Abir Mukherjee, an accountant turned writer, is the author of the bestselling book A Rising Man. His debut novel was inspired by a desire to recover a crucial period in Anglo-Indian history that seems to have been almost forgotten. It won the Harvill Secker/Daily Telegraph crime writing competition and became the first in a series starring Captain Sam Wyndham and ‘Surrender-not’ Banerjee.
The story follows Sam Wyndham, an English detective who comes to Calcutta after the Great War in search of a new start. He’s immediately thrown into his first case, the murder of a British burra sahib who’s been found with his throat cut in an alley. Sam, aided by his Indian assistant Sergeant Banerjee, investigate and soon find that things are a bit more complicated than they thought
Here are 5 quotes that will make you pick A Rising Man as your next book.
Murder as entertainment? Hmm…
Intriguing!
Ambivalence as a source of shock!
Captain Wyndham was no fan of the war!
British and their alternate channels
Sounds interesting? Pick up your copy of A Rising Man now.
Orhan Pamuk’s ‘A Red-Haired Woman’: An Excerpt
Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s tenth book ‘The Red-Haired Woman’ is a mysterious story of a well-digger and his protégé near Istanbul, excavating stretches of barren earth only to find an unusual oasis in the form of a red-haired woman, who ultimately becomes the cause of their estrangement.
Here is an excerpt from the novel:
I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering geology and became a building contractor. Even so, readers shouldn’t conclude from my telling the story now that it is over, that I’ve put it all behind me. The more I remember, the deeper I fall into it. Perhaps you, too, will follow, lured by the enigma of fathers and sons.
In 1984, we lived in a small apartment deep in Beşiktaş, near the nineteenth- century Ottoman Ihlamur Palace. My father had a little pharmacy called Hayat, meaning “Life.” Once a week, it stayed open all night, and my father took the late shift. On those evenings, I’d bring him his dinner. I liked to spend time there, breathing in the medicinal smells while my father, a tall, slim, handsome figure, had his meal by the cash register. Almost thirty years have passed, but even at forty-five I still love the smell of those old pharmacies lined with wooden drawers and cupboards.
The Life Pharmacy wasn’t particularly busy. My father would while away the nights with one of those small portable television sets so popular back then. Sometimes his leftist friends would stop by, and I would arrive to find them talking in low tones. They always changed the subject at the sight of me, remarking how I was just as handsome and charming as he was, asking what year was I in, whether I liked school, what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My father was obviously uncomfortable when I ran into his political friends, so I never stayed too long when they dropped by. At the first chance, I’d take his empty dinner box and walk back home under the plane trees and the pale streetlights. I learned never to tell my mother about seeing Father’s leftist friends at the shop. That would only get her angry at the lot of them and worried that my father might be getting into trouble and about to disappear once again.
But my parents’ quarrels were not all about politics. They used to go through long periods when they barely said a word to each other. Perhaps they didn’t love each other. I suspected that my father was attracted to other women, and that many other women were attracted to him. Sometimes my mother hinted openly at the existence of a mistress, so that even I understood. My parents’ squabbles were so upsetting that I willed myself not to remember or think about them.
It was an ordinary autumn evening the last time I brought my father his dinner at the pharmacy. I had just started high school. I found him watching the news on TV. While he ate at the counter, I served a customer who needed aspirin, and another who bought vitamin- C tablets and antibiotics. I put the money in the old- fashioned till, whose drawer shut with a pleasant tinkling sound. After he’d eaten, on the way out, I took one last glance back at my father; he smiled and waved at me, standing in the doorway.
He never came home the next morning. My mother told me when I got back from school that afternoon, her eyes still puffy from crying. Had my father been picked up at the pharmacy and taken to the Political Affairs Bureau? They’d have tortured him there with bastinado and electric shocks. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Years ago, soldiers had first come for him the night after the military coup. My mother was devastated. She told me that my father was a hero, that I should be proud of him; and until his release, she took over the night shifts, together with his assistant Macit. Sometimes I’d wear Macit’s white coat myself— though at the time I was of course planning to be a scientist when I grew up, as my father had wanted, not some pharmacist’s assistant.
When my father again disappeared seven or eight years after that, it was different. Upon his return, after almost two years, my mother seemed not to care that he had been taken away, interrogated, and tortured. She was furious at him. “What did he expect?” she said.
So, too, after my father’s final disappearance, my mother seemed resigned, made no mention of Macit, or of what was to become of the pharmacy. That’s what made me think that my father didn’t always disappear for the same reason. But what is this thing we call thinking, anyway?
By then I’d already learned that thoughts sometimes come to us in words, and sometimes in images. There were some thoughts— such as a memory of running under the pouring rain, and how it felt— that I couldn’t even begin to put into words . . . Yet their image was clear in my mind. And there were other things that I could describe in words but were otherwise impossible to visualize: black light, my mother’s death, infinity.
Perhaps I was still a child, and so able to dispel unwanted thoughts. But sometimes it was the other way around, and I would find myself with an image or a word that I could not get out of my head.
My father didn’t contact us for a long time. There were moments when I couldn’t remember what he looked like. It felt as if the lights had gone out and everything around me had vanished. One night, I walked alone toward the Ihlamur Palace. The Life Pharmacy was bolted shut with a heavy black padlock, as if closed forever. A mist drifted out from the gardens of the palace.
Grab your copy of ‘The Red-Haired Woman’ here today.
The Consolidators: An Excerpt
‘The Consolidators’ by Prince Mathews Thomas tells the story of seven second-generation entrepreneurs who display an arresting imagination and interest in evolving the business they inherited from their fathers.
Here’s an excerpt from the book which highlights Abhishek Khaitan’s tussle between one’s own desired profession vs the one chosen by the parents.
In many ways, the situation that Abhishek found himself in upon returning home from his studies in Bengaluru was similar to what his father Lalit had faced many years ago. The senior Khaitan too had harboured dreams of higher studies. ‘In those days there were two choices for us—law or chartered accountancy. I wanted to do law,’ he says.
The larger Khaitan families had quite a few eminent lawyers, including Devi Prasad Khaitan, founder of Khaitan & Co, the country’s third largest law firm, which completed a century of practice in 2010. Devi Prasad was part of the drafting committee that prepared the Constitution of India.
But being the oldest among his brothers and cousins, Lalit was asked by his father and uncle to study commerce at St. Xavier’s College in Kolkata, and at the same time join the family business. So after completing his classes for the day, Lalit would head to the bakery or the restaurant near Park Street that the family owned.
And then he was married at nineteen.
This—joining the family business and marrying early—was the norm in Marwari families. It was a tradition that had stood the test of time.
Many among the following generations of the family became leading lawyers, cementing the legacy of the Khaitan family in the country’s legal fraternity. A few of the Khaitans chose to do business and ventured into several industries—education, tea, batteries, cinema, restaurants, fertilizers and chemicals. Lalit’s father, G.N. Khaitan, also chose to do business.
Along with his brother, G.N. dabbled in several businesses— furniture, soap making, bakery, restaurants and a general provisions store. ‘We were a joint family. We were nine children living under the same roof [we were four brothers and a sister, and uncle had a daughter and three sons.Everything was done jointly, everything was shared. And we would all even sleep together in the same room. We didn’t have much money and were just a little above middle-class, or an upper middle-class family,’ says Lalit.
His father, called Gajju or Gajanand by his friends, was a well-known personality in Kolkata’s vibrant social circle. He had headed several institutions, including business bodies such as the Bharat Chamber of Commerce, Export Council of Engineering, and other organizations like the Indian Red Cross Society, and some popular clubs like Rajasthan Club and Bengal Rowing Club.
‘He used to be known for his bow tie. He never wore a regular tie in his life. He was very well connected, even in Bollywood. Once, he arranged a cricket match in Kolkata that had most of the biggest Bollywood names, including Raj Kapoor, attending. Shailesh Khaitan, my youngest brother, remembers the actor telling my father, “Khaitan sahib, you have got the whole of Bollywood here. If the plane crashes, Bollywood is dead”.’
Actor Pran, the legendary villain of Indian cinema, and often more popular than the heroes, was a close friend. ‘He would often drop by at our house in Kolkata. Once he was visiting after Zanjeer (a film that famously starred Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri) had released. I remarked that Amitabh had done a great job. Pran retorted, “What did he do? I did everything!”’
Grab your copy of The Consolidators now!
8 Steps to Improve Your Quality Of Life And Achieve Your Goal
We all dream about a glorious future and set goals to turn it into a reality. What if someone told you that you only need 5 years to achieve your goals.
Arfeen Khan in Where will you be in 5 years gives you crucial tips that are practical, effective and can be implemented from day one. He also helps you chart out your growth and solve your personal problems.
Here are 8 steps that he insists will help you improve your quality of life
Take Control of Your Health
Grow Your Wealth in a Steady Manner
How Passionate Are You about Your Work?
When Someone Knows You Better than You Know Yourself
Stay Curious and You Will Enjoy Life
Things Belong to You, You Don’t Belong to Them
How to Be Creative? Play Games
Stay Tuned to Your Social Support System
Tell us what do you do to improve the quality of life.
Who Are Nicky and Noni and Why Should You Introduce Them To Your Children?
Meet Nicky and Noni — the uber cool twins from author Sonia Mehta’s new series of books for children — ‘My Book of Values’.
Like any kid, Nicky and Noni too love to engage in fun activities. But as kids, they get into trouble too.
Nicky and Noni now know that learning good values can be very cool. It can be fun, and super engaging!
Do you want to meet them?
Dear Moms and Dads,
Would you believe that your little one is already old enough to take small decisions by herself or himself? There will be a hundred tiny things that happen to them during the day, where they have to act in a certain way, take small calls and make their own judgement. This then is the right time to prepare and give them that sense of right and wrong that we all grew up with.
But it needs to be done subtly. Today’s child isn’t up to lectures and threats. This is the purpose of this series. Being able to differentiate right from wrong and good from bad, building a strong value system, learning to accept consequences—all through relatable stories and fun activities.
Nicky and Noni are typical twenty-first-century kids. Smart, communicative and alert, they know how to get their way. But as they go about their lives, they encounter situations and challenges during which their value system is tested.
Using Nicky and Noni as protagonists, and with activities that make your child think and apply certain concepts, the series highlights the importance of key values and how they make a difference in life.
We’ve tried to make the series fun and engaging while communicating a single message: that in today’s time, BEING GOOD IS COOL.
Find out what new lesson Nicky and Noni learnt today! Grab your copy of ‘My Book of Values’ by Sonia Mehta now!
What Happens in Haruki Murakami’s ‘Men Without Women’?
In Men Without Women master storyteller Haruki Murakami returns with his signature style, but with a twist. Revolving around the themes of love, loss and existential conundrums, Men Without Women also asks if curiosity is always necessary. It’s this curiosity in which lies the secret of Murakami’s ‘Men Without Women’.
Here’s taking a visual peek into Murakami’s new book.
Drive My Car
Yesterday
An Independent Organ
Kino
Scheherazade
Samsa in Love
Men Without Women
Powerful, thought-provoking, intense, Murakami’s Men Without Women dives deep into those crevices of your heart you didn’t quite know existed.
9 Things You Didn’t Know About Anurag Garg
Anurag Garg studied to be an engineer but was destined to be a writer. He found his forte in writing by putting random thoughts in the form of a heartfelt story. The bestselling author of A Half-Baked Love Story and Love . . . Not for Sale, he is back with another enigmatic tale of friendship and redeeming power of love called Love Will Find A Way.
Here are 9 things you probably didn’t know about the bestselling author:
Mountains calling!
Aren’t we all?
The Storyteller
Wow!
Next time the Indian cricket team qualifies for a final, you know where to be.
Aww!
Woah!
Heart-melting!
Adorable!
How many of these facts did you know about the Anurag Garg?
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Abir Mukherjee
Abir Mukherjee is the author of the bestselling crime fiction novel A Rising Man. He is the child of Indian immigrants from Calcutta and grew up in West Scotland. A graduate of the London School of Economics, he currently works in finance in London.
He is back with another enthralling crime fiction called A Necessary Evil.
Here are five things you probably didn’t know about him.
That’s how it started!
Wow!
He didn’t even expect it!
He was born in London.
This time Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee are in Sambalpore, investigating the assassination of the Maharajah’s son.
Indulge in suspense and thrills with the Captain Wyndham and Sergeant Banerjee’s latest adventures in A Necessary Evil.
It’s Nicky and Noni’s Birthday! But Why Aren’t They Happy?: ‘Being Grateful is Cool’ — An Excerpt
Sonia Mehta’s new series of books for children — My Book of Values, explores why having values is not just important, but totally cool!
In Being Grateful is Cool, the author shows us why it’s essential to learn the meaning of gratefulness and acknowledge the kindness of others.
But on Nicky and Noni’s birthday, something seems to be amiss…is it gratefulness? Let’s find out!
Do Nicky and Noni learn how cool it is to be grateful? Find out with Being Grateful is Cool today!
‘A Bewildering Mosaic of Communities’: ‘Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India’ — An Excerpt
Diverse discourses born from diverse cultures, histories and geographies of India come together in senior journalist, Nidhi Razdan’s book ‘Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India’.
Author and Indian academic, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, discusses the inherent dichotomy in the celebration of this ‘diversity’ in India in his essay ‘India: From Identity to Freedom’.
Here’s an excerpt from Mehta’s essay.
India is a diverse country, a bewildering mosaic of communities of all kinds; its peculiar genius is to fashion a form of coexistence where this diversity can flourish and find its place. It has created cultures of political negotiation that have shown a remarkable ability to incorporate diversity.
This description of India is often exhilarating; and it is our dominant mode of self-presentation. But it’s very attractiveness hides its deep problems. The problem lies with the normative valorization of diversity itself. Diversity is something to be celebrated and cherished for often it is an indication of other values like freedom and creativity. But diversity has become a source of several intellectual confusions. Very schematically these are: Diversity is not itself a freestanding moral value. It makes very little sense to discuss diversity as carrying independent moral weight, even though under some circumstances, loss of diversity can be an indication of other underlying injustices. The invocation of diversity immediately invites the question: Diversity of what? This question cannot be answered without invoking some normative criteria about the permissible range of social practices. The limits to diversity cannot themselves be settled by an invocation of diversity.
The appeal to diversity is usually an aestheticized appeal. It is as if one were surveying the world from nowhere and contemplating this extraordinary mosaic of human cultural forms and practices. Such a contemplation of the world can give enormous enrichment and satisfaction and we feel that something would be lost; perhaps something of humanity would be diminished if this diversity were lost. But the trouble is that this view from nowhere, or if you prefer an alternative formulation, the ‘God’s Eye’ view of the world is a standpoint of theoretical, not practical, reason.
Most of us can conceptually grasp the fact of diversity; we may even try to recognize each other in an intense and important way, but it is very difficult to live that diversity with any degree of seriousness. From this theoretical point of view, cultures and practices form this extraordinary mosaic; from the practical point of view of those living within any of these cultures, these cultures and practices are horizons within which they operate. Even when not oppressive, these horizons might appear to them as constraints. It would be morally obtuse to say to these individuals that they should go on living their cultures, just because they’re not doing so might diminish the forms of diversity in the world. The imperatives of diversity cannot, at least prima facie, trump the free choices of individuals.
There is often a real tension between the demands of integration into wider society—the imperatives of forming thicker relationships with those outside the ambit of your own society on the one hand, and the measures necessary to preserve a vibrant cultural diversity on the other. What the exact trade-off is depends from case to case. But simply invoking diversity by itself will not help morally illuminate the nature of the decision to be made when faced with such a trade-off.
From this perspective, talk of identity and diversity is profoundly misleading because it places value on the diversity of cultures, not the freedoms of individuals within them. If the range of freedom expands, all kinds of diversity will flourish anyway. But this will not necessarily be the diversity of well defined cultures. It will be something that both draws upon culture and subverts it at the same time.
Diversity Talk is compatible with only one specific conception of toleration: segmented and hierarchical toleration. To be fair, India has been remarkably successful at providing a home for all kinds of groups and cultures. But each group could find a place because each group had its fixed place. To put it very schematically, it was a form of toleration compatible with walls between communities. Indeed, one of the major challenges for Indian society is that we have internalized forms of toleration that are suited to segmented societies. It is compatible with the idea that boundaries should not be crossed, populations should not mix, and that to view the world as a competition between groups is fine.
There is no country in the world that talks so much of diversity. Yet no other country produces such a suffocating discourse of identity; where who you are seems to matter at every turn: what job you can get, what government scheme you are eligible for, how much institutional autonomy you can get, what house you can rent. Conceptually, there is no incompatibility between celebrating diversity of the nation and refusing to rent housing to a Muslim just because they are Muslim. Such a conception of toleration does not work where the need is for boundaries to be crossed: people will inhabit the same spaces, compete for the same jobs, intermarry and so forth. Our moral discourse is so centred on diversity and pluralism that it forgets the more basic ideas of freedom and dignity.
Explore diverse opinions from some of the best minds in India with ‘Left, Right and Centre: The Idea of India’.
