What if, one day, you find yourself in a Himalayan cave, far away from the world? For Jeet, this is a choice he made after leaving city life behind.
One evening, a strange man called Adi, who does mysterious things, makes his way into Jeet’s cave. The two develop a friendship that will help Jeet unravel the secrets of the wild. In his pursuit to grow, Jeet travels to a mountain village that has been untouched by time and then up a sacred mountain, meeting some fascinating characters along his journey. On this quest from the surreal to the supernatural, Jeet untangles some of the most complex mysteries of the world, which often kept him awake at night in the city.
Intriguing, adventurous and containing the pearls of forgotten ancient Indian myths and legends, Caveman’s Secret Sauce has the right ingredients that are missing in society today.
India has taken so sharp a turn in recent years that the very centre has shifted considerably. What led to this swing? Is it possible to trace the path to this point? Is there a way back to the just, secular, inclusive vision of our Constitution-makers?
This country has long been an outlier in its South Asian neighbourhood, with its inclusive Constitution and functioning democracy. The growth of Hindutva, in some sense, brings India in line with the other polities here. In Our Hindu Rashtra, writer and activist Aakar Patel peels back layer after layer of cause and effect through independent India’s history to understand how Hindutva came to gain such a hold on the country. He examines what it means for India that its laws and judiciary have been permeated by prejudice and bigotry, what the breach of fundamental rights portends in these circumstances, and what the all-round institutional collapse signifies for the future of Indians.
Most importantly, Patel asks and answers that most important of questions: What possibilities exist for a return? Thought-provoking and pulling no punches, this book is an essential read for anyone who wishes to understand the nature of politics in India and, indeed, South Asia.
An ode to the majestic life of the late Lata Mangeshkar, Lata: A Life in Music celebrates art in its totality and tells the life story of India’s most loved vocal artists. The result of Yatindra Mishra’s decade-long dialogue with the great singer, it also explores the lesser-known aspects of the great artist, introducing the readers to Lata Mangeshkar as an intellectual and cultural exponent and providing a rare glimpse into the person behind the revered enigma.
At the confluence of cinema, music and literature, this is the most definitive biography of the voice of the nation that also documents sociocultural changes from the late British era through post-Independent India right up to the twenty-first century. This is the story of the various myths, mysteries, truths and contradictions which make a human an icon and also make an icon incredibly humane.
One of the greatest raconteurs of 20th century, Saadat Hasan Manto declared that he was forced to write when his wife routinely demanded that he put bread on the table for the family. He didn’t attribute any genius to his skills as a writer and convinced his readers that the stories flowed even as he minded his daughters or tossed a salad. Equally, Manto treated his tryst with Bollywood with disdain and unmasked the cardboard lives of tinsel town when a horse was painted to double up for a zebra or multiple fans rotate to create a deluge.
In these essays, two of Manto’s favourite and recurring themes-women and Partition-find special mention as he brings to focus the bizarre morality in the context of feminine beauty and the futile presence of religiosity in the creation of a nation he was to adopt later in life. For the first time ever, this unique collection of nonfiction writing from the subcontinent’s greatest writer, translated by well known author and journalist, Aakar Patel, showcases Saadat Hasan Manto’s brilliance while dealing with life’s most mundane things-graveyards, bumming cigarettes, a film crew with motley characters from mythology and a sharp dissection of what ails the subcontinent even after six decades, Hindi or Urdu, vile politicians and the hopelessness of living under the shadow of fear.
Dals have been an essential part of the human diet for centuries and they are an integral part of Indian cuisine. There are many enticing varieties of dals to choose from.
Pratibha Karan, in The Book of Dals, takes you on an incredible journey to different regions of the country and shows how locally available spices and herbs, vegetables and fruit impact the food of that region. The variety of dals and dal-based dishes that you can make with these are phenomenal and mind-boggling.
This book offers many varieties of beautiful, fragrant and beguiling dals that will have anyone savouring them in raptures. From the southern India, you will find Telangana Sambar, Khatti Dal and Dalcha with Vegetables and Meat. They are made using delicious combinations of chillies, tamarind, cloves, cardamom, pepper, coconut, curry leaves and drumsticks. It also has recipes such as Kootu from Tamil Nadu and the famous Bisi Bele Huliyana from Karnataka.
You will also find Lentils in Coconut Milk, Katachi Amti and Moong Sprouts from Maharashtra, and Dhansak, a Parsi dish, from Gujarat in western India. Dals from eastern India such as Chana Dal Bengali-style and Assamese Mati Maa are included. From the northern India, Delhi Rajma and Punjabi Dal Makhani find a place in the book.
This book is not limited by borders. It includes exotic dal recipes from the neighbouring countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, and some delicious and wholesome dal-based soups too.
India and the Indians have made some progress in 75 years after Independence. The number of literates has gone up. The Indians have become healthier and their life expectancy at birth has gone up. The proportion of people below the poverty line has also halved. But the shine from the story fades when India is compared with that of the East Asian Tigers and China. It looks good but not good enough. India looks far away from the glory it seeks. This issue forms the core subject matter of this book. It tries to argue why India could not achieve more and what all it could have achieved. It paints a picture of its possible future and highlights the areas that need immediate attention.
Introducing Sewaram Manjhi in this explosive novel that combines a tight mystery and an anti-hero who refuses to back down.
Sewaram Manjhi works as a security guard outside a posh Bombay café. On the surface, he’s not unlike millions of invisible Indians who make the city tick, but there is a difference: he holds rage in his heart, and he will go to any length to snatch a chunk of the good life. Enter Santosh, hostess at the restaurant across the street. A damsel in distress, Santosh has a strange request for Manjhi, and far be it from him to say no. What follows is tabaahi – mayhem – as Manjhi finds himself caught in a web of lies and deceit, and on the trail of a bag full of money that will lead to broken noses, bloody heads, sex, seduction, and murder. If he succeeds, Manjhi might finally discover what it means to be in control of one’s destiny in a land where birth determines fate.
So who really spearheaded India’s Freedom Struggle? Millions of ordinary people-farmers, labourers, homemakers, forest produce gatherers, artisans and others-stood up to the British. People who never went on to be ministers, governors, presidents, or hold other high public office.
They had this in common: their opposition to Empire was uncompromising.
In The Last Heroes, these footsoldiers of Indian freedom tell us their stories. The men, women and children featured in this book are Adivasis, Dalits, OBCs, Brahmins, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. They hail from different regions, speak different languages and include atheists and believers, Leftists, Gandhians and Ambedkarites.
The people featured pose the intriguing question: What is freedom? They saw that as going beyond Independence. And almost all of them continued their fight for freedoms long after 1947.
The post-1947 generations need their stories.
To learn what they understood. That freedom and independence are not the same thing. And to learn to make those come together.
From Sathasivam to Sangakkara, Murali to Malinga, Sri Lanka can lay claim to some of the world’s most remarkable cricketers – larger-than-life characters who thumbed convention and played the game their own way. More so than anywhere else in the world, Sri Lankan cricket has an identity. This is the land of pint-sized swashbuckling batsman, on-the-fly innovators and contorted, cryptic spinners.
On the field of play, Victorian ideals of the past collide with madcap tropical hedonism to create something dizzying. Cricket is Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka is cricket. We all know the story of the ’96 World Cup: how a team of unfancied amateurs rose from obscurity to the top the world, doing so with such swagger that they changed the way the game was played. Yet the lore of Sri Lankan cricket stretches back much further.
In the early days, matches between colonists and locals imbued cricket with a nationalistic drive. Ashes-bound ships stopping over in Colombo brought the world’s biggest stars, from Bligh and Bradman to Grace and Grimmet. More recently, Sri Lanka has had to face the triumphs and tragedies that come when cash flows freely into the gentleman’s game.
An Island’s Eleven tells this story for the first time, focusing on the characters and moments that have shaped the game forever.
The Sacred Wordsmith compiles the best of Raja Rao’s writings, including his autobiographical Prefaces and Introductions. The volume puts together several of his noted acceptance speeches, including those for the Sahitya Akademi Award and Neustadt International Prize, and other famous pieces, such as ‘The World is Sound’, ‘The Word’, ‘Why Do You Write?’, ‘The West Discovers Sanskrit’, ‘The English Language and Us’, and ‘The Story Round, Around Kanthapura’, a fascinating, unpublished account of the makings of his famous first novel.
