‘Time is money’. But the opposite is also true, i.e., ‘money is time’. Money, if used wisely, gives us the free time to do what makes us happy. It is crucial to understand the concept that money creates time because time is a non-renewable resource. And becoming financially independent is akin to finding a hidden treasure of time. It’s similar to discovering a gold mine, because it gives us the ability to live life on our own terms.
The key is not to think of financial independence as a goal but as a marathon, which we need to enjoy. This book is an easy, entertaining and actionable guide to becoming financially independent and avoiding any pitfalls on the journey.
There are many challenges facing business corporations today-the pandemic we have barely moved on
from, economic recession, rapid changes in consumer behaviour and technological and competitive disruptions. These challenges stick out like the visible tip of an iceberg, while culture, the biggest challenge, is like the slow-moving, gigantic mass that lurks deep under the surface. We cannot deal sufficiently with superficial problems if we do not understand the depths that drive them.
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ is a widely accepted saying in the business world, often attributed to Peter Drucker. This is as true for corporate India as it is for its consumers. Yet, we spend more time and money studying our consumers and their cultures than we do ourselves.
The Company We Keep is a market research-based exploration of Indian corporate culture. It looks beyond the glamour and jargon of the business world to individual stories that share real personal insights into the aspirations, vulnerabilities, pressures and possibilities of corporate careers and lives. These are urgent conversations we need to keep having as we reflect, review and decide where we can go from here.
Naishee Kamaraj has a special bond with her younger brother, Shravan. One day when he suddenly goes missing, everyone tells her perhaps he left of his own volition, but Naishee knew her brother better than anyone else. She fears there has been foul play. And her fears come true when she receives a second-hand phone with a video of her brother being held captive. She needs to perform some horrific activities to save her brother. As time ticks by, Naishee knows she will come out a totally different being by the end of it all . . .
Among the rulers of Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Jagat’s name is taken with contempt, because of his affair with a tawaif, or courtesan, Raskapoor, the daughter of a Muslim mother and a Brahmin father. The Maharaja defied all norms and bestowed upon her the title of ‘Half Empress’. With little experience, Raskapoor resiliently navigated her way through the cobwebs of the royal life. But, pitched against a fleet of plotters in an atmosphere filled with deceit, she finally fell into their trap and was imprisoned. There are many stories about how her life ended-the compassionate prison chief allowed her to flee or she flung herself on to the pyre of Jagat Singh. But today, she is best remembered by the guides who routinely mention her as a celebrity prisoner at the famous Nahargarh Fort.
In her historical novel The Half Empress, Tripti Pandey transports the reader to the royal corridors of nineteenth-century Jaipur and brings to life the story of a formidable woman who has been deliberately omitted from history.
We all know that our habits shape our lives, but when we try to incorporate a new habit into our lifestyle, we understand how difficult it can get. Most people fail to retain a new habit past the first week. This book doesn’t teach you how to develop habits; instead, it offers you a set of twenty-five small habits that take very little time and can be held on to without much effort.
The habits in this book are designed to give you holistic growth in terms of self-development, community, career, relationship, and physical and mental health. You can choose the habits that you are able to fit into your daily schedule.
One sultry Mumbai night, business tycoon Mihir Kothari takes a bite of a soufflé and drops dead. According to the CCTV footage, celebrity chef Rajiv Mehra is the killer. It seems like an open-and-shut case.
Or is it?
A catastrophic accident on the day the chef is to be hanged allows him to escape and, driven by an inner calling, pursue a new life. Chased by shadows he thought he had left behind, torn by spurned love, the chef
returns in search of the real killer so that he can prove his innocence. But there is a problem. Unknown to him, the killer has chosen his next target: the chef himself!
Soufflé is a rich, layered thriller that explores life, love and the passions that motivate people to do unexpected and impossible things.
‘If this psychological, compelling and unpredictable novel doesn’t keep you hooked, give up reading’
ASHWIN SANGHI
Kannappan is posted to Perumalpuram as the new schoolteacher. The village lies in the black soil region of Tamil Nadu where the river Tamirabarani flows. He’s an outsider in this village with Veerayyan, a local farmer, as his only guide and friend.
Once settled in his role, Kannappan observes the everyday brutality faced by the farmers at the hands of the sadistic, all-powerful landlord-the Master. Child marriage is common in the village and so is the appalling practice of marrying young lads to older women who then serve as their father-in-law’s consort. Through his gentle yet probing conversations with the villagers, Kannappan tries his best to show the villagers a better way of life. The farmers who had begun protesting the excesses meted out to them by the upper-caste landlord soon find an ally in Kannappan. The schoolteacher’s sympathies for their cause bolster their waning spirits and replenishes their resolve to fight back.
Ponneelan’s first novel is a tour de force. Now translated for the first time, Black Soil lays bare the atrocities faced by the farmers and the human cost of building a better tomorrow.
Written by the poet Thiruvalluvar, the Kamattu-p-pal is the third part of the Tirukkural – one of the most important texts in Tamil literature. The most intimate section of this great work – it is also, historically, the part that has been most heavily censored. Although hundreds of male translations of the text have been published, it has also only ever been translated by a woman once before. Tirukkural is award-winning writer Meena Kandasamy’s luminous translation of the Kamattu-p-pal.
Meena Kandasamy delves into this classic, and provides the first feminist interventionist translation into English-remaining true to the desire throbbing through the lifeblood of the text, while retaining the drama that pervades the quintessential Tamil world of exaggerated hurt, lover’s quarrels and evenings lost to longing.
With her trademark wit, lyricism and passionate insight, Meena weaves a magic spell: taking the reader on a journey through 250 kurals, organised under separate headings – ‘The Pleasure of Sex’, ‘Renouncing Shame’, ‘The Delights of Sulking’ – the result is a fresh, vital, and breath-taking translation that conveys powerful messages about female sensuality, agency, and desire. It is a revolution 2000 years in the making.
Unfinished Business is a chronicle of contemporary Indian corporate history, narrated through the professional trajectories of four high-profile businessmen: Anil Ambani, Naresh Goyal, V.G. Siddhartha and Vijay Mallya.
By no means unique in their proclivity for debt and penchant for politics, these four men belonged to a rarefied club of entrepreneurs, who could raise a sizeable quantum of financing with ease despite their businesses not generating adequate cash flows and/or possessing sufficient collateral.
So, what competitive advantage(s) did this guild of Indian entrepreneurs have? What caused their enterprises to struggle, while other similar organizations whose CEOs shared these attributes survived and even flourished? How did the Indian business ecosystem, regulatory norms, lenders’ underwriting practices and investor due diligence influence the organizations helmed by this quartet?
Following these four entrepreneurs’ careers and professional decisions, Unfinished Business throws light on the evolution of Indian capitalism during the first two decades of the twenty-first century, set against the backdrop of a dynamic political, regulatory and business climate in India. And, with great insight, clarity and analysis, Nandini Vijayaraghavan explores the takeaways for entrepreneurs, regulators, lenders and investors in this compelling, illuminating read.
Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it’s in our midst-or just across the ocean-if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama’s Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld – or can it be found in the here and now?
For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul’s delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim’s readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.
