Archives: Books

Leela Naidu was listed as one of the five most beautiful women in the world by Vogue magazine. But she was much more than that. She was the fine-boned, haunting face in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anuradha, in Merchant-Ivory’s The Householder and in Shyam Benegal’s Trikaal. She was the woman who refused to sign Raj Kapoor’s films four times, and the actor who asked for a script long before the phrase ‘bound script’ became Bollywood cliché. Jean Renoir taught her acting and Salvador Dali used her as a model for a Madonna. Leela was married, the mother of twins and divorced before she was twenty. Later, she was Dom Moraes’s muse, his unpaid secretary, his best friend and, when he was interviewing Indira Gandhi, his translator (interpreting ‘his mumbling questions’). Through this time she also edited magazines and dubbed Hong Kong action movies, was Kumar Shahani’s first producer, and when JRD Tata wanted a film on how to use the washroom on a plane, she made it for him. A Patchwork Life is a memoir that is charming, idiosyncratic and a window to a world of Chopin, red elephants, lampshades made of human skin, moss gardens and much more: a world where a naked Russian count turns up in a French garden, plush hotels offer porcupine quills as toothpicks and an assistant director sends his female lead an inflatable rubber bra. Leela’s life was about ‘staying in the moment’. Everyone who met her has a Leela Naidu story. This is her version

We all have an underlying desire to achieve more than what we already have, but something stops us from moving forward. We’ve all looked at more successful, happier people than us, and wondered what we are doing wrong.
• Why is it that we feel unable to progress any further?
• What is that always stops us from being the best that we can be?

Written by a columnist and lifestyle coach, Chitra Jha, Achieve Your Highest Potential, is a step by step guide to set you on your personal growth plan. It will help you to break all the barriers and be the success you should be

A solitary economist drives across Europe to try and redeem a tragedy; a boy fervently hopes his father will not miss his appearance in a school play; a girl sits alone in a deck chair in Goa, frightened by what she has done; a village boy leaves school for the bright lights of bangalore; a man tries to stop time. Wry, tender, borderline surreal, Difficult Pleasures is a collection of stories about the need to escape and the longing to belong. Accomplished, ambitious and full of surprises, this is a masterful collection and it confirms anjum Hasan’s reputation as one of India’s most gifted young writers.

What are the consequences of Empire? Do they ever fade? In this follow-up to his bestselling book Being Indian, Pavan K. Varma takes a long hard look at our cultural psyche, sixty years after India’s political liberation from Western colonial masters. Examining modern history, contemporary events and personal experience, he demonstrates, with passion, insight and impeccable logic, why India, and other formerly subject nations, can never truly be free-and certainly not in a position to assume global leadership-unless they reclaim their cultural identity.

Padma Desai grew up in the 1930s in the provincial world of Surat, where she had a sheltered and strict upbringing in a traditional Gujarati Anavil Brahmin family. Her academic brilliance won her a scholarship to Bombay University, where the first heady taste of freedom in the big city led to tragic consequences-seduction by a fellow student whom she was then compelled to marry. In a failed attempt to end this disastrous first marriage, she converted to Christianity.

A scholarship to America in 1955 launched her on her long journey to liberation from the burdens and constraints of her life in India, with a growing self-awareness and transformation at many levels, as she made a new life for herself, met and married the celebrated economist Jagdish Bhagwati, became a mother, and rose to academic eminence at Harvard and Columbia.

How did she navigate the tumultuous road to assimilation in American society and culture? And what did she retain of her Indian upbringing in the process? This brave and moving memoir, written with a novelist’s skill at evoking personalities, places and atmosphere, and a scholar’s insights into culture and society, community and family, tells a compelling and thought-provoking human story that will resonate with readers everywhere.

Alehya is back in Chandigarh after ten years to attend her childhood friend, Shagun’s wedding. However, her plans are rudely interrupted when she finds out about the man Shagun is going to marry.
Vicky, is a sorted guy who knows exactly what he wants in life. His decision of marrying Shagun has the approval of everyone who means a lot to him-everyone, except Shagun’s best friend, Alehya.
Shagun is excited about getting married to Vicky. This fulfills her childhood dream of marriage. But with her best friend and future husband being childhood frenemies, will things go by without a hitch?

As the wedding draws near, Shagun, Vicky and Alehya grapple with issues of love, confusion and guilt to discover what their heart truly desires.
They have to make life altering decisions, in the Nick of Time, before time runs out on them and the life of their dreams!