My India: Notes for the Future contains excerpts from Dr A.P. J Adbul Kalam’s speeches in his post presidency years. Drawn from Dr Kalam’s addresses to parliaments, universities, schools and other institutions in India and abroad, they include his ideas on science, nation building, poverty, compassion and self-confidence.
Dr Kalam draws on the lives of stalwarts such as Marie Curie, Dr Vikram Sarabhai to encourage and inspire his young readers. Through these speeches, he shares many valuable lessons in humility, resilience, and determination and leads children to think, grow and evolve.
A project very close to his heart, Dr Kalam’s last book for children is a road map for every child to pursue their dreams, to be the best they can be, leading to the realization of a better India.
Archives: Books
Caravan to Tibet
In the last years of the nineteenth century, a caravan of traders sets off from the high hills of Kumaon, India, for Tibet. They traverse dangerous passes and brave blinding snowstorms, in order to carry on their traditional trade in the Tibetan markets. Among them is fourteen-year-old Debu’s father. Many days later, when the caravan returns, Debu is heartbroken to learn that his father was lost in one of the treacherous passes. Somehow he cannot believe it, and when a Tibetan trader turns up in the local market wearing an amulet remarkably similar to his father’s, he is convinced that his father is alive, somewhere in Tibet. Debu joins the next caravan to Tibet to look for his father, little knowing he is setting out on the most perilous, yet most exciting journey of his life. The adventures follow thick and fast-a forced stay in a monastery with a young lama who takes a fancy to him; his capture by a band of bandits led by the cruel, mysterious Nangbo gifted with magical powers; a stay in the goldfields of Thok Jalong; and finally ending with a heart-pounding, breathtaking horse race.
The Black Book
As he investigates the mysterious disappearance of his wife and a popular newspaper columnist, Celâl, Galip finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl’s identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns.
With its cascade of beguiling stories about Istanbul, The Black Book is a brilliantly unconventional mystery, and a provocative meditation on identity.
Raj
A sprawling, extravagant saga, Raj is at heart the story of Maharani Jaya Singh. Spanning nearly half a century, the novel takes in its sweep both Jaya’s coming of age as the ruler of her state, Balmer, as well as the drama of India’s struggle for independence. Powerful, enlightening and compulsively readable, Raj is one of the great historical novels of our time.
The Eighth Ring
This deeply felt memoir, translated from the acclaimed original in Malayalam, chronicles the endeavours of four generations of the Kandathil Varughese Mappillai family that set up the Malayala Manorama, the Travancore National and Quilon Bank and other enterprises. With great candour, K.M. Mathew describes how their fortunes changed when their support to the nationalist State Congress brought upon them the wrath of the Travancore dewan, leading to the bank’s collapse; and how through sheer persistence and diligence they could rebuild the paper and go on to establish huge companies. Mathew also shows that throughout the paper upheld the values of liberalism, credibility and democracy, which it continues to do until today. Featuring some of Kerala’s tallest figures over almost a century, The Eighth Ring is a rich portrait of a remarkable man, his family-clan and their stirring times.
Picky Eaters
Does your child revolt at the mere thought of eating greens? Are you running out of nutritious lunch-box ideas?
Parents today are constantly reminded of the need to give their children healthy, home-cooked meals instead of the fat-, salt- and sugar-laden fare in food courts and restaurants. Yet, busy lifestyles mean that family time is in short supply which makes it hard to balance this need with the practicality of cooking for every family member.
In Picky Eaters, celebrity chef and culinary expert Rakhee Vaswani guides parents and kids on how they can make everyday food fun, exciting and yummy. From delicious, healthy recipes to party-planning and cooking together, this book will tell you how to get your child to eat right. So banish all those mind-boggling questions about what to feed your children—and start cooking!
The Book Of Gold Leaves
Two lovers are destined to meet in the city of Srinagar. Roohi is a beautiful,spirited girl who is haunted by dreams of a mysterious man she believes is hertrue love. Faiz is a young papier mâché artist on the cusp of painting his masterpiece,the Falaknuma. When fate conspires to bring them together on one windsweptevening, both fall irrevocably in love.But it is 1991. Kashmir is simmering with political strife, and it is only a matter of timebefore Srinagar is engulfed in the gathering storm. Before they know it, the city they callhome erupts in violence, threatening everything that the two lovers hold dear.An ageold tale of love, war, duty and choice, The Book of Gold Leaves is as devastatinglyresonant as it is beautifully written.
Being Mortal
Doctors are trained to keep their patients alive as long as possible. But they are never taught how to prepare people to die. And yet for many patients, particularly the old and terminally ill, death is a question of when, not if. Should the medical profession rethink its approach to them? And in what way? With aging populations and hospital costs rising globally, these questions have become increasingly relevant.
In his new book, Atul Gawande argues that an acceptance of mortality must lie at the center of the way we treat the dying. Using his experiences (and missteps) as a surgeon, comparing attitudes toward aging and death in the West and in India and drawing a powerful portrait of his father’s final years-a doctor who chose how he should go-Gawande has produced a work that is not only an extraordinary account of loss but one whose ideas are truly important.
Questioning, profound and deeply moving, Being Mortal is a masterpiece.
And Then One Day
Naseeruddin Shah’s sparkling memoir of his early years, ‘from zero to thirty-two’, spans his extraordinary journey from a feudal hamlet near Meerut to Catholic schools in Nainital and Ajmer, and finally to stage and film stardom in Mumbai. Along the way, he recounts his passages through Aligarh University, the National School of Drama
and the Film and Television Institute of India, where his luck finally began to change.
And Then One Day tells a compelling tale, written with rare honesty and consummate elegance, leavened with tongue-in-cheek humour. There are moving portraits of family members, darkly funny accounts of his schooldays, and vivid cameos of directors and actors he has worked with, among them Ebrahim Alkazi, Shyam Benegal, Girish Karnad, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi.
The accounts of his struggle to earn a living through acting, his experiments with the craft, his love affairs, his early marriage, his successes and failures are narrated with remarkable frankness and objective self-assessment. Brimming with delightful anecdotes as well as poignant, often painful revelations, this book is a tour de force, destined to become a classic of the genre.
Collected Stories
Buried resentments, unexpected disappointments, new friendships, small acts of cruelty, journeys that take you back to where you started. With trademark compassion and tender irony, Anita Desai’s short stories give us familiar worlds made unfamiliar, to wonderful effect.
An ageing couple is stranded in a stultifying Delhi summer by the visit of a roguish old Oxford friend, who trades on his charm; an American woman turns to hippies living in the Indian hills, homesick for the farmlands of Vermont; a dog terrorizes the neighbourhood but is cherished by his stern master; a Delhi girl of slender means finds a new kind of freedom with her young friends, in her barsati home; a peaceful game of hide and seek turns into a nightmare; a businessman sees his own death.
In one masterly volume, for the first time ever, here are Anita Desai’s collected stories —including Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight.