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Approaches to Water Sensitive Urban Design: Potential, Design,
Ecological Health, Economics, Policies and Community Perceptions
covers all aspects on the implementation of sustainable storm water
systems for urban and suburban areas whether they are labeled as
WSUD, Low Impact Development (LID), Green Infrastructure (GI),
Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) or the Sponge City
Concept. These systems and approaches are becoming an integral part
of developing water sensitive cities as they are considered very
capable solutions in addressing issues relating to urbanization,
climate change and heat island impacts in dealing with storm water
issues. The book is based on research conducted in Australia and
around the world, bringing in perspectives in an ecosystems
approach, a water quality approach, and a sewer based approach to
stormwater, all of which are uniquely covered in this single
resource.
The setting of Stone Gods & Naked Lovers is in the magical
landscape of a fictional city called Narkanda near the east coast
of India, famous for its erotic temple sculptures as well as
growing reputation as a hi-tech center. The main protagonist is
Rahul Adam born out of a secret love affair between an American
nurse Ruth Adam and a Catholic Missionary priest Father Mark Wayne
Thomas of the Mission of Sacred Souls in Narkanda. Rahul Adam who
spent first five years of his life as an orphan at the Mission
returns quarter of a century later as the general manager of a
multinational American Power Corporation (APC) that is establishing
a power plant project in India. While searching for his roots and
the priest, Rahul falls in love with an Indian woman reporter
Rohini Rao who is being hunted herself and is on the run. Later on,
he learns that the renegade priest had left the church long time
ago and became the founder of a cult called the Lotus Eaters. The
climax of this book takes place in a coastal town where body of the
dead priest was being preserved by his followers in the belief that
as promised, he would come back to life with the first Monsoon rain
(and he almost does). The central motif of this book is Rahul
Adam's search for his father and a doomed love affair with the
Indian magazine reporter Rohini Rao. Story background includes some
interesting Moslem characters, violence against Christians in
India, and mass suicide of poor farmers in the drought stricken
region. The book with strong plotting of a suspense novel is about
search for identity, corrupt power politics, love, monsoon, rain
and death.
A Tale of Two Countries- is a contemporary, mainstream novel about
the first and second generation of immigrants of Asian Indian
origin in pursuit of the American Dream- the rewards and woes it
brings. At one level, the story explores alien psyche, emotional
angst, dreams and conflicts of several interesting and
multicultural characters, revolving around three friends settled in
USA for over thirty years, who knew each from back home living in
the same neighborhood in Delhi. On a deeper level, it is a moving
and intricate love story (and stories) of these three characters,
their unrequited loves, temporary affairs and arranged marriages,
and redeeming value of their friendships- and ends when the
trajectories of their lives make a sudden intersection at the WTC
on 9/11. The major character of this story is Robin Arya, an
engineer, failed entrepreneur (also called-a man with bullet in the
head) shot during a robbery attempt at his Maryland store and taken
to India by his parents who were visiting him in USA to attend the
funeral of his wife. He miraculously survived with surgery and the
only effects appear to be emotional- lucid dreaming and nostalgia
for good old days both in India and USA. His childhood love is
Vanita Mehra, the two of them were born on the same day in a
hospital in Lahore but she ends up marrying Robin's friend (who
tries to set her on fire and she kills him in self-defense), when
he has to flee India during the Emergency Rule and ends up in USA
while she moves to Canada and later starts working at the UN in New
York. The book starts with a scene, in which Vanita Mehra has
promised their precocious son Baby Michael that she will let him
fly a kite from the top of WTC, which happens to be the fateful day
of 9/11- they are both trapped on the roof of North Tower from
where she makes a long farewell phone call to her newly wedded
husband for recording in her lower Manhattan apartment since he is
in India, reflecting on the twists and turns in their lives like in
a Bollywood movie but eventually love had triumphed, and all the
while she is talking, Baby Michael is unfurling his large pink kite
so both of them can hang on to it- believing they can escape from
the burning tower. And from here, the story moves backward in time
in a non-linear narrative style that alternates back and forth in
settings from India to Washington DC/Maryland suburbs. Two other
major characters are Robin's friends: one of them is Naren "Nick"
Grover, the crooked immigration lawyer who was married twice in USA
and then went to India for arranged marriage to a woman lot younger
than him and later has two daughters with her; and the third of
triad of friends is Dr. Adi Shankar, a cardiologist who went to
India for a visit and was forced into an arranged marriage to a
woman from a business family by his parents and he did not have the
courage to refuse- even though he was in love with this white
American girl Autumn Rose of the beat generation to whom he was
engaged and she was pregnant. Other minor characters in this book
are: Robin's wife Ruby Joyce of mixed Indo-American Jewish origin
who becomes a Buddhist nun, spending a year seeking nirvana in a
solitary cave in the Himalayas, later dies of accidental drug
overdose and was put in a cryogenic preservation ("American Ice
Mummy") by her father Dr. Jason Joyce, a biotech scientist; Robin
and Ruby Joyce's son Baby Michael, a "test-tube" born child
prodigy; Robin's father, Rampal Arya- a retired journalist
translating Urdu work of great poet Mirza Ghalib into English, and
Robin's possessive mother Nandini; a Bollywood star Faroze Khan
with whom Naren Grover's wife elopes to Bombay to get married; Dr
Adi Shankar's illegitimate daughter Dawn Rose from his previous
affair working in a topless bar in Washington DC, who shows up
twenty years later at his son's wedding; and many others.
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