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How did the Tamil merchant become India’s first link to the outside world?
The tale of the Tamil merchant is a fascinating story of the adventure of commerce in the ancient and early medieval periods in India. The early medieval period saw an economic structure dominated by the rise of powerful Tamil empires under the Pallava and Chola dynasties. This book marks the many significant ways in which the Tamil merchants impacted the political and economic development of south India.
What if you decided to do what you love instead of working at someone else’s desk every day?
That’s exactly what the men and women in this book did. They took the conventional route but slowly gathered the skills, resources and strength to make their own path. Featured here, among other incredible people, are Mahesh and Suresh Ramakrishnan, IT and banking professionals turned bespoke suit makers, former corporate lawyer Piya Bose, who now owns a travel company, and Raghu Dixit, a microbiologist turned rock star. Success, to them, is in earning a living from their passion, having a strong sense of purpose and learning from the challenges they face every day.
Their lives and sterling tips for success are not only inspiring but also empower you to muster up the courage and make a go of your new life.
A scintillating collection from one of our most original minds
Eminent philosopher, professor and public intellectual, Ramchandra Gandhi (1937-2007) was regarded as a sage in his lifetime. This book brings together some of his long essays and hitherto unpublished talks and writings on themes ranging from non-violence and karma to svaraj, brahmacharya and modern Indian spirituality, that are contextualized in an introduction by close disciple A. Raghuramaraju.
Bridging the moral, religious and social, the book offers many original insights: on how Sri Ramakrishna and Sri Sarada Devi’s catholic vision of religion annihilated exclusivism; the manner in which Gandhi’s martyrdom broke the prevailing power of evil and violence worldwide; how going beyond celibacy, brahmacharya is a joyous renunciation of sex; and on svaraj being ‘a struggle for the kingdom of self and autonomy’, not mere political independence.
Brilliantly argued and inspiring, The Seven Sages brings Ramchandra Gandhi’s ideas to a new audience, beyond his admirers.
It is the late 1970s. India has been wrenched by the Emergency. Ajay and Birju are taken by their parents to America so they can have a better life. In New York, their flat is tiny, the students at their school racist. The brothers forge ahead, pushed on by their ambitious parents. But then everything changes. Birju has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged, and the world around Ajay collapses. His father begins to drink, his mother takes to prayer, and it is Ajay who must now bear all the guilty weight of their love.
The Mahabharata is one of the greatest stories ever told. Though the basic plot is widely known, there is much more to the epic than the dispute between the Kouravas and Pandavas that led to the battle in Kurukshetra. It has innumerable sub-plots that accommodate fascinating meanderings and digressions, and it has rarely been translated in full, given its formidable length of 80,000 shlokas or couplets. This magnificent 10- volume unabridged translation of the epic is based on the Critical Edition compiled at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. Volume 1 consists of most of Adi Parva, in which much happens before the Kouravas and the Pandavas actually arrive on the scene. This volume covers the origins of the Kuru clan; the stories of Poushya, Poulama and Astika; the births of the Kouravas and the Pandavas; the house of lac; the slaying of Hidimba and Baka; Droupadi’s marriage; and ends with the Pandavas obtaining their share of the kingdom. Every conceivable human emotion figures in the Mahabharata, the reason why the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination. In this lucid, nuanced and confident translation, Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvellouly accessible to contemporary readers.
Christopher, a young travel writer, arrives at a riverside resort in Kerala to meet Koman, a famous kathakali dancer. Immediately he is sucked into a world of masks and repressed emotions. Koman is instantly drawn to the enigmatic young man with his incessant questions about the past-but so is his niece Radha. Excluded from this triangle is Shyam, Radha’s husband, who can only watch helplessly as she embraces Chris with a passion that he has never been able to draw from her. As the drama unfolds, the nuances and contradictions of the relationships being made-and unmade-come alive in this searing novel of art and adultery.
The greatest long poem in classical Sanskrit, by the greatest poet of the language
She with her beautiful face at once was in the power
of Siva and of drunkenness, taking her shyness away,
both eagerly drawing her toward the bed
and both now turned into kindled desire.
The greatest long poem in classical Sanskrit, Kumarasambhavam celebrates the love story of Siva and Parvati, whose passionate union results in the birth of their son, the young god Kumara. Beginning with a luminous description of the birth of Parvati, the poem proceeds in perfectly pitched sensuous detail through her courtship with Siva until the night of their wedding. This poem plays out their tale on the immense scale of supreme divinity, wherein the gods are viewed both as lovers and as cosmic principles.
Composed in eight cantos by the greatest Sanskrit poet of all time, the verses of Kumarasambhavam continue to enchant readers centuries after they were first written. Hank Heifetz’s sparkling translation brings to life the heady eroticism and sumptuous imagery of the original.
Her left hand rests on her hip, the bangle motionless at her wrist
while the other arm falls freely like a fig branch.
Lowering her eyes to the tiled floor, where her big toe caresses a flower,
her curved body is more beautiful than her dance.
Believed to be Kalidasa’s first work, Malavikagnimitram is the love story of King Agnimitra and the court dancer Malavika. The tale unfolds through humorous palace interludes, vivid descriptions of fine arts and the cunning machinations of court players. Even in this early work, Kalidasa’s characteristic penchant for romance, art and natural beauty is evident at every delightful turn of the plot. He transforms a simple tale of forbidden love into an engrossing courtly drama filled with beauty, humour and wit.
Can a man walk on water?
Can he see the future?
Can he read people’s minds?After a deep personal loss, Maximus Pzoras, Harvard economist and Wall Street banker, sets out on a quest to find the cause of human pain and suffering. His journey takes him from New York to a hidden ashram in south India, and then to a freezing cave high in the Himalayas. And as he goes from being a cubicle dweller to a cave-dwelling yogi, he starts to develop extraordinary powers. But will Max, an investment banker turned Himalayan sage, find the answers to the questions that led him to India?
The Seeker is the story of a man’s tremendous inner transformation, a Siddhartha for our generation.
This definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations of full of the epic. Bibek Debroy makes the Mahabharata marvelously accessible to contemporary readers. Dispute over land and kingdom may lie at the heart of this story of war between cousins-the Pandavas and the Kouravas-but the Mahabharata is about conflicts of dharma. These conflicts are immense and various, singular and commonplace. Throughout the epic, characters face them with no clear indications of what is right and what is wrong; there are no absolute answers. Thus every possible human emotion features in the Mahabharata, the reason the epic continues to hold sway over our imagination.
In this superb and widely acclaimed translation of the complete Mahabharata, Bibek Debroy takes on a great journey with incredible ease. This is the second volume in the series.
