Venkat Iyer was living a fast-paced life in the IT world in Mumbai when he decided to stop and take a long, hard look at where he was headed. Disheartened by his stressful existence in the city, he decided to give it all up and take up organic farming in a small village near Mumbai. But it wasn’t easy. With no experience in agriculture, his journey was fraught with uncertainty. He soon went from negotiating tough clients, strict deadlines and traffic to looking forward to his first bumper crop of moong. As he battled erratic weather conditions and stubborn farm animals, he discovered a world with fresh air and organic food, one where he could lead a more wholesome existence. At times hilarious, and other times profound, this book follows his extraordinary story.
Catagory: Biographies, Diaries & True Accounts
Supreme Whispers
In 1980, a brilliant young American scholar, George H. Gadbois, Jr., met five judges of the Supreme Court of India. The judges gave him astonishing details: about what they actually thought of their colleagues, about the inner workings and politics of the court, their interactions with the government and the judicial appointments process, among many other things. This was only the beginning. Over the course of that decade, Gadbois visited India on two more occasions and conducted over 116 interviews with more than sixty-six judges of the Supreme Court of India (nineteen of whom held the post of chief justice of India),
and others such as senior lawyers, politicians, relatives of deceased judges, and court staff. During each meeting, Gadbois diligently took down handwritten notes, which he later typed up on his typewriter, recording nearly every detail of what the judges had told him, sometimes to a fault.
Relying on these typewritten interviews, Abhinav Chandrachud sheds light on a decade of politics, decision-making and legal culture in the Supreme Court of India. This book yields a fascinating glimpse into the secluded world of the judges of the Supreme Court in the 1980s and earlier.
Fitness Secrets of the Stars
Ever wondered how Farhan Akhtar trained to play a professional athlete in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, or what diet plan Aamir Khan followed to maintain those rock-hard abs in Dhoom 3? If yes, this is the book for you. Veteran journalists Ram Kamal Mukherjee and Devyani Ghosh interview the fitness trainers behind the amazing physiques of Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Bipasha Basu, Farhan Akhtar, Tiger Shroff, Priyanka Chopra, Varun Dhawan and Sonu Sood.
With detailed daily workouts, diets and plans followed by these actors for specific roles, this book will show you how to get in shape like your favourite movie star. The authors also provide a peek into each star’s fitness philosophy, along with interesting personal anecdotes and the ways in which they motivate themselves to not only achieve great bodies but also maintain them. Whether you’re just starting your fitness journey or looking to ramp it up a notch, this book is sure to help you look like a star.
Today’s Pasts: A Memoir
Rawalpindi in the first few decades of the twentieth century is a prosperous, bustling town, witnessing the first stirrings of the freedom movement. It is in this place and time that a delicate child grows into adolescence, at the heart of an unusual family. Adulthood and the horrific business of Partition drive the young man to Bombay, then Ambala and finally Delhi. As he gathers life experience and hones his talent at writing, his politics are formed. We observe the making of one of the icons of modern Hindi literature: Bhisham Sahni.
In addition to being the story of Sahni’s life and art, Today’s Pasts also chronicles the great cultural highpoints of modern India: the IPTA, the Progressive Writer’s Association, the Nayi Kahani movement. The stars of Hindi and Urdu literature enter and exit the text as friends and familiars.
In Bhisham Sahni’s hands a life story is transformed into a history of our present: one life bears witness to the tale of a nation.
Disrupt and Conquer
The TTK Group was founded in 1928 in Chennai (then Madras) by T.T. Krishnamachari, who later became a Union minister and held the portfolios of finance, industry and commerce for close to fifteen years.
In this book, the current chairman T.T. Jagannathan, along with Sandhya Mendonca, takes us through the journey of this extraordinary company which fought off bankruptcy and rose like a phoenix to become a highly profitable, successful entity.
Like a phoenix, the group and its constituent companies, have risen from the ashes, many times over, to stand tall and proud. This is the story of a journey that began with early success and experienced catastrophic disasters, and set about turning its fortunes around in stunning comebacks, time and again.
With invaluable business lessons, decades of experience and innovation distilled in these pages, Disrupt and Conquer is a must-read for aspiring entrepreneurs, executives and business leaders.
The Accidental Prime Minister
When The Accidental Prime Minister was published in 2014, it created a storm and became the publishing sensation of the year. The Prime Minister’s Office called the book a work of ‘fiction’, the press hailed it as a revelatory account of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first term in the UPA. Written by Singh’s media adviser and trusted aide, the book describes Singh’s often troubled relations with his ministers, his cautious equation with Sonia Gandhi and how he handled the big crises from managing the Left to pushing through the nuclear deal. Insightful, acute and packed with political anecdotes, The Accidental Prime Minister is one of the great insider accounts of Indian political life.
Notes of a Dream
Who really is A.R. Rahman? We know the music. But do we know the man? For the first time, a nation’s pride-–winner of National Film awards, Oscars, Grammys and hearts-–opens up about his philosophies: hope, perseverance, positivity and love. From his early days as a composer of advertisement jingles to his first big break in feature films, from his keenness to integrate new technology with good old-fashioned music scores to the founding of his music school, from his resounding entry on to the international stage to his directorial debut, from his philanthropy to his inner life, Notes of a Dream captures Rahman’s extraordinary success story with all the rhythm and melody, the highs and lows, of a terrific soundtrack by the man himself.
Featuring intimate interviews with the soft-spoken virtuoso, as well as insights and anecdotes from key people in his life, this balanced, uplifting and affectionate book is the definitive biography of A.R. Rahman—the man behind the music and the music that made the man.
The Man Who Saved India
There is perhaps no political figure in modern history who did more to secure and protect the Indian nation than Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. But, ironically, seventy years after Patel brought together piece by piece the map of India by fusing the princely states with British India to create a new democratic, independent nation, little is understood or appreciated about Patel’s enormous contribution to the making of India. Caricatured in political debate, all the nuances of Patel’s difficult life and the daring choices he made are often lost, or worse, used as mere polemic. If Mahatma Gandhi was the spiritual core of India’s freedom struggle and Jawaharlal Nehru its romantic idealism, it was Sardar Patel who brought in the vital pragmatism which held together the national movement and the first ideas of independent India. A naturally stoic man, Patel, unlike Gandhi or Nehru, wrote no personal history. He famously argued that its was better to create history than write it. This is why even his deepest misgivings and quarrels have been easily buried. But every warning that Patel left for India – from the dangers of allowing groups to create private militias to his thoughtful criticism on India’s approach to Kashmir, Pakistan and China – are all dangerously relevant today. It is impossible to read about Patel, who died in 1950, and not feel that had he lived on, India might have been a different country. It is also impossible to ignore Patel and understand not only what the idea of India is but also what it could have been, and might be in the future.
The Man Who Saved India is a sweeping, magisterial retelling of Sardar Patel’s story. With fiercely detailed and pugnacious anecdotes, multiple award-winning, best-selling writer Hindol Sengupta brings alive Patel’s determined life of struggle and his furious commitment to keep India safe. This book brings alive all the arguments, quarrels and clashes between some of the most determined people in Indian history and their battle to carve out an independent nation. Through ravages of a failing body broken by decades of abuse in and outside prison, Patel stands out in this book as the man who, even on his death bed, worked to save India. Hindol Sengupta’s The Man Who Saved India is destined to define Patel’s legacy for future generations.
When Coal Turned Gold
Coal India Limited (CIL) contributes to about 82 per cent of India’s coal production. In When Coal Turned Gold, former CIL chairman and managing director Partha Sarathi Bhattacharyya tells the story, warts and all, of how he tackled the Dhanbad coal mafia, changed the way the industry was perceived, dealt with the trade unions and the government and, most importantly, scripted one of the greatest success stories the country has ever seen.
Changemakers
Blurb:
Since Bollywood’s earliest days, women have played a part in its success, both in front of the camera and away from it. Yet it has taken more than half a century for women to assert their presence in significant numbers in Bollywood. Today, Hindi cinema relies on a record number of women who work tirelessly, sometimes invisibly, to keep the world’s largest dream factory buzzing.
This book tells the story of twenty incredible women, many with no prior connections in the industry, who have carved successful careers despite significant challenges. They often work away from the public gaze-as studio heads, producers, directors, make-up artists, stylists, script writers, lyricists,editors, choreographers, stunt artists, set designers, and in the many other jobs that support the making of a movie. These women deserve to be applauded and their journeys acknowledged, as they transform Bollywood and in the process, create a new India.