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The Bane of Each Other’s Existence- An Excerpt from ‘Pataakha’

Posted on by Penguin India

They cannot live with each other, they cannot live without each other. As children, they squabbled all day long. When they were old enough, they married two brothers, and took with them their feuds to their in-laws. Boisterous and fiery pataakhas, sisters Badki and Chhutki are the bane of each other’s existence.

Based on Charan Singh Pathik’s eponymous short story, Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation is a hilarious tour de force that obliquely and mischievously takes into its ambit notions of patriarchy and diplomacy between nations. This translation, which includes the novella and the screenplay that the film-maker developed from the short story, not only brings to the reader a rustic, elemental tale rooted in the soil, but also provides a unique glimpse into the art of adapting a literary work into film.

Here’s an excerpt from the book below:

Badki’s husband dropped her back to the village after buying her medicines. Although Badki religiously took her medicines as prescribed, she found no relief even after the stipulated three days. Badki’s husband brought her back to the city. This time he showed her to a specialist who ran a battery of tests.

‘I can’t find anything wrong with these results,’ said the mystified specialist. ‘Let me prescribe some other medicines, however. Come back to me after five days.’

Badki flounced out of the doctor’s cabin in a huff and her embarrassed husband ran after her. She turned on him furiously. ‘What kind of a quack is this guy? He knows nothing. How in the name of the devil will he treat me?’ And with that she returned home, deeply annoyed.

At night, she said to her elder son, ‘Call your cousins in Agra. I want to talk to your maasi.’

The soldier, who had just come home from work, answered, ‘Hello, who is this?’
‘It’s me . . . Golu.’

‘Yes, Golu. Tell me . . . is everything okay?’

‘Everything is fine.’

‘Is budhi-maa okay?’ he said, referring to his mother; all the kids were used to calling their grandmother budhi-maa or ‘old-mother’.

‘Yes, she is. Please give the phone to maasi. Ammi wants to talk to her.’

The soldier handed the phone to Chhutki. ‘A call from home.’

Chhutki snatched the phone. ‘I’m Chhutki. Who is this?’

‘It’s me . . . Badki.’

‘Idiot! Why this urgent need to talk to me?’

‘Did you see the Red Fort and the Taj Mahal?’

‘May you suffer, dari.’

‘I’m already very unwell.’

‘You’ll die suffocating,’ Chhutki retorted, unsympathetically.

‘Did you sit in the aeroplane?’

‘Don’t you dare talk, witch! I’m also unwell. Agra’s water doesn’t suit me.’

‘You left me behind to go gallivanting with your husband. You had to pay, so pay!’

‘You’re a monster from another life, dari!’

‘And acting like a lioness just because you are at a safe distance, you hedgehog! If you have any guts, and are a red-blooded man’s daughter, I dare you to come to the village and face me . . .’ Badki challenged again. ‘Trying to behave like a soldier’s wife from far away!’

‘I’ll be back in two days, dari . . . and then see if I don’t grab your braids, twirl you around and hurl you a hundred yards out! Then you’ll know whether I’m the daughter of a red-blooded man or not!’

The soldier was dumbstruck to see the transformation in his wife. She seemed to have instantly thrown off the wan, sickly air that she had been carrying for days now.

Upon hearing that Chhutki was due to return in two days, Badki immediately switched off her phone.

That night she devoured several rotis and polished off a double helping of milk and rabdi. The next day she tossed out the packet of medicines. She announced, ‘It has been ages since I slept as well as I did last night.’

Will things go too far between Badki and Chhutki? You’ll have to read Pataakha to find out!

A Friendship Set in Stone

Posted on by Penguin India

In Sarojini’s Mother, Sarojini-Saz-Campbell comes to India to search for her biological mother. Adopted and taken to England at an early age, she has a degree from Cambridge and a mathematician’s brain adept in solving puzzles. Handicapped by a missing shoebox that held her birth papers and the death of her English mother, she has few leads to carry out her mission and scant knowledge of Calcutta, her birthplace.

Through an emotionally intense journey of survival and mental demons – Sarojini discovers how the concept of motherhood is much more nuanced than simple biology.

Chiru Sen, an Elvis lookalike, becomes her guide and confidante on this journey. Find a glimpse of their first meeting in the excerpt below.

 

It was easy to spot Saz at the Rex. She was sitting by herself near the window. At first glance she looked Indian, but not fully so, given the way she was flapping the menu around awkwardly, troubled by the flies. She nodded when I mentioned Idris and pointed to the seat across from her. Then she gave a start as I grabbed the menu from her hand and swatted a fly that was about to perch on her half-eaten croissant.

‘Did you have to kill it!’ She scowled; eyes fixed on the dead fly.

‘Not unless you wished to share your meal with it!’ Shrugging, I tried to lighten the air.

She didn’t speak to me for a good while, kept her eyes locked on my face. From her puzzled look you could see she wasn’t expecting Idris’s friend to resemble a rock star. ‘Why do you dress like a dead man?’ Saw asked.

Right away I knew she was special and why Suleiman was bent on saving her from being spoilt.

‘The King isn’t dead!’ I joked.

‘Really! If he was alive, his hair would’ve fallen out by now. Would you have shaved your head then?’ Regaining her composure after the fly incident, she returned tot he croissant, taking small bites and chewing thoroughly.

Words came to my lips, but I kept them closed hoping to hear some more from Saz.

‘Or are you hoping he lives on through you? Like we want our parents and grandparents to keep on living forever.’

I wasn’t expecting philosophy straight up, I have to confess, not before we had discussed matters of hygiene at least. Like the condition of her flat and toilet and the owner’s demeanour, whether she had managed to acquire an Indian SIM for her phone, and stayed healthy from her travels.

Finished with her meal, she avoided the Rex’s yellowing napkin and took out a pack of tissues to wipe her lips. Then she cut into my thoughts.

‘It isn’t all bad to imagine we are somebody else. Especially if there is confusion over who we really are.’

She appeared calm, and the words coming out of her mouth were crisp and clear. Much as I was prepared to strike up a Geordie, a Brummie or a Cockney, her English was clearly BBC.

‘Especially if we aren’t sure where we’ve come from, or where we belong?’

It was my turn for lofty talk, and a chance to impress my new friend. ‘Which is…’

‘Which is true for half the people on this planet!’ She took the words right out of my mouth, ‘like the two of us—you a Bengali Elvis and me a brown Saz Campbell from Bromley!’

Smart girl!—I thought. She was playing my role, out of the wings and joining up two strangers with nothing more than a few chosen words.

Did I want a coffee of the cinnamon tea she’d ordered, Saz asked when the waiter came around. I shook my head. It was too early in our friendship to have her buy me refreshments. ‘A croissant perhaps?’ She smiled, pointing to the menu and keeping it out of my reach to avoid another unnecessary killing.

I wasn’t expecting Suleiman’s ‘girl’ to be a stunner, but her smile was quite extraordinary. The eyes are the most revealing, they say, but in her case it was definitely the smile. Dressed Western but Indian in looks, it made her out to be her own person unattached to a place of birth or home address.

The bestselling author of The Japanese Wife is back with an intimate look at human connections, friendships and family.

Saz, Chiru and his band members set off to help Saz look for her birth mother. Will they be successful? Find out in Kunal Basu’s, Sarojini’s Mother!

Perils of the City: Everyday Realities of Urban

Posted on by Penguin India

So All Is Peace is a story of twin sisters – Layla and Tanya, who were anointed the ‘Starving Sisters’ when they were found to be starving in an upper middle class gated apartment complex in Delhi. Their news became instantly sensational and nobody could figure out what had caused two educated, beautiful women to starve themselves.

Here are some excerpts from Vandana Singh-Lal’s book, So All Is Peace, that highlights the feelings of alienation that the girls experienced while living in a big city.

 

Living in Delhi, Layla and Tanya were taught to avoid places where women felt vulnerable to inappropriate glances. Tanya remembers,

“With our carefully controlled outings with Mamma and Papa—shopping only at the malls, going to school in the school bus and to college in university-special or U-special as they are called; never going to any religious festival or a fair or any place where there may be crowds and the potential for a stampede (which was almost every place in Delhi)—our experience of groping fingers and lascivious glances was almost non-existent and we entered the territory that came with being a woman in Delhi or perhaps anywhere in India, unprepared, naked and woefully unarmed.”

*

Soon after their parents passed away, Tanya recalls an incident when feelings of loneliness gripped her, and she couldn’t discuss her harrowing experience of sexual assault with anyone around.

“Like sparks flying out of a short-circuit, it spewed out stray thoughts that I had nobody to share with, pieces of conversations that I could not have, bits of passages that nobody was present to hear, tears of sympathetic neighbours that had no place inside me, whispers of curious onlookers that I could not hide away from, the buzzing and sparking and searing and the absolute emptiness of a house where every room was still filled with the paraphernalia of the living but where everything had died.”

*

With Tanya relocating to Andhra Pradesh, Layla started dating Deepak. He often came to their house because,

“In a country where everything takes place outside in the open, where people bathe, eat, pray, sleep, shit, fight, play, kill and die on the road, the only thing that does not and that cannot happen on the road is love; the making of it, the display of it, or even the allusion to it, except in the larger than life film posters. But the posters too remain coy, allegorical, metaphorical. No kissing is allowed on the roads of the country, no holding of hands, no looking for too long into each others’ eyes either. So Layla had to find a place for them to meet and a relationship; a veneer however thin or translucent or unconvincing.”

*

Raman, the award-winning journalist, who has been tasked to write about the ‘Starving Sisters’ had begun to have strong feelings for Tanya.

Although he had spent relatively short time with her in person, he had devoted long hours to her mentally, analyzing the smallest of her gestures and the tiniest of inflictions in her voice ad-infinitum, and something in her had suggested a kind of depth that he was not used to encountering. Now he has been provided with some more clues about what exists behind her vulnerable tarsier eyes, and he is excited. This is a new challenge. And yet. Wouldn’t it have been easier if she did not have this other side? If she could have been enfolded within the narrative that was furiously being woven about her with the help of disparate threads—some real, most imaginary—but all being accorded the same amount of space and value as if the difference between the fake and the real does not matter anymore as long as everything could be fitted into an easily explained, easily propagated, easily digested world.

*

The gated societies of Delhi often have Residents’ Welfare Association (RWA) that have rules for visitors, especially males. When Deepak had moved in with the twins, Layla was regularly pestered by the head of RWA – Mr. Deol, to submit Deepak’s identity documents. Mr. Deol explained,

“We made the rule that we could not allow any overnight male visitor in any all-women household until they handed over his passport copy and gave us in writing what relationship they had with the man. I personally went to tell the sister that and to give them a copy of the notice. You know, the sister had looked at me very strangely then.’”

Pick your copy of So All Is Peace, to read how the shocking events unfolded in the starving sisters’ lives.

Meet the Characters from ‘Jaipur Journals’

Posted on by Penguin India

Jaipur Journals is a unique, metafictional novel by Namita Gokhale, one of the founder-directors of Jaipur Literature Festival. Set against the backdrop of the festival itself, the book brings together a rich cast of characters and their even richer stories.

We introduce you to some of the characters whose lives intersect and collide within these pages.

 

Zoya Mankotia

A writer who identifies herself as pan-sexual and non-binary, Zoya Mankotia is an icon of queer literature and representation. Her most recent novel, The Quilt, created waves, occasioning both outrage and intense appreciation. Her voice holds a mélange of accents.

In the world of Jaipur Journals, we meet her in a panel, where she introduces herself:

‘I am by discipline a novelist […] as passionate about crossover genres as I am about gender fluidity. I am nonbinary and pan-sexual, and I am committed equally to my writing, my raison d’être, and my wife, my monogamous partner. We can be who we are, write as we like. Sexuality, as a narrative, is a freeflowing river.’

Raju Srivastava

Born in Bijnor, Raju Srivastava is a burglar who is passionate about poetry. He is the son of an unsuccessful tailor-master. He arrives in Jaipur to fulfil two purposes: meeting India’s greatest poet, Janab Javed Akhtar, and covering the cost of the trip through some well-executed burglaries.

Raju nurses a deep-seated desire to become a poet, and is an avid reader of poets like Nirala and Dushyant Kumar, Muktibodh and Firaq Gorakhpuri and Faiz Ahmad Faiz. He writes prolifically, and his preferred form of poetry is the ghazal. His hero and idol in the poetry world, however, is Javed Akhtar.

Anura

Anura is short for Anuradha, a twelve-year-old student en route to Jaipur on a school trip. She is a prodigy, having been selected for a Young Adult panel in the Jaipur Literature Festival. She has self-published a dystopian novel.

As is evident from her preference for the shortened form of her name, she is quite taciturn, and likes to save her words for important things.

Anna Wilde

Anna Wilde is a writer from America, who primarily publishes books on meditation and reflection. Anna is quite renowned for her association with the Beat Poets, especially Allen Ginsberg. She is attending the Jaipur Literature Festival to talk about her books The Inner Eye, which was very successful, and The Third Way, which has recently been reissued.

Anna teaches theology at the University of Colorado. She calls herself a Hindu, by ‘dharma and karma’, and has spent many years in India before returning to America.

Rudrani Rana

Rudrani Rana is a woman in her seventies, who sees herself as a ‘failed novelist’. She always carries around a handbag that contains her unpublished magnum opus; which she refers to as UNSUBMITTED.  The novel is actually titled The Face by the Window and is a dedicated to Alice Walker and her book, The Colour Purple.

Rudrani is an alumna of Waverly Girls School in Dehradun. Alongside her unpublished semi-fictional novel, she also writes anonymous letters as a means to express herself.

She is a huge fan of Oprah Winfrey, which is what had drawn her to the Jaipur Literature Festival for the first time, back in 2012. She is often fatigued and lonely, and feels like an outsider within the literature circuit at the festival.

Gayatri Smyth Gandhy

Gayatri Smyth Gandhy is fifty-two, single, divorced and is a self-proclaimed ‘citizen of the world’. She is a  historian and cultural anthropologist with an American green card.  She is also an aspiring novelist.

She is stuck in her novel, struggling to understand herself what it is about. She lived in Jaipur as an adolescent when her father Brig. Gandhy was stationed there. She considers herself a Jaipurite in many respects, and makes annual trips to the city during the festival. She often feels divided between her Indian and Western selves.

Namita Gokhale’s Jaipur Journals  brings together these characters within the setting of the Jaipur Literature Festival, and their stories are as vibrant and diverse as the largest free literary festival in the world!

There’s More to Life than Cricket

Posted on by Penguin India

Jai is fourteen and dreams of owning a café in Delhi. Inaya is fifteen and dreams of playing cricket for Pakistan.

In 2008, their worlds collide. What unfolds is a story that started way back in 1947 – with the drawing of a line.

Inaya lives with her father in Rawalpindi. Her cricket ambitions don’t always go down well with her family.

Find a glimpse of her story in the excerpt below. 

*

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

A loud crash announced Inaya’s misjudged attempt at hitting a sixer in the tape-ball cricket tournament taking place in the street adjoining Haider Mansion. It startled Mudassar, the Haiders’ elderly help, almost causing him to drop the figurine of the ballerina that he was dusting. A tennis ball covered in insulation tape had shot through the open French windows in the drawing room, bouncing off a painting over the mantelpiece and knocking over a crystal photo frame. The ball deftly made its way through the shards of glass that now covered the floor to finally disappear beneath the large leather sofa. Moments later, a breathless fifteen-year-old burst into the room.

‘Sorry, sorry, Mudassar Chacha,’ Inaya panted, pushing away the mop of unruly curls from her eyes. Impenitently, she crouched down and retrieved the ball. ‘Please blame this on Zain. Please!’

There was the sound of footsteps and Inaya spun around.

‘What are we blaming on Zain, Inaya?’ asked her father, Irfan, as he strode in, followed at a more sedate pace by her grandparents. Inaya gulped and looked at them sheepishly. The trio surveyed the scene in silence. Inaya clutched the ball behind her back, hoping they wouldn’t notice the smashed photo frame.

Inaya’s grandmother straightened the painting that had tilted leftwards with the ball’s impact. ‘If you don’t like your grandfather’s paintings, you should just tell him so, Inaya. As I do,’ said Humaira. ‘Why go to all the trouble of taking potshots at them through windows?’

‘But I do like Daada’s paintings—that was an accident,’ muttered Inaya.

Inaya’s father retrieved the photograph that was on the floor. He carefully removed the fragments of glass and propped the photograph against the ballerina on the mantelpiece.

‘Inaya, look at your great-grandmother—she was . . . the epitome of grace. She would be appalled by all this,’ he said, gesturing at the destruction that lay before him. ‘There’s more to life than cricket, you know.’

* 

­­

In Across the Line, Nayanika Mahtani presents a powerful story of borders and beliefs, shaped by the games people play. Lauded by Vidya Balan as a story that “lingers long after the last page is turned”, Jai and Inaya’s story brings together unlikely worlds across time and borders.

Books to Read This February!

Posted on by Penguin India

Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or a picture book on the theme of depression. We have an exciting range of books for you this February. You’ll run out of days before you run out of books to read this month!

Here’s the list of books you should look out for:

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line

Nine-year-old Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari and Faiz. When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him.

But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighbourhood. Jai, Pari and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force and rumours of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.

 

Undertow

The tale of the troubled relationships of a family and what it might take to put the pieces back together.

Years ago, Torun Goswami and his charismatic, formidable wife cast their Rukmini away from their home and their lives for marrying out of her community.

Now, Rukmini’s daughter, Loya, twenty-five, solitary and sincere, arrives at Torun’s old yellow house. Will she be able to change her nonexistent relationship with her grandfather and in the process figure out who she is?

 

Soar

A laugh-out loud book by the author of Sitayana and Godsong. 

Bholanath and Khudabaksh are two soldiers in the British Indian Army, sent off to Europe to fight in World War I.

When a mission in a surveillance balloon goes awry, these two gentle soldiers-along with an exceptionally ill-tempered squirrel-are set adrift high above the Western Front. Follow their grand tragicomic adventure!

The World Between Us

The bestselling queen of romance is back!

When Amal finds out that her disastrous Tinder match is now going to be her boss, she can’t be more annoyed. Qais Ahmed is everything she never wants to be: narcissistic, manipulative and arrogant.

However, despite her relentless efforts, she is unable to resist his charm. Will a disturbing secret tear them apart or bind them together forever?

Calligraphies of Love

Inspired by timeless poems from around the world, Hassan Massoudy’s calligraphy takes us on a visual journey through love in its many forms.

Through his signature broad strokes and vibrant colours, this master calligrapher brings to life the words and wisdom of some of our greatest poets, from Ibn Zaydoun and Rumi to John Keats.

 

With Love: A Collection of Letters 

Dear Reader,

Letters change people.

They turn forty-year-old men into helpless fathers.
Scared mothers into fierce fighters.
Long-lost pets into possessive exes.
And old lovers into best friends.

They make you spell help.
Give someone a second first chance.
Make you leave behind a home.
And find another in someone.

Sometimes, they’re warnings.
Sometimes, confessions.
And sometimes, a story left untold.

Letters change people, they say.

Let’s hope these change you too.

With love,
Us

Terribly Tiny Tales and Penguin come together on the same page with this book!

The Girl Who Disappeared

The bestselling author of The Girl Who Knew Too Much is back!

At the onset of her getaway to the hills of Himachal Pradesh, Nisha knew something terrible was going to happen. Less than seventy-two hours later, she goes missing under mysterious circumstances.

With barely any leads, the police know they have to work doubly hard if they want to find her, but with each passing day, the mystery around her disappearance gets murkier.

Where is Nisha?

Inside A Dark Box 

A pertinent picture book on depression.

When you get trapped in darkness, finding your way out can be a long and lonely battle, especially when the war is within your own mind. Here’s a peep inside a mind struggling with itself.

Fearless

One girl can change everything.

Through the ages, strong, inspirational women and girls have risen in response to uncertainty and injustice. A timeless call to arms that many like Fatima Jinnah, Asma Jehangir and Malala Yousafzai have always been answering.

Fearless chronicles the lives of fifty such incredible women-scientists, lawyers, politicians, activists and artists-who incite hope, inspire action and initiate dialogue.

Not All Those Who Wander

Quirky and heartfelt, this is a story of millennial friendship that is #litAF.

Seventeen-year-old Gehna Rai has normal friends and belongs to a normally dysfunctional family. Everything about Gehna is normal-except she just found out that she’s going to be a mom.

Eram, a nerdy high-school dropout, dreams of becoming a poker pro while trying to keep his dad, who has Parkinson’s disease, from going completely mental. He has little time for much else-until a chance meeting with a girl blows his life to pieces.

The Crown of Seven Stars

Aum is under attack. The enemies are not external; rather, they are within the kingdom, each obsessed with the Crown of Seven Stars. Early one morning, Destiny rolls her dice. General Saahas, heir to the throne, becomes a hunted man and Aum plunges into chaos, submitting meekly to the tyranny of the self-appointed Raja Shunen and the wily Queen Manmaani.

Rolling the dice once more, Destiny prepares to bend Saahas to her will. She, not Saahas, must decide the winner of the Crown of Seven Stars.

The Other Side of the Divide

A fresh perspective on Pakistan, how Indians view Pakistan and how Pakistanis view India and Indians.

Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani’s visit to Pakistan, this book provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. The Other Side of The Divide attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.

Chanakya Niti

Chanakya’s numerous sayings on life and living — popularized in the wake of his successful strategy to put Chandragupta Maurya on the throne, if legend is to be believed — have been compiled in numerous collections and anthologies over time. This entire corpus was referred to as Chanakya Niti.

A.N.D. Haksar’s wonderful translation places this work into context, showing how these verses have endured in the popular imagination for so long.

Endless Song

The Tiruvaymoli is a grand 1102-verse poem, composed in the ninth century by Sathakopan-Nammalvar, the greatest of the alvar poets. Ingeniously weaving a garland of words-where each beginning is also an ending-the poet traces his cyclical quest for union with the supreme lord, Visnu.

In this magnificent translation, Archana Venkatesan transports the flavour and cadences of Tamil into English, capturing the different voices and range of emotions through which the poet expresses his enduring desire for release.

Nava-e-Sarosh

 

Delhi established a legacy of poets whose words set hearts ablaze for the times to come. Love, with all its wine-infused passions and experiences of yearning, has preoccupied classic poets of the city.

As a patron of Urdu poetry and a resident of Delhi, Sanjiv Saraf’s personal investment in preserving and furthering the arts in the Urdu world led to the creation of this book.

Desire, longing and the complexities of love are therefore open to exploration for you, dear reader and lover, through the words laid out in these ghazals by the ‘voices from beyond’.

An Officer and His Holiness

In 1959, the Dalai Lama escaped from Tibet into India, where he was granted refuge. Few know about the carefully calibrated operation to escort him safely from the Indian border. An Officer and His Holiness narrates how political officer Har Mander Singh successfully managed this assignment in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) with limited resources, and despite a treacherous terrain and external threats.

The Story of Yoga

How did an ancient Indian spiritual discipline turn into a GBP 20 billion-a-year mainstay of the global wellness industry?

This comprehensive history sets yoga in its global cultural context for the first time. From arcane religious rituals and medieval body-magic, through muscular Christianity and the British Raj, to the Indian nationalist movement and the arrival of yoga in the twentieth-century West.

The importance of gratitude in everyday life

Posted on by Penguin India

Making a conscious effort to count one’s blessings adds to physical and psychological well-being of a person. Mandira Bedi’s book Happy for No Reason affirms the beneficial effects of expressing appreciation for what one has. She illustrates how gratitude can be achieved by minimizing the possibility of mulling over negative emotions of resentment, envy, and depression.

Why is gratitude an important facet of being happy for no reason? Here’s Mandira Bedi telling you why!

 

Gratitude is the key

“Wherever there is gratitude, there is no room for unhappiness. The two are mutually exclusive.”

*

Biggest learning: being grateful, not entitled

“When we receive something on a regular basis, we start taking it for granted. Even if it is a gift, eventually we come to expect it. Going by natural human tendency, if we receive a gift long enough, we come to view it almost as entitlement.”

*

The real transformation

“I can see now that it wasn’t really an epiphany, but I know it had everything to do with gratitude, that it came about when I started feeling and experiencing sincere thankfulness at the very core of my being. For all the small things. For my home, my body, my son, my husband, my family, for the love I receive, the car I drive, the muscles that show, the food I eat, the good single malt . . . for every single thing.”

*

The truth of life

“Gratitude is a state of being, literally! When we simply are, with all-encompassing awareness, we are opening up to appreciate the wonderment of life and nature and existence itself.”

*

Gratitude is the state of being

“One can never run out of gratitude. I can look back at every single moment of my life—the good, the bad, the ugly—and give thanks. Because all of that has brought me to this very moment. Right here, right now, writing these words. I feel great right now. And if this moment feels aligned and full and content, everything is perfect.”

If you’ve resonated with any of these, then pick up your copy of Happy for No Reason to walk further into Mandira Bedi’s journey of eternal gratitude (and of course, happiness!).

5 Beautiful Lines from ‘The Yogini’

Posted on by Penguin India

The Yogini is a thought provoking and sensual novel by acclaimed Bengali writer Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay. It is the story of a modern woman, Homi who encounters a mysterious yogi on the street. The yogi, visible only to her, begins to follow her everywhere. Convinced that the yogi is a manifestation of fate, Homi embarks on a series of increasingly desperate attempts to prove that her life is ruled by her own free will.

Set in Kolkata, this tale is both unique and unsettling, philosophical and beautiful!

Here are some lines that mesmerised us:

 

‘…niyati also refers to a state in which the individual is under the illusion of being bound to a particular time and space, when in fact they are not. So, in its earthly manifestation for human beings, niyoti/ niyati is a constraining factor for the individual but still not real, only illusory.’

*

‘”fate isn’t just the big things. It isn’t only the sorrows and suffering, the pain and torture, the grief and accidents. Fate is every single footstep. When you wake up and yawn or stretch, that’s fate too. It’s predetermined. If you set off on a journey, and make it safely to the end, then that’s what was predestined.”’

*

‘A game, nothing but a game. Everyone in this immense land of India was engrossed in a game with their gods.‘

*

‘“All our childhoods are actually forms of madness”’ Lalit said. “There’s just one thing you have to remember. We’ve built a relationship, a beautiful relationship, which has an existence in reality, where there is room for reason and evidence. As long as you can hold on to that reality, that reason, everything will be fine, you’ll see.”’

*

‘“Only birth and death are inevitable – everything else is in your hands. Circumstances play a huge role in our lives, but we ourselves can make or break those circumstances. What you’re forgetting is that we’re human beings, we have no choice but to believe in the power of work.”’

Grab your copy of The Yogini to read more such incredible words!

What is the Human Impact of War?

Posted on by Penguin India

Vanni is a powerfully illustrated story of war, survival and trauma suffered by countless Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka. A story that is crucial to unbury and remember, the graphic novel format makes it accessible to an even wider range of audience.

Here are some heartrending ways in which Vanni makes a statement on the brutal human impact of war and trauma:

Becoming an Orphan

On 22nd January 2009, as Selvi and Prem get caught in a gunfire that sfinds them witnessing the brutal death of a mother with an infant boy. They take the boy with them, who has now lost his mother and become an orphan.

Mass Casualties

Loss of life on a large scale is always a by-product of war. “In August 2006, Sri Lankan Army (SLA) shelling killed 61 children.”

Displacement

War uproots homes. Not only do the people have their security and safety taken away from them, they are also displaced from their own homes. “Entire villages and communities took to the road with all they could carry. On the main arteries between jungle, fields, and lagoons, they came together in vast crowds – a mass of weary, desperate people in search of a safe haven.”

Fear

“With shells flashing across the lagoon and falling like rain behind them, Indran and his family had fled their home in Pooneryn. […] Indran had dug their bunker on the first day. […]When he heard explosions, they would scramble for the bunker. In seconds, they would be under the ground. Sometimes they stayed there for hours, listening for gunfire or shelling.”

Safety

A sentiment that consumes civilians during war is a perpetual desperation for safety.

“On 21st January 2009, a ‘safe zone’ was announced. The government declared that an area of 35 Square kilometres – within territory still nominally held by the Tigers – would not be shelled.

Desperate civilians hurried to follow the government’s instructions.”

Emotional Numbing

Consumed and driven by a basic need for day-to-day survival, war also concurrently breeds an arguable numbness to sights of pain and suffering, since they become so commonplace. “The weeks dragged past. It became unremarkable to see people shuffling past with horrible injuries. Despite their fears, the Ramachandrans were often bored. In the same dense jungle around them, the battle pounded on.”

Forced Labour

Forced recruitment is also commonplace within ranks of the army, since war needs as many people as possible to fight on the battlefields. Civilians fall victim to this in large numbers. “Some Tiger soldiers used coercion, threats (and some were even alleged to have shot at civilians) to prevent [the civilians’ leaving the conflict zone and fleeing to the Army. Civilians were also used for forced labour, building military defences and children were forced into the dwindling LTTE ranks.”

Estrangement

Towards the end of the narrative, we see the main character, Antoni, forced to leave behind his wife Rajini and daughter Theepa in Chennai, India – in an arrangement he hoped was temporary – to go to London with the help of a people-smuggler in an effort to seek permanent asylum for his family. Familial separation is a painful reality in the aftermath of war, driven by a desperation to find a new home and start life afresh. “We [Rajini, Theepa and I] talked, we cried a lot. I didn’t want to leave them ever again but –

What choice did we have?

There was no other way.”

These instances give just a glimpse into the life-long horrors and human impact of war through the ordeal of The Ramachandrans in the 2009 war in Sri Lanka. Join them in an emotionally impactful narrative in Vanni.

What do Dhirubhai Ambani, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Sunil Mittal have in common?

Posted on by Penguin India

What do you think Dhirubhai Ambani, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Sunil Mittal have in common? They started out just like you and me—with nothing but empty wallets and strong ambition. It is indeed time for a far more unique, practical and effective approach to success. There has got to be a better way, and there certainly is.

As the first and only opportunity consultant in the world, author Richard M. Rothman presents to us a very simple and accessible answer to this question.

The answer of course is: opportunity. As  How, you ask? We take a look!

 

Opportunity Is The Universal Starting Point

It’s the essential factor in all business and career success. Opportunities are the seeds from which all wealth grows. Regardless of where you are in life, whether you’re a businessperson, an employee earning wages, an aspiring entrepreneur, a student or a professional, your ability to capture the best opportunities will be the most crucial factor that determines your success.

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Capture, Build And Take

All five of the aforementioned successful men captured a series of breakthrough opportunities. They built upon opportunities that others had ignored. They took opportunities that even industry insiders ignored. And, they capitalized on them.

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Hard Work, Diligence And Persistence Are Insufficient

Hard work, diligence, persistence and a positive attitude are all very useful if you want to succeed. They’re essential, and business gurus are right to talk about them and explain how to develop them. But they’re insufficient. None of them will deliver success unless you also harness the power of opportunity.

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Opportunities Need A Process

To leverage the immense value of opportunities, you can’t wait for opportunities to knock at your door. What if opportunity never knocks? What if you don’t hear it knocking? And what if the opportunity that does turn up isn’t right for you . . . but you take it anyway because you waited so long? Opportunity is far too important to leave to chance. It needs a process.

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The wisdom of crowds rarely applies to opportunities

The wisdom of crowds rarely applies to opportunities any more than it does to investing. Buying a stock after everyone else has bought it rarely makes you money. The same logic applies to opportunities. You need to find opportunities yourself and turn them into the foundation of your success.

Many times, we overlook an opportunity sitting right before our eyes, whilst we’re on a quest for something bigger- it could be uncertain, but still, bigger! The Power of Opportunity helps you recognize that opportunity sitting right before you which could eventually end up becoming your ladder to success. We hope you like reading the book as much as we did! Don’t forget to tell us what you think.

 

 

 

 

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