The Discover India series is a delightful and educational read for the young reader curious about India and its vast diversity. Discover India: Off to Chhattisgarh by Sonia Mehta will transport your little ones to the land of Chhattisgarh, telling them about the major landmarks, heritage and culture of the state. This book is sure to make your children learn more about the state in an interactive way with the help of Pushka, Mishki and the witty Daadu Dolma.
Here are 4 things to know about Chhattisgarh:
With puzzles, crosswords and dozens of other activities, the books will entertain, educate and enlighten young minds.
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Four Things to Know About Jharkhand
The Discover India series will take you and your little ones on a tour of the country making you travel through many states of India and show the diverse culture of the states with the help Pushka, Mishki and the wise Daadu Dolma. A part of the Discover India series, Discover India: Off to Jharkhand talks about the state’s geographic marvels and the culture of Jharkhand.
Here are 4 things to know about Jharkhand:
With puzzles, crosswords and dozens of other activities, the book will entertain, educate and enlighten young minds.
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Which Bollywood Couple Are You?
Waste of a Nation – Who Actually Handles Waste in our Country?
What is your relationship with ‘waste’? At most, your only interaction is when you throw something into the dustbin and then later when you’re driving around the country, you complain of mounts of garbage from the luxury of your car. Perhaps you cross a smelly river or drain. Perhaps you read the headlines of a newspaper talking about how India produces too much waste.
But who are the people who actually hands down deal with it? In New Delhi, a common estimate was that between 200,000 and 350,000 people worked as waste-pickers in an urban area of 16 million people in 2011. Rough calculations suggest that India’s 53 cities with populations of more than 1 million support close to 2 million waste-pickers, and its 465 cities with populations between 100,000 and a million sustain a further 1.5 million.
That’s a lot of people handling waste, and at different levels. To understand this better, we’ve taken an excerpt from Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey’s book, Waste of a Nation, where they’ve created four categories of occupations that deal with waste.
Waste professionals are the people that local governments turn to for managing waste. These include scientists, engineers, private-enterprise executives, and the public service administrators and finance managers who go with twenty-first-century bureaucracy. They vary in their enthusiasm, knowledge and commitment, but the best of them bring skills, networks, and institutional understanding necessary to improving and maintaining public sanitation in growing towns and great cities. Even for those who never touch a bin or clean a toilet, work associated with garbage brings little prestige and only modest rewards at best. As we have seen, India has always been short of expertise in local government and public health.
At the other end of the waste chain – or at the bottom of the pyramid – are the handlers of waste. These are the people who scratch a living largely by dealing with the expelled materials of their fellow citizens. The way people who collect waste derive their income varies. Some are completely on their own – they find what they can in the streets, around rubbish dumps, and around the skips, or Dumpsters, at street corners or towns and cities. They confront feral animals, police, and better-resourced competitors for items of value. Better-off collectors may be full-time employees of local governments and enjoy some benefits, including regular wages (although often paid irregularly) and even ghetto-style housing. Other collectors may be employees of contractors who work for local governments or for recyclers.
Kabaadiwalas, the third of our categories, buy items of value from householders, merchants, and waste-pickers and carry them to places where they are reborn. India’s long-standing culture of frugality rests on at least three pillars. Certain systems of Hindu belief and practice celebrate asceticism and renunciation, and since the nineteenth-century, Hindu revivalists have emphasized the spirituality of India over the materialism of the West. During the nationalist movement, Mahatma Gandhi made spiritual characteristics key aspects of his program for national redemption. The rural life that characterized most of India until the 1990s meant that most people had little to throw away. And the controlled economy for the first forty years after independence produced few consumer goods. The door-to-door recycler can still be found in towns and cities, and many kabaadiwalas have gone far beyond hauling bags on a bicycle to become substantial middlemen of a kind Adam Minter, author of Junkyard Planet, would recognize at once.
The last category we call facilitators – nongovernmental organizations or self-help groups, which thirty years ago were often called action groups. India is rich with such organizations, usually run by educated, middle-class activists who aim to improve their environment by bringing skills and organization to disadvantaged workers. Such organizations are often at the center of stories of improvement in public sanitation. They suggest promising possibilities, if only…If only the work of the best of them could be scaled up; if only they were capable of surviving the loss of a dynamic founder; if only governments interfered with them less; if only more powerful interests had not muscled in on activities they had made effective and profitable; if only some of them were less enthusiastic about purely market-based solutions.
An examination of these categories of activity and people suggests rich possibilities for a cleaner India if the skills of the professionals, the networks of the recyclers, the energy of the NGOs, and the willing labor of the collectors could be synchronized. Coupled with advocacy networks and propaganda aimed at waste makers, such a combination has the potential to find ways to improve lives by vastly reducing what goes to waste.
Your September Wish List
Do you know it’s possible to want something, without realizing you want it? Take books, for example. There may be a great book out there, waiting to be read by you—waiting to change your life. How will you know unless you try?
Here is your September wish list. A list you may not have known you even had! Take a pick from this wide range of topics and authors…who knows, you may discover a new favorite author!
Stories at Work
Storytelling in business is different from telling stories to friends in a bar. It needs to be based on facts. Stories at Work will teach you how to wrap your stories in context and deliver them in a way that grabs your audience’s attention.
Gandhi: The Years that Changed the World
This magnificent book tells the story of Gandhi’s life from his departure from South Africa to his dramatic assassination in 1948. It has a Tolstoyan sweep, showing us Gandhi as he was understood by his contemporaries, with new readings of his arguments with (among others) Ambedkar, Jinnah, and Churchill, and new insights on our freedom movement and its many strands.
Hippie
In Hippie, his most autobiographical novel to date, Paulo Coelho takes us back in time to re-live the dream of a generation that longed for peace and dared to challenge the established social order-authoritarian politics, conservative modes of behavior, excessive consumerism, and an unbalanced concentration of wealth and power.
Heart: A History
For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live.
The Non Violent Struggle for Freedom 1905-1919
In recent years, there has been a surge of writing on the technique and practice of non-violent forms of resistance. Much of this has focused on movements that occurred after the end of the Second World War, many of which have been extremely successful. Although the fact that such a method of resistance was developed in its modern form by India is acknowledged, there has not until now been an authoritative history available to show exactly how this occurred.
This book provides such a study.
The Women’s Courtyard
Set in the 1940s, with Partition looming on the horizon, The Women’s Courtyard cleverly brings into focus the claustrophobic lives of women whose entire existence was circumscribed by the four walls of their homes, and for whom the outside world remained an inaccessible dream. Daisy Rockwell’s elegant and nuanced translation captures the poignance and power of Khadija Mastur’s inimitable voice.
The Shooting Star: A Girl, Her Backpack and the World
Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.
Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life
Das is one of the most popular and sought-after monks and life coaches in the world, having shared his wisdom with millions. His debut book, Life’s Amazing Secrets, distils his experiences and lessons about life into an accessible book that will help you align yourself with the life you want to live.
Through Two Doors at Once
With his extraordinarily gifted eloquence, Anil Ananthaswamy travels around the world and through history, down to the smallest scales of physical reality we have yet fathomed. Through Two Doors at Once is the most fantastic voyage you can take.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
Understanding “the self” has long been thought to be neuroscience’s greatest challenge, a mystery perhaps that never can be solved.
We are who we are, but mystics, Buddhists and even scientists have told us the self is an illusion. We know who we are but then no matter how successful and healthy you are, sometimes we wonder, who is that inside our heads? Who am I really? Are you sure you know?
The Rabbit and the Squirrel
Illustrated by Stina Wirsén, this poignant and moving fable for all ages was originally conceived by the author as a private gift of love for a beloved friend. Featuring a bisexual bunny and an heiress squirrel, by turns witty and absurd, endearing and brave, this little book harbours a fine ache that lends it a timeless quality.
The Sage’s Secret
In the year 2025, twenty-year-old Anirudh starts dreaming of Krishna. But these visions that keep flashing through his mind are far from an ordinary fantasy-they are vivid episodes from the god’s life. Through these scenes, as Krishna’s mystifying schemes are revealed, Anirudh slowly comes to terms with his real identity . . .
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What Happens When India Moves – The Long Term Impacts of Migration in 6 Points
Chinmay Tumbe is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and Political Science; the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore; Ruia College, Mumbai; and Rishi Valley School Mandapalle. He is passionate about migration, cities and history. He is currently a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He has published widely on migration for a decade and has served on policymaking groups. India Moving is his first book.
Here are the impacts of migration as listed in the book:
1. The influence of mobility and globalization on migration
2. Rural – urban divergence in natural growth rates ( difference between birth rate and death rate)
3. Migration helped in reducing social inequalities.
4. The story of brain drain.
5. Link between migration and gender.
6. The impact of the partition of India and Pakistan.
Science Can Be Found in Everything, Even in Your Daily Life
Sonia Mehta’s Fun With Science series is a fun way to teach your little ones about science. The wide range of the books in this series are filled with fun experiments of various kinds. With amusing ways to explore science in our day-to-day lives, this series is sure to invoke curiosity in kids and encourage them to learn in a comprehensible manner.
Here are the books that prove science can be found in everything:
1. Fun with Science: Messy Science Experiments
2. Fun with Science: Magical Science Experiments
3. Fun with Science: Party Science Experiments
4. Fun with Science: Earthy Science Experiments
5. Fun with Science: Foodie Science Experiments
6. Fun with Science: Crafty Science Experiments
Sangeetha Sreenivasan on Exploring the World of Acid
Acid by Sangeetha Sreenivasan is a gripping and powerful story about two women and their journeys of discovering their lives and the struggles that come with it. Kamala and Shaly, pose as two distinctive women living in an unusual household. Kamala’s twins, from her former marriage, take care of each other and are a part of the same household. The characters in the book make for a dynamic storyline as the plot is driven by their spirited characters.
Here, Sangeetha Sreenivasan, talks about the psychological and behavioral anatomy of her characters and her road to a final realization of the mould of her characters in the book. Dwelling in the deep crevices of the psyche of women, sexuality, and a unique understanding of relationships, Sreenivasan also explains as to what drove her to write this book, which highlights a quintessential meaning of womanhood and places it in the current state of the world.
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Imaginary as they are, I first came into contact with my characters in the year 2007. Extending in curves and turns, instantly I was allowed to participate in their private lives—their kinesics, their voices and tacit manners, their odors, and their screaming meemies. “A dark and private weather settled down on everything,” to borrow a line from Mark Strand. In a certain sense they started interfering with the course of my regular life. I found myself in a world that really has been turned on its head.
Before they started blurring my mind there was a sort of emptiness within me which I wanted to flush out. I started writing the story of Kamala. But the emptiness I mentioned was not separable from the idleness which was stronger and kept reminding me of the banality of the improbable relationships I wanted to work on. I quit writing at this stage even though I had an offer from a publisher. Years later when I wanted to write a second novel in Malayalam the book in the slush pile came to my mind. There was no literature or no music in it but there was this skeleton I knew would help me work. For me, writing Acid was a nerve-racking business of tampering my inner self with the everydayness I rarely got along with on a daily basis. What I wanted for writing was absolute silence and an exaggerated mindscape where I could find myself emotionally unsettled and strangely lost, where it was easy to toy with certain uncertain situations. I spent three or four intensive months on writing this piece. In the end I sobbed, but like a small wonder that happens once in a while, the emptiness didn’t return.
I am a listener (not always) and definitely not a judge. I don’t believe in judging people, particularly the fictitious ones. Everything is connected here in the inextricably complex and intricate meshes of the Universe. Everything emerges out of chaos and individual existence is fragile like a bubble on the surface of water. Who are we to judge or decide? I don’t care about people’s sexual preferences as long as they do not hurt or harm another living being. It was not my aim to shock the readers by writing a story on homosexuality. I think it is time we forget the divisions. We do not call Manon Lescaut a heterosexual novel though it is one of the most enigmatic and challenging love stories that happened between a man and an amoral courtesan. We call Call Me by Your Name a gay story even though the intention of André Aciman was to depict the intimate bond between two individuals. It is time we accept sexuality in its multiplicity and stop attributing titles and divisions, it is time we stop seeing the strangeness of relationships in the name of sex. I don’t care if a woman loves a man or a woman or a man loves many as in the monogatari of the ‘Shining Prince’.
I remember the story ‘The End of the Party’ by Graham Greene and the way I got carried away after reading it. I couldn’t find a way out of the intense inner worlds of the identical twins and maybe that is the reason why the twins stayed in my mind longer than what the characters in a short story demanded of its reader forcing me to unravel the psycho-behavioral patterns of the twins and pondering over creating fictitious twins of my own. As a reader I always have this kind of troublesome connections with the books I love dearly. My writing is just an extension of what I had read so far, twice or thrice removed from the original text, a faint recreation or an imitation in its weakest form. I was never a detached reader; I applied emotions and shunned my intelligence and ended up an imbecile ready to get carried away at a mere beckoning. The issue of copyright and plagiarism is a different story. I think the books I have read and loved are mine, my books, my words, my worlds—this totally private joy; reading becomes an extended conversation. As Yiyun Li says “To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one’s existence.”
The woman in my story is also an amalgamation of all the women I have loved so far. I believe the strength of a woman lies in her delicate curves and powerful sexuality. I always cherish the images of beautiful women/nymphs from the epics and wanted to create a woman as tender and sexually enticing as one of those magnificent creatures we come across in literature. But when the sexuality of such a powerful being remains unanswered everything turns upside down demanding total devastation. I named her Kamala; the lotus flower, graceful yet susceptible. I gave her twins; I made her marry her brother; I made her long for the same sex; I gave her burdens of every kind; I even placed her in a society that has still not come to terms with accepting or appreciating the power of sexuality. I wanted her to scale the ill-fated mountain.
My associations with the lovely self-taught women from North Eastern regions of India enabled me to experience the cultural differences helping me to develop the character of Shaly. The graveyard I had described in the book is a place I had visited more than a couple of times and its premises are far more beautiful than described in the book. All these were ingredients or separate entities designed to float on the surface of a lotus leaf, the disoriented heroine of my book. The leaf of the lotus absorbs nothing, invites nothing into its inner sanctum. Those who move on the surface may sometimes fall down losing grip. This was the idea around which I started working initially. I wanted to see the beautiful leaf torn and shattered and I worked for the accomplishment of the most probable devastation possible.
Acid is not so much of a story on homosexuality and I don’t consider myself presumptuous in writing on same-sex relationships or psychedelic ups and downs as my book was not meant to shock the reader. But it pains me to think that the society has not come to terms with homosexuality even today. This is indeed a lamentable situation.
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Acid unravels the secrets that lurk beneath the surface of our lives, and marks the entry of a searing new voice in the Indian literary landscape.
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Timeline on the Life of the Enigma: Mahendra Singh Dhoni
With his phenomenal gumption as wicketkeeper, batsman and captain, Mahi has captivated the hearts of billions of Indians. He dealt with his career, both on and off field, with common sense, a lot of practical ingenuity and some unmatched foresight.
Here are some key milestones in Dhoni’s journey in life, that made him the maestro he is today:
2004: The year of ‘smashing’ new beginnings
India meets the new star of Indian cricket and witnesses his unique repertoire of breathtaking strokes.
“It was late 2004. There had been talk of an exciting twenty-four-year-old from Ranchi who had been making waves in domestic cricket with his big-hitting, but there was little evidence of his prowess, especially when he made a quiet entry in his first few international games.”
There wasn’t much scope left for debate when Dhoni smashed 148 in the next game he played.
‘The India A tour to Kenya in 2004 is correctly identified as the tipping point for Dhoni’s graduation to international cricket. This was one of the first A series to be shown live on TV back home.’
2005: India’s new wicketkeeper
Dhoni makes his international debut and his all-rounder traits come to life through his expert wicketkeeping and explosive batting skills.
‘They’re in the city for the 2004-05 edition of the Challenger Trophy. Dhoni, who made his international debut only two months earlier, is part of the India Seniors team led by Sourav Ganguly.’
‘Dhoni had crossed single figures only once in his first three ODI innings. So, when India met Pakistan in the second ODI in Vizag on 5 April 2005, India’s new wicketkeeper had a lot to prove. Dhoni had batted at No. 7 in all those previous innings.
It’s an area of the ground where he rarely scores. But it was a shot that had both oomph and a bit of arrogance.
‘I saw that boundary and thought, today he’ll score a century. His career hasn’t looked back since that boundary,’ recalls Chhotu about the 123-ball 148 that set the Dhoni career off with a bang.
2006: To chop off or not to chop off?
Dhoni sports his mane with confidence and gets Pakistan’s nod on it.
In other news, he becomes a record holder of the highest ODI score by any wicketkeeper.
The mane was there to stay. Even dictator Pervez Musharraf agreed. He, in fact, ordered Dhoni to not even think about chopping his locks off. By then, Dhoni had also smashed two blitzkrieg centuries, including the highest one day international (ODI) score by any wicketkeeper, established himself among the most destructive batsmen in world cricket and was just a year away from taking over as India’s T20 captain and winning the inaugural World T20, and chopping off his hair.
2007: Shows exemplary captaincy through his unexpected decisions
Thanks to Dhoni’s trailblazing leadership and shrewd judgement, India becomes the first-ever world champions in T-20 cricket.
‘The Joginder Sharma example, of course, stands out, when on that famous night in Johannesburg in 2007, Dhoni handed the inexperienced medium-pacer the final over in the grand finale against Pakistan, a move that shocked the world and also eventually made India the first-ever world champions in T20 cricket.’
2008: Becomes a ‘Super King’
It’s time for IPL players auction and the most popular cricketer in the country is in high demand, so much so that his predictive market rate was going up by USD 100,000 almost every fifteen minutes.
‘The first-ever IPL players’ auction took place on 20 February 2008 at a plush hotel in Mumbai.
Then the CSK management had to take a call on how much they would be willing to pay for Dhoni.
When Mumbai took it up to USD 1.4 million, Chandrasekhar hesitated for so long that he recalls that the Ambani-led auction table almost began to celebrate, and that’s when he pulled the trigger again and took the price up to 1.5 million. That was it. Mumbai backed out.
2014: The legend calls it quits
India is flabbergasted. Conspiracies start floating around, no one understands the reason behind his decision to quit test cricket in the middle of a series.
‘Dhoni quit test cricket in the middle of the series against Australia in 2014-15. I had no inkling – nobody did – that this thought was even churning in his mind. When he announced his retirement, everybody was stupefied.’
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Bharat S Sundaresan’s The Dhoni Touch focuses on breaking into the life of a cricketer extraordinaire, who has remained a mystery wrapped in a million dollar bubble. This is not the story of where M.S. Dhoni has come from or where he’s reached. It’s about how he got there.
13 Facts you Didn’t Know about James Bond Before 007
We all know and are in awe of the famous James Bond 007, but little do we know about just James Bond.
Forever and a Day, the thrilling prequel to Casino Royale, will take us through the action packed life of James Bond, a field agent who was prepped to take up a 00-status, after successfully performing two official assassinations.
Here are some riveting facts that will introduce you to a young Bond still finding himself, learning his skills and what it means to be a 00 agent.
