In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to a bloody end the stubborn and complicated civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war’s fingers had reached everywhere: into the bustle of Colombo, the Buddhist monasteries scattered across the island, the soft hills of central Sri Lanka, the curves of the eastern coast near Batticaloa and Trincomalee, and the stark, hot north. With its genius for brutality, the war left few places, and fewer people, untouched.What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country’s soul? Samanth Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, and to other battles from other times, he draws out the story of Sri Lanka today-an exhausted, disturbed society, still hot from the embers of the war. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how religion and state conspire, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.This Divided Island is a harrowing and humane investigation of a country still inflamed.
Catagory: Biographies, Diaries & True Accounts
Vikram Sarabhai
Vikram Sarabhai (1919-71), the renaissance man of Indian science, visualized the impossible and often made it happen. Founder of India’s space programme, Vikram dreamed of communication satellites that would educate people at a time when even a modest rocket programme seemed daring; of huge agricultural complexes serviced by atomic power and desalinated sea water. He envisioned research technology that would free Indian industry from foreign dependence, and of a world-class management college that would train managers for the public sector.
Vikram Sarabhai: A Life is the story of this dynamic visionary. Born into an immensely wealthy and politically conscious business family, Vikram had an early understanding of the power of money and the problems of a newly independent nation, to which he married a deep love for physics. Between 1947 and 1971, he built a thriving pharmaceutical business, conducted research into cosmic rays, set up India’s first textile research cooperative, ATIRA, the first market research organization, ORG, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and the dance academy Darpana. He also headed the Atomic Energy Commission and laid the foundations for the world’s first entirely peaceful space programme.
Good-looking, charismatic, married to the glamorous classical dancer Mrinalini, and closely associated with the most influential figures of his time-C.V. Raman, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Homi Bhabha, Bruno Rossi, Louis Kahn and John Rockefeller III-Vikram seemed to have led a charmed existence. Yet, his personal life was troubled and his strong resistance to India’s move towards a nuclear explosion in the late 1960s put him at odds with powerful lobbies and fellow technologists.
Amrita Shah delves into the life and mind of this fascinating, complex individual. This is a vivid and intimate portrait of a multifaceted genius who died young, but whose vision still drives India’s ambitious space programme and inspires Indians in all walks of life.
The Mind of a Terrorist
David Headley, the American-Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.
Born in 1960, the son of an American mother and Pakistani father, with one blue eye and one brown, Headley grew up between East and West. He was attracted to both worlds, even working as an informant for the US government, until one day he found he had to choose between the place of his birth and a radical form of Islam preaching global jihad. This is the disturbing story of the mastermind behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people-who, two months later, flew to Copenhagen to plan another act of terror with the help of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Europe.
Veteran journalist Kaare Sørensen has reconstructed his movements and planning in a tense feat of reportage. His account, based on extensive reporting, eyewitness interviews, and documentation, including wiretaps, court transcripts, and emails by Headley accessed from a chat room cache of 9000 messages, offers unprecedented insight into the mind of the terrorist.
Bhujia Barons
In the early twentieth century, young Ganga Bhishan Agarwal, aka Haldiram, gained a reputation for making the best bhujia in town. Fast-forward a century and the Haldiram’s empire has a revenue much greater than that of McDonald’s and Domino’s combined.
In Bhujia Barons, Pavitra Kumar manages to tell the riveting story of the Agarwal family in its entirety-a feat never managed before. It begins in dusty, benign Bikaner and traces the rise and rise of this homegrown brand which is one of the most-recognized Indian brands in the world.
The Haldiram’s story is not an average business story, it’s chock-full of family drama with court cases, jealousy-fueled regional expansion, a decades-old trademark battle, and a closely guarded family secret of the famous bhujia. Fast-paced and riveting, this book provides a delicious look into family business dynamics and the Indian way of doing business.
Red Lipstick
The world keeps taunting him as girlish but the fact is that, biologically, he is a boy. And, he is always attracted to guys. Is Laxmi both a man and a woman? Or, perhaps, neither a man nor a woman? The first inklings and stirrings of lust that Laxmi remembers came from noticing big, strong arms, the hint of a guy’s moustache over his lips, billboards that advertised men’s underwear. Laxmi found this puzzling initially. Was there a woman inside him who couldn’t really express herself because of some last-minute mix-up that god did at the time of his birth? Struggling with such existential questions, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, eminent transgender activist, awakens to her true self: She is Laxmi, a hijra.
In this fascinating narrative Laxmi unravels her heart to tell the stories of the men-creators, preservers, lovers, benefactors, and abusers-in her life. Racy, unapologetic, dark and exceptionally honest, these stories open a window to a brave new world.
The Assassinaton of Rajiv Gandhi
On 21 May 1991, journalist Neena Gopal had finished just one part of an interview with Rajiv Gandhi-the last of his life-when his car reached the election rally at Sriperumbudur. Moments later, Rajiv Gandhi was dead, blown up by suicide bomber Dhanu, irrevocably changing the course of Indian politics, as Neena Gopal, just yards behind him, watched in horror.
In this gripping, definitive book, Gopal reconstructs the chain of events in India and at the LTTE’s headquarters in Sri Lanka where the assassination plot was hatched, and follows the trail of investigation that led to the assassins being brought to justice.
Drawing on extensive interviews, research and her own vast experience as a journalist, she deftly establishes the background-the shortsightedness of India’s Sri Lanka policy; the friction between the intelligence agencies and between the agencies and the external affairs ministry; the many warnings that went unheeded; and the implacable hatred that LTTE supremo Prabhakaran felt for Rajiv Gandhi. Bringing all these complex threads together, Gopal takes us step by step to Sriperumbudur as Rajiv Gandhi walked inexorably to his death on that tragic May evening twenty-five years ago.
Exile
A special edition with a new introduction
On 21 November 2007, the city of Kolkata came to a rude, screeching halt as a virulent mob of religious fanatics took to the streets. Armed with a fatwa from their ideologues, the mob demanded that Taslima Nasrin leave the city immediately. While the Kolkata Police stood watching, mere dumb witnesses to such hooliganism, a morally, intellectually and politically bankrupt Left Front government, tottering under the strain of their thirty-year-old backward-looking rule, decided to ban her book and drive her out of Kolkata, a city she has always considered her second home.
This inextricable nexus of petty political conspiracies, vote bank politics and minority appeasement saw her being hurriedly shifted, first to Jaipur and then to New Delhi, only to be confined to an obscure ‘safe house’ in an undisclosed location and left to face incessant pressure from senior officials and politicians to leave India. Dark, provocative and at times surreal, Exile is a moving and shocking chronicle of Taslima Nasrin’s struggles in India over a period of five months, set against a rising tide of fundamentalism and intolerance that will resonate powerfully with the present socio-political scenario.
Savaging The Civilized
This evocative and beautifully written book brings to life one of the most remarkable figures of twentieth-century India. Verrier Elwin (1902-64) was an anthropologist, poet, Gandhian, hedonist, Englishman, and Indian.
Savaging the Civilized reveals a many-sided man, a friend of the elite who was at home with the impoverished and the destitute; a charismatic charmer of women who was comfortable with intellectuals such as Arthur Koestler and Jawaharlal Nehru; an anthropologist who lived and loved with the tribes yet who wrote literary essays and monographs for the learned.
Savaging the Civilized is both biography and history, an exploration through Elwin’s life of some of the great debates of our times, such as the impact of economic development, and cultural pluralism versus cultural homogeneity. For this new edition, Ramachandra Guha has added a long new introduction, stressing the relevance of Elwin’s work to current debates on adivasis, Naxalites, and Indian democracy.
Half-Lion
When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift, violent insurgencies, and economic crisis. Despite being unloved by his people, mistrusted by his party, and ruling under the shadow of 10 Janpath, Rao transformed the economy and ushered India into the global arena.
With exclusive access to Rao’s never-before-seen personal papers and diaries, this definitive biography provides new revelations on the Indian economy, nuclear programme, foreign policy and the Babri Masjid. Tracing his early life from a small town in Telangana through his years in power, and finally, his humiliation in retirement, it never loses sight of the inner man, his difficult childhood, his corruption and love affairs, and his lingering loneliness. Meticulously researched and brutally honest, this landmark political biography is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing about the man responsible for transforming India.
A Hero in the Chair beside me
A gifted boy from a small town in newly independent India dreams of making a life in the big city in the 1950s. Suddenly, misfortune and tragedy beset his family, to which he is dearly attached. As responsibilities fall on his twelve-year old shoulders, he chooses his family’s welfare over himself. He does not spare himself as he devotes his energy, attention, focus and time to the two priorities in his life: his family and his ambitions, in that order. Accolades and rewards begin to flow in early, followed by recognition, status and prosperity.
Devoted and indebted to his mother, whom he regards as a power-endowed ascetic, Girish Mohan Gupta continues to uphold the family and service to humanity as his highest values. Slowly, he moves from childhood, to his young adult years and then to a full-blooded householder’s life, supporting ever-increasing family responsibilities, with an eye on philanthropy.
This thought-provoking account by Dr Gupta’s daughter points to how success can be achieved, living life with dignity and honesty, and not giving in to despair in the face of great odds.