Sanjay de Silva lives in Colombo, under the thumb of a controlling Sri Lankan father, having lost his English mother at an early age. When his father is diagnosed with cancer, he feels the ground shifting under his feet, the balance of power realigning. Though it is something he has dreamed of all his life, he is uneasy when it happens. Learning that he is entitled to live in England-thanks to his half-English parentage-he arrives in south London.
It is 1980, the start of the glorious blue-rinsed Thatcher years, when every girl looks like Princess Diana but not every boy looks like Prince Charles. He meets and falls in love with a fellow Sri Lankan, Janine, who is old enough to be his mother and famous within the acid-tongued Sri Lankan community as ‘a hooker of the very highest class, with royal connections’.
Sanjay manages to buy an old wreck of a house in Brixton and succeeds, against all odds, in converting it into two flats. But all is not well with that house. At night there are voices . . .
This is the story of south London’s first Asian builder who in eight years developed and sold eighty-four flats, cashing in his winnings just before the crash of 1988. But at its heart it is about grief: how each of us copes in our inimitable way with the hidden mysteries of family and the loss of loved ones. Because, as Sanjay is about to find out, grief is only the transmutation of love, of the very same chemical composition-liquid, undistilled-the one inevitably turning to the other like ice to water.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Customer to Human
Customer to Human stems from Murali Balraman’s extensive experience in customer experience and customer centricity. Murali took a pledge to give back his life’s lessons many years ago and this book marks a step in that direction. It is filled with stories and experiences, to evoke the reader’s interest and ideas that impact an organization or business. Every business has a customer, big or small, and that customer is the business’s most important asset.
Whether you are a startup or an established business there is something for you in this book. It contains trends, insights, methods and technologies laid out in an easy-to-read format and is relevant for anyone seeking well-researched information in this field. It is also filled with invaluable stories on inspirational customer experiences (CX), agnostic to which industry you belong to.
Women Who Misbehave
Women Who Misbehave, much like the women within its pages, contains multitudes and contradictions-it is imaginative and real, unsettling and heartening, funny and poignant, dark and brimming with light.
At a party to celebrate her friend’s wedding anniversary, a young woman spills a dangerous secret. A group of girls mourns the loss of their strange, mysterious neighbour. A dutiful daughter seeks to impress her father even as she escapes his reach. A wife weighs the odds of staying in her marriage when both her reality and the alternative are equally frightening. An aunt comes to terms with an impulsive mistake committed decades ago.
In this wildly original and hauntingly subversive collection of short stories, Sayantani Dasgupta brings to life unforgettable women and their quest for agency. They are violent and nurturing, sacred and profane. They are friends, lovers, wives, sisters and mothers. Unapologetic and real, they embrace the entire range of the human experience, from
the sweetest of loves and sacrifices to the most horrific of crimes.
Making Excellence A Habit
One of the few practising doctors in India who contributed to research, education and charity in such a large measure, the book documents the fundamentals of what makes a person achieve meaningful success. While hard work, passion and focus emerge as winning lessons, delicate and tender learnings from Dr Mohan’s life, such as empathy or spirituality, are not forgotten.
Written in Dr Mohan’s sagacious and affable voice, and peppered with examples of his bold and unusual ideas such as planning a diabetes expo or conducting a country-wide diabetes study, this book is a behind-the-scenes account of a person honoured internationally for delivering path-breaking care to hundreds of thousands of people with diabetes.
The Coming Age
C. Subramania Bharati (1882-1921) has an unrivalled reputation in twentieth-century Tamil literature and has come to be known as the Tamil ‘Mahakavi’, meaning ‘Supreme Poet’. His work as a poet and prose-writer ignited a Renaissance in modern Tamil writing. However, he also wrote and published regularly in English.
The Coming Age brings together Bharati’s important English writings in an authoritative and reliable edition presented by his great-granddaughter. The pieces in this volume reveal a well informed and cosmopolitan writer, engaging with the world around him, passionately sharing his opinions.
Exploring Indian history and culture, offering a shattering contemporary view of the colonial experience, commenting on political events, advocating for women’s rights and caste equality, and sharing his deep knowledge of the Tamil language and literary tradition, these pieces present Bharati in a new light for a new generation.
Platform Scale for a Post-Pandemic World
The decade leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic witnessed the rise of platform business models as they drove stock market gains and extended their influence across economic and political activity.
The pandemic has accelerated these platforms further. Apple, Google, Alibaba and Amazon have made strong inroads into the health-care industry. When most supply chains were reeling under the effects of the pandemic, Amazon continued unabated and even took on governmental functions. The market dominance of Apple and Google was perhaps most starkly observable in their ability to create a global contact tracing infrastructure. And even as the US-China trade war heats up, Alibaba’s Electronic World Trade Platform continues to work with countries across Africa, Europe and Asia to create a new infrastructure for global trade.
Platform Scale: For a Post-Pandemic World explains the inner workings of platform business models and their ability to scale rapidly. The ideas in this updated edition illustrate the importance of platform business models, the forces that power their rapid scale and the factors that will cement their dominance in a post-pandemic world. The book serves as a maker’s manual, helping executives design and build platforms, and provides a lens to analyse the shifts currently underway and their implications for future platform-scale businesses.
Impetuous Women
Impetuous Women is about women who step across the Lakshman Rekha, whose transgressions fly in the face of the establishment, the patriarchy, often their own families and loved ones. From two housewives who play a potentially lethal game of keeping up to an expert baker who serves revenge with chocolate sprinkles on top; from a stern hostel warden who examines her relationship with the teenagers she must surveil to a grouchy widow shuts out the world; from a couple madly in love and desperate for a bit of privacy to a tender bond between a husband and wife, these stories create an unforgettable portrait of modern-day India and the experiential realities of being impetuous, of being women.
This darkly comic, thrillingly tragic collection of stories is sensuous, bittersweet and whimsical by turns, and always wildly, subversively original.
The Right Choice
Should money be the primary factor in picking a job? When do I pursue an MBA or a second MBA? Should I switch industries to move ahead?
The Right Choice delves deep into the ten frequently faced dilemmas in a person’s career, such as the ones listed above. The author shares his wisdom and experiences from his illustrious career as one of India Inc’s longest-serving CEOs. In his trademark straightforward and lucid style, he shares lessons and learnings on each of the ten dilemmas. The book also contains insights and perspectives from twenty-four highly experienced professionals.
A successful career is not a straight line; it has many twists and turns where you are faced with difficult choices. Practical and inspiring, The Right Choice is a must read corporate management book and a career guide that will help you navigate these difficult situations-and win in your career.
ANUSHA SHETTY – BHAVYA MISRA – CHANDRAMOULI
VENKATESAN – DEBJANI GHOSH – HARI MENON –
HARISH DEVARAJAN – KIRTHIGA REDDY – M. DAMODARAN –
MEENA GANESH – PAVITRA SINGH – PIYUSH PANDEY –
PRAKASH NEDUNGADI – PRIYANKA VIJAYAKUMAR –
RAKESH KUMAR – RAMA BIJAPURKAR – ROHIT KALE –
R.R. NAIR – RUCHIKA GUPTA – SONNY IQBAL –
SUDHANSHU VATS – SUJATHA DUVVURI – BALARAMAN V. –
VANI GUPTA DANDIA – VIVEK GAMBHIR
Hunchprose
What affirms our humanity, enduring beyond our barbarism? Where is home, in a world beleaguered by climate crisis, pandemic and genocide? Hunchprose is Ranjit Hoskote’s fierce, poignant testament to these urgencies.
The title of this dazzling new collection asserts poetry’s claim to be heard above the buzz of data, to transform language, broken by history, into music. Vibrant with linguistic experiment, Hunchprose weaves unpredictable patterns, celebrates our plural selves. In the erasure of ancient scripts, the melting Arctic ice, a lion tamer’s primal fear, we recognize vulnerability and rupture. A dancer’s courage, a leather worker’s revolutionary promise, a locksmith’s passion for ruins inspire us to redeem ourselves through love, doubt, hope and dream.
Infused with wry humour, informed by the wisdom traditions, Hunchprose urges us to look at our world, and within ourselves, with renewed ardour.
Karunanidhi
The most definitive biography of one of the most popular Indian politician, Karunanidhi.
Writer-turned-politician Muthuvel Karunanidhi is amongst the most important political figures India has ever seen. He was the chief minister of Tamil Nadu for five terms and leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for over five decades. Still remembered for his controversial but fruitful career as a regional leader, his contribution to Tamil history and culture has been invaluable. Meticulously researched and deeply engrossing, Karunanidhi: A Life delves into the life and times of this unforgettable man and his contribution to Indian politics.