Veteran musician and sarod maestro Ustad Amjad Ali Khan writes a deeply personal book about the lives and times of some of the greatest icons of Indian classical music. Having known these stalwarts personally, he recalls anecdotes and details about their individual musical styles, bringing them alive.
Twelve eminent musicians of the twentieth century appear in the book – Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Amir Khan, Begum Akhtar, Alla Rakha, Kesarbai Kerkar, Kumar Gandharva, M.S. Subbulakshmi, Bhimsen Joshi, Bismillah Khan, Ravi Shankar, Vilayat Khan and Kishan Maharaj. In writing about them, Amjad Ali Khan transcends the Gharana and north-south divide, and presents portraits of these great artists that are drawn with affection, humour and warmth.
Who killed Sheena Bora?
What led to her disappearance and gruesome murder?
When the partially burnt body parts of a young woman are discovered on the outskirts of Mumbai and her mother arrested as a suspect, the country is taken by storm. A rich boyfriend, an unnoticed brother, stepfathers, a farfetched tale, socialites and media barons-all tumble out of the woodwork like badly kept secrets. Sachin Waze provides insights into the relationship between Indrani and Sheena, the murky world of media czars, the high stakes in police investigations and the goings-on that led to the murder.
Based on court documents, police chargesheets and interviews, Sheena Bora is the first-ever comprehensive account of the gruesome murder that became a national obsession and shook us to the core.
It was the best and brightest of times . . .
You’d think a Bombay teen’s life in the early 90s would be the usual sunshine and rain. But when this regular teenager realizes he’s gay, things suddenly get interesting.
Pop culture and its massive influence on a young gay boy lie at the core of this memoir. Bear witness to his transition to adulthood as he traverses a big, burgeoning city and the gay scene slowly blooming at its fringes.
A STANDOUT DEBUT COLLECTION OF POETRY
Annus Horribilis is concerned with the violence of thinking, alone. The voices in these poems move through relationships, family, friendship, external disintegration, the labour of loving, being loved and of caring, where they are constantly confronted with the familiar turning foreign, the quotidian becoming a scene of absolute hostility, and where a word otherwise spoken easily becomes incommunicable. The book grapples with a (habitually futile) desire to communicate what should only be communicable-looking for some friend in language-that won’t lead to misunderstanding or, worse, silence. It searches for a language in which thought might survive and perhaps even reach out towards others.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is an idea that was seeded into the minds of nationalist Jana Sangh leaders when they began to envision India after Independence. Much like the very core the freedom struggle was built on, they saw India as a demographically, culturally and historically cohesive and unified nation – as Bharat.
In this book, senior BJP leader and cabinet minister Bhupender Yadav and leading economist Ila Patnaik come together to trace the BJP’s journey from its humble roots, through ups and downs and to eventually getting 303 seats in Lok Sabha in 2019 and becoming the world’s largest political party. While focusing on the larger economics and political story, the book encapsulates many smaller, yet hugely significant stories of individuals and incidents, which brought the BJP to where it stands now.
For the first time ever, The Rise of the BJP, tells us the inside story of how one of the most powerful political parties makes decisions, implements ideas and executes policy. Meticulously researched and immensely readable, the book shows us how the BJP fought competing ideologies, political assaults and catapulted to the centre stage of national politics.
Drawing on traditional knowledge, Boost Your Immune Power with Ayurveda is your everyday guide to holistic living. Besides focusing on one’s core nature and imbalances, mindful diets and yoga therapy, Janesh Vaidya draws our attention to a universal conundrum-mental health.
Vaidya’s years of experience as an Ayurvedic practitioner allows for a blueprint on how to live in an integrated manner. Written in a conversational style, this book is for anyone looking to improve their immunity, both physically and mentally, through practical Ayurvedic advice.
‘Dhirendra K. Jha has anatomized, with calm resourcefulness, the politics and psychology of a fanatic. He has also written a secret and sinister history of modern India—the one we need to understand our ruinous present’—PANKAJ MISHRA
A confirmed bigot and an oddball, the man who became Gandhi’s assassin was something of a miracle baby. Born to Brahmin parents after several stillbirths, Nathuram Godse started off as a child mystic. However, success in everything serious—studies or work—eluded him. The expectations and frustrations that mark the path of young men who cannot cope with the changing tides form the basis of Dhirendra K. Jha’s spectacular study of this disaffected youth. Godse was one of hundreds, and later thousands, of young Indian men to be steered into the sheltering fold of early Hindutva. As disruptions to history evolved new social structures, these men were caught by ideologues, cocooned in a community and coached and readied for action.
Gandhi’s Assassin: The Making of Nathuram Godse and His Idea of India lays bare Godse’s relationship with the organizations that influenced his world view and gave him a sense of purpose. The book draws out the gradual hardening of Godse’s resolve, and the fateful decisions and intrigue that eventually led to, in the chaotic aftermath of India’s independence in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. On a wintry Delhi evening on 30 January 1948, Godse shot Gandhi at point-blank range, forever silencing the great man. Godse’s journey to this moment of international notoriety from small towns in western India is, by turns, both riveting and wrenching.
Drawing from previously unpublished archival material, Jha challenges the sanitization of Gandhi’s assassination, and offers a stunning view on the making of independent India.
How easy or difficult is it to be a single father in India?
How does the world react when a Bollywood celebrity becomes the first man to have a child via surrogacy?
1998
A superstar dad
A successful sister
A growing production empire
Yet a young Tusshar Kapoor was sitting far away from the arc lights in the US, working as a financial analyst, until circumstances led him to return to India to pursue a career in entertainment.
Little did he know that a totally different journey was awaiting him in the years to come; that he would make a life altering choice while on a car journey that would eventually make him India’s first celebrity single dad.
Written in a frank, fun, no-holds-barred and incisive first-person narrative, Tusshar reveals interesting childhood anecdotes, the process of raising a child as a single man in India, how the search for the perfect soulmate doesn’t stop after having a child and finally how, his son, Laksshya, changed his life forever.
Society tends to glorify the get-rich-quick entrepreneur–who builds a company, takes it public and then (maybe) contributes to charity.
In Leadership to Last, Geoffrey Jones and Tarun Khanna interview iconic leaders in India who have demonstrated leadership to last. There are leaders from South Asia and other emerging markets as well to illustrate that the ideas Indian entrepreneurs speak about are echoed by their counterparts in the Global South. All these magnates–Ratan Tata, Anu Aga, Adi Godrej, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Devi Shetty and Rahul Bajaj, to name a few–have built, to general acclaim and acknowledgement, organizations that are seen as forward-looking and innovative. They subscribe to a code of ethics and contribute to the betterment of society. The authors demonstrate that this is a lot harder to achieve than unicorn status.
The authors corroborate how these stories are less about building a get-rich-quick organization and much more about triggering foundational and institutional change in society. These interviews, encapsulating the history of recent decades, eloquently lay out the opportunities and challenges of today and the future. The profiled leaders inspire awe by displaying audacity of intent, humility of demeanour and steadfastness of purpose.
