A prince once gave up everything to attain inner peace, creating the world’s most treasured and well-known coming-of-age story: Siddhartha’s journey to Enlightenment; his transformation from a mere mortal to an enlightened soul. Join Siddhartha, the ‘brooding dove’, as he wins Yashodhara’s hand in marriage, challenges his father-in-law, celebrates with wine and festivities and then, to everyone’s surprise and consternation, renounces it all. Seeking the path of the wise, he lay the noble path for us. This is the story of how an ordinary mortal came to see the light.
Aged ninety-two, Shiv K. Kumar injects the wisdom of a lifetime of writing into this immortal tale, fashioning the Buddha’s story into, possibly, each of our own.
Six friends at university are pursuing the coveted MBA. Viraat, Sandy, Karan, Mallika, Vandana, and Preeto are a gang who hang out together and get into trouble together. And when the boys are not in their classrooms, they’re indulging in some high octane fun—from experimenting with dope, riding bikes semi-naked to even sneaking into cabarets. To add to their complicity, they are all vying for the attention of the same girl—Mallika.
As their term ends, a disillusioned Viraat discovers that his gang that was once inseparable has disintegrated and his wild, carefree days are now history. His past catches up with him faster than he excepts and he is left in the biggest rut of his life.
Will Viraat get past the hurdles to pave a path of his own? Will he finally get Mallika, the girl of his dreams? Most importantly, are his dreams even worth chasing? The Dream Chasers is a hysterical and candid story about fate, love, and the follies of youth.
Arjan Banga is forced to leave London to help his lonely mother run Bains Stores, their family’s provincial corner shop. But, it’s also a return to all that he tried to leave behind: narrow worldviews and post-industrial decline—and Singhfellows, a desi pub that defines itself by a religion that officially rejects drinking. But, his mother is adamant to keep the store open, forcing Arjan to work with her, reassess his relationship with his gori fiancé and discover his family’s silent history: his aunt’s elopement, his mother’s marriage to a lower-caste man, and his family’s strange relationship with their desi neighbours, the Dhandas, whose macho heir can’t stop listening to Malkit Singh and declaring: ‘Am just gonna bun dis spliff.’
The story of modern Britain as seen through the windows of an English shop with a big Punjabi heart, Marriage Material is the humorous chronicle of finding love as a desi in England—and of English desis forging and celebrating a betwixt identity that is neither here nor there.
In the newest Jana Bibi adventure, Hamara Nagar is rocked by an espionage scandal. Now that the dust has settled and the town is safe from the threat of being flooded by a planned government dam, all eyes are on Jana and her feisty parrot, now the target of a potential kidnapping—‘birdnapping’—that puts Jana and her household on edge.
Meanwhile, love is in the air and thanks to the appearance of an old flame and the intoxicating elixir Love Potion Number 10, Jana is giddy-headed with the possibilities. She sees love and connection all around her. Everyone in her bustling home, however, from her long-time ayah, Mary, to her 11-year-old errand boy Tilku, think that what’s missing from her life is a husband. A visit from Jana’s friends Lily and Cyrus, accompanied by Cyrus’s recently widowed cousin and business partner Max King, lead to hopes that Max might fit the bill. But the trio’s indulgence and hedonistic lifestyle clash with Jana’s simple existence.
Set in the 1960s, Love Potion is the second book in the series which debuted with Jana’s Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes. With its eclectic cast of loveable characters, gentle wisdom and good cheer, this charming tale of love, adventure and intrigue is sure to lift the most cynical of spirits.
When booze smugglers Jai and Mike reconsider their options after another close brush with the law, their friend Aziz, a corporate lawyer comes up with a plan for all of them to rake in even more money with less risk. Setting up an undetectable, foolproof scam, the boys who grew up together in the same London neighbourhood are now going to grow rich together, and quick. As with the best laid plans, they’d not counted on a few bumps along the way in the form of the intrepid fraud investigator who picks up on their trail, and Pam, the femme fatale whose sari blouses leave less to the imagination than bikinis, who has her eye set firmly on Jai. Knowing you have to risk it big to make it big, the boys put everything on the line in this high-speed thrill ride of a novel. But will they come out laughing or are they walking into a trap?
When love comes with a mythic twist!
Born into a well-known business family, Deeya is a high-flying, spoilt, rich girl who owns an elite fashion store. Her parents want her to get married and hold a swayamvar of sorts for her to select a husband. And she has a dilemma—to go with the extremely attractive and intriguing Karan or the dashing and outgoing Arjun!
She is determined to make the best decision when she finds that her life resembles that of Draupadi, from the Mahabharata, in more ways than one.
Will she be able to find her own path in life? Or will she flounder?
Funny and romantic, Draupadi in High Heels explores the power of one’s choice and how deeply its affects life!
Aasha Rani, the ravishingly beautiful ‘Sweetheart of Millions’, makes one fatal career-move: she falls in love. Aasha Rani, the unrivalled number one of Bombay cinema, seems intent on ruining her career-and her life-blinded by a scorching passion that threatens to destroy everything she has attained. Aasha Rani’s story is that of a vulnerable, small-town girl whose scheming mother pushes her via a never-ending orgy of blue films and PBI – Indiscriminate sex into the crass PBI – World of Bombay cinema, teeming with vicious, preening stars and near-stars and insecure, high-society celebrities: Akshay Arora, the reigning stud of 70mm and the object of Aasha Rani’s desire; Sheth Amirchand, the Don of Bombay’s underPBI – World, under whose hallowed sheets her career is sealed; Kishenbhai, the small-time distributor, who gives her her first break, and his heart; Sudha, her younger sister, whose envy and hate of her sister’s success make her Aasha Rani’s worst enemy.
When Helen Fielding first wrote Bridget Jones’s Diary, charting the life of
a 30-something singleton in London in the 1990s, she introduced readers to one of the most beloved characters in modern literature. The book was published in 40 countries, sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, and spawned a best-selling sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. The two books were turned into major blockbuster films starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.
With her hotly anticipated third instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Fielding introduces us to a whole new enticing phase of Bridget’s life set in contemporary London, including the challenges of maintaining sex appeal as the years roll by and the nightmare of drunken texting, the skinny jean, the disastrous email cc, total lack of twitter followers, and TVs that need 90 buttons and three remotes to simply turn on. An uproariously funny novel of modern life, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is a triumphant return of our favourite Everywoman.
Set in Shimla, The Red Tin Roof evokes with rare delicacy and precision the interplay of seasons, nature and people, while it broodingly tells the story of a young girl growing into adolescence, in the company mostly of older women but also of a younger brother who trails her. In this exploration
of an inner world, Nirmal Verma does not so much as tell a story as reminisce. Memory is the seed of his story.
DO MIRACLES REALLY HAPPEN?
Sixteen-year-old Trisha is hugely embarrassed by her hip mom who rides around on a monster motorbike called Smelly Beast. But along with her exuberant little sister, Shivi, they make for a quirky threesome, as Trisha adjusts to a new school, explores her talent for singing and falls head over heels for Akshay. Trisha’s happy-go-lucky world suddenly comes crashing down when a fatal illness befalls her mother. She struggles to make the transition from a carefree teenager to a responsible adult, hoping that some miracle will magically set things right. Poignant and deeply sensitive, Miracles is a heart-warming coming-of- age story of a feisty young girl’s struggle against her fate.
