Maestro management consultant and strategy guru Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese has been dispatched to London to the Lederman account. Things in the mother country are not all tally-ho as Einstein must make do with convoluted remuneration, temperamental digestion and a comely coworker who revels in mixed signals-not to mention a bizarre conspiracy by museums all over the city to frustrate his every attempt to imbibe in high culture. Things are not all that much better with his love life. Gouri insists that he go to Madame Tussaud’s and take a photo with the Shah Rukh Khan statue. But who will pay for the entry ticket? Gouri’s father is not the proprietor no? Then? Just when things look like they can’t get any worse, Lederman threatens to shut down the project. Panic ensues. Once again Dufresne Partners turns to their most resourceful, inventive, original, strategic, out-of-the-box-thinking employee.
Catagory: Fiction
Fiction main category
A Girl Like Me
Recently transplanted from the quiet suburbs of Minnesota to bustling Gurgaon, sixteen-year-old Anisha Rai is determined to hate her new life. While her irrepressible mom, Isha, loves her new job, Annie clutches on to the memories of her father.
Annie’s life becomes too hot to handle when she discovers that her childhood friend, Keds, has transformed into quite a dude; theatre enthusiast Kunal wants to teach her a lot more than drama; and Rani, who lives upstairs, is not as sweet and simple as she appears.
Deftly weaving through home and school, and love and loss, A Girl like Me is a roller-coaster ride packed with the breathless exuberance of teenage life.
The Carpet Weaver
Afghanistan, 1977. Kanishka Nurzada, the son of a leading carpet seller, falls in love with his friend Maihan, with whom he shares his first kiss at the age of sixteen. Their romance must be kept secret in a nation where the death penalty is meted out to those deemed to be kuni, a derogatory term for gay men. And when war comes to Afghanistan, it brings even greater challenges-and danger-for the two lovers.
From the cultural melting pot of Kabul to the horrors of an internment camp in Pakistan, Kanishka’s arduous journey finally takes him to the USA in the desperate search for a place to call home-and the fervent hope of reuniting with his beloved Maihan. But destiny seems to have different plans in store for him.
Intimate and powerful, The Carpet Weaver is a sweeping tale of a young gay man’s struggle to come of age and find love in the face of brutal persecution.
Rabda: My Sai . . . My Sigh
Rabda has lost much in life and now wants to attempt suicide. But destiny saves him. As he lies distraught and broken on the hospital bed, he has a visitor-Sai Baba of Shirdi himself. From there, together with Baba, he embarks on a journey of understanding his life. He realized how his anger had affected his past life and how it has now cast a shadow on the present. Several such truths of life and living begin to unfold. Through Baba’s conversations with Rabda emerge the former’s philosophy and teachings. Powerfully written, this novel shows the path to understanding faith, hope and surrender, and Sai Baba of Shirdi.
The Politician
Ram Mohan is an intrepid and ambitious young man in newly independent India, who refuses to be held down by his humble origins. Spurred on by his diehard optimism, he aims for things usually inaccessible to people of his extraction. However, he soon realizes that without political or bureaucratic power, the idea of a respectable life in India is nothing but pretence, and when Gulab Singh rescues him from being insulted by a thug, Ram Mohan becomes persuaded of the efficacy of violence in certain situations . . .
Beginning at the peak of Nehruvian era and ending in the early seventies, The Politician is an enthralling, evocative view of provincial northern India-once the political heartland of the country-and the ebb and flow of the fortunes of its protagonists.
Night of the Restless Spirits
A young Indian in the USA embraces a cause rooted in his motherland, but one that he doesn’t fully understand. A student’s world is turned upside down when his friend and her family are caught in the cross hairs of volatility and violence. A train burns as it enters Delhi, and the sole Sikh survivor shares with the nation the harrowing tale of his survival . . .
These and many other stories form this heart-rending collection that evokes the horrors and uncertainties of 1984, through the tales of ordinary people caught in something bigger than themselves. Set during a time of monumental upheaval, Night of the Restless Spirits blurs the lines between the personal and political, and takes the reader on a journey fraught with love and tinged with tragedy, frayed relationships, the breaking down of humanity and resilience in the face of absolute despair. These stories tell us that people are capable of the best and the worst, but that ultimately there is always hope.
Ladakh Adventure
On their visit to the Changthang plateau of Ladakh, Vikram and Aditya find themselves on the run along with Tsering, a young Tibetan boy they meet while camping on this grand yet barren frontier of India. Determined to protect Tsering from the mysterious band of men chasing him, the three boys traverse the majestic land beyond the Himalayas in search of answers.
Who is Tsering? Why is he being hunted with such fierce resolve? Follow Vikram and Aditya across the remote frozen plateau to the mountain city of Leh-through a land of startling contrasts and magnificent mountains-as a perilous game of hide-and-seek unfolds.
Journey to the roof of the world with an enthralling tale set in one of India’s most splendid destinations.
Darklands
Dust and ash engulf the land, dry rivers snake the earth and a phantom darkness looms over everyone. As most of India reels from this environmental catastrophe, water replaces oil as the most valuable commodity and cities get infested with gangs and powerful religious figures.
In this dystopia, the hi-tech Millennium City, which is inhabited by the rich, overlooks the quarters of the poor. Millennium City gives rise to a form of technology that manufactures artificial humans in laboratories.
Born in one such lab, Haksh does the forbidden: he falls in love with Chhaya, a human.
A coming-of-age novel about violence and transgression, Darklands is about one thing above all: love-both all-consuming and redemptive.