles that are as tortuous in real time as they are amusing in retrospect.
About the author
Milind Bokil is a Marathi writer and sociologist. He was part of the Sampoorna Kranti movement led by Jayprakash Narayan in the 1970s and since then has been associated with various civil society organizations. A quest for meaning and direction in life is a consistent underlying theme in his writing. He explores the nuances of social relationships and human emotions with a natural flair in his books. He writes both fiction and non-fiction and has more than a dozen books (short stories, novels, travelogues and sociological studies) to his credit, some of which are Zen Garden, Ekam, Ran Durga and Samudra, Samudraparche Samaj. He has received several awards including the Best Literature Award by the Maharashtra Foundation. A Marathi movie based on his novel Shala bagged the National Award in 2012 apart from 40 other national and international prizes.
Vikrant Pande has translated twelve Marathi bestsellers into English. His translation of Girish Kuber's book Tatayan (The Tatas: How a Family Built a Business and a Nation) won the prestigious Gaja Capital Best Business Book Award in 2019. His book on the history of the State Bank of India, The SBI Story: Two Centuries of Banking (2021), has been received well. His book, co-authored with Neelesh Kulkarni, In the Footsteps of Rama: Travels with the Ramayana, is a bestseller and has received excellent reviews. He has translated and written original pieces for Storytel, an audio book company. Pande is a graduate of IIM Bangalore, and a full-time writer now.
