Capturing the beauty of a mother-daughter relationship, Divya Dutta in this moving memoir celebrates her mother’s zest for life that made her into the woman she is today. Divya walks us through the most intimate memories of her life, those that strengthened her relationship with her mother. The incredible bond she forged with her mother helped her through difficulties, times good and bad, that led to her becoming an award-winning actor of stature in the Indian film industry.
Me and Ma is a celebration of Divya’s exemplary achievements. It is also an honest, intimate and heartfelt tribute to the force behind her success-her mother.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
The Candidate
‘I can’t picture you surviving in Indian politics. Let me tell you the reasons: you have morals, too much integrity, and you lack an ego.’
Without a job, and a marriage on the rocks, the mild-mannered Jay Banerjee has no choice but to come back from the US to Delhi. A chance meeting with a childhood friend, Govardhan Ray, aka Raja—a neta with a scandal too many—plunges him into the seamy, madcap world of Indian politics.
The fight for the Narayanpore seat—a nondescript district in West Bengal—begins, and along with it, the process of discovering ‘the real India’. Jay’s challenge: to provide a ‘clean campaign with integrity’.
Replete with colourful campaigns, media hullabaloo, cynical voters, goondas, chamchas and all the usual suspects, The Candidate is a breezy and humorous story of the great Indian election tamasha.
We The People
Who are the people of India? What are their rights? What are their claims on the Indian Constitution and on democracy? We the People, the fourth volume in the Rethinking India series, brings together a collection of essays that explores the process of germination and growth of undisputed universal rights, and of them being developed as tangible entitlements in India. The essays also examine the continuing challenge of establishing, realizing and protecting these entitlements.
The authors are academics, activists and practitioners who have a strong relationship with social movements. Their narratives trace the use of the rights-based framework of the Indian Constitution by sociopolitical movements in order to strengthen the economic, cultural and social rights of ordinary Indians. The multiple perspectives draw upon and contextualize the complex relationship of the citizen with the state, society and market in democratic India. Their sharp critiques have a counterpoint in stories of creative, successful alternatives designed by peoples’ collectives.
There is both an explicit and implicit challenge to conservative notions of ‘market-led development’ that see competition and profits as central to ‘progress’ and success. The essays showcase the continuing dialectic between established constitutional rights and shifting state policy. They provide invaluable insight at a time when many sacred pillars of neoliberal ‘globalization’ are crumbling, and the capitalist superstructure is itself turning to the state for survival. They promote understanding and scholarship, and enliven debates as we continue to search for answers in uncertain and challenging times.
Running Toward Mystery
Born in India to a prominent Hindu Brahmin family, the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi was only six years old when he began having visions of a mysterious mountain peak, and of men with shaved heads wearing robes the color of sunset. And so at the age of ten, he ran away from boarding school to find this place-taking a train to the end of the line and then riding a bus to wherever it went.
Strangely enough, he ended up at the Buddhist monastery that was the place in his dreams. His frantic parents and relatives set out to find him and, after two weeks, located him and brought him home. But he continued to have visions and felt a strong pull to a spiritual life.
This book is the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi’s profound account of his lifelong journey as a seeker. At its heart is a story of striving for enlightenment, the vital importance of mentors in that search, and of the many remarkable teachers he met along the way, among them the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa.
Running Toward Mystery is the beautiful story of a singular life compelled to contemplation, and a riveting narrative of just how exciting that journey can be.
Tharoorosaurus
Shashi Tharoor is the wizard of words. In Tharoorosaurus, he shares fifty-three examples from his vocabulary: unusual words from every letter of the alphabet. You don’t have to be a linguaphile to enjoy the fun facts and interesting anecdotes behind the words! Be ready to impress-and say goodbye to your hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia!
Queen of Ice
DIDDA, PRINCESS OF LOHARA, IS BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT—AND LAME.
Despised by her father and bullied by his heir, Didda’s childhood is miserable and her future, bleak. When she is married off to the dissolute ruler of Kashmira, she must learn to hold her own in a court ridden with factions and conspiracies. But Didda is no ordinary queen. Ruthless and ambitious, she wants to rewrite history. Will she succeed?
Queen of Ice is a compulsive read that brings alive the turbulent history of tenthcentury Kashmir with an exquisite balance of fact and fiction. This is awardwinning
author Devika Rangachari’s finest novel yet.
Vijyant at Kargil
‘By the time you get this letter, I’ll be observing you all from the sky. I have no regrets, in fact even if I become a human again, I’ll join the army and fight for my nation.’
This was the last letter Captain Vijyant Thapar wrote to his family. He was twenty-two when he was martyred in the Kargil War, having fought bravely in the crucial battles of Tololing and Knoll. A fourth-generation army officer, Vijyant dreamt of serving his country even as a young boy. In this first-ever biography, we learn about his journey to join the Indian Military Academy and the experiences that shaped him into a fine officer.
Told by his father and Neha Dwivedi, a martyr’s daughter herself, the anecdotes from his family and close friends come alive, and we have a chance to know the exceptional young man that Vijyant was. His inspiring story provides a rare glimpse into the heart of a brave soldier. His legacy stays alive through these fond memories and his service to the country.
Checkmate
On 28 November 2019, Uddhav Thackeray, the Shiv Sena chief, was sworn in as the eighteenth chief minister of Maharashtra. This event marked the culmination of a high-voltage political drama that had the entire nation glued to their television sets for days on end. With no party being able to claim a majority in the assembly, President’s Rule was imposed in the state. This book takes its readers through the twists and turns of the dramatic political crisis that unfolded as Maharashtra waited for its chief minister.
What really went on behind the scenes?
With access to inside sources and private conversations, this book reveals the hitherto untold story of this political drama, with a comprehensive overview of the state’s politics in the last few decades.
Rajinikanth
Rajinikanth is, quite simply, the biggest superstar cinema-crazy India has ever seen. His stylized dialogues and screen mannerisms are legion, and his guy-next-door-cum-superhero image has found a hysterically appreciative following among millions of moviegoers.
Naman Ramachandran’s marvellous biography recounts Rajini’s career in meticulous detail, tracing his incredible cinematic journey from Apoorva Raagangal (1975) to Kochadaiyaan (2013). Along the way, the book provides rare insights into the Thalaivar’s personal life, from his childhood days to his times of struggle—when he was still Shivaji Rao Gaekwad—and then his eventual stardom: revealing how a legend was born.
The Pregnant King
‘I am not sure that I am a man,’ said Yuvanashva. ‘I have created life outside me as men do. But I have also created life inside me, as women do. What does that make me? Will a body such as mine fetter or free me?’
Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story.
It is also the story of his mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; of young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; of Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; of Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; of Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and of Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others.
Building on Hinduism’s rich and complex mythology-but driven by a very contemporary sensibility-Devdutt Pattanaik creates a lush and fecund work of fiction in which the lines are continually blurred between men and women, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers. Confronted with such fluidity the reader is drawn into Yuvanashva’s struggle to be fair to all-those here, those there and all those in between.