The most definitive biography of one of the most popular Indian politician, Karunanidhi.
Writer-turned-politician Muthuvel Karunanidhi is amongst the most important political figures India has ever seen. He was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for five terms and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for over five decades. Still remembered for his controversial but fruitful career as a regional leader, his contribution to Tamil history and culture has been invaluable. Meticulously researched and deeply engrossing, Karunanidhi: A Life delves into the life and times of this unforgettable man and his contribution to Indian politics.
Modern business has changed forever, becoming more customer-centric, and we need clear road-maps to navigate this world. Customer experience-or CX-is every interaction a customer has with your business. It’s neither the product nor the service-it’s a combination of both.
Murali Balaraman has over twenty-five years of experience in multiple roles, as a banker, as part of the IT industry
and as a management consultant and adviser, interacting with global leadership across five continents. Customer to
Human weaves together the learnings he has drawn from the industry, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to tiny neighbourhood businesses. In this anecdotal account of successes and failures in CX, it becomes clear that
customers are the most important part of any business structure.
With over 150 individual, easy-to-read and diverse case studies, it presents a revolutionary approach to CX and
the individual customer journey. The book provides a practitioner’s point of view, with actionable suggestions
and pragmatic concepts that will come in handy no matter what part of the business you work in.
What started as a love affair for Indian royalty is now the mainstay of Indian roads. Since Independence, the automobile has played an important role in India’s industrial growth, as well as been the hero in many Bollywood movies. It has changed our cities and the way our houses and apartment blocks are configured, as well as transformed the countryside, connecting the remotest corners of our vast nation and providing jobs to millions. It has also empowered women in many parts of the nation, enabling them to attend schools and universities and commute to work and the marketplace. For thousands of Indians, the automobile has been, and remains, an object of pleasure, pride, status, excitement, emotion and passion.
In The Automobile, Gautam Sen has not only traced the history of the automobile in India and the way it has shaped society for over a century but has also delved into the fascination Indians have for all matters automotive, such as motor racing, bikes, road movies and historical vehicle shows.
A riveting story told in the most fascinating anecdotal tone, this book is filled with well-researched facts and beautiful pictures for lovers of automobiles.
Offering a unique expression of thought reflecting feeling more than meaning, Grains of Stardust is a synesthetic stream of consciousness that does not distinguish between journey and destination, but meanders unchecked upon the river of human emotion.
‘Read my poetry out loud
Breathe it in
and taste the letters pour out.
A delicious sound.
Do you hear the colours take form?
Feel the pages move you
as you float in space
make some space
Open your mind
and get inside
and see all that
shimmering
marmalade liquid.
Grains of stardust‘
‘A novel of ideas’–Jerry Pinto
A child grows with mother’s love
Also with its reverse.
The sun nurtures trees and flowers
The moon is equal nurse.
Thus do things grow and thrive
In this our universe.
The evening prayers in the ashram are over. Cowbells tinkle sweetly in the distance. The residents of the ashram sit in a circle, their eyes fixed on Shyam, who has promised them a story as sweet as lemon syrup. And so Shyam begins.
While on some evenings he tells them of his boyhood days, surrounded by the abundant beauty of the Konkan, on others he recalls growing up poor, embarrassed by the state of his family’s affairs. But at the heart of each story is his Aai-her words and lessons. He reminisces of the day his mother showed him the importance of honesty and the time she went hungry just so her children could eat a full meal.
Narrated over the course of forty-two nights, Shyamchi Aai is a poignant story of Shyam and Aai, a mother with an unbreakable spirit. This evergreen classic, now translated by the incomparable Shanta Gokhale, is an account of a life of poverty, hard work, sacrifice and love.
A delicious adventure set in Darjeeling about a young witch’s attempts at living a human life
For readers of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton and David Walliams
To every witch, wizard and glum,
I’m Tootoolu Toop, a ten-year-old, fully trained witch of the Oonoodiwaga tribe from the Darjeeling mountains. Like every other ordinary human who wants to live a life of magic, us witches and wizards want to experience the non-magical world too (I do for sure). For me, the ‘ordinary’ world is nothing short of an adventure. So I have left my tribe to live life as a glum.
This is my story.
Tootoolu is on the run. From her mundane life of stirring grasshopper’s legs into potions and her underground home where her tribe has been in hiding for 569 years. Will Tootoolu find what she’s looking for-best friends, books and a chance to be who she truly is?
What if you ran away from your life today?
Twenty years later, three people are looking for you.
One is dying to meet you again.
The other wishes you had never met them.
The third wishes they could have met you at least once.
You are one person. Aren’t you? But you are not the same person to each of them.
Find the answers about your own life in this story about searching for love and discovering yourself. Join a broken but rising YouTube star Alara, a struggling but hopeful stand-up comedian Aarav, and a zany but zen beach shack owner Ricky. Together, take the journey to seek the truth behind the famous singer Elisha’s disappearance somewhere by the deep sea in Goa.
Will you be able to find Elisha? Or will you end up finding yourself?
As a person with mood disorders that sprung up in her late teens, Urvashi Bahuguna had to navigate being the first person in her Indian family to admit to and seek help for a mental illness. The changes and challenges which came with this admission and the actions that followed not only impacted who she became as a person but also everything around her-from her interpersonal relationships, both familial and romantic, to the way she walked among her friends and peers and the manner in which she connected with art, literature, popular culture, they all became new and unknown.
Through these deeply honest essays that move between personal narratives, anecdotes from conversations and research-driven storytelling, Bahuguna traverses the opportunities and roadblocks that come her way with the tools she has available to her. From a writer of astonishing talents, No Straight Thing Was Ever Made bravely discusses the many facets of living with mental illness.
‘ . . . a valuable contribution both to the world of scholarship and to the larger public discourse’ – JAIRAM RAMESH
Indus Basin Uninterrupted, with an easy narration and rich archival material, brings alive a meandering journey of peace, conflict and commerce on the Indus basin. The Indus system of rivers, as a powerful symbol of the passage of time, represents not only the interdependence and interpenetration of land and water, but equally the unfolding of political identities, social churning and economic returns. From Alexander’s campaign to Muhammad-bin-Qásim crossing the Indus and laying the foundation of Muslim rule in India; from the foreign invaders and their ‘loot and scoot’ to the Mughal rulers’ perspective on hydrology and water use; from the British ‘great game’ on the Indus basin to the bitter and bloody Partition; and finally, as a historical pause, the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty-this book is a spectrum of spectacular events, turning points, and of personalities and characters and their actions that were full of marvel.
On 5 August 2019, Suhas Munshi was returning to Srinagar from a visit to legendary poet Habba Khatoon’s relic in Gurez, when an unprecedented curfew was imposed upon Jammu and Kashmir, and Article 370 was abrogated. Through his travels and conversations with people across the Valley, Munshi tries to give a sense of what that moment has meant to the common Kashmiri.
This insightful travelogue breaks away from the clichéd view of Kashmir, one that sees it either as an earthly paradise or a living hell. It takes you to unexpected places, into the homes of poets, playwrights and street performers; to a heartwarming Christmas service with the minuscule Christian community in Baramulla; and inside the barricaded city of Srinagar’s football stadium, which is a lively refuge for the elderly and their memories of a glorious past. Over three weeks, for fear of being abandoned in a harsh terrain, Munshi struggles to keep up with a group of Bakarwal nomadic shepherds as they make their way from Srinagar to Jammu over the mighty Pir Panjal mountains. And he finds a lone Pandit family living in a decrepit ghost colony in Shopian, the hub of militancy in Kashmir.
This World below Zero Fahrenheit presents a portrait of a people who’ve been overshadowed by the place they live in, even as it ruminates on the idea of home and exile.
