Catagory: Non Fiction

Shashi Deshpande’s latest novel explores the lives of two women, one obsessed with music and the other a passionate believer in Communism, who break away from their families to seek fulfillment in public life. Savitribai Indorekar, born into an orthodox Hindu family, elopes with her Muslim lover and accompanist, Ghulaam Saab, to pursue a career in music. Gentle, strong-willed Leela, on the other hand, gives her life to the Party, and to working with the factory workers of Bombay. Fifty years after these events have been set in motion, Madhu, Leela’s niece, travels to Bhavanipur, Savitribai’s home in her last years, to write a biography of Bai. Caught in her own despair over the loss of her only son Aditya, Madhu tries to make sense of the lives of Bai and those around her, and in doing so, find a way out of her own grief.

The Funniest Jokes in the World brings together hundreds of jokes and epigrams—collected over several decades from all around the world—that are guaranteed to tickle the funny bone and brighten up the dullest of days.

The women in this book are not extraordinary or famous, and yet their stories and testimonies, narrated here by one of India’s best-known women journalists, provide a passionate, often deeply touching, revelation of what it means to be a woman in India today.
The women tell of marriage and widowhood, unfair work practices, sexual servitude, the problems of bearing and rearing children in poverty, religion, discrimination, other forms of exploitation…Yet they also talk of fulfilling relationships, the joys of marriage and children, the exhilaration of breaking free from the bonds of tradition, ritual, caste, religion…Interwoven with all this isi the story of one woman’s journey—-of how Anees Jung, the author, brought up in Purdah, succeeded in shaking off the restricting influences of her traditional upbringing to become a highly successful, independent career woman, still a comparatively rare phenomenon in India.
As such, the book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the women of India—the silent majority that is now beginning to make itself heard.
The women in this book are not extraordinary or famous, and yet their stories and testimonies, narrated here by one of India’s best-known women journalists, provide a passionate, often deeply touching, revelation of what it means to be a woman in India today.
The women tell of marriage and widowhood, unfair work practices, sexual servitude, the problems of bearing and rearing children in poverty, religion, discrimination, other forms of exploitation…Yet they also talk of fulfilling relationships, the joys of marriage and children, the exhilaration of breaking free from the bonds of tradition, ritual, caste, religion…Interwoven with all this isi the story of one woman’s journey—-of how Anees Jung, the author, brought up in Purdah, succeeded in shaking off the restricting influences of her traditional upbringing to become a highly successful, independent career woman, still a comparatively rare phenomenon in India.
As such, the book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the women of India—the silent majority that is now beginning to make itself heard.

A lucid and brilliantly-argued book on India’s recent economic reforms Nearly fifty years after independence, India remains a very poor country. It ranks near the bottom in terms of per capita income, and is similarly placed in the Human Develoent Index which measures social well-being. Economic growth in India has been less than half that of China or even other countries in Asia. And governments, at the Centre as well as in the states, are close to insolvency. The reason for our spectacular underachievement lies in the continuation of policies which had a certain validity as a response to the colonial experience, but which have long outlived their usefulness. The global economic scene has changed dramatically since they were formulated, and we must respond to the new realities. Bimal Jalan, the well known economist and present Governor of the RBI, in this lucid and well-argued book, makes a case for governments doing what they alone can best do, and less of what they cannot do effectively.

A brilliant biography of one of India’s greatest poets
Mirza Mohammad Asadullah Khan Ghalib began writing poetry in Persian at the age of nine and the pre-eminent poet of the time, Mir, predicted a great future for the precocious genius when he was shown his verse. But success and material rewards did not come to Ghalib easily, for the times were against him, and he did not suffer fools gladly even if they occupied positions of importance.
Ghalib was at the height of his powers when events took a turn for the worse. First came the decline of the Mughal court, then the rise of the British Empire and, finally, the Revolt of 1857. Though Ghalib lived through the upheavals and purges of the Revolt, in which many of his contemporaries and friends died and his beloved Delhi was irrevocably changed, he was a broken man and longed for death. When he died, on 15 February 1869, he left behind some of the most vivid accounts of the events of the period ever written. In this illuminating biography Pavan K. Varma evocatively captures the spirit of the man and the essence of the times he lived in.