Adult Readers
About Living
Ranga, the man, wept as Ranga the boy inside him watched the orange and green and brown, then black, flames crackle through the funeral pyre, flickering into the deep blue Punjabi sky, lifting their flimsy burden, then dropping it down into the river; home.
Some people are like drums, Ranga. They are only heard when you strike them. Do not be like a drum, Ranga, be heard when thou has something to say, and let the world decide.
Ranga, the boy, wept as Ranga the man inside him heard these words – and so many more – that they both - man and boy - didn’t really understand...
The two became exceedingly close, their conversations extending over many years and clearly making a deep and lasting impression.
Ranganathan Ananda Rao is approaching old age, and, as is so common in aging, his thoughts begin to tumble back over the years.
Generally about cricket. And why not?
Cover design: Sophie Sirninger Rankin
Chapter art: Pat Sirninger
Thomas Bulford's English Companion
An extraordinary book, giving seminal insights into such diverse matters as Amazons and aardvarks, and the mythical or legendary Eve (of Eden), Helen (of Troy), and Joan (of Arc). Of great importance is the clever Table of Contents – located conveniently for Americans near the beginning of the book – setting out the subjects of the book’s twenty-seven categories, together with the page numbers that each of these categories begins on. Readers may be surprised and delighted to discover that our delightful English language has much more going for it than is commonly known. Saying anything else, at this stage, would be entirely superfluous, and probably an insult.
Thomas Bulford's Essays on Life, Language and Love
Readers may be aware that Thomas Bulford died recently (though not as recently as before), and that I had what I then regarded as the onerous honour of editing his lexicographical work.
Following this, his son – Thomas Bulford Junior II – presented the Publisher (whom even I now acknowledge the need to capitalise) with a box of scribblings that he said were his ‘distinguished’ father’s.
On being shown these, my impression was that they were, indeed, Thomas Bulford’s (the senior, that is), for two reasons, though not without reservation (as some of them do appear to be at least a little out of character with the bulk of the opus).
Firstly, they bore a striking resemblance to the ‘essays’ that the Publisher insisted on being incorporated in the English Companion as introductions to the various definitional categories.
Secondly, and I say this with as much grace as I can, they, whilst being somewhat idiosyncratic in construction and questionable in logic, contained a number of insights into the human condition that were also occasionally present in the earlier volume.
Accordingly, with less reluctance than before, I agreed to edit this material, and offer it to readers for their judgement. Editor
Messing With Your Mind
How are you with cognitive dissonance? Can you carry two contradictory thoughts in your mind at the same time and still tie your shoelaces? What about three, four, five, six...? Is that shoelaces or thoughts?
Where a lot of people get into desperate trouble. Or do they?
Murders, but are they really murders?
A Dutch woman blows up her husband and then becomes best friends with an Australian Aboriginal lesbian warrior?
A Chinese grandmother seduced, not unwillingly, by a Scottish rubber planter in Malaya? Was she, in fact, a grandmother? What about their granddaughter?
Where do frogs fit in? Or Queen Elizabeth I? Why bring Jesus into it?
Why shouldn’t you start a paragraph with “the”?
Can there be beauty in nonsense or desperation, farce or high drama?
What would you do for $20 million? $60 million?
Does doing something good justify doing something bad?
Was the vastly experienced and decorated detective really responsible?
Can you work it out? Is there a plot or is it a plot? Is it possible to work it out?
When everything comes together and is fully explained, will you know what happened?
Or will you find that have you a bout of Depersonalisation Disorder?
Dammit.
Why don’t you just ignore all this – relax, open your personable autobiography of Sigmund Freud and let me mess with your mind?
On the other hand . . .
Cover design: Sophie Sirninger Rankin
The Once Shredded Rainbow and Other Stories From Down Under
…before then, all birds were white. They didn’t mind.
They were happy, though sometimes there were little problems – when it snowed, for instance.
Life could generally go on, however, with few serious collisions, as only some places had snow.
But change was coming.
Change in its common guise - unnoticed.
Stealthily.
Until parrot…
And forty-one other stories…Australia; England; France; Ireland; Holland; India; Africa; America…
In the past; far into the future; unexpected places.
‘…sometimes heart-warming, sometimes heart breaking, sometimes soul-stirring, sometimes soul-searching…from the immediately recognisable to the most unlikely and obscure, dipping into life’s truths and fantasies along the way.’
Cover design: Sophie Sirninger-Rankin
Ranga Plays Australia
It’s only four years after the end of World War 2, during which there were no great cricket matches. But now things are getting back to normal: the Australians have thrashed the Poms in England (which is always, and will always be, a good thing), India has played its first Test series in Australia, and ‘the Don’ has retired.
In a small Bangalore village young Ranganathan Rao is musing about life in general and cricket in particular.
The weather’s been hot and dry for ever – everyone’s eyes are skywards, looking for the monsoon.
Except for Ranga’s, whose spinning fingers begin to itch.
Kumar, Ranga’s English/Geography/History teacher, as part of a discourse on the strangeness of the English language, introduces his pupils to an especially strange word - that he heard an Australian say during the war – and invites them to try to pronounce it and identify its meaning.
After many unsuccessful attempts Kumar reveals both the word’s pronunciation and meaning, and suggests that everyone might remember this, as one day they might go to Australia.
This starts Ranga thinking.
Stories from Somewhere
Where do stories come from?
They must come from somewhere, and these certainly do.
From outback Australia, from England, from France, Malaya, Singapore, Thailand...
From the past and the deep future...
Drama and farce; fantasy and stark reality; the deeply personal and the absolutely frivolous.
Hidden word puzzles.
Evading the Nazis.
Childhood escapades.
The emergence of Homo spiritus ephemera...
Nineteen stories – including a poem, a creation story, a shaggy frog story, ferrets, god, and more.
Cover design: Sophie Sirninger Rankin
The Alone Man
The Alone Man draws on the concept of Aboriginal ‘dreamtime’, the Australian aboriginal mythology of creation and relationships to and custodianship of the land.
It is a ‘double love story’, about a man’s love for his wife and family, and his love of the land and nature.
Set in outback Australia around 100 years ago, the story is of a simple man in a simpler time, creating a micro-world as many European settlers did.
He carves a farm out of the bush, courts and weds a girl from even farther out back, and raises a family.
Although he doesn’t realise it, his life is a kind of poetry, with the beauty of love, of nature, and of sorrow as the themes.
The book affirms all of these, and the continuity of life.
A ‘prose poem’, poetic about something as ordinary (or common) as building a life – marriage, birth, death, livelihood.
The style is gentle and poetic; humorous and sad, touching and poignant, affirming and happy, dreamy and warm.
'The Alone Man is a simple story full of understated insights that will have deep emotional resonance with readers – male and female, old and young – all over the world.'
Purchase this book 
Listen to the story read by Ian Burns, music composed by Bruce Rowland
The Wisdom of Harkishen Singh
Little is known about Sardarji Harkishen Singh, other than that he left the Punjab at the time of what he called The Troubles.
He eventually found himself in Akkithimmanalli, where he befriended young Ranganathan Rao.
The sayings recorded in these pages would undoubtedly have been lost if it hadn’t been for a series of accidents – all cricket related – whereby the guru’s young companion became a close friend of the compiler of this volume.
To this day, long after his village turned into the great city of Bengaluru and his guru pyred into the infinite tomorrow, Ranga still has not confidently resolved the meanings of all these pieces of fondly-remembered wisdom.
But, as he said in his biography: Wisdom, to be wise, is not always of the understandable kind.
A compilation of sayings – sometimes wise, sometimes inscrutable, sometimes humorous – of an Indian guru in post-WW2 India, as spoken to and recalled by his young protégé.
Cover design: Sophie Sirninger Rankin