Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s life was more fascinating than the legend. As the supreme commander of the Indian National Army, he united Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians in the struggle for freedom based on his commitment to equal rights and respect for all. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none and he evoked matchless affection and loyalty as a selfless leader.
Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private lives encapsulated the contradictions of global history in the first half of the twentieth century. Evocative, engaging and relevant, His Majesty’s Opponent is the most definitive and critically acclaimed biography that illuminates the life, times and the making of Netaji.
Archives: Books
Unlock Your Word Power
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A Good Wife
At fifteen, Samra Zafar had big dreams for herself. She was going to go to university, and forge her own path. Then with almost no warning, those dreams were pulled away from her when she was suddenly married to a stranger at seventeen and had to leave behind her family in Pakistan to move to Canada. Her new husband and his family promised that the marriage and the move would be a fulfilment of her dream, not a betrayal of it. But as the walls of their home slowly became a prison, Samra realized the promises were empty ones.
In the years that followed she suffered her husband’s emotional and physical abuse that left her feeling isolated, humiliated and assaulted. Desperate to get out, and refusing to give up, she hatched an escape plan for herself and her two daughters. Somehow she found the strength to not only build a new future, but to walk away from her past, ignoring the pleas of her family and risking cultural isolation by divorcing her husband.
But that end was only the beginning for Samra. Through her academic and career achievements, she has gone on to become a mentor and public speaker, connecting with people around the world from isolated women in situations similar to her own, to young schoolgirls in Kenya who never allowed themselves to dream to men making the decisions to save for their daughters’ educations instead of their dowries. A Good Wife tells her harrowing and inspiring story, following her from a young girl with big dreams, through finding strength in the face of oppression and then finally battling through to empowerment.
6 Secrets Smart Students Don’t tell you
How do smart students succeed?
How do they crack exams and come out on top?
What tricks do they have up their sleeves?
How do they succeed in life?
Find all the answers here in Six Secrets Smart Students Don’t Tell You! A book that tries to answer the pressing question asked by students and parents alike: how to study better and have a successful academic career. Based on his extensive research of smart students, Chandan Deshmukh enumerates the six secrets that will ensure success for all students. Conversational, funny and insightful, this book is a compilation of useful advice, tips and tricks, and anecdotes that not only help answer these all-important questions but also provide a clear and concise guide to how students can pass their exams with flying colours.
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The Constitution of India for Children
Every 26th January, people gather on New Delhi’s Rajpath amidst a colourful jamboree of fluttering flags, marching soldiers and dancing children. What is celebrated on this day is at the heart of our democracy-the magnificent Constitution of India.
The document didn’t only lay down the law but united India with a vision that took two years, eleven months and seventeen days to realise. Subhadra Sen Gupta captures the many momentous occasions in Indian history that led to its making in The Constitution of India for Children. Populated with facts and dotted with cheerful illustrations, this book provides answers to innumerable questions asked over the years.
Which language is our Constitution written in?
Were women a part of the team that drafted the Constitution?
Why do political parties have symbols next to their names?
What is the official language of India?
An essential handbook for every student and denizen of India, here is a compendium of knowledge that serves as an insightful introduction to the most important document of Independent India.
Journey to the Forbidden City
Nineteenth-century Tibet was an unknown entity, a complete geographical mystery to the West.
Where did its capital city Lhasa lie?
Which rivers, lakes and mountains stretched across this land?
Where were its fabled monasteries and legendary goldfields?
And did the magical flying lamas actually exist?
It was next to impossible for a white man to enter this rigorously guarded territory. And so was chosen an intrepid Indian explorer from the mountains of Kumaon-Nain Singh Rawat. Trekking across this country, he risked life and limb and donned innumerable clever disguises as he surveyed the vast expanses and identified countless villages, cities and people. From putting Lhasa accurately on the world map to earning the title of Pundit, his eventful and often arduous travels led to his name being permanently engraved in the annals of Indian exploration.
Based on his actual diaries, this gripping narrative is also a tribute to the indomitable spirit of this fascinating man, who rose from being an impoverished village schoolteacher to a legendary hero.
Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
Nine-year-old Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.
But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.
Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line is extraordinarily moving, flawlessly imagined and a triumph of suspense. It captures the fierce warmth, resilience and bravery that can emerge in times of trouble and carries the reader headlong into a world that, once encountered, is impossible to forget.
Chanakya Niti
Chanakya’s numerous sayings on life and living — popularized in the wake of his successful strategy to put Chandragupta Maurya on the throne, if legend is to be believed — have been compiled in numerous collections and anthologies over time. This entire corpus was referred to as Chanakya Niti.
These aphorisms, which continue to be recalled and quoted in many parts of India, primarily deal with everyday living: with family and social surroundings, friends and enemies, wealth and knowledge, and the inevitable end of everything. They also advise on the good and bad in life, proper and improper conduct, and how to manage many difficult situations.
A.N.D. Haksar’s wonderful translation also places this work into context, showing how these verses have endured in the popular imagination for so long.
The Other Side of the Divide
Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, this book provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. These include details on the impact of India’s soft power, thanks to Bollywood, and the remnants of Pakistan’s multireligious past, and how it frittered away advantages of impressive growth in the first three decades of its existence by embracing religious conservatism.
The book profiles extraordinary people-lawyers, poets, musicians and even a former military chief-who stood up to an oppressive state. It has historical anecdotes, like the story of an ordinary woman who became the ‘muse and mistress’, and often the ‘brains behind the regime of a swinging general’ who led Pakistan to ignominy in the 1971 war, that of a Sikh family which dared to swim against the tide to stay back in Pakistan after Partition, and a prostitute’s son who uses his art to humanize commercial sex workers in defiance of a conservative society.
The book attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan-where prohibition remains only on paper and one of the biggest taxpayers is a Parsee-owned brewery-as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.
Undertow
Loya is twenty-five: solitary, sincere, with restless stirrings in her heart. In an uncharacteristic move, she sets off on an unexpected journey, away from her mother, Rukmini, and her home in Bengaluru, to distant, misty Assam. She comes looking for her beloved Asian elephant, Elephas maximus, but also seeks someone else-her grandfather, Torun Ram Goswami, someone she has never met before. She arrives at the Yellow House on the banks of the Brahmaputra, where Torun lives, not knowing that her life is about to change. Twenty-five years ago, Rukmini had been cast out of the family home by her mother, the formidable and charismatic Usha, while Torun watched silently. Loya now seeks answers, both from him and from the place that her mother once called home. In her quest, she finds an understanding not only of herself and her life but also of the precarious bonds that tie people together.
A delicate, poignant portrait of family and all that it contains, Undertow becomes, in the hands of this gifted writer, an exploration of much more: home and the outside world, the insider and the outsider, and the ever-evolving nature of love itself.