India is one of the largest economies in the world today. India’s finance minister has predicted it would be the third largest by 2030. Yet, an average Indian is worse off than his counterpart in other developing nations like Algeria, Indonesia, Mongolia and Morocco.
India’s infant mortality rate is worse than Iraq’s. An average Indian makes less money than a Sri Lankan. The female literacy rate is worse than Congo’s. And life expectancy in one of the world’s polluted countries is lower than Bangladesh’s. How can we explain this dichotomy? This is the India that the government does not want you to know about: the India where healthcare doesn’t work, corruption is rampant, criminals get elected to public office, the rich go scot-free, most people don’t pay income taxes and inequality is out of control.
Dev Kar, a former senior economist at the International Monetary Fund, points out the truth behind the noise of popular media and jingoism of leaders. Meticulously researched and objectively narrated, this enlightening book tells us why India continues to be a shackled giant and how it can find the road to redemption.
In this lively, informative and insightful book, Shashi Tharoor brilliantly demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has come of age and forecasts where it will need to focus in the new millennium. He surveys India’s major international relationships in detail, evokes the country’s soft power and offers his thoughts on a new ‘grand strategy’ for the nation, arguing that India must move beyond non-alignment to multi-alignment. Stimulating, reflective, elegantly written and passionately engaged, Pax Indica is another substantial achievement from one of the finest Indian authors of our times.
What do your best friend’s wedding, a beach holiday and the coming of summer have in common?
You got it. It’s the need to knock off those extra kilos and get into your hottest avatar. And if you think that’s an impossible task after all the fruitless diets you’ve been on, well, you’ve come to the right space.
Thirty years of experience and a clientele of 1500 Delhiwallahs (who swear by her) later, Nishi Grover has finally put out the bible for weight loss. If this diet doesn’t get you into your favourite pair of jeans in a month, nothing else will. Simple, logical and result-oriented, Lose a Kilo a Week follows a few key mantras-time, portion, quality and mind control-which will get you shipshape in no time. Packed with handy tips, diets and charts that track your weight loss over the weeks, this is the definitive guide on losing weight quickly.
Combining two classic texts by Rabindranath Tagore, this special edition features a new Introduction by eminent scholar Sugata Bose. Nationalism is based on Tagore’s lectures, warning the world of the disasters of narrow sectarianism and xenophobia. Home and the World is a classic novel, exploring the ever-relevant themes of nationalism, violent revolution and women’s emancipation.
Girl meets boy. It’s a story as old as time. But what happens when an old story meets a brand new set of circumstances?
Ali Smith’s remix of Ovid’s most joyful myth is a story about the kind of fluidity that can’t be bottled and sold. It’s about girls and boys, girls and girls, love and transformation—a story of puns and doubles, reversals and revelations.
Funny and fresh, poetic and political, here is a tale of change for the modern world.
To be a better spiritual being and to better even that with every step is the goal of every soul so it can then ultimately merge into The One . . .
Rudra is exactly where he wants to be-with his kind, loving BABA, talking about life and the laws of the spiritual realm. He is taken to various villages to see for himself what the right way to live and pray is.
As he serves his BABA and asks Him questions, much is revealed to him: ‘When you pray with such intensity that The One shall listen to your prayer, then your purity, intensity, devotion and yearning will get wings to reach The One’
BABA also talks about how we should be in life, how our relationships should be, how jealousy and anger are detrimental to the development of good karma and how conducting oneself without cribbing and complaining takes on to the higher plane.
In The Fakir once again Rudra is the student and BABA the teacher as well at the MASTER.
Dr Kashyap Patel is a renowned oncologist in the US who works with terminally ill cancer patients. Through him, we meet Harry, who, after a life full of adventure, is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. As he stares death in the face, Harry leans on Dr Patel, an expert in understanding the process of death and dying. His questions and fears are addressed through the stories of many other patients that Dr Patel has treated-from the young and vivacious to those who had already lived full lives, from patients who could barely afford their rent to those who had been wildly successful. What ties these stories together is the single thread of the lessons Harry learns along the way, lessons that ultimately enable him to plan his own exit from the world gracefully-dying without fear.
Pandit Amarnath was regarded as a musicians’ musician and the foremost interpreter of the Indore Gharana. In this book, he demystifies the many terms associated with Hindustani classical music for the common man interested in this art form. From crucial terms such as avaart and kharaj bharna to musicological terminology like moorchhana and shrutee to short profiles of stalwarts in the field and telling musical ‘proverbs’ and sayings of the great masters, this is a pathfinder to the otherwise closed traditions of Hindustani classical music whose secrets and philosophies have been restricted to masters and connoisseurs. Pandit Amarnath reveals the terms in both their etymology as well as their implications in musical practice and listening.
First published twenty-five years ago to great critical acclaim and now being updated by Rekha and Vishal Bhardwaj, this will be a must-read for music lovers and musicologists, musicians and students, linguists and historians alike.
The most popular devotional text recounting the adventures of the Hindu god Ram
The Ramcharitmanas, composed by the poet-saint Tulsidas in the sixteenth century during a dynamic period of religious reform, was instrumental in making the story of Ram-and his divine feats against Ravan, the demon king of Lanka-widely accessible to the common people for the first time. Prior to that, this tale was exclusively the preserve of the priestly class who could read Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic, The Ramayana. By reimagining Valmiki’s text in the vernacular language, as a poem to be imbibed through recitation rather than reading, Tulsidas kindled a devotional revolution, forever changing the religious and social landscape of northern India.
Rohini Chowdhury’s exquisite translation brings Tulsidas’s magnum opus vividly to life, and her detailed introduction sheds crucial light on the poet and his work, placing them both in the wider context of Hindi literature.
The most popular devotional text recounting the adventures of the Hindu god Ram
The Ramcharitmanas, composed by the poet-saint Tulsidas in the sixteenth century during a dynamic period of religious reform, was instrumental in making the story of Ram-and his divine feats against Ravan, the demon king of Lanka-widely accessible to the common people for the first time. Prior to that, this tale was exclusively the preserve of the priestly class who could read Valmiki’s Sanskrit epic, The Ramayana. By reimagining Valmiki’s text in the vernacular language, as a poem to be imbibed through recitation rather than reading, Tulsidas kindled a devotional revolution, forever changing the religious and social landscape of northern India.
Rohini Chowdhury’s exquisite translation brings Tulsidas’s magnum opus vividly to life, and her detailed introduction sheds crucial light on the poet and his work, placing them both in the wider context of Hindi literature.