From the realization of mental peace to the experience of illness, suffering, death, pain, pleasure, desire and contentment, the Dalai Lama opens a window into the attainment of absolute happiness in day to day life.
Catagory: Non Fiction
non fiction main category
Ghalib
Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib was born in Agra in the closing years of the eighteenth century. He wrote in both Urdu and Persian and was also a great prose stylist. Ghalib fascinates his readers for many reasons, but one of the most noted qualities in Ghalib was that he was a careful, even strict, editor of his work. It is said that he discarded or disregarded more than half of his Urdu verses. These verses were forgotten for long, until as late as 1918, in the library of the princely state of Bhopal. In 1921, they were edited and published as a new Divan-e Ghalib.
In Flowers in a Mirror, Mehr Afshan Farooqi continues her research in the strain of her first book, A Wilderness at My Doorstep. She examines Ghalib’s approach to his work, the world in which he lived and composed, and ultimately, his genius. She selects 30 ghazals from the rejected corpus, translates them into English and provides an erudite, sparkling critical commentary. Through this book, she highlights the significance of marginalized poetry and the need to reinstate the forgotten verses in our lives and hearts.
A Case Of Exploding Mangoes
In August 1988, Zia gets into the presidential plane, Pak One, which explodes midway. Who killed him? The army generals growing old waiting for their promotions, the CIA, the ISI, RAW, or Ali Shigri, a junior officer at the military academy whose father, a whisky-swilling jihadi colonel, was murdered by the army?
A Case of Exploding Mangoes is sharp, black, inventive, and utterly gripping. It marks the debut of a brilliant new writer.
The Tell
The brain remains a mystery to us. How can a three-pound mass of jelly that can fit in our palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Renowned neuroscientist Prof. V.S. Ramachandran takes us on a fascinating journey into the human brain by studying patients who exhibit bizarre symptoms and using them to understand the functions of a normal brain. Along the way he asks big questions: How did abstract thinking evolve? What is art? Why do we laugh? How are these hardwired into the neural mechanisms of the human brain, and why did they evolve? Brilliant, lucid, and utterly compelling, The Tell-Tale Brain is a path-breaking book from one of the leading neuroscientist
Manto
The gentle dhobi who transforms into a killer, a prostitute who is more child than woman, the cocky, young coachman who falls in love at first sight, a father convinced that his son will die before his first birthday. Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories are vivid, dangerous and troubling and they slice into the everyday world to reveal its sombre, dark heart. These stories were written from the mid 30s on, many under the shadow of Partition. No Indian writer since has quite managed to capture the underbelly of Indian life with as much sympathy and colour. In a new translation that for the first time captures the richness of Manto’s prose and its combination of high emotion and taut narrative, this is a classic collection from the master of the Indian short story.
In Custody
In this sensitive portrayal of human nature, Anita Desai, one of India’s foremost writers, paints an intimate portrait of lives impacted by the quest for identity and purpose. Deven, a Hindi lecturer in small-town Mirpore, lives a humdrum existence. A chance to interview Nur—India’s greatest living Urdu poet—offers him an escape from his dreary life. But the Nur he meets is an enfeebled man, surrounded by clashing wives and preying sycophants. Deven’s decision to be the custodian of Nur’s verse gives birth to an unusual alliance between the two. Stimulating and thought provoking, In Custody is a brilliant parable lamenting the gradual corrosion of culture and tradition in the face of modernity, and a dazzling study of the complexity of human relationships.
Supermarketwala
• Rita, the young bahu, avoids buying personal products from the family grocer.
• Sonu’s breakfast table on a Sunday represents global cuisines. Do you know how it is possible?
• Where do big corporates and MNC retailers fumble, and what helps simple DMart get its model right?
• What is Ching’s Sercret that is not Knorr’s, Maggi’s, or Yippie’s?
Supermarketwala, Damodar Mall’s intriguing and revelatory debut book, answers these questions and much more. Damodar, in Supermarketwala, provides the very basics for the growth of modern retail and consumerism in India, through interesting and carefully studied consumer behaviour, an art that few in his domain possess.
Supermarketwala, is intended to be the go-to book for all consumer business enthusiasts and readers alike, who wish to understand how and why we as consumers behave in a certain manner at different places. These insights, which are the analyses of the sector so far, could become the pillars for shaping successful consumer products and retail businesses in the huge consumer economy that India will soon be.
Everyman’s War
What do Naxal terrorists have in common with Somali pirates? What man-made event triggers more refugees than all wars put together? How do terrorist movements end? And how can you help?
Everyman’s War is a collection of insightful essays that describe our participatory role in securing ourselves and our progeny. Defence, internal security and terrorism are important yet closely guarded issues. Even as outrage over safety of women and rising terror take centrestage, there continues to be limited access to information on the subjects of national defence and security, especially in language that a layman can understand. Raghu Raman, an expert on security and terrorism, presents issues of defence, strategy and national security in an engaging narrative, with historical and contemporary examples. He recalibrates the great ‘India rising’ story with its real and present dangers and the role of a regular citizen in this everyman’s war.
Rokda
Baniya—a derivative of the Sanskrit word Vanij, is a term synonymous with India’s trader class. Over the decades, these capitalists spread their footprint across vast sectors of the economy from steel and mining to telecom and retail. And now even e-tail.
Nikhil Inamdar’s Rokda features the stories of a few pioneering men from this mercantile community—Radheshyam Agarwal and Radheshyam Goenka, founders of the cosmetic major Emami; Rohit Bansal, co-founder of Snapdeal; Neeraj Gupta, founder of Meru Cabs; and V.K. Bansal, a humble mathematics tutor whose genius spawned a massive coaching industry in Kota—amongst others.
Through the triumphs and tribulations of these men in the epoch marking India’s entire post independence struggle with entrepreneurship—from the License Raj to the opening up of the floodgates in 1991, and the dawn of the digital era—Rokda seeks to uncover the indomitable spirit of the Baniya.
The Blood Telegram
In 1971, the Pakistani army launched a devastating crackdown on what was then East Pakistan (today’s independent Bangladesh), killing thousands of people and sending ten million refugees fleeing into India. The events also sparked the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War.
Drawing on recently declassified documents, unheard White House tapes, and meticulous investigative reporting, Gary Bass gives us an unprecedented chronicle of the break-up of Pakistan, and India’s role in it. This is the pathbreaking account of India’s real motives, the build-up to the war, and the secret decisions taken by Indira Gandhi and her closest advisers.
This book is also the story of how two of the world’s great democracies-India and the United States-dealt with one of the most terrible humanitarian crises of the twentieth century. Gary Bass writes a revealing account of how the Bangladeshis became collateral damage in the great game being played by America and China, with Pakistan as the unlikely power broker. The United States’ embrace of the military dictatorship in Islamabad would affect geopolitics for decades, beginning a pattern of Ameranti-democratic engagement in Pakistan that went back far beyond General Musharraf.
The Blood Telegram is a revelatory and compelling work, essential reading for anyone interested in the recent history of our region.