A Place in My Heart is a many-splendored thing. It is a listicle. It is a celebration of the power of storytelling. It is also an account of a life lived in the Bollywood trenches. National Award-winning author, journalist and film critic Anupama Chopra writes about fifty films, artistes and events that have left an indelible impression on her and shaped her twenty-five-year-long career. Shah Rukh Khan is here. So are Super Deluxe and the Cannes Film Festival. A Place in My Heart is a blend of recommendations and remembrances, nostalgia and narratives. It is a smorgasbord of cinematic delights, written, as Marie Kondo would say, to ‘spark joy.’ Above all, it is a testament to Chopra’s enduring love for all things cinema.
Archives: Books
Midnight Freeway
Yogesh Moolchandani, a disreputable builder, is dead. All the signs say suicide but there was nothing wrong with his life. He had just cracked a deal and things were looking hale and hearty for him. He had recently even purchased an imported Volkswagen Jetta. CCTV footage from the night of his death shows him crashing into a toll booth at a speed of 180 km per hour on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link. The dealer he had purchased his car from had received five missed calls from him just five minutes prior to the time of the alleged crash.
On the same night, in another part of town, Pranav Paleja, a criminal lawyer who works at the law chamber-
Mangesh & Mangharam, tries his best to extricate his client-a troublesome drunk-from the clutches of the police. Although an upholder of the law himself, Paleja is pathologically incapable of following it in his day-to-day personal life. Since Pranav Paleja was settling a dispute with the man concerned only moments before the crash, the police land up at his doorstep.
As the authorities try to find out why Yogesh was calling his car dealer frantically, the plot begins to thicken.
Who, or rather what, killed Yogesh Moolchandani?
Women of Influence
Women of Influence is a compilation of the untold stories of ten women IAS officers who have walked the extra mile and made a difference despite facing major pressures in governance. Having worked in the civil services for thirty-seven years, Rajni Sekhri Sibal has been in a unique position to see things at close quarters, which is why she is able to present narratives that provide an insight into the challenges of being a woman IAS officer, and also highlight episodes where the protagonist displays immense courage and commitment during the most difficult of times.
The narratives span many generations-the oldest narrative is set at the Bikaner border during the 1965 Indo-Pak War and the latest recounts events that occured fifty years later in UP in 2015. They also deal with varied subjects and geographies, ranging from a panchayat election in Punjab during the height of militancy in the eighties, to Naxal-prone Chandrapur in Maharashtra, to joyful learning in Karnataka and right across to the orchid plantations in Arunachal. The book relates accounts of how different protagonists responded to threats of violence post a death in police custody, to illegal mining by a sand mafia and to resistance to the introduction of technology in a government organization. Strategies adopted for making India Polio-free in 2011 and interventions to deal with the scrouge of human trafficking also provide interesting insights in the book. The narratives are inspiring tales of ten strong and efficient women of substance, and their extraordinary careers wherein they made a difference.
Ecstasy and Other Stories
STORIES THAT TOUCH YOUR HEART BY ONE OF THE BEST MODERN TAMIL WRITERS
Special Birth Centenary Edition
Thi. Janakiraman (ThiJa) was one of the best Tamil prose writers of the twentieth century. The stories in this specially curated collection offer a view of the modernizing Tamil countryside as well as the changing landscape of human relationships. A man builds his reputation based on lies to meet the expectations of his father, a woman desiring tenderness from her abusive husband finds release in an unexpected way, a music teacher is mocked for taking on a lower-caste student, and a drowning cat becomes the centre of attention during funerary rituals. In these and other tales, Janakiraman reaches inside the depths of the human heart and lays bare its contradictory pulls.
Through their brilliant translation, Professor David Shulman and the late S. Ramakrishnan reveal the ‘perfect pitch’ of Janakiraman’s precise, exquisite Tamil. They deftly capture his fluid, sensitive style in idiomatic English, seamlessly rendering the subtle inflections of the original. Prof. Shulman’s insightful and affecting introduction places Janakiraman within the long continuum of Tamil literature. There is also a short, beautiful memoir on him, written by his daughter Uma.
Selected Satire
Selected Satire: Fifty Years of Ignorance brings together about 20 satire pieces of eminent Hindi writer, Shrilal Shukla. Most noted for his novel Raag Darbari, for which he received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Shukla also wrote several collections of satirical essays and short stories.
The pieces in this volume include his socio-political and cultural satires, where he caricaturizes politicians, mocks the bureaucracy (many of whom were his friends), and picks on the so-called developmental schemes of the government. A couple of pieces are also about small town attitudes and pretentions of intellectuals. The overall flavour is of an irreverence to authority and humour drawn from everyday occurrences.
Yogiplate
Learn about Ayurvedic and sattvic cooking principles used at the ISKCON Mumbai Ashram and Govinda’s restaurant from former ISKCON monk and Yogiplate founder Radhavallabha Das. Ayurvedic diet varies by body type, a person’s nature, their lifestyle and the food they grew up eating. In this book, we learn how to identify our unique body type, the vegetables, fruits, grains, and spices that will suit us, and how Sattvic food nourishes the body, mind and inner soul.
Some food combinations can be toxic for a certain body type. In his simple style, Radhavallabha Das shows us how to pair the correct ingredients, avoid the ones that are harmful to us, and also focus on the oil, salt and water we cook with. This book will teach you how to tailor a unique diet that will nourish you to lead a happy and healthy life.
Capital Allocators
Capital Allocators is the essential new reference manual for current and aspiring CIOs, the money managers that work with them, and everyone allocating a pool of capital.
The chief investment officers (CIOs) at endowments, foundations, family offices, pension funds, and sovereign wealth funds are the leaders in the world of finance. They marshal trillions of dollars on behalf of their institutions and influence how capital flows throughout the world. But these elite investors live outside of the public eye.
Across the entire investment industry, few participants understand how these holders of the keys to the kingdom allocate their time and their capital. What’s more, there is no formal training for how to do their work.
So how do these influential leaders practice their craft? What skills do they require? What frameworks do they employ? How do they make investment decisions on everything from hiring managers to portfolio construction?
For the first time, Capital Allocators lifts the lid on this opaque corner of the investment landscape. Drawing on interviews from the first 150 episodes of the Capital Allocators podcast, Ted Seides presents the best of the knowledge, practical insights, and advice of the world’s top professional investors. These insights include:
> The best practices for interviewing, decision-making, negotiations, leadership, and management.
> Investment frameworks across governance, strategy, process, data analysis, and uncertainty.
> The wisest and most impactful quotes from guests on the Capital Allocators podcast.
Learn from the likes of the CIOs at the endowments of Princeton and Notre Dame, family offices of Michael Bloomberg and George Soros, pension funds from the State of Florida, CalSTRS, and Canadian CDPQ, sovereign wealth funds of New Zealand and Australia, and many more.
With practical insights, important lessons, and sound advice from the world’s leading investment experts, Capital Allocators is a must-read for aspiring and professional investors.
A Venetian at the Mughal Court
‘An absorbing account of an almost unbelievably colourful life . . .’ AMITAV GHOSH, AUTHOR
‘An extraordinary character leaps off the pages of Marco Moneta’s book . . . ‘ MARIKA SARDAR, CURATOR, AGA KHAN MUSEUM, TORONTO
‘. . . irresistible . . . ‘ GIORGIO RIELLO, HISTORIAN
‘. . . rich and accessible . . .’ AMIN JAFFER, CURATOR AND AUTHOR
The man who witnessed India’s history in the making
Venetian Nicolò Manucci’s story is distinct from those of other European travellers and adventurers who documented their stay in India. The young teenager, who arrived on Indian shores with little education and few connections, lived here till his death at the age of eighty-two. He was witness to some of the most dramatic events in the subcontinent’s history.
Living by his wits, he started his career as chief artilleryman in Dara Shukoh’s fratricidal battle against Aurangzeb for the Mughal throne. Thereafter, Manucci joined Rajput general Jai Singh in his campaign to subdue the Maratha leader Shivaji.
However, Manucci had no stomach for a prolonged military career. With a great capacity for learning and immense good fortune, he made his way into the Mughal court, incredibly, as a court physician to Aurangzeb’s son Shah Alam. In service of the future Mughal emperor, Manucci was to head back to the Deccan once again to meet the challenge posed by Shivaji’s son Sambhaji. Manucci would spend the rest of his life within European settlements in Madras and Pondicherry. And his in-depth knowledge of the Mughal court would prove useful in negotiations between the Europeans and the Mughal authorities.
Marco Moneta tells the gripping story of a man who was witness to the intrigues and rivalries in Mughal and European territories, and who not just survived but rose to a position of influence and respect in a hostile and alien world.
Resolve
The vision he saw in his dream, a world in ruins and bereft of women-was that going to come true soon? If he could get married, he would live the way people lived in the old days. He wanted to have at least ten children, and he wanted them all to be girls. The world should never again witness the sorrow of a man like him.
It might be a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, or at least a piece of land, must be in want of a wife, but Marimuthu’s path to marriage is strewn with obstacles big and small. Inward-looking, painfully awkward, desperately lonely and deeply earnest, Marimuthu is fuelled by constant rejection into an unforgettable and transformative matrimonial quest. Enter a series of marriage brokers, horoscopes, infatuations, refusals and ‘bride-seeing’ expeditions gone awry, which lead Marimuthu to a constant re-evaluation of his marital prospects.
But this is no comedy of manners, and before long we find ourselves reckoning with questions of agricultural change, hierarchies of caste, the values of older generations and the grim antecedents of Marimuthu’s poor prospects, as decades of sex-selective abortion have destroyed the fabric of his community and its demographics.
Perumal Murugan’s Resolve is both a cultural critique and a personal journey: in his hands, the question of marriage turns into a social contract, deeply impacted by the ripple effects of patriarchy, inequality and changing relationships to land and community. In this deceptively comic tale that savagely pierces the very heart of the matter, translated with deft moments of lightness and pathos by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, Perumal Murugan has given us a novel for the ages.
The Odd Book of Baby Names
LONGLISTED FOR THE JCB PRIZE 2022
As a thin ribbon of smoke rose from the edge something stirred in me and I slapped the book against the railing until small specks of fire fell to the floor and died down. It was not just a book of baby names. It was an unusual memoir my father was leaving behind, memories condensed into names; memories of many kisses, lovemaking, panting and feeling spent.
Can a life be like a jigsaw puzzle, pieces waiting to be conjoined? Like a game of hide-and-seek? Like playing statues? Can memories have colour? Can the sins of the father survive his descendants?
In a family – is it a family if they don’t know it? – that does not rely on the weakness of memory runs a strange register of names. The odd book of baby names has been custom-made on palace stationery for the patriarch, an eccentric king, one of the last kings of India, who dutifully records in it the name of his every offspring. As he bitterly draws his final breaths, eight of his one hundred rumoured children trace the savage lies of their father and reckon with the burdens of their lineage.
Layered with multiple perspectives and cadences, each tale recounted in sharp, tantalizing vignettes, this is a rich tapestry of narratives and a kaleidoscopic journey into the dysfunctional heart of the Indian family. Written with the lightness of comedy and the seriousness of tragedy, the playfulness of an inventive riddle and the intellectual heft of a philosophical undertaking, The Odd Book of Baby Names is Salim’s most ambitious novel yet.