The Man Who Saved India by Hindol Sengupta is an extensively researched book about the man who, as the author tells us, brought together piece by piece the map of India by fusing the princely states with British India to create a new democratic, independent nation. A stoic man, Patel, wrote no personal history about himself.
This book tells the story of Patel and his indispensable role in uniting the nation and creating India. Bringing to the foray, the arguments, quarrels and the power struggles that went into the building of the nation, Hindol Sengupta defines Patel’s legacy for the progeny.
Here are 6 things that you should know about Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel:
Hindol Sengupta’s The Man Who Saved India is destined to define Patel’s legacy for future generations. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!
Gurcharan Das' Trilogy for Decoding Life
Gurcharan Das is a renowned author, commentator and thought leader. He is the author of two bestsellers, India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good, which are volumes one and two of a trilogy on life goals, of which Kama: The Riddle of Desire, is the third book.
His first book, India Unbound focuses on artha, ‘material well-being’; and The Difficulty of Being Good, his second book, lays emphasis on dharma, ‘moral well-being’. In his third book, Kama: The Riddle of Desire, he examines how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life, arguing that if dharma is a duty to another, kama is a duty to oneself.
With his keen eye and magnificent prose, the author shares marvelous insights on decoding life. Here is a little more on his trilogy:
India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age
This is the riveting story of a nation’s rise from poverty to prosperity and the clash of ideas that occurred along the way. Gurcharan Das analyses the highs and lows of independent India through the prism of history, his own experiences and those of numerous others he has met—from young people in sleepy UP villages to chiefs of software companies in Bangalore. Defining and exploring the new mindset of the nation, India Unbound is the perfect introduction to contemporary India.
The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma
Why should we be good? How should we be good? And how might we more deeply understand the moral and ethical failings–splashed across today’s headlines–that have not only destroyed individual lives but caused widespread calamity as well, bringing communities, nations, and indeed the global economy to the brink of collapse?
In The Difficulty of Being Good, Gurcharan Das seeks answers to these questions in an unlikely source: the 2,000 year-old Sanskrit epic, Mahabharata.
Kama: The Riddle of Desire
India is the only civilization to elevate kama-desire and pleasure-to a goal of life. Kama is both cosmic and human energy, which animates life and holds it in place.
Gurcharan Das weaves a compelling tale soaked in philosophical, historical and literary ideas in the third volume of his trilogy on life’s goals. He shows that kama is a product of culture and its history is the struggle between kama pessimists and optimists. The yogis and renouncers regarded kama as an enemy of their spiritual project. Opposed to them were those who brought forth Sanskrit love poetry and Kamasutra. In the clash between the two emerged the kama realists, who offered a compromise in the dharma texts by confining sex to marriage.
Kama: The Riddle of Desire is a ground-breaking narrative that will leave you with puzzles and enigmas that reveal the riddle of kama. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!
6 Instances that Give a Glimpse into the Life of Classical Musicians
When Namita is ten, her mother takes her to Dhondutai, a respected music teacher from the great Jaipur Gharana. Dhondutai’s antecedents are rich- she is the only remaining student of the legendary Alladiya Khan, the founder of the gharana and of its most famous singer, the tempestuous Kesarbai Kerkar. Namita begins to learn singing from Dhondutai, at first reluctantly and then, as the years pass, with growing passion. Dhondutai sees in her a second Kesar, but does Namita have the dedication to give herself up completely to music-or will there always be too many late nights and cigarettes?
Here are six anecdotes from her book, The Music Room that offer a glimpse into the life of classical musicians:
Some classes (and concerts) sucked the joy out of singing.
“I hated my mother for pushing me into this embarrassing, depressing world. Besides these classes, I was routinely dragged to even more irksome music concerts, where I would usually fall asleep and wake up when the singer was rendering fast, arpeggiated passages which meant the end of the show was near.”
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The most talented musicians had some interesting neighbours
“The music teacher lived in an old building under Kennedy Bridge… [it]was a neighbourhood known for prostitutes and gentlemen’s clubs, but not for musicians. The only other time I had heard of Kennedy Bridge was when my parents joked about their adventurous evening in a mujrah dance parlour many years ago.”
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A cough is a serious illness which needs to be taken care of using any means necessary (superstitious or otherwise)
“During my next lesson, I was made to sit on the sofa with the marigold garland around my neck, looking like a horrendous child goddess, while my teacher circulated a hairy brown coconut around my head three times, muttering a mantra…I don’t know whether it was the coconut ritual, the plant, or a heavy dose of vitamins, but my cough disappeared.”
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Even bandits appreciate good music
“Before leaving, the bandits happened to ask the brothers where they had gotten the money. When they found out that they were musicians, they asked them to sing. At first the duo was nervous, but as they warmed up, they forgot where they were, or who their audience was, and sang a sublime raga. The bandits were so moved by their music, that they returned not just Khansahib’s purse but also gave them whatever other stolen jewels and money they were carrying.”
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Musicians can go to extreme lengths to plagiarize…
“Rajabali Khan, moved into a house right next to Alladiya Khan’s home so that he could secretly listen to the Khansahib while he practiced and then try and copy his style. He did this for years, until his singing actually began to sound like Alladiya Khan’s music, and he even became a well-regarded performer. Finally Alladiya Khan persuaded the king to send the plagiarist away.”
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Competitors can come up with extremely creative (and illegal) ways to get you out of the picture
“One hot afternoon, Badeji was playing cricket and the ball hit him right on the chest. He vomited a little blood. Worried about his growing prowess as a singer, some rival musicians went to a local doctor and bribed him to give an incorrect diagnosis about Badeji so that he would never sing again.”
Beautifully written, full of anecdotes, gossip and legend, The Music Room is perhaps the most intimate book to be written about Indian classical music yet.
Get to Know the Author of Requiem in Raga Janki
An Indian English fiction writer and academic, Neelum Saran Gour is the author of Grey Pigeon And Other Stories,, Winter Companions And Other Stories, Virtual Realities, Sikandar Chowk Park and Song Without End And Other Stories.
Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals and she has been an active book reviewer for the TLS and The Indian Review of Books. She has also been a humour columnist for the Allahabad page of Hindustan Times for a year.
Her latest book, Requiem in Raga Janki is based on the real-life story of Hindustani singer Janki Bai Ilahabadi.
Here are seven more things you should know about the author!
Requiem in Raga Janki is the beautifully rendered tale of one of India’s unknown gems. For more posts like these, follow us on Facebook!
The Art of Deceiving – the Life of The Perfect Imposter
Is Raju the perfect imposter?
R.K.Narayan’s The Guide follows Raju, a corrupt tourist guide who, together with his lover, the dancer Rosie, leads a prosperous life before he is thrown into prison. After release he rests on the steps of an abandoned temple when a peasant passing by mistakes him for a holy man. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he begins to play the part, acting as a spiritual guide to the village community.
Here are some quotes from the book that showcase his mastery over the art of deception:
“Raju himself was not certain why he had advised that, and so he added, ‘If you do it you will know why.’ The essence of sainthood seemed to lie in one’s ability to utter mystifying statements.”
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“A clean-shaven,close-haired saint was an anomaly. He bore the various stages of his make-up with fortitude, not minding the prickly phase he had to pass through before a well-authenticated beard could cover his face and come down to his chest. By the time he arrived at the stage of stroking his beard thoughtfully, his prestige had grown beyond his wildest dreams.”
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“…the age I ascribed to any particular place depended on my mood at that hour and the type of person I was escorting. If he was an academic type I was careful to avoid mention of facts and figures and to confine myself to general descriptions, letting the man himself do the talking.”
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“He had a subtle way of mentioning his special requirements…He enunciated some principle of living such as that on a special Wednesday he always liked to make his food with rice flour and such-and-such spice, and he mentioned it with an air of seriousness so that his listeners took it as a spiritual need, something of a man’s inner discipline to keep his soul in shape and his understanding with the heavens in order.”
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“They assumed that he was fasting in order to stop their fight, and he was not going to announce to them that he had already had two meals during the day. He would just leave it at that, and even if his eyes should drop a little out of seeming fatigue,it would be quite in order.”
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“…we had surreptitious drinks too, although there was a prohibition in force —well, the prohibition law was not for a man of my influence. I had managed to get a medical certificate to say that I needed alcohol for my welfare.”
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“He decided to look as brilliant as he could manage, let drop gems of thought from his lips, assume all the radiance available, and afford them all the guidance they required without stint. He decided to arrange the stage for the display with more thoroughness. With this view he transferred his seat to the inner hall of the temple. It gave one a better background.”
Set in R.K. Narayan’s fictional town, Malgudi, The Guide is the greatest of his comedies of self-deception. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!
Know Partha Sarathi Bhattacharyya
The author of When Coal Turned Gold ParthaSarathi Bhattacharyya was a former Chairman and Managing Director of CIL (Coal India Limited). In his book, he tells the story of how the CIL joined the elite club of Maharatna PSUs after a resoundingly successful IPO. Along with this, he remembers the time when he dealt with the Dhanbad coal mafia and changed the way the coal industry was perceived.
Here are a few things about the author to get you to know him better:
In When Coal Turned Gold ParthaSarathi Bhattacharyya tells the story of how he was able to script one of the greatest success stories the country had ever seen.
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Ten Simple Rules for Dating a Bollywood Goddess
When charming, goofy Vicky Behl, everybody’s favourite scandalous leading man, and Kritika Vadukut gorgeous model/badminton player turned successful actress, meet on the sets of Ranjha Ranjha they find it hard not to give in to their attraction to each other amidst all the romantic numbers and their undeniable onscreen and off-screen chemistry. But will the pressure and scrutiny of Bollywood allow Vicky to assure Kritika that’s he’s a fantastic partner off-screen too, or will there be a twist in the tale?
Inspired from Saranya Rai’s book, Love, Take Two, we’ve come up with ten ‘simple’ rules for Dating a Bollywood Goddess.
‘Word is she doesn’t fraternize with the likes of you, especially after her last public break-up.’
Vicky immediately sat up straight. ‘Likes of me? What is that supposed to mean? What’s wrong with me? ‘Meaning you wealthy, well-connected types. She is understandably wary after the shit that went down with Raunak Rajput.’
‘No, this isn’t She’s All That, desi Freddie Prinze Jr! I’m just making a general observation. Kritika Vadukut is out of your league.’
‘But I’m not a star-kid! Does it even count if your dad has some friends in the industry? I’m like . . . like . . . Pluto. Trying hard to be a planet but disowned by the solar system.
Vicky scrambled to cover up for his mid-conversation wayward thoughts. ‘Yeah, sorry, I kinda started fantasizing about the mango kulfi my cook makes. It’s so incredible, I’d give my firstborn for it.’
‘Aur jo apni bansuri ki dhun mein baandh kar mera dil le ja raha ho, usse main kaise yaad karoon?’
Vicky knew he’d regret it, but he did it anyway.‘As the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Heeriye.’
His steady gaze wasn’t threatening at all—just slightly curious and sympathetic. Kriti was suddenly overcome by an urge to get up from her chair, walk over to him and throw herself into his arms for a comforting hug.
‘This wasn’t—I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought it would be fun to hang out. Sorry, if I appeared to imply anything else.’
Vicky stared at her in amazement. ‘Did I just get schooled by my own baby sister?’ ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m hardly your baby sister. And yeah, you did. Mini-3, Vicky-0.’
He pulled her closer, tightening his arms around her waist. Droplets of water clung to her hair and made her skin gleam in the late afternoon sun. She seemed in no particular hurry to go anywhere, and Ranjha? Ranjha wasn’t quite ready to let her go either.
Meher was one of Kriti’s closest friends and she’d volunteered to cook for their little picnic. He knew that helping her lay out the food on a thick rug was a test of some kind, he just wasn’t sure of what.
Disclaimer
Love, Take Two is not Cosmopolitan and any dubious relationship advice is meant to be applied in precisely the spirit in which it is given.
How Addicted are you to your Smartphone?
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Your Happiness Was Hacked turns observation into a handy guide to adapting to our new reality of omnipresent technology.
Six Untold Stories that Give Us a Glimpse into Ruskin Bond's Life
There is no doubt that Ruskin Bond is one of India’s most beloved writers. At least three generations have grown up reveling in the exquisite simplicity of his writing and aspiring to the carefree childhood among the hills, to the tales that he weaves with all the soft, natural magic of the mountains themselves.
All his stories, fiction and non-fiction, have such tantalizing hints of autobiography that many of us have often wondered as to the sources of his characters-those ordinary people with the very slight idiosyncrasies that he has elevated beyond the mundane to a magical place in his readers memories. And just like reading a Ruskin Bond book takes his readers go back to a place in their mind unique to their own reminiscence, The Beauty of All My Days is no ordinary chronological autobiography but a piecing together, a remembrance of things past, an aggregation of the incidents, friends, books and movies that have shaped him to become the person he is.
Read on for six untold stories that give us a glimpse into Ruskin Bond’s life
When his first moment of literary glory funded a party for a crew that sounds like the gang from A Room on the Roof
“And then I sold a story to The Illustrated Weekly of India, the country’s premier English magazine, editedby C.R. Mandy. It was a trifle, a school story or skit called ‘My Calling’, but it brought me fifty rupees, a princely fee in those far-off days (August 1951). I gave a party for my friends—Somi, Chottu, Haripal, Kishen, Ranbir and Co.—and declared myself to be a fully established writer, although it would be several months before I sold another story!”
The elusive woman who features in different forms in so many of his stories
“Maplewood. I take Sushila and her cousin down to the stream. We’ll picnic near running water, I tell them. Down comes the rain! It comes rushing down the hill—running water everywhere! We run for it, run for home. Get home drenched. Sushila, beautiful with her hair dripping and her blouse clinging to her slender figure.”
The first venue for his literary output seems a combination of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Gerald Durrell’s My Family And other Animals!
“My first real writing room was that tiny room on the roof, a barsati on top of a rambling old building in Dehradun, which had once been the Gresham Hotel and later the Station Canteen and was now occupied by various tenants, among them my mother and stepfather and my three small brothers and sister, not forgetting an Alsatian and a dachshund.”
The hotel from hell that he inhabited as a broke teenager en route to London
“Ah! Lamington Road . . . Sometimes I see you again in my dreams, or rather my nightmares, for youand your seedy little hotel were indeed a nightmare for a pimply seventeen-year-old without friends ormoney. They gave me a small bare room with a rickety chair and table and a bed made of wooden slatscovered with a lumpy mattress. There was no window, not even a skylight. The toilet served several rooms. This wouldn’t have mattered, but within an hour of taking up residence I was making frequent trips to the lavatory.”
The great escape from school that is referenced in the evocative story The Playing Fields of Shimla’
“‘I think it was Brian, searching for a cricket ball, who discovered the tunnel…The great escape! It hadn’t taken us anywhere, really, but to be outside the school instead of inside, made a lot of difference to us from a psychological viewpoint. That feeling of being hemmed in was no longer there. We returned to our dormitories the conventional way—through the open school gate—but we had broken bounds, and that made us feel special.’”
A steady diet of MGM musicals
“I was paid about £12, a useful amount, and I had planned to spend it on clothes, but just then a number of big musical shows were running in London’s theatres, and all my spare money went on seeing them. Paint Your Wagon, Guys and Dolls, Pal Joey and others. And having grown up on a rich fare of Hollywood musicals, I couldn’t resist going to see these stage performances; but they did eat into my income.”
There, but for the grace of God, go I, his fear at almost having become one of the ‘lost boys’
“There were many Fishers and Spreads ‘left behind’ across the country, left to fend for themselves, forthere was no godfather or fairy godmother on hand to support them. And they come to mind while I am writing this memoir because they remind me of how close I came to being one of them. I was luckyin that I had a small talent, a talent with words.”
Each chapter of this memoir is a remembrance of times past, an attempt to resurrect a person or a period or an episode, a reflection on the unpredictability of life. For more posts like this, follow Penguin India on Facebook!
Premchand on Screen: Movies Based on His Books
Munshi Premchand, widely lauded as the greatest Hindi fiction writer of the twentieth century, wrote close to 300 short stories over the course of a prolific career spanning three decades. His range and diversity were limitless as he tackled themes of romance and satire, gender politics and social inequality, with unmatched skill and compassion.
Premchand wrote widely about life in the city, life of the Indian peasant and his cattle, the countryside and stories shedding light on the plight of women. This carefully curated collection brings to readers some of his best short stories that have helped shape the genre of short stories in India.
Many of his stories have been converted into movies, and here we see some of the most popular ones.
