Geeta Niti Katha

Author: Esther Ananthamurthy Editor: Jasavant Jadhav, Narrator: Prithviraj Kavathar, Translator: Gayathri Rao

Flowering with the Suragi: Memories of My Life with U R Ananthamurthy Life as the spouse of a celebrated public figure, and that too over five decades, brings its own challenges alongside its privileges and opportunities, especially for a woman in a traditional society like India. Should one be content to live in the spouse’s shade or find a parallel, independent life-arc? How does one balance family life with one’s own career? How does one navigate between the private and the public realms of one’s existence? These are some of the questions that Esther Ananthamurthy explores in this memoir of her days with the renowned Kannada writer and thinker U R Ananthamurthy. Living with someone like Ananthamurthy, who would alternatively retreat into a hermit-like state during intense spells of literary creativity, then plunge, with his rock-star-like appeal, into movements of historic socio-political importance, and then, as a public intellectual and deeply loved teacher, lend himself virtually completely to peers, students, and admirers through endless interactions, must have been as much a source of pride and joy for Esther as of bafflement and loss of privacy. Her successful interfaith marriage, especially in the conservative milieu of her times, playing the gracious hostess to countless visitors and the tactful homemaker balancing family budgets; boldly facing various controversies and threats arising out of Ananthamurthy’s unflinching stands on sensitive public matters—none of this would have been possible without extraordinary patience and spirit. This memoir chronicles the manner in which a woman like Esther Ananthamurthy negotiated all these challenges and evolved her own ‘home-and-the-world’ equilibrium, more as an act of love and faith than as a matter of duty or responsibility.

– Mr Jasavant Jadhav

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Author: M V Nadkarni

The book Samajika Niti-Kavya Gucchah contains five satakams (sets of hundred verses) on social ethics, inspired by the ancient Sanskrit poet, Bhartrhar’s Niti-satakam. They are on environmental ethics, Gandhi’s ethical philosophy, Hinduism from the ethical perspective of Gandhi, humanitarianism, and ethical philosophy of democracy including human rights. There are also two dasakams (sets of ten verses), being prayers to goddess Sharada and goddess Mahalakshmi, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the satakams, respectively; seeking wisdom and end to poverty and inequality in the world. Though the original compositions are in Sanskrit, the book provides their lucid translation into English with word-to-word meaning and annotation.

The book is a short but comprehensive introduction to social, political, economic, and environmental ethics, and can be an aid in learning Sanskrit through modern problems showing the language as relevant for contemporary concerns as well.

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