One of the biggest challenges facing India today is the question of reservation for the nation’s minority communities. Although the Constitution of India affirms equal justice for all, the manner in which legislatures and courts operate often compromises justice in the name of political pragmatism. As a result, the voiceless and vulnerable members of society—Dalits, tribals, women and religious minorities—continue to be excluded and marginalized.
Taking Sides outlines a credible roadmap to aid the quest for an inclusive and just society. Examining this churning debate from several points of view, Rudolf Heredia makes a persuasive argument for a justice premised on liberty, tempered by equality and moderated by fraternity—a justice beyond politics.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Guru Dutt
Beating The Blues
Can’t sleep soundly?
Don’t feel like stepping out of the house?
Having suicidal thoughts?
You might be depressed and don’t know it yet. According to a study, more than 36 percent of Indians suffer from major depressive episodes (MDE). Yet, depression remains a much-evaded topic, quietly brushed under the carpet by most of us.
In Beating the Blues, India’s leading clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and trauma researcher, Seema Hingorrany, provides a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to treating depression, examining what the term really means, its signs, causes, and symptoms. The book will equip you with the following: easy-to-follow self-help strategies and result-oriented solutions ways of preventing a depression relapse, everyday examples, statistics, and interesting case studies workbooks designed for Seema’s clients. With clients ranging from celebrities and housewives to teenagers and even children, Seema decodes depression for you. Informative and user friendly, with a foreword by Indu Shahani (former sheriff of Mumbai), Beating the Blues is an invaluable guide for those who want to deal with depression but don’t know how.
A New World
The Professional Companion
Are you a true professional? Would you like to become one? In The Professional, Subroto Bagchi showed how one can behave professionally-or otherwise-in diverse situations, and asked the key question: What does it mean to be a professional? Inspired by that game-changing book, many aspiring professionals wanted to test their mettle using Bagchi’s tools. The Professional Companion fulfils that need. In this do-it-yourself workbook that is meant as a companion volume to The Professional, Bagchi takes you through simple exercises that allow you to understand how professional your approach is in a given context, and helps you develop a wider skill set and a more committed outlook.The Professional Companion is your very own personalized guide to excelling in today’s world.
Whispers From The Wild
Some people talk about nature, others listen to it. Listening can reveal wondes like how to befriend an elephant, how to talk to a tiger and how to live in the jungle. Many such amazing experiences crowd this volume containing the unpublished writings from the early and last years of the well-known naturalist, the late E.R.C. Davidar, besides his acclaimed book Cheetal Walk. a lawyer by profession and a shikari-turned-photographer, he established maybe the first ever private elephant corridor in India, near his jungle-cottage, and undertook the first census of the Nilgiri tahr along the entire range. Charmingly told, funny and brimming with insights, the book, enriched with photographs from the family album, not only enlightens us about wildlife and conservation in the Nilgiris but becomes a memoir of a jungle lover and his family.
Fitness On The Go
Looking slim isn’t the only marker of being fit. Fitness means having stamina, flexibility, and strength; being able to do your everyday tasks better; and being calm and focussed. Celebrity fitness trainer Abhishek Sharma shows you the perfect exercise regime that:
• Works on body and mind drawing elements from yoga, martial arts, and athletics
• Can be done anywhere and without machines and includes a range of exercises such as brisk walking, jogging, skipping, and cycling
• Helps you achieve a focussed mind through breathing and mind centring
• Is great for people on the move since the emphasis is on using your natural surroundings
• Will make you more confident, alert, and fearless, and is a great self defence tool
Fun, challenging, and for all age groups, Fitness on the Go has worked for celebrities such as Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, and Bollywood’s fittest actress, Deepika Padukone. Supplemented with photographs and celebrity secrets, it is the one stop solution for the modern warrior.
Makers Of Modern India
Ramachandra Guha, author of the internationally acclaimed India After Gandhi, profiles nineteen Indians whose ideas had a defining impact on the formation and evolution of our republic and presents rare and compelling excerpts from their writings and speeches. These men and women were not only influential political activists-they also wrote with eloquence, authority and deliberation as they reflected on what Guha describes in his illuminating prologue as ‘the most contentious times in the most interesting country in the world’. Their writings take us from the subcontinent’s first engagement with modernity in the nineteenth century, through the successive phases of the freedom movement, on through the decades after Independence. This book highlights little-known aspects of major figures in Indian history like Tagore and Nehru; it also rehabilitates thinkers who have been unjustly forgotten, such as Tarabai Shinde and Hamid Dalwai. These makers of modern India did not speak in one voice: their perspectives are sometimes complementary, at other times contradictory. The topics they explore and analyse include religion, caste, gender, language, nationalism, colonialism, democracy, secularism and the economy-that is to say, all that is significant in the human condition. These issues have a resonance in our own times, not just in India but everywhere in the world as well.
Celebrating Delhi
Delhi, located at the crossroads of history, has been occupied, abandoned and rebuilt over the centuries. It has been the capital of the Pandavas, the Rajputs, Central Asian dynasties, the Mughals and the British, and is best described as a melting pot of these vastly varying traditions and customs.
A galaxy of experts come together to offer fresh perspectives on the capital city. Originally part of The Sir Sobha Singh Memorial Lecture series organized by The Attic in collaboration with the India International Centre and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, this updated selection explores Delhi’s living syncretic heritage.
The essays illuminate unknown and fascinating aspects of the city’s history. We learn, for instance, how Sir Sobha Singh transplanted Delhi’s two foundation stones by bullock-cart in the stealth of the night from Kingsway Camp to Raisina Hill. In a different departure, archival records point to the fundamental ecological miscalculation in the British choice of trees to line the avenues of Imperial New Delhi. Place names, part of the cultural fabric of a city, unearth a vanishing history of Delhi, while the contrasting history of Sufi shrines draws attention to the spiritual masters, the pirs, and their search for truth.
This open-mindedness is reflected in the letters and public proclamations issued from the Mughal court in the Delhi uprising of 1857. These were emphatically religious, yet inclusive of both Hindus and Muslims. In our time a different take on the reality of refugee and resettlement colonies shows the blindness of the city’s civic planners, and reveals who was making and who was breaking the city in the twentieth century.
As the centre of political power for centuries, many great artists, poets and musicians found patronage at the royal courts of Delhi. The city has been home to a rich tradition of classical music-both the Sufi traditions of Central Asia and the darbari (courtly) style explore the development of the rich Delhi gharana tradition, as well as the birth, growth, banishment and reinvention of the language of Delhi over centuries. The many peoples who made Delhi their home through the centuries have all contributed to the creation and development of a sumptuous cuisine noted for its rich variety.
Celebrating Delhi takes you on a journey, both varied and unexpected.
Yudhisthir And Draupadi
IN THE FOREST, IN THE STILLNESS OF HTE MORNING, YUDHISHTAR, CUSTODIAN OF MORALITY, OBLIVIOUS TO SCALE OR BALANCE, UNTHINKING, MADE LOVE TO THIS WOMAN, HIS WIFE DRAUPADI.
A long poem in rhymed sonnets, Yudhishtar and Draupadi is and imaginative retelling of the encounter between the Pandavas and the Yaksha of the pool, which finds Yudhishtar, the eldest Pandava, answering fundamental philosophical questions about existence and the lives of his brothers hang in the balance. Unknown to him, also at stake is his relationship with Draupadi, who is still furious with him for having wagered her at the game of dice with Kauravas (‘he hadn’t won her; she wasn’t his to lose’).
This marvellous poetic interpretation of a key episode from the Mahabharata has now been translated by renowned poet-lyricist Gulzar, and is re-published in a bilingual edition.