An introduction to the culture of India to include religion, family life, art and architecture, performance art, and current trends.

Maya is an accomplished psychiatry resident with a supportive boyfriend, loving family, and bustling New York social life. When her grandmother dies in India, a family squabble over property ignites a curse that drifts across continents and threatens Maya's life. Or so her father says-- Maya (being a modern woman, an American, and a doctor) doesn't believe in curses, Brahman, or otherwise. But then a series of calamities befalls her family, her career...

"A young Indian woman falsely rumored to have killed her husband finds a way to make her unfortunate reputation surprisingly useful -- but complications arise when other village women seek her help offing their husbands -- in this provocative, razor-sharp debut. In the five years since her husband's disappearance, Geeta has become accustomed to a solitary life; you'd be surprised how difficult it is to make friends when your entire village believes...

Dispatched to a home in the sacred city of Varanasi, Lalgudi Iyer spends his days immersed in scripture. When an accident leaves him with concussion, he receives a vision of his past incarnation - he was the mythological warrior Bhima, sent from the heavens to destroy evil. Convinced of his need to continue Bhima's mission and revive the noble principles of the Mahabharata, Iyer embarks on an epic adventure down the sacred Ganges with the help of...

"Written late in Anita Desai's illustrious career, these three novellas ruminate on art and memory, illusion and disillusion, and the sharp divide between life's expectations and dreams and its realities. Set in India in the not too distant past, the stories' diverse surroundings and dramas frame universal themes, which illuminate the ways in which various aspects of the Indian culture can nourish or suffocate. All are served up with Desai's characteristic...

Explores the lives of the British in India from the seventeenth century to Independence, profiling the everyday realities of everyday British people, including missionaries, East India Company employees, and forestry officials.

Among the once arid lands of Rajasthan, India, there is an oasis: a small town called Piplantri, where women are no longer afraid of giving birth to a girl. Since 2005, every time a girl is born, 111 trees are planted in her name to celebrate her birth, turning Piplantri into an oasis. This film reveals the life of the women of Piplantri, and the positive changes that the community is making.