Shah-Jahan – ‘King of the World’ – ruled the Mughal Empire from 1628 to 1658. His is a complex and conflicted tale of romance and violence, of marital fidelity and fratricidal betrayal, of exquisite artistry and ugly intolerance. For the Mughal court was a world where brutally violent politics, internecine conflict, pedantic quadruplicate bureaucracy and high art all coexisted under the same royal roof. Before his usurpation by his own son, Shah-Jahan reigned for thirty-two years as an enlightened despot: a man seen variously as a virtuous supporter of Sharia law and a monster of moral depravity. Between these extremes lies the truth of the man.
In his book Shah Jahan: The Rise and Fall of The Mughal Emperor Fergus Nicoll has reconstructed this intriguing tale from contemporary biographies, edicts and correspondence, putting together an original portrait that challenges many established legends to bring the man and the emperor to life.
Here are some things you didn’t know about the Mughal emperor.
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Business Books to Look Out For
“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs” – Farrah Gray
Whether you’re thinking of setting up your own business – and need some inspiration or advice – or whether you need help making improvements in your already-existing business, we’ve got a set of books for you. Here we have a list of business books for you to pick up, by authors with lots of experience in the field that are bound to help you take your company to new heights.
Let’s take a look!
Talent Wins: The New Playbook for Putting People First
Turning conventional views on their heads, talent and leadership experts Ram Charan, Dominic Barton, and Dennis Carey provide leaders with a new and different playbook for acquiring, managing, and deploying talent–for today’s agile, digital, analytical, technologically driven strategic environment–and for creating the HR function that business needs.
Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became a Billion-Dollar Business
In this book, the current chairman T.T. Jagannathan, along with Sandhya Mendonca, takes us through the journey of this extraordinary company which fought off bankruptcy and rose like a phoenix to become a highly profitable, successful entity. With invaluable business lessons, decades of experience and innovation distilled in these pages, Disrupt and Conquer is a must-read for aspiring entrepreneurs, executives and business leaders.
The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World
At Stanford University, If you had majored in the humanities or social sciences, you were a fuzzy. If you had majored in the computer sciences, you were a techie. This informal division quietly found its way into a default assumption that has misled the business world for decades-that it’s the techies who drive innovation. But in this brilliantly contrarian book, Scott Hartley reveals the counter-intuitive reality of business today: it’s actually the fuzzies-not the techies-who are playing the key roles in developing the most creative and successful new business ideas.
Shortcut Your Start-Up
The world of startups is more competitive than ever: what will make yours stand out from the crowd? Shortcut Your Startup has the answers you need. Star entrepreneurs Courtney and Carter Reum have invested in such global successes as Lyft, Pinterest and SpaceX, as well as launching a multimillion-dollar business of their own – they have the hands on experience, insights and tips that will make all the difference.
Games Customers Play – What they don’t tell you about buyer-seller relationships
Business has been an endless series of games played by buyers and sellers-with one difference. Both sides could win at the same time. But somewhere along the way, many customers have changed the rules of these games in their favour. In Games Customers Play, Ramesh Dorairaj shows you how to spot such games and change the rules to your advantage. So that it doesn’t matter what the deal is, you will always win!
The Two Minute Revolution: The Art of Constantly Creating Value in Business
Sangeeta Talwar, the first woman executive in the FMCG industry, who established one of the most beloved and enduring brands of India-Maggi Noodles-shares creative and strategic lessons which can help you grow and add value to your business. Insightful and packed with fascinating examples, this book suggests tried and trusted strategies for building extraordinary brands.
Creating Signature Stories
In Creating Signature Stories, branding guru David Aaker applies the power of intriguing, authentic, involving stories to communicate strategic messaging internally and externally, a critical and difficult task. Creating Signature Stories, full of case studies, discusses how to find, evaluate, refine and leverage great stories and use them to build brands, enhance customer relationships and inspire employees.
Discover India: Four Things your Little Ones Should Know About Bihar
Mishki and Pushka can’t believe what they see. They’re here from their home planet Zoomba and though they have seen a lot of Earth, they’ve never seen a place like India. Daadu Dolma takes them around and tells them all about these beautiful places.
Now, they are excited to know where Daadu Dolma will take them next. They question him eagerly and he laughs at their enthusiasm as he explains that they are going to Bihar, a state that has an old, old history.
Here are four things they learn about Bihar on their visit.
Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who & Mrs Which
Madeleine L’Engle lived in New York and wrote over 60 books for children, including A Wrinkle in Time, the first in her Time Quintet series and winner of the highly prestigious Newbury Medal. She died in 2007, aged 88. A Wrinkle in Time, is a classic sci-fi adventure where Charles Wallace Murry goes searching through a ‘wrinkle in time’ for his lost father, he finds himself on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as ‘It’. How Charles, his sister Meg and friend Calvin find and free his father makes this a very special and exciting mixture of fantasy and science fiction, which all the way through is dominated by the funny and mysterious trio of guardian angels known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which.
Let’s get to know the quirky Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which a tad bit better.
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Here, There and Everywhere: 5 Sudha Murty Stories you Must Read
Wearer of many hats-philanthropist, entrepreneur, computer scientist, engineer, teacher-Sudha Murty has above all always been a storyteller extraordinaire.
Here, There and Everywhere is a celebration of her literary journey and is her 200th title across genres and languages. It brings together her best-loved stories from various collections.
Here are 5 stories by her that you must read, from this collection.
Sudha Murty talks about her journey as a writer in A Tale of Many Tales. She mentions how her mother would force her to sit down and write about the events of her day, and how this ultimately lead to ‘inadvertently improving her expression and adding clarity to her ideas’.
R.H. Kulkarni, a young medical doctor was posted to a small dispensary in a quiet village. One night, during a heavy rain, he heard a knock on his door. Four men wrapped in woolen rugs stood with sticks in their hand. They forced him out of his house and made him sit in a bullock cart. Where were they taking him? Read this gripping story to find out more.
A middle aged man brings an old man with no friends or family into the authors office, saying he met him on the bus stop and needed help in relocating him to an old-age home. A few months later, the old man is in hospital. When she goes to visit him, she sees the same middle-aged man there as well. Who is he and why is he there?
On an overcrowded train from Bombay to Bangalore, the author comes across a young girl in torn clothes without a ticket. She pays the ticket collector the fare for the girl but is unable to get her to talk. When she finally does, she finds out she’s a run away with nowhere to go. She helps her find place in a shelter in Bangalore not realizing then, the long way the girl will go from there, all thanks to a simple train ticket.
Sudha Murty tells us the story of being the only female in her engineering college. She shares her struggles-first in being allowed to actually attend the college, and then those she faced while being there. However, she was adamant to do complete her course and ended up doing better than most of the boys. She joined college as a scared teenager but left as a confident and bright young engineer.
5 Quotes from Daisy Khan on Gender Equality
Born with Wings is a powerful, eye-opening account of Daisy Khan’s inspiring journey of self-actualization. Guided by her faith, Daisy Khan is a women’s advocate and has devised innovative ways to help end child marriage, fight against genital mutilation, and, most recently, educate young Muslims to resist the false promises of ISIS recruiters.
Here are some of Daisy Khan’s thoughts on Islam and gender equality:
The Quran, believed to be the central religious text of Islam, lays great emphasis on upholding a woman’s dignity no matter what the circumstances.
By carefully studying the holy Quran, Daisy Khan was convinced that gender equality has always been a part of Islam. However, because of misguided interpretations of the Quran especially by men, women have suffered several injustices.
Daisy Khan points, that in the religious scriptures of Islam, nowhere is it stated as a rule that a woman has to maintain her modesty by wearing hijabs or burqas.
Muslim women have historically always had rights. Fourteen hundred years ago, when these rights were not granted to even Western women, Muslim women have had the right to property, the right to divorce, the right to inheritance and the right to have a career simply because men and women are considered equal in Islam. The situation is quite different today simply because of faulty interpretations of the Quran’s verses.
8 Things worth knowing about Subhadra Sen Gupta
Peppered with stunning illustrations and unusual trivia, A Bagful of History is a fascinating read about how children lived in the times of King Ashoka, Emperor Akbar, Raja Raja Chola and during the Uprising of 1857. In these dozen stories you will travel back in time to the India of the past.
The fact that Subhadra Sen Gupta has written over thirty books for children including mysteries, historical adventures, ghost stories and comic books is well documented but we found some rather interesting things that very few people know about the author. Scroll below to know now!
Here are 8 things you didn’t know about the author who loves writing for children:
Meet Seven Women who Fought against Triple Talaq
The battle against instant talaq has garnered public attention for a long time now. In Till Talaq Do Us Part, Ziya Us Salam, an eminent social commentator and an associate editor at Frontline, presents a holistic view of how divorce works in Islam.
Banning triple talaq was no easy feat. It happened through the struggle and effort of many people. Ziya specifically talks about seven women who questioned established mores and practices common to all patriarchal societies beyond the boundaries of religion. Their fight is what took the case to the Supreme Court.
Let’s meet the women behind the ban on Triple Talaq.
It was experience that held Zakia in good stead as she piloted the movement for Muslim women’s rights.
Her first marriage had been a tale of subjugation and oppression in which she suffered emotionally, socially and physically. She suffered alone in the privacy of her home with her son as witness and co-abused. Her middleclass upbringing did not allow her to speak out against the injustice. She found happiness only in her second attempt at matrimony. This union, however, invited huge criticism from patriarchal quarters. The fact that her husband is a Hindu has been used to attack her campaign for Muslim women’s rights.
As she helped marginalized women fight everyday battles, Noorjehan began to appreciate the challenges that lay ahead. That, in turn, led to her founding the BMMA with Zakia Soman, who had also tapped into her reservoirs of inner strength after the 2002 Gujarat violence.
Also notable was Noorjehan’s attempt to train Muslim women to be qazis, to apprise them of what the Quran says, what the Sunna of the Prophet says. They set up Darul Uloom Niswaan, a centre for Islamic learning. The centre trains women qazis in the study of the Quran, the Hadith and the sharia. The women are trained to conduct nikah, fill up nikahnamas, etc. Then followed all-women sharia courts, which interpret religious injunctions in a manner deemed fair to women.
For years, Shayara Bano put up with her property dealer husband’s demand for dowry, a car and cash. For years, she underwent abortions. In the absence of any social support, she was reduced to being a helpless soul. A kidney ailment and the absence of medical care at her husband’s place in Allahabad forced Shayara Bano to go back to her parents’ in Uttarakhand for treatment. It was a small step for Shayara Bano that was to prove a giant leap for womankind.
As she explored her options to hold her husband accountable, she met the volunteers of the BMMA and approached the Supreme Court. The court clubbed her petition with the larger case against instant talaq or triple talaq.
The verdict may have pleased many, but it left Ishrat homeless and hopeless.
Instead, she decided to give a new direction to her life by joining politics. Towards the end of 2017, she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and pledged to work for all women who have suffered.
With help from her brothers, she approached the Supreme Court after they got to know of the Shayara Bano case. In the highest court, her petition was clubbed with that of Shayara Bano.
In January 2017, she approached the Supreme Court to invalidate triple talaq as it violated the fundamental rights of a woman. Her petition was clubbed with that of Shayara Bano and others. The court set aside instant triple talaq, but there was no direct word on the status of her marriage. Atiya hopes that the verdict will end the agony of those women who have suffered for no fault of their own.
The Story of TTK Prestige and its journey to becoming one of India’s Most Valuable Brands
While several companies have kneeled over when faced with adversities, TTK Prestige has reinvented itself and rose to greater heights. The turnaround story of the TTK Group is one of India’s greatest success stories. Here is T.T. Jagannathan’s journey as he turned TTK Prestige into a billion dollar company, from Sandhya Medonca’s book , Disrupt and Conquer: How TTK Prestige Became a Billion-Dollar Company.
The Diary of a Domestic Diva – Introduction from Shilpa Shetty Kundra
Shilpa Shetty Kundra is a popular Bollywood actor, model, entrepreneur and health enthusiast. She is the author of two books, Diary of a Domestic Diva and The Great Indian Diet. The latter touches upon various food categories and not only tells you how to take care of your nutritional intake but also how to burn fat in the process.
In The Diary of a Domestic Diva, the actor and entrepreneur brings you fifty of her most special recipes-some of which feature in her popular Sunday Binge videos on Instagram. These favourites of the Shetty-Kundra household have been created to give you variety, taste and the occasional food coma.
Here is an excerpt from The Diary of a Domestic Diva
It’s just bhindi. A vegetable that’s probably as common as the potato in Indian homes. But at the mere mention of bhindi the first thing that pops in my mind is my sister. Shamita, for reasons she has sworn me to secrecy, abhors bhindi. No amount of masking it can get her to taste even a bite of the most delicious bhindi preparation. Her extreme reaction, and the fact that it is always discussed in my home, is why in every bhindi I see my beloved sister.
Food brings an onslaught of feelings, conjuring up some of our most powerful memories. In many cases, the taste or smell of a meal is capable of painting a picture more vibrant than any snapshot you may have on your phone. In other instances, it’s the people sitting around you as you tuck in who make it a wonderful memory. Food that is linked with memorable events is more likely to trigger a few reminiscences than something we eat regularly, which is why we probably remember birthdays more clearly than the average Sunday brunch. Personally, it takes nothing more than a mutton dish to take me back to my childhood.
I grew up with parents who held full-time jobs. I remember my mother buying about 5 kilograms of chicken and 5 kilograms of mutton every weekend, cooking it all at once and freezing it. On alternate days, she would thaw a little bit after she came home from work and served it for dinner. I know many people who still do that prepare the whole week’s meals in advance. This book is for women like my mother who want to serve fresh, nutritious food to their families every day without spending too much time in the kitchen.
People probably think that just because I’m a celebrity, I diet a lot and don’t eat what I want. But you know better than that from my previous book, The Great Indian Diet. I am a huge foodie and make and eat everything I like. The only difference is that I know when to stop. This book will show you how and what we -my husband, son and I – enjoy cooking at our home. I hope you like what we make.
Every dish you’ll find in the pages that follow has been cooked by me. My family and I love each of these dishes and I enjoy making them, mainly because I can prepare them quickly, which leaves me free to attend to other tasks. As silly as it sounds, the most important thing for me while cooking is making sure my hair doesn’t frizz. So the food I cook is usually very quick to make. And tasty, of course. I can’t bear to cook recipes that involve a lot of preparation. They really put me off. I’ve gone through books where the pre-cooking instructions and ingredients are sometimes over one page long. Unless you’re a professional cook, who has the energy to spend so much time getting so many ingredients ready? I certainly don’t, and neither do most working women.
I don’t claim that all the recipes here are original. Maybe you’ve already made some of them in your home. But each of them has a twist to it – something that makes it uniquely mine.
Before you begin reading this book, I want you to make a resolution: that you will enjoy every part of the meal – yes, that includes dessert too – without ever feeling guilty. The food we love and eat makes us so happy. Why would you feel guilty about feeling happy? My father loved, really loved, to eat good food. He was the kind of person who would attend the wedding of even a very distant relative of a relative (bless him!) because he wanted to sample the rich food served there. But it was also because he could never say no to an invitation. When he passed away recently, we wanted to celebrate him and his life. According to Mangalorean customs, the whole family comes home on the thirteenth day after the loved one has passed away for the Bojja ritual and eats vegetarian food. But my father was not fond of vegetarian food at all. For him, a meal was never complete unless it had a chicken or a mutton dish. Mutton was his most favourite meat and he relished every mutton dish that was ever served to him. He loved it so much that even if he was too busy to meet me, I could lure him home by saying I was cooking mutton! So for the evening of the thirteenth day, we prepared all of my father’s favourite dishes and ended up with around twenty-one nonvegetarian dishes, including mutton cooked in four different ways. But despite his indulgences, he was a very fit man till the day he passed away. I believe it was because he took so much joy in eating and balanced it with his walks and yoga.
Every woman is domesticated in one way or the other because we are conditioned to make sure that we look after everyone around us. But in doing so we often neglect ourselves or feel apologetic for the things we do for ourselves. Being a professional, a wife and a mom is a tough job, and given the fast pace of our lives, we have to learn to compartmentalize. The glam quotient from our lives goes away when we become so domesticated. It’s a beautiful coincidence that the Marathi word for lamp is ‘diva’.
Each one of us has a diva within us. I hope that through this book, I’m able to turn all of you into real-life divas and light the lamp inside you; I hope I can make your life simpler. Things like having an in-house menu can make figuring out what to prepare for lunch and dinner, pack for your husband and child and serve at parties easier. People may assume that I have it easy because I have plenty of help. On the contrary, being a homemaker comes first on my list and it’s the finer details that make me a domestic diva. If these ideas can make life easier for you, I’ll be so happy. And in that one hour that I’ll be able to save in your day, I hope you go for a massage or get a pedicure or work out – do something for yourself.
I hope this book makes your lives easier and with that also intend to bring focus to ‘label reading’. Visiting the supermarket or vegetable vendor to buy your groceries every week may get cumbersome but your own and your family’s health and what goes into your body must be of paramount importance. With readymade meals and pre-packaged quick fixes so easily available, I hope you don’t take your family’s lives for granted. Please read the label of the packet/box to know what has gone into it. Children should not be encouraged to eat sugary cereals and snacks on a regular basis; google it and you will know how harmful it can be. Reading the labels on packaged food products will also increase your knowledge and help you understand the difference between healthy and unhealthy food products. If you want to lead a healthy life, mindful eating is imperative.
With love, from my kitchen to yours.
