From his birth in a village in Andhra to founding and running Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, now one of India’s largest pharmaceutical enterprises, Dr K. Anji Reddy’s journey makes for an inspiring story. That story is told rivetingly in his own words in his memoir, An Unfinished Agenda.
Dr Anji Reddy became an entrepreneur at a time when India was woefully short of technology to manufacture many basic medicines. Then, in barely three decades, the Indian pharmaceutical industry had grown to the point that India not only became self-sufficient in medicine, but also a supplier of affordable generic medicines to the world. Dr Anji Reddy provides a ringside view of this remarkable transformation, with fascinating anecdotes about those who made it happen.
The history of modern medicine is a gripping story of triumphs and failures. An Unfinished Agenda takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the science of medicine over the last hundred years and reminds us of the stark challenges that remain.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
On Creativity
The concept of genius has been a subject of much speculation and debate since the eighteenth century. However, in a world obsessed with creative genius and the possibilities of the human imagination, the actual workings of the creative process and its psychological underpinnings remain a mystery.
In On Creativity, a group of experts seeks to unlock this enigma.The essays of Sudhir Kakar, Günter Blamberger and Weihua Niu provide a cross-cultural perspective, comparing historical and actual concepts of creativity in the East and the West. The essays of Patrick Mahony, James Kaufman and Margaret Boden offer an interdisciplinary perspective, demonstrating the successes and limits of the psychoanalytical and psychological approaches to understanding creativity while also discussing cognitive biology as the seemingly most promising approach to solving the puzzle of the creative mind.
Brilliant, lucid and thought-provoking, these essays examine and illumine the reasons that compel us to innovate further.
The Living Goddess
In a small medieval palace on Kathmandu’s Durbar Square lives Nepal’s famous Living Goddess-a child chosen from the Buddhist caste of goldsmiths whose role is to watch over the country and protect its people. Once she attains puberty, another girl takes her place.
To Nepalis she is the embodiment of Devi and for centuries the kings of Nepal have sought her blessing to rule. Legends swirl about her. But the facts remain shrouded in secrecy and closely guarded by the Living Goddess’s priests and caretakers. Why are Buddhist girls worshipped by Hindu monarchs? Are the initiation rituals as macabre as they are rumoured to be? And what happens to Living Goddesses once they attain puberty?
Using myth, religion, history and her unprecedented access to the priests, caretakers and ex-Living Godessess, Isabella Tree takes us deep into this hidden world. Through it she draws a vivid portrait of the girl-goddess, the beliefs and practices of traditional Nepal, and the uneasy journey it now makes towards modernity. Deeply felt and written over many years of travel and research, The Living Goddess is a profound, compelling and extremely moving book.
Touching Lives
Touching Lives is is the story of journeys to far corners of India meeting people whose lives have been transformed by technology. It is the account of people who have forged a different destiny for themselves, breaking the cycle of poverty and helplessness, with a little help from ISRO. Throwing light on some of the million tiny revolutions sweeping the country, the book takes us from Jhabua to interior Karnataka, from the Sundarbans to Chamoli in Garhwal. It is our chance to meet everyday
Yuva India
Yuva India takes a deep dive into the lives of India’s young men and women. In unravelling what makes them tick, the book uncovers the phenomenon of ‘attitudinal convergence’ that is rapidly growing across youth cohorts in India. Tracing its origin to the arrival of and exposure to a ‘composite culture’, the research behind ‘convergence’ zeroes in on how a young India is defining itself using new-age sensibilities.
Drawing on insights collected over a decade, Ray documents and analyses how young men and women in India approach issues of identity, image, sexuality, spirituality, personal relevance, social connections and community, and professional pursuits. In a one-of-a-kind analysis, using comprehensive data from across the nation, Ray scrutinizes young India’s psyche to make sense of their aspirations.
Filled with numerous first-person accounts and brand stories, Yuva India provides an insightful understanding of India’s most valuable asset, its youth population. The present and the future of India’s young, it reveals, will be invaluable not just for business and brand managers, but also for all those who wish to engage with them.
Neither a Hawk nor a Dove
An authoritative and revelatory account of Pakistan’s politics
Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri is one of Pakistan’s most important diplomats, and was the country’s foreign minister 2002-07. In this book, he provides the ultimate insider’s account of Pakistan’s foreign policy, especially the peace process with India including the Kashmir framework (hailed at the time the most promising-ever dialogue between Pakistan and India since Independence) and the complex Pakistan-US-Afghanistan-India quadrangular relationship. Kasuri talks frankly about his Indian interlocutors, his three counterparts Pranab Mukherjee, Natwar Singh and Yashwant Sinha and the two prime ministers he worked with-Dr Manmohan Singh and A.B. Vajpayee. He also gives us a rare insight into the minds of the Pakistan Army, the contribution of the Foreign Office and his warm but complex relationship with President Musharraf. Blending analysis with choice anecdote, Neither a Hawk nor a Dove gives us a comprehensive and revealing account of Pakistan’s politics and the political compulsions of those at the helm.
Indianomix
A quirky look at India using popular economics
Why does the stock exchange dip during a lunar eclipse? Why don’t cars with safety features lead to fewer injuries? Why did Nehru ignore the Chinese threat in the lead-up to the 1962 war? Why is it that a stranger might risk his life to save yours on one day, and a street full of passers-by might casually watch you bleed to death on another? Why did pollsters wrongly predict a BJP victory in 2004, and what was the real reason for their defeat? And why is India’s Independence Day not, in fact, on the day on which it’s celebrated?
In pithy, sparkling, bite-sized chapters, economists Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya tackle these seeming mysteries and unearth the real reasons why ‘we are like this only’. The answers are entertaining and surprising at every turn, and reveal a picture of modern India as never seen before.
Total Fitness
The complete health and lifestyle guide for the true fitness enthusiast
One of the pioneers in the health and fitness industry, and the first to introduce the idea of celebrity fitness in India, Leena Mogre is an institution in herself. Her client list boasts personalities such as Madhuri Dixit, Katrina Kaif, John Abraham, Bipasha Basu, among others. And for the first time ever, she tells us all about it in her debut book—Total Fitness.
In a humorous and inimitable style, Leena brings you all the insider secrets—everything from the myth of size zero to assessing your actual strength and fitness before starting out, and finding your comfort zone and pushing beyond it gradually to achieve complete fitness. This book is the perfect guide for anyone looking to get fit the right way.
Supersurvivors
A supersurvivor is a person who has dramatically transformed his or her life after surviving a trauma, accomplishing amazing things or transforming the world for the better.
When tragedy befalls, many people succumb to trauma and suffer many psychological setbacks such as posttraumatic stress disorder. Many are able to move past the trauma and return to normal life. Some, however, are able to bounce back stronger and tougher than before. This rare species is called the supersurvivor.
The scope of suffering may vary, but most people face troubles small or big in their day-to-day lives. Supersurvivors offers astonishing stories of the indomitable human spirit which will put your own life and how you live it into perspective.
Two Lives
Shanti Behari Seth was born and brought up in India in the late years of the Raj, and was sent by his family in the 1930s to Berlin to study medicine and dentistry. It was here that Shanti’s path first crossed that of his future wife, as a lodger in her father’s house. Henny Gerda Caro was born in Berlin, to a Jewish family, cultured, patriotic and intensely German. A friendship flowered between them, and when Henny fled Hitler’s Germany for England, just a month before the war broke out, she was met at Victoria Station by the only person she knew in that country: Shanti.
Vikram Seth, their great-nephew from India, arrived in this childless couple’s life as a teenage student. Now he has woven together the astonishing story of Shanti and Henny, and the result is an extraordinary tapestry of India, the Third Reich and the Second World War, Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine, post-war Germany and 1970s Britain. Two Lives is both a history of a violent country seen through the eyes of two survivors as well as an intimate portrait of their friendship, marriage and abiding yet complex love. This is the true tale of two remarkable lives-a masterful telling from one of our greatest living writers.