Explore the Shobhaa De minsite here! ‘This is a story about India. My India. It is a very personal story. You see, I’m exactly as old as India is.’ It all began when, viewing the breathless preparations for independent India’s 60th birthday celebrations–and poised then on her own sixth decade—Shobhaa Dé was struck by the thought: ‘Surely my life has taken the same trajectory as the country’s?’ In an intimate confession to her readers, she answers that question, and many more: Does India really deserve to congratulate itself? Has it lived up to the early promises it made to its people? Does the author believe in India herself? Surveying the many images of the country, Dé points out that for every truism about India the opposite is also true: India as the land of the meek; India as inheritor of the earth; India gherao-ed by distinctly unfriendly neighbours; Indians fleeing to jobs in the West and then racing right back to a better life; Indians who ape their erstwhile colonizers and yet cling irrationally to tradition. In a departure from anything else she has written, Shobhaa Dé lasers in on Indian people and their place in the larger human society, pointing out her country’s historical failings and equally historical glories. Admitting to our knee-jerk reactions to much of what is happening at home and in the world, Dé reasons, nevertheless, that the nation has earned superstar status, and with humorous argumentativeness, she convinces the reader that India is not about to lose its glow.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Mrs Funnybones (Spl 30)
In Mrs Funnybones, Twinkle Khanna wittily explores the plight of the modern Indian woman who has a familiar family story. She organizes dinner each evening after having been at work all day, she runs her own life but has to listen to her mummyji and she worries about her weight and the state of the country. This is an extraordinary book with deliciously witty observations.
Modi
The story of a young boy with limited means becoming the Prime Minister of India is a true testament of democracy. Modi: A Story of Hope and Human Endeavour details the working of the Prime Minister’s mind: what inspires him, what motivates him, the experiences that shaped the man we see before us today, featuring unseen photographs and telling unheard stories.
Set in two volumes, The Life and The Leader, these two books tell the story of Narendra Damodardas Modi, from when he was a young boy in Vadanagar, Gujarat, to 7, Lok Kalyan Marg, the official residence of the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy. The first volume, The Life, shares his journey from his childhood to ascending the ladder of the BJP’s leadership, until his resounding mandate in the 2014 general elections. The second volume, The Leader, tells his story from then to now, the milestones India achieved under his visionary leadership.
Reporting India
Reporting India is a fascinating account of the life and times of Prem Prakash, a pioneer in the field of Indian journalism. Over the course of his long and illustrious career as a photographer, film cameraman and columnist, Prakash covered major events, both in India and abroad, bearing witness to natural calamities, wars, military coups and insurgencies.
The book celebrates Prakash’s unparalleled body of work, providing a detailed account of his personal and professional life, along with his reminiscences of the most impactful stories that he covered-from the 1962 Indo-China war to the
1965 and 1971 wars against Pakistan; from the Emergency to the assassination of Indira Gandhi; from Lal Bahadur Shastri’s fateful Tashkent journey to the liberation of Bangladesh; from Jawaharlal Nehru’s demise to Narendra Modi’s rise. An intriguing read, Reporting India brings to life some of the defining moments in Indian history.
From Pony to Unicorn
The journey of a business-from a small start-up to a large company ready for an initial public offering (IPO)-is fraught with pitfalls and landmines. To scale a company, one needs to do more than just expand distribution and ramp up revenue. Scale entails a long-term vision that includes putting in place a timeline to achieve anticipated milestones, hiring and managing the right talent, sourcing capital to support expansion and building in simple yet effective processes as well as technology. Scaling requires the founders and the leadership team to understand the different pieces of the puzzle of scale and the components of organization-building.
From Pony to Unicorn lucidly describes the X-to-10X journey that every start-up aspiring to become a unicorn has to go through. The book effortlessly narrates the fundamental principles behind scaling. Peppered with anecdotes, insights and practical wisdom, the book is a treasure trove of lessons derived from the authors’ rich personal experiences in both building and guiding several start-ups that went on to attain the ‘unicorn’ status and became public-listed companies. Guaranteed to make for a very interesting read, the book will be useful to entrepreneurs, leaders and investors involved in scaling start-ups.
How to Improve Concentration
Our world today is filled with distractions that demand our attention every few seconds. The constant messages, notifications and pop-ups have a huge impact on our physical and mental health, making it difficult for us to concentrate on any task. In such a fast-paced world, attention is our most important resource. But we are largely unaware of the key role it plays in shaping our everyday lives.The book aims to help you harness the power of concentration for personal and professional growth, and overcome distractions through simple, research-based and time-tested exercises. It showcases various techniques used by maths and memory experts Aditi and Sudhir Singhal, and digital wellness coach Bala Kishore, in their own lives.
Let’s Build A Company
Harpreet Grover and Vibhore Goyal met in college and then spent the next decade of their lives building a company before exiting successfully.
One way to tell their story is this: they had a dream, they followed it and, then, through perseverance, they made it come true.
But that’s not really the truth. Like everything in life-at least everything worth having-it wasn’t that simple. There was blood, sweat and tears, there was loss of capital, loss of friendship and even a loss of faith along the way.
It started with a phone call from Harpreet’s mother introducing him to an uncle who wanted some help. Or maybe it started when Vibhore and Harpreet met as roommates in Room 143 at IIT Bombay. What remains true is that soon both had quit their jobs and launched CoCubes. From no money in their bank accounts for eight years after graduating to becoming dollar millionaires two years later in 2016, this is a tale of grit-of a company built in India by two Indian-middle-class-twenty-somethings-turned-entrepreneurs-written in the hope that you can avoid the mistakes they made and learn from what they did right.
This is that story-the story that you don’t always hear. But if you want to be an entrepreneur, and you prefer straight talk to sugar-coating, it’s one you should read.
Unfinished
“I have always felt that life is a solitary journey, that we are each on a train, riding through our hours, our days, our years. We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we made as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone.”
In this thoughtful and revealing memoir, readers will accompany one of the world’s most recognizable women on her journey of self-discovery. A remarkable life story rooted in two different worlds, Unfinished offers insights into Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s childhood in India; her formative teenage years in the United States; and her return to India, where against all odds as a newcomer to the pageant world, she won the national and international beauty competitions that launched her global acting career. Whether reflecting on her nomadic early years or the challenges she’s faced as she’s doggedly pursued her calling, Priyanka shares her challenges and triumphs with warmth and honesty. The result is a book that is philosophical, sassy, inspiring, bold, and rebellious. Just like the author herself.
From her dual-continent twenty-year-long career as an actor and producer to her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, from losing her beloved father to cancer to marrying Nick Jonas, Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s story will inspire readers around the world to gather their courage, embrace their ambitions, and commit to the hard work of following their dreams.
The Deadly Royal Recipe
Mix one lonely princess with a bunch of school friends and a little boy.
Add a top-secret recipe Masterbook, lots of exotic food, a villainous raja and his even more villainous son.
Garnish it with action, adventure, car-chases and elephant rides and cook it all to perfection with a fast-paced plot!
What you get is a wacky, racy adventure, which will have you burping with satisfaction!
Singing in the Dark
“The range and depth of this amazing anthology convey the conflicted and conflicting emotions of our times. It provides the consolations of poetry and the solace of art as balm to troubled souls.” NAMITA GOKHALE, author, and director, Jaipur Literature Festival
“…Although it may seem that devoting poetic energy to an invisible enemy that is pushing the world towards a terrifying future is too closely tied to social duty, the truth is entirely different: it is not death that the poets are celebrating, it is life.” EVALD FLISAR, Slovenian author and playwright
While the benumbed world is struggling to combat the apocalyptic devastation it has wreaked, a choral spectrum of poetry has emerged to rekindle the spirit of hope. Has poetry not always spelt hope in dark times? Over a hundred voices of unparalleled resilience have gathered here to speak… It is a word of love, solace and bonding; the word the world today is sorely in need of hearing. GULAMMOHAMMED SHEIKH, artist and author
Singing in the Dark brings together the finest of poetic responses to the coronavirus pandemic. More than a hundred of the world’s most esteemed poets reflect upon a crisis that has dramatically altered our lives, and laid bare our vulnerabilities. The poems capture all its dimensions: the trauma of solitude, the unexpected transformation in the expression of interpersonal relationships, the even sharper visibility of the class divide, the marvellous revival of nature and the profound realization of the transience of human existence. The moods vary from quiet contemplation and choking anguish to suppressed rage and cautious celebration in an anthology that serves as an aesthetic archive of a strange era in human history.