Monthly Archives: May 2019

May Day at May Day – 2019

2019 was special for us at LeftWord Books. We turned 20 this year. Even the bookstore – May Day – is 6 years old now. 'There was barely place to stand!' is what we reported last year. But we broke our own record this year, with over 800 of you joining our May Day celebrations. Amidst all the books, coffee, pastries and music, we went around asking you questions. Hope that didn't bother much. We were only trying to survey who was visiting us. The total number who agreed to take the survey w[...]

Story Time in Kerala

On a warm evening in 1972, when I was five years old and living in a village by the sea—Puthenthope in Thiruvananthapuram—I accompanied my cousin to our village library. The librarian gave me a nice smile and took me to the old wooden shelves where the children's books were stacked. As I quickly glanced through them my eyes rested on an oddly shaped book—Vaalameen Chirikkunnu (The Vaala Fish Laughs). The book was the Malayalam translation of a Soviet folktale, fabulously illustrated and pr[...]

An India without the Left?

To understand the Left’s central role, one has to take stock of the mass mobilisations to highlight injustice and inequity One out of every two Indians goes to bed hungry at night. That’s almost 700 million Indians. The number comes from McKinsey. But you don’t need a consultant to tell you about the distress in India. It is evident on our streets and in our fields. Agrarian distress (amplified by the suicide of farmers) and urban distress (illustrated by the growth of slums) have become [...]