The Best of Satyajit Ray


Satyajit Ray - 2001
    This collection features four new stories, translated specially for this volume. It also contains all eight stories that Satyajit Ray translated himself into English.

RESET: Regaining India’s Economic Legacy


Subramanian Swamy - 2019
    The monograph vociferouslydemanded that socialism be sacrificed for a competitive market economic system, so India cangrow at 10 per cent per year, achieve self-reliance, full employment and produce nuclear weaponry.The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi denounced the plan as dangerous.Fifty years later, Swamy redefines his path-breaking ideas on India-specific economic developmentin his seminal work, Reset. It undertakes a nuanced analysis of the manner in which the highlyprosperous Indian economy witnessed a long, accelerated decline due to persistent British imperialistaggression, and compares the distinctive manner in which Asian giants—India and China—sufferedat the hands of imperialism. He critically analyses the highs and lows of the Nehruvian model ofcentralized economic planning borrowed from the Soviet Union, and the debilitating circumstancesthat impelled him, as Commerce Minister in Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar’s government, todraw up a blueprint for economic reforms.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain


Vikram Chandra - 1995
    Combining Indian myths, epic history, and the story of three college kids in search of America, a narrative includes the monkey's story of an Indian poet and warrior and an American road novel of college students driving cross-country.

Untouchable


Mulk Raj Anand - 1935
    This novel describes a day in the life of Bakha, sweeper and toilet-cleaner, as he searches for a meaning to the tragic existence he has been born into - and comes to an unexpected conclusion.

East, West


Salman Rushdie - 1994
    In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another. Yet he remains a writer who insists on our cultural complexity; who, rising beyond ideology, refuses to choose between East and West and embraces the world.

The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma


Gurcharan Das - 2009
    The Mahabharata is obsessed with the elusive notion of dharma - in essence, doing the right thing. When a hero falters, the action stops and everyone weighs in with a different and often contradictory take on dharma. The epic's characters are flawed, but their incoherent experiences throw light on our familiar dilemmas. Gurcharan Das's best-selling book India Unbound examined the classical aim of artha, material well being. This, his first book in seven years, dwells on the goal of dharma, moral well being. It addresses the central problem of how to live our lives in an examined way - holding a mirror up to us and forcing us to confront the many ways in which we deceive ourselves and others. What emerges is a doctrine of dharma that we can apply to our business decisions, political strategies and interpersonal relationships - in effect, to life itself.

Tales from a Vending Machine


Anees Salim - 2013
    Unfortunately, a stint at the airport lounge's tea vending machine does not seem to be getting her any closer to her dreams. To pass the time she daydreams, chats with air-hostesses and takes part in mock anti-terrorist drills. At home, she studies her English, fights with her twin and engages in a secret love affair with her cousin and neighbour, Eza. But when a scandal threatens her tenuous happiness, she must pull out all stops on her overactive imagination, and seek a terrible revenge.

India’s Most Fearless: True Stories of Modern Military Heroes


Shiv Aroor - 2017
    . .Their own accounts or of those who were with them in their final moments.India’s Most Fearless covers fourteen true stories of extraordinary courage and fearlessness, providing a glimpse into the kind of heroism our soldiers display in unthinkably hostile conditions and under grave provocation.

Most and More


T.T. Rangarajan - 2011
    

This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War


Samanth Subramanian - 2013
    For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere: into the bustle of Colombo, the Buddhist monasteries scattered across the island, the soft hills of central Sri Lanka, the curves of the eastern coast near Batticaloa and Trincomalee and the stark, hot north. With its genius for brutality, the war left few places and fewer people, untouched.What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Samanth Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past and to other battles from other times, he draws out the story of Sri Lanka today-an exhausted, disturbed society, still hot from the embers of the war. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how religion and state conspire, how the powerful become cruel and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.This Divided Island is a harrowing and humane investigation of a country still inflamed.

Pandeymonium: Piyush Pandey On Advertising


Piyush Pandey - 2015
    You’ve seen cobblers, carpenters, cricketers, trains, villages, towns and cities. What makes Piyush different is the perspective from which he views the same things you’ve seen, his ability to store all that he sees into some recesses of his brain and then retrieve them at short notice when he needs to. That ability combined with his love, passion and understanding of advertising and of consumers make him the master storyteller that he is. In Pandeymonium, Piyush talks about his influences, right from his childhood in Jaipur and being a Ranji cricketer, to his philosophy, failures and lessons in advertising in particular and life in general. Lucid, inspiring and unputdownable, this memoir gives you an inside peek into the mind and creative genius of the man who defines advertising in India.

Bombay, Meri Jaan: Writings on Mumbai


Jerry Pinto - 2003
    Reclaimed from the sea, these would become the modern city of Bombay. A marriage of affluence and abject poverty, where a grey concrete jungle is the backdrop to a heady potpourri of ethnic, linguistic and religious subcultures, Bombay, renamed Mumbai after the goddess Mumbadevi, defies definition. Bombay, Meri Jaan, comprising poems and prose pieces by some of the biggest names in literature, in addition to cartoons, photographs, a song and a Bombay Duck recipe, tries to capture the spirit of this great metropolis. Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Dilip Chitre, Saadat Hasan Manto, V.S. Naipaul, Khushwant Singh and Busybee, among others, write about aspects of the city: the high-rise apartments and the slums; camaraderie and isolation in the crowded chawls; bhelpuri on the beach and cricket in the gully; the women's compartment of a local train; encounter cops who battle the underworld; the jazz culture of the sixties; the monsoon floods; the Shiv Sena; the cinema halls; the sea. Vibrant, engaging and provocative, this is an anthology as rich and varied as the city it celebrates.

Police, Arrests & Suspects: The True Story of a Front Line Officer


John Donoghue - 2015
     Who’s afraid of the Ginger Bread Man? Why do police like big busts? How can a priest assist in a violent robbery? When does Hitler figure in police negotiations? Why can making mashed potato get you arrested? When do police deploy the banana phone? What happens when you die if CSI don’t like you? Come on patrol with PC Donoghue and discover the funny, interesting and bizarre side of life on the front line of British policing. Police, Arrests & Suspects is the third fascinating account of a front line police response officer in ‘The True Story of a Front Line Officer’ series. John’s books remain hugely popular today, with over 600 5-star Amazon reviews combined. WARNING: Contains Humour & Traces of Nuts

Congress-Mukt Bharat


Amit Bagaria - 2021
    For the first 92 years, the 135-year-old party was headed by a Nehru-Gandhi family member for only 11 years, even though Nehru and Indira were collectively the PM of India for 28 years. Then things changed. Indira was the party president for seven consecutive years, and succeeded by her son Rajiv Gandhi for six years. After Rajiv’s assassination in 1991, PV Narasimha Rao was party president for five years. Sitaram Kesri was the next Congress president for 18 months. Enter Sonia Gandhi. Barring a 20-month period when her son Rahul held the post, she has been Congress president for 23 years. During her ‘reign’, the party has seen an average 31.6% decline in vote share and a 50.2% reduction in seats in the Lok Sabha. Due to her not allowing a proper election for the post of party president — as was the norm for the first 92 years — the Congress is collapsing. Ever since the Modi-led NDA routed the party in 2014, several Congressmen have been complaining about “lack of effective leadership.” Narendra Modi. Whether you admire him or belittle him, adore him or chastise him, praise him or ridicule him, love him or hate him, no Indian can pretend to ignore the man. Since September 2013, he has been the biggest newsmaker in India . On 15th August 2020, Modi became the longest-serving non-Congress PM of India. The first three chapters of this easy-to-read book are about Congress party’s corruption. The next three analyse the 2019 elections in great detail. Then, there is a chapter about the Left Front and one on the Congress’ performance in each state since Sonia became the chief. The next eight chapters are about Modi, his successes, his failures, and the work he has done in 80 months. The longest chapter, divided into 14 sections, details the successes and failures of India’s 14 prime ministers. “Is Congress Becoming Anti-India” and “Congress-Mukt Bharat” are the final two chapters. The Appendix lays out ‘Agenda 2024’ for India.

The Girl Who Ate Books: Adventures in Reading


Nilanjana Roy - 2016
    Desani to Vikram Seth, Indian writing in English has come a long way over the last hundred years. And Nilanjana Roy – voracious eater of books and sharpest of critics – has taken stock of it all. One of India’s most widely read journalists, Roy has been writing reviews, columns, essays and features for over two decades. 'The Girl Who Ate Books' revisits the best of these occasional pieces and weaves them together with a set of new personal essays. From early memories of living in a house made of books to encounters with men and women who hoarded books to the author’s first taste of the printed word, this is a memoir of reading, loving and living with books like no other. Bringing together writers across generations – from the obscure Sake Dean Mahomet to the mischievous Khushwant Singh to the fiery Arundhati Roy – 'The Girl Who Ate Books' gives us a ringside view of the theatre of Indian writing in English over several decades, and especially the last two. Written in the author’s understated but unfailingly elegant style, this is an essential collection for those who live to read and read to live.