‘An exceptionally well-written book’ Ian Talbot
In over three decades as a police officer, Kirpal Dhillon handled some of the most challenging assignments in independent India, from anti-dacoity operations in Madhya Pradesh to revamping a demoralized force as police chief of Punjab in the aftermath of Operation Blue Star. These memoirs describe his experiences in fascinating detail, and present vivid portraits of a range of people, including sadhus and swindlers, maharajas and brigands, scheming politicians and back-stabbing colleagues.
There are evocative descriptions of his village in Punjab, of Partition, and of the leaders he worked with, such as Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Morarji Desai. He writes with insight and expertise about terrorism, law-and-order problems, the training of administrators and policemen, and what can be done to ensure that they function with greater autonomy, accountability and humanity.
Ex-Files is the story of a woman, who despite her best efforts to save her marriage, finds herself facing a divorce petition. But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Vandana picked up the pieces of her shattered life and moved straight on. She not only finds a job and becomes self-sufficient, she also starts India’s first divorce support group, and deals inappropriate and hurtful remarks with grace and equanimity.
While being true to both the pain and challenges of divorce, Vandana’s personal stories reveal the hardships and joys of moving through emotional upheaval and emerging stronger with her positive thinking and humour intact. The book also deals with the legal and social aspects of a divorce which are so often overlooked while women are dealing with the emotional upheaval of divorce.
At once funny, tragic and uncompromisingly honest, this memoir will resonate with anyone who has endured the end of a marriage and come out changed.
In 2009, after several years in China, journalist Pallavi Aiyar moved to Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, to discover a Europe plagued by a financial crisis, and unsure of its place in a world where new Asian challengers are eroding its old and comfortable certainties. With a lively mix of memoir, reportage and analysis, Aiyar takes the reader on a romp across the continent as she meets workaholic Indian diamond merchants in Antwerp, upstart Chinese wine barons in Bordeaux, Sikh farmhands in the Italian countryside, and Indian engineers running offshore energy turbines in Belgium. In the Europe of today everything is in a flux, as she discovers through conversations with Muslim immigrants struggling to define their identities, the austere bosses of Germany’s worldbeating companies, and bewildered Eurocrats struggling to save the EU from splitting apart. Examining the diverse challenges the continent faces today-among them, bloated welfare states, the accommodation of Islam, the European ambitions of Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs, and the fissures that threaten to break up this union of diverse nations-Punjabi Parmesan takes a panoramic look at Europe’s firstworld crisis from a unique India-China perspective.
A rare portrait of Chhattisgarh, its people and its development
For thirty years, until his conviction in 2010 by the High Court, pediatrician Binayak Sen and his sociologist wife Ilina worked among people in Chhattisgarh’s tribal heartland. They came here seeking fresh ideas for change-and stayed on.
This fascinating memoir illuminates their journey and how their world imploded. Ilina vividly describes their years at the trade union CMSS, led by the iconic Shankar Guha Niyogi, where Binayak and three doctors started a hospital, and she organized workers’ education, joined the feisty women mineworkers’ struggles, and discovered the rich local history and cultural and farming traditions. These experiences later found expression in Rupantar, their own NGO, and when the new state’s government sought their advice for its women’s policy and for Mitanan, a precursor of the National Rural Health Mission.
Candid and deeply felt, the book celebrates Chhattisgarh but also laments the lost opportunity for its inclusive and violence-free development.
The dark legacies of partition have cast a long shadow on the lives of people of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The borders that were drawn in 1947, and redrawn in 1971, divided not only nations and histories but also families and friends.
The essays in this volume explore new ground in Partition research, looking into areas such as art, literature, migration, and notions of ‘foreignness’ and ‘belonging’. It brings focus to hitherto unaddressed areas of partition such as the northeast and Ladakh.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
