safdar studio

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[...]

P. Sainath and the Toofan Sena

P. Sainath, India’s most important journalist, has just released his new report on Satara District’s prati sarkar [provisional government] of the Quit India era. It is a dazzling account of the freedom movement – one that takes us through the audacity of the fighters, such as ninety-four year old Ramchandra Sripati Lad, to the disregard of such people in contemporary India. Lad tells Sainath about the arc of his aspirations, ‘We dreamed of bringing freedom to the common man. It was a bea[...]