‘I was born ugly. That’s what my mother always said.’
So begins the story of young Sonny Mahadewala who leads a dual life: between his adoptive England where he cohabits with a privileged American; and the mixed blessings of Mahadewala Walauwa – the big house on the mountain belonging to his father’s people in Kandy, the ancient capital of Sri Lanka-where a troubled existence has earned him both honour and shame. For Sonny’s mother, a wonderfully maleficent anti-heroine, is convinced that demons possess this ugly son of hers. Demons and the devil himself circumscribe the playing field of this book, whether seated in the draughty chapels of Oxford or roaming the Kandyan countryside, and through their clever interplay they speak of larger horrors with able grace.
For who in this world is utterly good or utterly evil-and who, indeed, is the devil?
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Of Love and Other Sorrows
Reports announcing the death of the book are now rife, but the continued relevance of the ten master writers discussed in this volume is proof to the contrary.
Here we come across the dissident Czech writer Václav Havel, who later became the nation’s president; the South African Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer, with her pronounced anti-apartheid novels; the Chilean-American Isabel Allende, ‘the world’s most widely read Spanish author’; and Günter Grass, hailed as the ‘literary spokesman of his generation’. We also meet Graham Greene and Milan Kundera alongside the Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, who, in his quiet way, ridiculed Islamic fundamentalism. The book is rounded off with three remarkable Latin American writers: Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz and Gabriel García Márquez.
Of Love and Other Sorrows takes the reader on a fascinating journey in the company of some of the biggest names in modern literature. This illuminating study of their lives and works will seduce readers to rediscover these masters for themselves.
The Man Who Became Khali
‘I was a common man and a common man isn’t allowed to dream big . . . but then, there are those rare moments when one of these ill-fated lives manages to rise from mediocrity like a phoenix from the ashes’
His formative years were nothing but full of turbulence. From leaving his schooling to working as a daily-wage labourer, Dalip Singh Rana had seen it all at a very young age. He was often the subject of ridicule and was poked fun at due to his enormous girth.
However, even under such harsh circumstances, a determined Dalip relentlessly pursued his goal of wrestling for India. Such was his passion that he did what no Indian had done so far – enter the internationally acclaimed WWE arena!
My Fight with Destiny is the story of a man who not only triumphed over wrestling superstars like The Undertaker and went on to win the World Heavyweight Championship but also of a man who conquered his inner demons and physical anomalies.
An inspirational, emotional and no-holds-barred account of a life less ordinary-of a village simpleton who went on to become an international icon.
This is the story of how Dalip Singh Rana turned into THE GREAT KHALI!
My Dear Bapu
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, or Rajaji, was famously described by Mahatma Gandhi as his ‘conscience keeper’. The eighty-odd largely unpublished letters presented here span the period from the run-up to Independence to its early years, providing deep insight into the struggles and endeavours of Indian public life. Frank, brave, even bitter at times, they reveal the fierce debates, strong differences of opinion and continuous negotiation between the two leaders on matters crucial to the country’s future.
Introduced and annotated with trademark brilliance by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the letters offer us a rare glimpse of the lives of two of the tallest Indians of our age, when idealism rode strong but was also challenged.
Indian Railways
The railways brought modernity to India. Its vast network connected the far corners of the subcontinent, making travel, communication and commerce simpler than ever before. Even more importantly, the railways played a large part in the making of the nation: by connecting historically and geographically disparate regions and people, it forever changed the way Indians lived and thought, and eventually made a national identity possible.
This engagingly written, anecdotally told history captures the immense power of a business behemoth as well as the romance of train travel; tracing the growth of the railways from the 1830s (when the first plans were made) to Independence, Bibek Debroy and his co-authors recount how the railway network was built in India and how it grew to become a lifeline that still weaves the nation together.
This latest volume in The Story of Indian Business series will delight anyone interested in finding out more about the Indian Railways.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan
‘Cinema is your experience, your vision of life.’—Adoor Gopalakrishnan
A couple living in defiance of society, trying to make ends meet; a rootless, rustic simpleton unaware of his responsibilities; a selfish, middle-aged man clinging to old feudal ways; an ex-revolutionary wasting himself, sleeping and eating and drinking, much to the disgust of his old comrades; a writer who finds the true meaning of love and freedom in prison; and a prostitute discovering love only to be separated from her lover by the guardians of society.
Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s characters are drawn from real people, real lives. His cinema manages to frame details that often escape our everyday glance, turning the mundane into the magical, the commonplace into the startling. Yet, very little is known about the auteur.
In Adoor Gopalakrishnan: A Life in Cinema, the first authorized biography of the Dada Saheb Phalke Award winner, Gautaman Bhaskaran traces the ebbs and flows of the life of this enigmatic director. From his birth during the Quit India Movement to his lonely childhood at his uncles’ house; from life at Gandhigram, where Adoor studied rural development, to his days and nights at the Pune Film Institute; and from his first film, Swayamvaram, to his latest, Oru Pennum Rantaanum, Bhaskaran’s lucid narrative tracks the twists and turns of Gopalakrishnan’s life, finding an uncommon man and a rare auteur.
The Modern Gurukul
Are you confused about how to raise your kids?
How many hours should they spend with the TV, iPad or Xbox?
Do you worry about what they should eat, drink and read?
As the urban, nuclear family is becoming the norm, replacing the traditional joint family, what happens to the children who grow up with a single support system? In The Modern Gurukul, Sonali Bendre Behl shares her three principles of parenting that will help you find a balance between tradition and modernity, and show you how to raise your child in the digital age. Personal, anecdotal and honest, it highlights the need for a return to our roots to raise a healthy, curious and, most importantly, compassionate child.
Love In The Tsunami
Love in the Tsunami brings together a selection of Ashok Ferrey’s short fiction and includes four brand-new stories. The title story, set against the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 describes Veena Patel’s all-too-brief encounter with forbidden love. ‘But Did I Tell You I Can’t Dance?’ is a hilarious fable about the occasional humiliations and the many heart-warming victories of old age. And in ‘Maleeshya’ Ashok himself makes a cameo appearance as a dead author who has embarrassingly come back to life.
Endlessly inventive and crackling with energy, Love in the Tsunami represents the very best writing in English from contemporary Sri Lanka.
Rabindranath Tagore
Pakistan at the Crossroads
In Pakistan at the Crossroads, top international scholars assess Pakistan’s politics, economics and the challenges faced by its civil and military leaders domestically and diplomatically. Contributors examine the state’s handling of internal threats, tensions between civilians and the military, strategies of political parties, police and law enforcement reform, trends in judicial activism, the rise of border conflicts, economic challenges, financial entanglements with foreign powers, and diplomatic relations with India, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and the United States.
In addition to ethnic strife in Baluchistan and Karachi, terrorist violence in Pakistan in response to the American-led military intervention in Afghanistan and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by means of drones, has reached an unprecedented level. Growing consensus among state leaders predicts that the nation’s main security threats may come not from India but from its spiraling internal conflicts, though this realization may not sufficiently dissuade the Pakistani army from targeting the country’s largest neighbor.
This volume is critical to grasping the sophisticated interplay of internal and external forces complicating the country’s recent trajectory.