In this charming and insightful story, Deepak Singh chronicles his journey as an Indian immigrant in the United States of America.
Deepak falls in love with an American visiting India as an exchange student. The young couple gets married and leaves the country to live the American dream. Unfortunately for Deepak, he soon realizes that reality was completely different.
Armed with an MBA from a good B-school and quitting a cushy job in BBC, Deepak moves with his wife. But once in the US, all he is able to get is a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts an unfamiliar American culture. He experiences the deeply entrenched racism and observes first-hand the crushing reality of being poor in America.
‘Fresh off the plane’, Deepak tells an intimate tale of living in an unfamiliar place, being the perennial outsider and making a mixed marriage work.
How May I Help You is a moving tale of love, empathy, vulnerability and hope that will keep you hooked till the last page.
Catagory: Biographies, Diaries & True Accounts
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi’s life spanned over two-thirds of a century. By the time of her brutal assassination in 1984, she had established herself as the most significant political leader India had seen since the death of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. In this book, written with the close cooperation of her subject, Pupul Jayakar seeks to uncover the many personalities that lay hidden within Mrs Gandhi. Much more than a political biography, the book reveals the complex personality of Indira Gandhi-her thoughts and feelings, her hates and prejudices, her insights and her faults, her loves and emotional entanglements.
Full of startling insights, Indira Gandhi: A Biography paints a magnificent portrait-at once empathetic and unprejudiced-of one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable women.
What After Money and Fame?
Adi Godrej * Ajay Piramal * Amit Chandra * Anu Aga * Hafeez Contractor * Harish Salve * Javed Akhtar * Jayant Sinha * Kavita Seth * Narayana Murthy * Dr Naresh Trehan * Rashesh Shah
Twelve distinguished Indians who have achieved dizzying heights of success. What lies beyond material triumph for them? What is it that continues to motivate and sustain them? How much money do they think amounts to enough for individuals? What is their core philosophy of life that has helped them achieve what they have? What according to them is most important in life?
From the author of the bestselling book Corporate Divas, this is another insightful and engaging read that answers the above questions and more. Sonia Golani delves deep into the minds and psyche of some of India’s doyens par excellence, and through a series of in-depth conversations, attempts to throw light on the measure of a life well lived. What after Money and Fame is riveting and uplifting, an indispensable resource for anyone striving to attain exceptional success and balance in their lives-for sustained accomplishments for themselves-as well as towards making a definite contribution to the nation.
The Vijay Mallya Story
The Vijay Mallya Story is an extraordinarily detailed and lively chronicle of the life of one of India’s most celebrated and reviled businessmen, Vijay Mallya. His extraordinary career spans three decades and is spread across multiple industries. The book covers Mallya’s childhood, his relationship with his father and his inherent deal-making abilities. It tracks his meteoric rise with Kingfisher and how the airline led to his downfall.
The Case That Shook India
On 12 June 1975, for the first time in independent India’s history, the election of a Prime Minister was set aside by a High Court judgment. The watershed case, Indira Gandhi v. Raj Narain, acted as the catalyst for the imposition of the Emergency. Based on detailed notes of the court proceedings, The Case That Shook India is both a legal and a historical document of a case that decisively shaped India’s political destiny.
The author, advocate Prashant Bhushan, sets out to reveal the goings-on inside the court as well as the manoeuvrings outside it, including threats, bribes and deceit. Providing a blow-by-blow account, he vividly recreates courtroom scenes. As the case goes to the Supreme Court, we see how a ruling government can misuse legislative power to save the PM’s election.
Through his forceful and gripping narrative, Bhushan offers the reader a front-row seat to watch one of India’s most important legal dramas unfold.
Aurangzeb
Aurangzeb Alamgir (r. 1658-1707), the sixth Mughal emperor, is widely reviled in India today. Hindu hater, murderer and religious zealot are just a handful of the modern caricatures of this maligned ruler. While many continue to accept the storyline peddled by colonial-era thinkers-that Aurangzeb, a Muslim, was a Hindu-loathing bigot-there is an untold side to him as a man who strove to be a just, worthy Indian king.
In this bold and captivating biography, Audrey Truschke enters the public debate with a fresh look at the controversial Mughal emperor.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi – Tryst with Power is a book that focusses on the life of one of India’s most popular politicians – Indira Gandhi. How did she come to power? Did the nation blossom under her rule? for people who have been pondering on such questions, this book has the answers that they have been looking for. Indira broke the conventional, democratic ruling method that her family had been using and adopted a somewhat authoritarian way of ruling the nation.
The emergency that was declared during her reign is shown in this book to be a means of bringing in her son Sanjay into the political scene as her obvious successor. However, after Sanjay’s death, Rajiv Gandhi entered politics and gained almost immediate popularity. All of these political changes showed just how determined Indira Gandhi was to ensure that her family retained its right to rule.
This book offers unparalleled detailing concerning the personal life and political life of Indira Gandhi from the author, who is her own cousin. Owing to this close family link, the book is filled with accounts that could only be told by a family member who knew the Nehru family for a long time. Indira Gandhi’s highly individualized style of functioning in politics has been spoken about at length in this book, along with the countless changes that took place in the political scene of the nation when it was under her rule.
An in-depth portrayal of the life and times of one of India’s greatest political leaders, Indira Gandhi – Tryst with Power has been published by Penguin India in the year 2012 and is available in paperback.
Across the Universe
The music’s still playing, fifty years on . . .
It is 1965, and John, Paul, George and Ringo have lost themselves. Beatlemania is at its peak and the boys are overwhelmed by screaming fans, more money than they can count, and fame beyond their dreams. But one day, on the sets of the surreal Help!, George discovers the sitar, starting the boys off on a journey filled with
drug-induced introspection, transnational spirituality and damned fine music.
It is 1968, and John, Paul, George and Ringo have decided to find themselves. Following an eerie series of events, as if devised by fate, the boys are brought to Rishikesh, India, in pursuit of eternal happiness through a secret mantra from Transcendental Meditation guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Hoping to get the better of their personal demons, they seek to break the shackles of stardom even though it begins the unravelling of the band.
Across the Universe etches in lyrical detail a picture of the world’s greatest band torn apart by their inner dissensions yet bursting with creative genius. Full of characters and happenings delightful and evil, of comic excess and dark whimsy, the book traces the path the Beatles took to India and the dramatic denouement
of their sojourn at the Himalayan ashram. It is a modern fairy tale about four people the world has loved like no one else.
Rajesh Khanna
In the 1970s, Rajesh Khanna achieved the kind of fame that no film star had ever experienced before-or has since. But then he saw it all vanish. They say superstardom destroyed him. But was it something else buried deep in his past?
In this riveting biography, award winning journalist Yasser Usman examines Rajesh Khanna’s dramatic, colourful life in its entirety: from little-known facts about his childhood to the low-down on his relationships and rivalries, from his ambitious hopes to his deep-seated insecurities. What emerges is a tantalizingly written, meticulously researched chronicle of a fascinating and mercurial man-one who was both loved and feared by those closest to him. It is a story that encapsulates the glittering, seductive, cut-throat world of Bollywood at its best and its worst.
What I Did Not Learn At IIT
Every year, graduating engineers are told that they are destined for success. But what are the habits and behaviours that actually lead to success? In What I Did Not Learn at IIT, Rajeev Agarwal, founder and CEO of MAQ Software, distils decades of life experience into one accessible and informative guide. In simple language, he explains the success techniques he applied and what worked for him.
Encouraging graduates to look at their careers over a forty-year span, Rajeev explains that successful people choose to be passionate about every job they have. Using a skilful combination of personal stories and checklists, What I Did Not Learn at IIT provides students, young and old, with a roadmap for success.