Gulzar

For seven decades, Gulzar-one of India''s most beloved and respected literary and cinematic personalities-has made Mumbai (once called Bombay) his home. Over the years, Gulzar has written at length on the city, in the form of both poems and short prose pieces. These writings reflect not only his inimitable thoughts on the city, but also many facets of the ever-changing and evolving metropolis, as a Mumbaikar sees it. Aamchi Mumbai brings together twenty-five unforgettable short stories, all set in Mumbai, and thirty-six poems, arising from Gulzar''s experience of living in the great city. These poems and stories were handpicked and given their current arrangement for this collection by Gulzar himself; they appear together for the very first time.

The Partition of 1947 has influenced the works of an entire generation of writers, and continues to do so. Gulzar witnessed the horrors of Partition first-hand and it is a theme that he has gone back to again and again in his writings. Footprints on Zero Line brings together a collection of his finest writings - fiction, non-fiction and poems - on the subject. What sets this collection apart from other writings on Partition is that Gulzar's unerring eye does not stop at the events of 1947 but looks at how it continues to affect our lives to this day. Wonderfully rendered in English by well-known author and translator Rakhshanda Jalil, this collection marks seventy years of India's Independence. Footprints on Zero Line is not only a brilliant collection on a cataclysmic event in the history of our nation by one of our finest contemporary writers, it is also a timely reminder that those who forget the errors of the past are doomed to repeat them.