Bakha is a proud and attractive young man. Nonetheless he is an Untouchable- an outcast in India’s caste system. Into this vivid recreation of a single day in the sweeper and toilet-cleaner Bakha’s life, Anand pours a vitality, fire, and richness of detail that earn his place as one of the most important Indian writers of the twentieth century.
Archives: Books
The Shadow Lines Penguin Premium Classic Edition
As a young boy, Amitav Ghosh’s narrator travels across time through the tales of those around him, traversing through unreliable planes of memory, unmindful of physical, political and chronological borders. But as he grows older, he is haunted by a seemingly random act of violence. Bits and pieces of stories, both half-remembered and imagined, come together in his mind until he arrives at an intricate, interconnected picture of the world where borders and boundaries mean nothing, mere shadow lines that we draw dividing people and nations. Out of a complex web of memories, relationships and images, Amitav Ghosh builds an intensely vivid, funny and moving story. Exposing the idea of the nation state as an illusion, an arbitrary dissection of people, Ghosh depicts the absurd manner in which your home can suddenly become your enemy.
India’s Most Fearless
The men who hunted down terrorists in a magical
Kashmir forest where day turned to night. The Army major who led the legendary September 2016 surgical strikes on terror launch pads across the LoC. A Navy officer who sailed into a treacherous port to rescue hundreds from an exploding war. A bleeding Air Force pilot who found himself flying a jet that had become a screaming fireball. An e xclusive first-hand account of the 2020 Galwan clash.
Featuring thirty-eight untold accounts, this box set brings together the three books from the India’s Most Fearless series-a collection of true stories of extraordinary courage and fearlessness that provide glimpses into the kind of heroism our soldiers display in unthinkably hostile conditions and under grave provocation.
Ayo Gorkhali
Nepal, 1767. The tiny kingdom of Gorkha is on the ascendant under its ruler Prithvi Narayan Shah.
Over the next few decades, his Gorkhali army establishes a mighty kingdom, the borders of which extend from Kangra in the west to the Teesta river in the east. The territory encompasses a large part of present-day Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and almost all of present-day Nepal and Sikkim. When they are eventually reined in by the mighty British army in 1815, it sparks off a new engagement between the imperial power and Nepal.
Impressed by the fighting abilities on display, the British army begins recruiting them. The Gurkhas (the prevalent spelling today) go on to serve with distinction in many theatres of war over the next hundred-odd years, their exploits in World War I and II earning them a number of bravery medals.
With Indian independence in 1947 comes further change: the Gurkhas are now split across three armies: the British, Indian and the Nepalese.
Ayo Gorkhali by Tim I. Gurung, a former British Gurkha, is the first work of history by a member of the community and brings alive the story of a people who have served flags other than their own with honour, even as they have attempted to keep their native warrior traditions alive in letter and spirit.
The history of the Gurkha serviceman is one that goes beyond soldiering and bravery-it is in equal measure a story of the resilient human spirit, and of a tiny community that carved for itself a niche in world history.
The Hidden Hindu 3
Who is Devdhwaja: Nagendra or Om? Parimal and LSD struggle to trust each other while Nagendra is resurrected from the dead, unharmed and more powerful than ever before. Parashurama and Kripacharya are trapped in the collapsed Om’s past while Vrishkapi is fighting against certain death, which has already consumed Milarepa. Leaving the mighty Ashwatthama clueless, the other immortals are dismantled from all fronts. Where are the remaining words hidden? Will Nagendra find them all and complete the verse, or will the immortals be able to stop him? Unravel the unexpected mystery of the doomed immortals, running out of time.
Passion Economy and the Side-Hustle Revolution
‘Work’ is getting unbundled from ’employment’ and the ‘Great Resignation’ has become the new normal. As the passion economy becomes mainstreamed, people will look to build a portfolio of professions that create multiple income streams. They are likely to monetize their passions and build a career on their terms, seeking autonomy, mastery and purpose along the way. Today it is possible to do what you love, teach what you love and make a living. This book will tell you how.
The Rebellious Spirit
‘The rebel is one who lives according to his own light, moves according to his own intelligence. He creates his path by walking on it’ Osho
We have all heard of rebels, those freelancers that don’t care about anyone else but themselves . . . But what if we were all to spend a little more time doing exactly that? It might just be that we can begin to respond to what is happening in the world with a heartfelt need to change ourselves.
In The Rebellious Spirit, Osho speaks to the spirit that lies hidden beneath our social conditioning, fanning a flame strong enough to burn through layers of rubbish, so that we can see with the crystal-clear gaze of an enlightened being. This is a book that will entice you, tickle your being with laughter, and give you the courage to be yourself in today’s world.
Water in A Broken Pot
Incredibly moving and hauntingly honest, Water in a Broken Pot is the memoir of Yogesh Maitreya, a leading independent Indian Dalit publisher, writer, and poet. Encompassing experiences of pain, loneliness, depravation, alienation, and the political consciousness of his caste identity, this intimately moving memoir is a story of resilience and raw brutality. Growing up in a working-class family with meagre wages to get by in life, Yogesh writes of his father’s struggle against alcohol and passion for cinema; of intergenerational dreams shattered; working day and night shifts in factories; the struggle of being lost, overlooked and unmentored in India’s schooling, college and University systems which continue to be casteist, exclusionary and hostile; and feelings of lovelessness, loss and heartaches.
Having hopped from gig to gig to make ends meet, he writes of his eventual discovery of the written word, literature and the Ambedkarite legacy, which helped shape his dreams, identity and the eventual career choice of publishing books. In sharing his story, this fresh and radical voice tells his truth in the most frank and unfiltered of ways, as it happened, giving us readers permission to also be vulnerable in telling our tales.
The Tatas, Freddie Mercury & Other Bawas
The Parsis are fast disappearing. There are now only around 50,000 members of the community in all of India. But since their arrival here from Central Asia, somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries, the Parsis’ contribution to their adopted home has been extraordinary. The history of India over the last century or so is filigreed with such contributions in every field, from nuclear physics to rock and roll, by names such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Petit, Homi Bhabha, Sam Manekshaw, Jamsetji Tata, Ardeshir Godrej, Cyrus Poonawalla, Zubin Mehta and Farrokh Bulsara (aka Freddie Mercury). This is a revised and updated new edition – engaging and accessible – making it as the most intimate history of the Parsis by senior journalist and columnist Coomi Kapoor, herself a Parsi. The book pores through the names, stories, achievements and the continuing success of this tiny but extraordinary minority. She delves deep into both the question of what it means to be Parsi in India, as well as how the community’s contributions-from tanchoi silk to chikoos-became integral to what it meant to be Indian. In Kapoor’s hands, the story of the Parsis becomes a rip-roaring, incident-filled adventure: from dominating the trade with China to being synonymous with Bombay, once, arguably, a city defined by its Parsis; from the business success of the Tatas, the Mistrys, the Godrejs and the Wadias, to such current contributions as the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines by the Parsi-founded Serum Institute of India.
Working to Restore:
Winner of the Tata Literature Live Business Book of the Year Award
Dispatches from a landscape where pioneering entrepreneurs use their businesses as catalysts of change to solve social and environmental problems
Historically, big businesses have sourced materials from remote corners of the globe and moved millions of people and tons of cargo around the clock-all in the name of profit. But many of today’s startups are rewriting the rules. Journalist Esha Chhabra draws on her decades of reporting to explore the nuanced realities and promise of regenerative business operations.
Working to Restore examines revolutionary approaches in nine areas: agriculture, waste, supply chain, inclusivity for the collective good, women in the workforce, travel, health, energy, and finance. The companies profiled are solving global issues: promoting responsible production and consumption, creating equitable opportunities for all, encouraging climate action, and more. Chhabra highlights how their work moves beyond the greenwashed idea of ‘sustainability’ into a new era of regeneration and restoration.
The book highlights innovative entrepreneurs who understand that we cannot expect to create radical change if we try to sustain a system that has long been broken. Instead, their efforts of restoration and regeneration should be used as a model for other forward-thinking enterprises.
Inspiring and engaging, this book shows it is possible for a business to thrive while living its mission and how the rules can be rewritten to put both the planet and its global citizens at the center.