Brought up on a hill-station in north-west India, he killed his first leopard before he was nine and wenton to achieve a legendary reputation as a hunter.Corbett was also an author of great renown. His books on the man-eating tigers he once tracked are not only established classics, but have by themselves created almost a separate literary genre. Man Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, one which offers ten fascinating andspine-tingling tales of pursuing and shooting tigers in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of this century. The stories also offer first-hand information about the exotic flora, fauna, and village life in this obscure and treacherous region of India, making it as interesting a travelogueas it is a compelling look at a bygone era of big-game hunting.

    In October 2011 when he presented his passport at immigration in Germany, Kapoor was unceremoniously whisked away into Interpol custody. India had weeks earlier issued a red-corner notice for his arrest after connecting him to audacious idol thefts in two Tamil Nadu temples.And when the US authorities subsequently raided Kapoor's warehouses in New York more skeletons came tumbling out of his closet. They recovered no less than $100 million worth of stolen Indian art! This was just Kapoor's inventory - he had been in business for close to four decades and the true scale of his loot is incalculable. The US declared Kapoor one of the most prolific commodities smugglers in the world.This is the unbelievable true story of how Kapoor was caught, told by one of the men who had for years been chasing Kapoor and is still tracking idols that have passed through his hands. From complicit police officers to corrupt museum officials to jilted girlfriends and from two-faced academics to shady temple looters and smugglers - this book has it all. Prepare to be shocked at the 21st-century pillaging of India's temples by a glittering cast of suave criminals.

    Each set of family members occupies a floor of the home, in accordance to their standing within the family. Poisonous rivalries between sisters-in-law, destructive secrets, and the implosion of the family business threaten to unravel bonds of kinship as social unrest brews in greater Indian society. This is a moment of turbulence, of inevitable and unstoppable change: the chasm between the generations, and between those who have and those who have not, has never been wider. The eldest grandchild, Supratik, compelled by his idealism, becomes dangerously involved in extremist political activism—an action that further catalyzes the decay of the Ghosh home.Ambitious, rich, and compassionate, The Lives of Others anatomizes the soul of a nation as it unfolds a family history, at the same time as it questions the nature of political action and the limits of empathy. It is a novel of unflinching power and emotional force.

    Who was Indira Priyadarshini, the person after whom her grandfather named her? And why her? What is her legacy as India’s first—and only—woman prime minister?Over the course of a long, hot summer and a curious friendship with an artist who is working on a biography of Mrs Gandhi, young Indira gets tangled up in the life and times of her memorable namesake. Sometimes by design and sometimes by accident, story after story comes alive—about a childhood spent in Allahabad growing the Vanar Sena, of a youthful romance with the charming Feroze Gandhi, of stints in jail and elephant rides through pouring rain, a magnificent audacity that catapulted India onto the international stage, and of the final, tragic end that ripped apart the fabric of the nation.Real and imagined worlds, the past and present, text and image all entwine as Indira walks us through the most formative decades of political life of India.

    Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the legendary Pandavas brothers in the Mahabharat, the novel gives us a new interpretation of this ancient tale. The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at their side through years of exile and a terrible civil war involving all the important kings of India. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her strategic duels with her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husbands' most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female redefining for us a world of warriors, gods, and the ever-manipulating hands of fate.

    I knew that agreeing to write my story would need me to be completely honest, as that’s the way I have always played the game. It would require talking about a number of aspects I have not shared in public before. So here I am, at the end of my final innings, having taken that last walk back to the pavilion, ready to recount as many incidents as I can remember since first picking up a cricket bat as a child in Mumbai thirty-five years ago." - Sachin Tendulkar

    P. Dalvi’s retelling of the Sino-Indian war that took place in 1962 - a war that India lost. Dalvi fought the war as the Commander of the 7th Infantry Brigade in NEFA (North-East Frontier Agency).His account of the war is graphic and telling. He was captured by the Chinese forces and held for seven months. As a participant of the war, he was privy to all that went on at the battlefield as well as behind the scenes. Based on his firsthand experiences, he recounts the events that occurred between September 8, 1962 and October 20, 1962.As early as 1951, China silently and steadily began to work its way onto Indian soil. Even in the face of indisputable evidence, India insisted on maintaining cordial relations with the Chinese. China seemed only too happy to play along.Dalvi narrates the manner in which India’s own political leadership traitorously worked against its cause. In no uncertain terms, he holds three men responsible for India’s defeat - Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon, and General Brij Mohan Kaul.Issuing orders from Delhi, they seemed to be clueless about the situation on the battlefield. Undoubtedly, when they were rushed into battle, the Indian soldiers - underfed, ill-equipped, and unprepared as they were - never stood a chance against the powerful Chinese army. Regardless of that, the soldiers fought bravely and laid down their lives for their homeland.Dalvi claims that the apathy and the sheer ineptitude of those at the helm of India’s political affairs sacrificed hundreds of valuable lives. Brigadier Dalvi’s detailed narrative of the massacre of the Indian soldiers, a horror that he witnessed firsthand, is heart-rending.The book was published in 1969. Among all the books based on the subject of the 1962 Sino-Indian war, this book is considered to be one the most striking and authentic versions. Due to its sensitive subject matter and its portrayal of India’s leaders in a harshly negative light, the book was banned by the Indian Government upon its release.

    Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.No book has traced the arc of modern India by taking readers so close to the action. Offering an intimate view inside the lives and minds of India’s political giants and its people, Sharma explains how the complex forces of family, caste and community, economics and development, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian leaders since Indira Gandhi. The ultimately encouraging message of Ruchir’s travels is that, while democracy is retreating in many parts of the world, it is thriving in India.

    You've been nothing but an inconvenience. Guised as an instructive manual, A Handbook For My Lover chronicles six years in the life of an unconventional affair between a young woman writer and her older photographer lover.The sensuous epistle documents the woman's demands and desires, her fantasies and eccentricities as she negotiates the minefield that is their relationship.A Handbook For My Lover is a poetic, erotic account of two lovers fated to seek refuge in the transient. It is a celebration of all that is momentary and fleeting rather than that which is permanent.

    The ‘invisible threads’ Nehru said held together an improbable union divided by language, religion and ethnicity have snapped under the burden of Modi’s Hindu-supremacist rule.In this blistering critique of post-Independence India from Nehru to Modi, K.S. Komireddi charts the unsound course of Indian nationalism: its cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India’s past and demeaning bribes to India’s minorities. He argues that the missteps of the nation’s founders, the mistakes of Nehru, the betrayals of his daughter and her sons, the anti-democratic fetish for technocracy inaugurated by Narasimha Rao and carried to the extremes by Manmohan Singh—all of them laid down the road on which Hindu nationalists rode to absolute power.Hindu bigotry, ennobled under Modi as a healthy form of self-assertion, has reopened old fissures that threaten to devour India’s hard-won unity. Yet bad times have also smashed the citizenly complacency that brought India to this point. There are multitudes who now realise how extraordinary and brave the idea of India was to begin with; there is a resurgent struggle against its extinction, and the assertion of new voices to wrest the republic from the forces of religious majoritarianism.A short history of the modern Indian nation, Malevolent Republic is also an impassioned plea for India’s reclamation. ‘Kapil Komireddi is one of the most thoughtful and thorough journalists writing today. His range of interests is impressive in its breadth and cosmopolitanism; his is a rare voice that can comment on global affairs from a truly comparative perspective.’ AMITAV Ghosh ‘Kapil Komireddi is a write of flair, originality and, above all, an absolute independence of mind … His ability to see through posturing and prejudice makes his work both distinctive and compelling. This book deserves to be widely read within India and beyond.’RAMACHANDRA GUHA

    Journeying along the edge of the peninsula, Samanth Subramanian reports upon a kaleidoscope of extraordinary stories.In nine essays, Following Fish conducts rich journalistic investigations: among others, of the famed fish treatment for asthmatics in Hyderabad; of the preparation and the process of eating West Bengal's prized hilsa; of the ancient art of building fishing boats in Gujarat; of the fiery cuisine and the singular spirit of Kerala's toddy shops; of the food and the lives of Mumbai's first peoples; of the history of an old Catholic fishing community in Tamil Nadu; of the hunt for the world's fastest fish near Goa.Throughout his travels, Subramanian observes the cosmopolitanism and diverse influences absorbed by India's coastal cities, the wthdrawing of traditional fishermen from their craft, the corresponding growth of fishing as pure and voluminous commerce, and the degradation of waters and beaches from over-fishing.Pulsating with pleasure, adventure and discovery, and tempered by nostalgia and loss, Following Fish speaks as eloquently to the armchair traveller as to lovers of the sea and its lore.

    The dam burst the night JKLF boys were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. As Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay,' were Farooq's prophetic words. Killings were almost a daily occurrence. Bombs and firings occurred not far from the chief minister's residence in the most secure zone. Gun-toting youth in trucks were seen close to the cantonment. Kashmiris believed that they were on the verge of liberation. It was prime time for Pakistan spies; not just militants but reputed businessmen, doctors, engineers and government officials were meeting their handlers in Delhi, Kathmandu, Lahore and Rawalpindi. No one trusted anyone else. A.S. Dulat was posted there at the time. Soon he saw Intelligence Bureau colleagues being picked off one by one. It was a long, slow haul to regaining control. From then to today, though he is now retired, he has had a continuous engagement with Kashmir. The initiatives launched by the Vajpayee government between 1998 and 2004 were the high point of this constant effort to keep things in balance in a delicate state. As Vajpayee said, Kashmir was a problem that had to be solved. In this extraordinary memoir that reads like a thriller, Dulat gives a sweeping dramatic account of the difficulties, success and near triumphs in this effort, showing the players, the politics, the strategies and the intent and sheer ruthlessness of the meddlers from across the border. Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years paints an unforgettable portrait of politics in India's most beautiful but troubled state.

    With him ride his wives, his sisters, his daughters, his aunts and his distant female relatives. Unhindered by a relatively recent conversion to Islam, these women will help found a culture of such magnificence and beauty that it will become a by-word for opulence in the world. These Mughal women of Hindustan—unmarried daughters, eccentric sisters, fiery milk-mothers and beautiful wives, will contribute to the great syncretic culture of the Mughals by writing biographies, building monuments, engaging in diplomacy, and patronizing the arts. And even as the zenana changes from the earlier nomadic, tented spaces to the later more sequestered grandeur within the high stone walls of mighty qilas, the influence of the women remains visible and unquestioned. This book looks at the lives of these Mughal women, and the enigma of their disappearance, except as objects of curiosity, from our collective memory.

    A combination of essays, short stories, poems and extracts from published works in both English and Malayalam, this anthology affords a tantalizing glimpse into the rich and varied layers of experience that Kerala has to offer.

    We were life-going-to-seeders.' Living in a sunny barsati in south Delhi, Saurav Jha and Devapriya Roy are your average DINK couple, about to acquire a few EMIs and come of age in the modern consumerist world. Only, they don't. They junk the swivel chairs, gain a couple of backpacks and set out on a transformational journey across India. On a very, very tight budget: five hundred rupees a day for bed and board. And the Heat and Dust project begins.Joining the ranks of firang gap-year kids and Israelis fresh out of compulsory army service, they travel across a land in which five thousand years of Indian history seem to jostle side by side. It is, by turns, holy and hectic, thuggish and comic, amoral and endearing. In buses that hurtle through the darkness of the night and the heat of the day, across thousands of miles, in ever new places, the richness of this crowded palette spills over into their lives. From rooms by the hour to strange dinner invitations, from spectacular forts to raging tantrums, this is a youthful account of wanderlust and whimsy, of eccentric choices that unfold into the journey of a lifetime ... and a supreme test of marriage.