Cast in the mould of a self-help guide to getting rich, this is the extraordinary story of a young boy, born into a poor family. As the years pass, he moves to a slum in the city, gets a brief education, flirts with militancy, and then, hungry for advancement, sets up a bottled water business, the ultimate symbol of the modern South Asian city-a place where nothing works but everything can be had at a price. But as he leaves his past behind, one thing remains
constant and true-his love for the girl he met as a teenager.
Archives: Books
Dirty Love
Dirt Track
A Village Awaits Doomsday
Millions of people are displaced every year by development schemes such as the construction of dams, national parks, factories, SEZs, mines and thermal power plants. The conflict between those who are forced to part with their land and those who reap benefits from the projects is getting fiercer.
In A Village Awaits Doomsday, Jaideep Hardikar brings us the personal stories of ordinary people from across the country displaced and made destitute by innumerable government and private initiatives. Apart from providing vivid accounts of individual experiences, he analyses the reasons why people protest, the laws that governments use to displace them, the existing rehabilitation and resettlement policies, and the latest debates over the land acquisition process.
Hardikar’s writing is evocative, the stories haunting and his book timely and important.
Emerging India
Bimal Jalan has closely followed the path of India’s economic policies across its changing trajectories, from before the time the economy was liberalized to the present. The pieces in Emerging India study the relationship between political and economic reforms and inclusive and incremental growth.
How I Got Lucky
‘I was with Lucky… Lucky Star. He showed me what he was wearing to the Cannes Film Festival. He’s given me an Exclusive.’
Raman Malhotra is thirty five, uninitiated in the matters of love, and endlessly confused about his sexuality. A journalist with The Weekly, his search for front page scoops come to a screeching halt when he’s assigned the Bollywood beat. Throw into the mix the shenanigans of an overpowering lesbian photographer, a dirt-swapping PR queen, a webcam model doling out sexual favours, and a rising Bollywood star.
Raman’s blah existence is dramatically thrown off-kilter when he finds himself being pursued and courted by the bisexual king of Bollywood, Lucky Star. Puckered into a world of celebrity, malicious gossip, and meaningless shags—Raman wrestles with his sense of self, ideas of love, and the monstrous caricatures of entertainment.
The Way Of The Knife
The Untold Story of USA’s secret War The Way of the Knife is the untold story of how the USA has been waging a new kind of war across the world against Islamic extremism. It is a shadow war that is spreading from Pakistan and Afghanistan into Yemen and Africa, where the next phase of battle has begun. The CIA today has become, more than ever, a paramilitary agency, ordered by the White House to kill off its enemies. It is increasingly using private security firms and drones to conduct proxy killings and Pakistan is the most prominent battlefield for this secret army to conduct its war. In The Way of the Knife, Mark Mazzetti tells this incredible story tracking an astonishing cast of characters. Here are ISI chiefs deadlocked against CIA officers, Islamic terrorists playing double games, and bitter rivalries between the CIA, the Pentagon and the White House. Superbly reported and rivetingly told, The Way of the Knife is an absolute revelation.
Journey To Ithaca
Sophie and Matteo are young and in love, sharing a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois Italian upbringing. Naturally, like so many other young Westerners in the sixties and seventies, they go to India. But the realities of life in an ashram ignite their differences; Sophie wants to be a tourist and go to Goa and eat shrimp, which Matteo scorns, seeking the ‘real’ India. Pragmatic Sophie is disillusioned by the hardships they encounter, while her husband, who yearns for spiritual fulfillment, sees only the purity of ascetic life, leading him to Mother, a charismatic guru.
Trying to reclaim an ailing Matteo, Sophie embarks on a new journey in search for a different truth; that of Mother’s mysterious past. Soon, she finds that the immortal has a history of her own; born in Cairo, she was once Laila, a dancer who toured the world before coming to Bombay to search for ‘divine love’. What each of the three people discover, on their individual quests, is at its heart that ancient truth: that wisdom is found in the journey itself.
A stirring, profound exploration of emotional exile, of sacred and profane loves, Journey to Ithaca is a masterful novel.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Internationally acclaimed director Mira Nair offers the reader an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the creation of her most ambitious film yet: The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Covering every aspect of the film-making process, this magnificently designed film book comprises an incredible array of images as well as short essays by those involved in the film-making process. Mira Nair discusses how the novel was turned into a screenplay; Mohsin Hamid reminisces about his first experience on a film set; production designer Michael Carlin recounts the thrill of transforming Old Delhi into contemporary Lahore; lead actor Riz Ahmed reveals how he got under the skin of his character Changez; and editor Shimit Amin demystifies some of his tricks on the editing table. This book also features a series of gorgeous black-and-white photographs by celebrated photographer Brigitte Lacombe.
