He loved French cookbooks, invented a new way of making khichdi, was interested in the engineering behind ship-building and the technology that makes ammunition. More than 100 years after his death, do we really know or understand the bewildering, fascinating, complex man Swami Vivekananda was? From his speech in Chicago that mesmerised America to his voluminous writings and speeches that redefined the idea of India, Vivekananda was much more than a monk. His work sweeps through Indian politics, economics, sociology, arts and culture, and of course religion. So ubiquitous are his sayings that they pop everywhere from the speeches of politicians to t-shirts and mugs. It may perhaps be said about Vivekananda that he rarely had a boring idea – and even when he did, he never expressed it boringly! We see and hear so much about Vivekananda that we have almost forgotten how critical he is to our understanding of ourselves as Indians, and indeed, as human beings. Vivekananda is one of the most important figures in the modern imagination of India. He is also an utterly modern man, consistently challenging his own views, and embracing diverse, even conflicting arguments. It is his modernity that appeals to us today. He is unlike any monk we have known. He is confined neither by history nor by ritual, and is constantly questioning everything around him, including himself. It is in Vivekananda’s contradictions, his doubts, his fears and his failings that he recognize his profoundly compelling divinity – he teaches us that to try and understand God, first one must truly comprehend one’s own self. This book is an argument that it is not just because he is close to God but also because he is so tantalizingly immersed in being human that keeps us returning to Vivekananda and his immortal wisdom.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Venus Crossing
In Venus Crossing, Kalpana Swaminathan masterfully crafts twelve stories that lay bare the deepest complexities of human relationships. These stories capture the instant of transit, that moment when the impossible-the unthinkable-is absorbed into the fabric of life so that life can be lived again. That moment is everything: revelation, challenge, existence. In the Yellow Dupatta, practical compulsions surmount grief as a young couple takes their dead child home from the hospital. A middle-aged nurse finds romance with the most obnoxious of patients in Sister Thomas and Mister Gomes. Two young women shattered by rejection begin the long journey of survival in Fly Away, Peter. Incident at Abu Ghraib finds Sukhi appalled by her mother’s empathy for a disgraced American soldier. Hemant is counselled, in Euthanasia, to opt for the final solution-but will he?
Incisive, brilliant and deeply compassionate, Venus Crossing showcases Kalpana Swaminathan’s consummate skill as a storyteller and proves, yet again, the uncompromising vision of her craft.
I Never Knew It Was You
Sita, detective Lalli’s niece-and occasional Watson-runs into former classmate Anais at Mumbai airport. Even as the friends catch up, Anais hands over a cardboard box she is carrying to a waiting woman, nonchalantly informing the traumatized lady that the box contains her son’s ashes. Some days later, Anais herself turns up dead in the slimy Mithi River, a pink nylon rope wrapped ritually around her neck.
The Secret Gardener
24 Patwardhan Cross. The solitary bone that surfaces in the garden there doesn’t mean much to police surgeon Dr Q or Inspector Savio. But Lalli, who collects curiosities, finds it curious. Things get curiouser when a dying gigolo whispers the address in terror, and curiouser still when a mummified finger with a chic manicure turns up in the same garden. Lalli might have ignored these curiosities had there not been a child at the heart of the matter. As she investigates what makes this garden grow, Lalli uncovers a gruesome tale.
Extraordinary
Extraordinary: 5 Steps to Achieve Success will help you realize your dream and be extraordinary! Are you leading an ordinary life? Many people go through life struggling with daily frustrations, making compromises all the time and feeling sorry for themselves. They never get to do what they really want. Soon, they begin to see themselves as failures. Is success just a matter of luck? Is the path of achievement open only to a few? Are most of us doomed to lead unfulfilled lives, without ever realizing our true potential? Certainly not, says Atul Magoon. Through inspiring real-life stories, this book shows you how success is simply a matter of putting in hard work, overcoming your fears and making full use of the opportunities before you.
The Game Changers
Entrepreneurship is not about breaking free from the 9 to 5 humdrum, not about being your own boss, and definitely not glorious. The entrepreneur shuns the comfort of a cushy corporate job and six-figure salaries to set sail on uncharted waters with a single-minded zeal and only an idea as an anchor. But it is this idea and passion that makes all the difference and catapults them into a world of infinite possibilities. The Game Changers brings to you 20 success stories of IITians who went on to live the big dream. These include: Suhas Patil, Vijay Kumar, Vinod Gupta, Sam Dalal, Sridhar Mitta, Arjun Malhotra, Kiran Seth, Prabhakant Sinha, Ranbir Singh Gupta, Bikram Dasgupta founder of Globsyn, Praful Kulkarni, Sunil Gaitonde, Anand Deshpande, Arvind Kejriwal, Harish Hande, Anuradha Acharya, Venkata Subramanian, Bikash Barai, Vikram Kumar, and Krishna Mehra.
With a foreword by Dr Duvvuri Subbarao, governor, Reserve Bank of India, and introduction by Damodar Acharya, director, IIT Karagpur, this book marks 60 golden years of India’s finest institute. Come, be a part of their journey, get inspired to dream and make your own story.
The Mouse Charmers
The advent of the Internet has been a significant game changer. The Mouse Charmers are a new breed of entrepreneurs in emerging India powered by the Internet and the opportunities that it offers to create new markets and to cater to old markets in new ways. Some of them have already achieved success where they can be called iconic and inspiring while others have powerful ideas that put them on the same path.
Anuradha Goyal tells the stories of digital entrepreneurs like Flipkart, Zomato, ImagesBazaar and IndiBlogger; how they started out, the innovations and technologies involved, their business models, and unique marketing strategies. Inspiring and useful, The Mouse Charmers is an essential guide for aspiring entrepreneurs.
IIMA Strategies for the Future
Have you wondered why international business seems magically simple in text books but inescapably complex in reality? With international business pushing horizons, cross-border activity is rampant and national boundaries are getting blurred. Economies have opened their doors and globalization is the watchword of the hour. Strategies for the Future explores the opportunities of a mingling world with remarkably discerning anecdotes and hands you the tools to master international trade. Professor Ajeet N. Mathur helps you formulate assumptions and make decisions under uncertainty in response to differences in business environments, national competitiveness, and regional and global strategies of other business players. As part of a competitive global village, this book is indispensable for any manager or entrepreneur bounding forward in the promising world of international business.
IIMA: Leading from the Top
Although corporations have been around for well over half a millennium, corporate governance as a distinctive field of study and specialization is of relatively recent origin. With corporate footprints escalating across industry and service sectors over different geographies around the world, governing the corporation has become an increasingly complex exercise. Professor Balasubramanian explains the three pillars of governance — the shareholders, the board and the executive management — including the dynamics of managing board effectiveness, through real-life case studies and interactive examples.
The author aims to encourage dialogue about leading corporations in an ethical and sustainable manner. In the wake of corporations like Satyam, Sahara, Sardha, SKS Microfinance and National Spot Exchange making headlines for all the wrong reasons, this is essential reading.
Super Power?
In his career as a journalist and one of India’s top entrepreneurs, Raghav Bahl has often faced a barrage of questions from visiting businesspeople bewildered by India: Why are Indian regulations so weak and confusing? Why is your foreign investment policy so restrictive? How is it that you speak such good English? Inevitably, the questions are followed by the observation: But, you know, that’s not the way it is in China.
Indeed, even as the two economies are together projected to dominate the world, there is a palpable difference in the way China and India work on the ground. China is spectacularly effective in building infrastructure and is currently investing almost half its GDP. Meanwhile, India is a ‘promising’ economy: more than half its GDP is consumed by its billionplus population; half its population is younger than twenty-five, giving it a unique demographic advantage; 350 million Indians understand English, making it the largest English-using country in the world
In the race to superpower status, who is likely to breast the tape-China’s hare or India’s tortoise? For anyone looking to understand China and India and the ways in which these two nations are about to change the history of the world, this is the book to read.