In this remarkable study, well-known biographer Rajmohan Gandhi, underscoring the prominence in the Mahabharata of the revenge impulse, follows its trajectory in South Asian history. Side by side, he traces the role played by reconcilers up to present times, beginning with the Buddha, Mahavira and Asoka. His explanation of the 1947 division of India identifies the role of the 1857 Rebellion in shaping Gandhi’s thinking and strategy, and reflects on the wounds of Partition. The survey of post-Independence India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka also touches upon the tragic bereavements of six of their women leaders.
Archives: Books
Besieged
Doll’s Wedding And Other Stories
The stories in Dolls’ Wedding, by the finest short-story writer in modern Telugu, are nuanced, hard-hitting and marked by the total absence of sentimentality. A tightly constructed plot relies on a minimalist portrayal of characters-among them beggars, peasants, widows, children and the upwardly mobile middle class-whose pragmatism drives them to break convention and fight for their survival. The aged auditor’s young wife in ‘Got to Go to Eluru’ seduces an adolescent boy in order to produce a son who will protect her status when she is widowed; in ‘Firewood’, a peasant girl overcomes fear and speaks out when she is falsely accused of theft.
A realist devoid of ideologies, Chaso was deeply interested in the actual life and the inner world of people around him. These luminous translations bring Chaso to a new audience.
The Puffin Mahabharata
‘A long, long time ago, in the ancient lands of India, known in those days as Bharatvarsha, a family quarrel grew into a bloody war. There had been wars before, and there have been wars since, but that mighty battle between warring cousins of the Kuru clan has become a part of the mythology and history of India. Told and retold a million times, the story of the Mahabharata is about defeat as much as victory, about humility as much as courage. It is the greatest story ever told.’
Like a modern-day suta or storyteller, Namita Gokhale brings alive India’s richest literary treasure with disarming ease and simplicity. She retells this timeless tale of mortals and immortals and stories within stories, of valour, deceit, glory, and despair, for today’s young reader in a clear, contemporary style.
A brilliant series of evocative and thoughtful illustrations by painter and animator Suddhasattwa Basu brings the epic to life in a vibrant visual feast.
Matchless in its content and presentation, The Puffin Mahabharata is a book that will be cherished by readers of all ages.
Thackeray Mansion
In this sequel to Chowringhee, the third instalment in the life and tribulations
of the naïve and innocent young Shanker, he is once again out of a job
and without a roof on his head. After much difficulty he finds a job as a
manager in a grand but crumbling building in the posh area of the city:
Thackeray Mansion on Scudder Street. The narrator directs his keen eye
and sympathetic ear to tell captivating stories of those who live in the
homes within a home of Thackeray Mansion, and those who work in it. The
mysterious disappearance of Philip sahib’s wife, the hilarious monologues
of the feisty Poppy Biswas and the grouchy Baradaprasanna, the seductive
Sulekha Sen who morphs into the respectable Seema Chatterjee, and
the love of Dorothy Watts for Rabindranath Tagore: stories nestle within
stories and the result is an astonishing novel filled with joys and sorrows,
laughter and tears, despair and hope.
Debt
Must we always repay our debts?
Wasn’t money invented to replace ancient barter systems?
Apparently not, according to Yale-bred anthropologist David Graeber.
In a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom, Graeber radically challenges our understanding of debt. He illustrates how, for more than 5000 years—long before the invention of coins or bills—there existed debtors and creditors who used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods. He argues that Madagascar was held to be indebted to France because France invaded it, reminds us that texts from Vedic India included God in credit systems and shows how the dollar changed European society forever in the sixteenth century. He also brilliantly demonstrates how words like ‘guilt’, ‘sin’ and ‘redemption’ derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong.
Debt: The First 5000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—of how it has defined the evolution of human society, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
The Wrong Enemy
A Corner of a Foreign Field
A Corner of a Foreign Field seamlessly interweaves biography with history, the lives of famous or forgotten cricketers with wider processes of social change. C. K. Nayudu and Sachin Tendulkar naturally figure in this book, but so, too, in unexpected ways, do B. R. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, and M. A. Jinnah. The Indian careers of those great British cricketers, Lord Harris and D. R. Jardine, provide a window into the operations of Empire. The remarkable life of India’s first great slow bowler, Palwankar Baloo, provides an arresting new perspective on the struggle against caste discrimination. Later chapters explore the competition between Hindu and Muslim cricketers in colonial India and the destructive passions now provoked when India plays Pakistan.
For this new edition, Ramachandra Guha has added a long epilogue bringing the story up to date to cover, among other things, the advent of the Indian Premier League and the Indian team’s victory in the World Cup of 2011, these linked to social and economic transformations in contemporary India.
A pioneering work, essential for anyone interested in either of those vast themes, cricket and India, A Corner of a Foreign Field is also a beautifully written meditation on the ramifications of sport in society at large.
The Learning Factory
‘The Learning Factory is a book full of anecdotal stories that offers different teachings and lessons for students, business professionals, as well as those curious about the Tata way of business. This firsthand narration of interactions and incidents with Tata leaders gives a new insight into the group’s leadership and strategy and helps better understand its value-driven business.’ – Ratan Tata
Founded in 1868 by Jamshetji Tata, the Tata Group symbolizes the great Indian story of hope, growth and phenomenal success.The group played the role of a nation builder in post- independent India. Its companies were headed by legendary chairpersons, all of whom firmly believed in the importance of continuously learning and growing. What can we learn from the individual stories that come together to form this inspiring narrative? Like all great successes, this isn’t one story-it is many accounts that are so powerful that the whole is so much greater than the sum of all its parts.
In The Learning Factory, Arun Maira narrates people-centric episodes that bring alive the values of the Tata Group, standards that combine the high-velocity practices as well as the old-fashioned principles that make the Tata Group the giant it is today. With insightful stories of conduct that are as practically implementable as they are inspiring, this is a blueprint for the individual as well as the business that seeks success through its community of leaders, workers and thinkers.
The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk
Over the years, Sudha Murty has come across some fascinating people whose lives make for interesting stories and have astonishing lessons to reveal. Take Vishnu, who achieves every material success but never knows happiness; or Venkat, who talks so much that he has no time to listen. In other stories, a young girl goes on a train journey that changes her life forever; an impoverished village woman provides bathing water to hundreds of people in a drought-stricken area; a do-gooder ghost decides to teach a disconsolate young man Sanskrit; and in the title story, a woman in a flooded village in Odisha teaches the author a life lesson she will never forget.