Sudha Murty explores how a single moment of kindness can change an entire life. Chitra was an abandoned girl alone on a train without a ticket. Sudha couldn’t bear to leave a girl alone on the railway station late at night. What could she do? How much responsibility can one woman take for a the life of a strange girl child? Sudha Murty deftly explores the tenderness of selfless, small actions, and how a single person can make all the difference in the world.
Catagory: Non Fiction
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The Last Vicereine
It was the spring of 1947 when Lord and Lady Mountbatten arrived in New Delhi. India was on the brink of civil war. The reluctant Vicereine was a rebel, a rule-breaker. She was a troubled soul, a great beauty, a firecracker. But there was more to Edwina than met the eye. The glamour was a façade; behind it was a highly intelligent woman of influence and power.
The only one to truly understand her for who she was was Jawahar, her friend, confidant and so much more.
No one could have imagined the maelstrom of intrigue, and the events and relationships that would change their lives and those of millions of Indians forever. Set amid the turmoil of Partition, The Last Vicereine is a heartbreaking story of the birth of two nations, of love, grief, tragedy, inhumanity and the triumph of hope.
Selected Speeches and Writings of Vallabhbhai Patel
Vallabhbhai Patel, popularly known as Sardar Patel, was one of India’s towering leaders, whose contribution to the Indian Republic is immense. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to join the freedom struggle, Patel was at the forefront of the Quit India movement, and was arrested by the British a number of times. After Independence, he served as India’s first home minister and deputy prime minister. A successful lawyer, he used his legendary negotiation skills to unite the 550 princely states and colonial provinces under the Union of India, to create the nation we know today.
The speeches and writings collected here showcase Vallabhbhai Patel’s unique vision for his beloved country-his staunch belief in communal harmony, benefits of freedom for all citizens and in peace and cooperation between different regions.
Paiso
Guided by their sharp business acumen and adaptability, Sindhis have braved Partition, fled from one nation to another, and weathered ups and downs in the economy to set up some of the biggest companies in the world. In Paiso, Maya Bathija, former head of content of the Sindhian, brings to you the extraordinary stories of five Sindhi families and the empires they have built over the years through Gary and David Harilela of the Hong Kong-based Harilela Group, renowned for their hotels; Ramola Motwani, chairwoman and CEO of the real-estate investment and development company Merrimac Ventures; India’s first individual angel investor and chairman of Americorp Ventures and IndiaLand Properties, Harish Fabiani; Dilip Kumar V Lakhi, head of Lakhi Group-one of the biggest diamond suppliers in the country; and Jitu Virwani, real estate kingpin and CMD of the Embassy Group.
Through the journeys of these incredibly successful companies, built painstakingly by many generations, this book takes a close look at the Sindhi way of doing business.
The Creation Of Wealth
When Jamsetji Tat started a trading firm in 1868, few could have guessed that he was also starting an important chapter in the making of modern India. Jamsetji saw that the three keys to India’s industrial development were steel, hydroelectric power, and technical education and research. A century and a half later, the Tatas can claim with justice to have lined up to the vision of their founder.
This edition includes the story of how the Tatas, with Ratan Tata at the helm, have had to grapple with change in the post-1992 era of economic reforms, when the opening up of India to the world came as both a challenge and a blessing. In a frank epilogue, Ratan Tata talks about the difficulties he faced in implementing change, including resistance from his colleagues. This new edition also has a postscript on the Nano, which has given the most global prominence to the Tata brand.
The Creation of Wealth is R.M. Lala’s bestselling account of how the Tatas have been at the forefront in the making of the Indian nation-not just by their phenomenal achievements as industrialists and entrepreneurs but also by their significant contributions in areas like factory reforms, labour and social welfare, medical research, higher education, culture and arts, and rural development.
Beyond The Last Blue Mountain
An exhaustive and unforgettable portrait of India’s greatest and most respected industrialist. Written with J.R.D. Tata’s co-operation, this superb biography tells the J.R.D. story from his birth to 1993, the year in which he died in Switzerland. The book is divided into four parts: Part I deals with the early years, from J.R.D’s birth in France in 1904 to his accession to the chairmanship of Tatas, India’s largest industrial conglomerate, at the age of thirty-four; Part II looks at his forty-six years in Indian aviation (the lasting passion of J.R.D’s life) which led to the initiation of the Indian aviation industry and its development into one of India’s success stories; Part III illuminates his half-century-long stint as the outstanding personality of Indian industry; and Part IV unearths hitherto unknown details about the private man and the public figure, including glimpses of his long friendships with such people as Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and his association with celebrities in India and abroad.
How May I Help You?
In this charming and insightful story, Deepak Singh chronicles his journey as an Indian immigrant in the United States of America.
Deepak falls in love with an American visiting India as an exchange student. The young couple gets married and leaves the country to live the American dream. Unfortunately for Deepak, he soon realizes that reality was completely different.
Armed with an MBA from a good B-school and quitting a cushy job in BBC, Deepak moves with his wife. But once in the US, all he is able to get is a minimum-wage job in an electronics store. Every day he confronts an unfamiliar American culture. He experiences the deeply entrenched racism and observes first-hand the crushing reality of being poor in America.
‘Fresh off the plane’, Deepak tells an intimate tale of living in an unfamiliar place, being the perennial outsider and making a mixed marriage work.
How May I Help You is a moving tale of love, empathy, vulnerability and hope that will keep you hooked till the last page.
Warrior of the Fourth Estate
Ramnath Goenka, or RNG as he was popularly known, redefined what it meant to be a newspaper baron. A man of many parts-freedom fighter, Gandhian worker, politician, merchant, industrialist-he made it his mission as a publisher to empower the citizen and hold the ruling classes accountable, often at enormous cost to himself. Goenka was a fearless agent for the freedom of the press, and famously waged an epic battle of defiance against the government during the Emergency.
B.G. Verghese’s biography charts the tumultuous course of Goenka’s life, from his modest beginnings to his building of the vast Indian Express empire with its multiple editions. It also paints a compelling portrait of a man who was a bundle of contradictions, who had staunch admirers as well as bitter enemies, a man you could love or hate but never ignore. This book is a roller-coaster ride through the twists and turns of Ramnath Goenka’s fortunes, including scandals and scoops, fiery public campaigns, dramatic court battles and the making and unmaking of political leaders and governments. Along the way, it tells the story, too, of a newspaper.
Indira Gandhi
Indira Gandhi’s life spanned over two-thirds of a century. By the time of her brutal assassination in 1984, she had established herself as the most significant political leader India had seen since the death of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru. In this book, written with the close cooperation of her subject, Pupul Jayakar seeks to uncover the many personalities that lay hidden within Mrs Gandhi. Much more than a political biography, the book reveals the complex personality of Indira Gandhi-her thoughts and feelings, her hates and prejudices, her insights and her faults, her loves and emotional entanglements.
Full of startling insights, Indira Gandhi: A Biography paints a magnificent portrait-at once empathetic and unprejudiced-of one of the twentieth century’s most remarkable women.
India in Slow Motion
Mark Tully is incomparable. No foreign commentator has a greater understanding of the passions, the contradictions, the charms and the resilience that constitute India. In India in Slow Motion, Tully and his colleague Gillian Wright delve further than ever before into this nation of over one billion people, attempting to unravel a culture that, famously, has always resisted unravelling. India in Slow Motion is the account of a journey that for Tully and Wright has no true beginning or end. Covering a diverse range of subjects-from Hindu extremism to child labour, Sufi mysticism to the crisis in agriculture, the persistence of political corruption to the problem of Kashmir-this book challenges the preconceptions others have about India, as well as those India has about itself. India is often depicted as a victim of forces too wild to be controlled-of post-colonial malaise, of religious strife, of the caste system, of a corrupt bureaucratic machine. India in Slow Motion refutes this, probing into the heart of the Indian experience and arguing that change is possible and that solutions do exist. In the process it brings the country and its people brilliantly alive.