Within five weeks, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency, suspending fundamental rights and imposing press censorship, and soon reckless policies said to be authored by the prime minister's younger son were unleashed on India's citizens. As the country suffered under the iron fist of an elected icon and her chosen heir, Tavleen observed that a small, influential section of Delhi's society people she knew well remained strangely unaffected by the perilous state of the nation. Before long, members of this circle were entrenched in key positions in the Indian government. In 1984, following Indira Gandhi's assassination, Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, fortified by a huge mandate from a nation desperate for change. But, belying its hopes, the young leader chose for himself a group of advisors, friends and acolytes from the drawing rooms of Delhi, as inexperienced as him and just as unaware of the ground realities of a complex nation. It was the beginning of a political culture of favouritism and ineptitude that would take hold at the highest levels of government, stunting India's ambitions and frustrating its people well into the next century. Seasoned reporter and distinguished newspaper columnist Tavleen Singh's Durbar is a sharp account of these turbulent years. Describing the Nehruvian era of her childhood, the Emergency of her youth and the political shifts that followed, Tavleen writes of the birth and evolution of insurgencies in Punjab and Kashmir, the blood spilt in assassinations and massacres, of crises internal and external and the clumsy attempts to set things right. A remarkable memoir, vivid with the colour of election campaigns and society dinners, low conspiracies and high corruption, Durbar rewards us with this truth: that if India is to achieve a better future the past can no longer be ignored or forgotten.

    forever.Before you walked into my life, all I did was survive...you made me rediscover what it means to be alive.HICCUPS is a tender love story that leaves you with a happy feeling. The story revolves around the life of the protagonist, how he struggles through life as a student taking care of his mother; paying for his engineering expenses with scholarships and awards. Enclosed in a wall of priorities doing well in his studies was paramount to him.What transpires when he meets a beautiful, witty and intelligent girl with a penchant for the good things in life? Destiny brings the two of them together under the unlikeliest of circumstances. What follows is a fascinating journey that will change their lives forever.

    This is the hilarious story of Ravan, a Maratha Hindu, and Eddie, a Roman Catholic, growing up to adolescence on the different floors of the CWD chawl No 17 in Bombay in the decade immediately after independence. First published in 1994, this cult classic is now being reissued for a new generation of readers. About the Author: Kiran Nagarkar was born in Mumbai. He wrote his first book in a language in which he had never written before—Marathi. The book was called Saat Sakkam Trechalis, recently translated as Seven Sixes Are Forty-Three, and is considered a landmark in post-independence Indian literature. He is the author of the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels Cuckold (which won the Sahitya Akademi Award), God's Little Soldier and The Extras, the sequel to Ravan and Eddie.

    Desperate to get noticed, Ananya takes some big steps.Over the weekend, Ananya is a changed person. Her skirt's shorter, her shirt's tighter and her hair falls stylishly over her shoulders. This is not what she wanted, but it wasn't about what she wanted anymore.Soon she realizes that changing just the outer appearance is not enough. The culture shock is too much for her to take. Will she survive the transition, without losing her integrity?

    Intellectually provocative and emotionally charged, Riot is a novel about the ownership of history, about love, hate, cultural collision, religious fanaticism and the impossibility of knowing the truth.

    The powerful district committee of Mityala routinely dismisses the suicide and refuses compensation to his widow. Gangiri, his brother, makes it his life’s mission to bring justice to the dead by influencing the committee to validate similar farmer suicides.Keyur Kashinath of the Democratic Party - first-time member of Parliament from Mityala, and son of Vaishnav Kashinath, the party’s general secretary - is the heir to his father’s power in Delhi politics. He faces his first crisis every suicide in his constituency certified by the committee as debt-related is a blot on the party’s image, and his competence.The brilliant farmer battles his inheritance of despair, the arrogant politician fights for the power he has received as legacy. Their two worlds collide in a conflict that pushes both to the limits of morality from where there is no turning back. At stake is the truth about ‘inherited’ democratic power. And at the end, there can only be one winner. Passionate and startlingly insightful, Shoes of the Dead is a chilling parable of modern-day India.A book that will make you stroll through India’s corridors of power and politics with a perfect portrayal of how its consequences creep into the lives of the farmers forcing them to commit suicide. Get ready to read a gripping tale by Kota Neelima.

    Her marriage to KK is perfect precisely because she is not in love with him, and their life on a tea plantation in the picturesque Anamalai hills is idyllic. Then, one rainy morning, a man arrives to take up temporary residence in the homestay they run. Shoola Pani is south Indian cinema's heartthrob, an actor in flight from his own superstardom, and the last thing he is looking for is emotional entanglement. But when Lena and he meet, something flares between them that neither could have anticipated. She becomes his Lee and he her Ship, and the place they inhabit Arcadia. Told partly from the point of view of Komathi, whose own relationship with Lena is fraught with buried truths from the past, this searing tale of unexpected passion and adultery reaffirms the magical power of love in all our lives.

    A brave hunter, Imchanok, totters when the ghost of his prey haunts him, till he offers it a tuft of his hair as a prayer for forgiveness. Pokenmong, the servant boy, by dint of his wit, sells an airfield to unsuspecting villagers. A letter found on a dead insurgent blurs the boundaries between him and an innocent villager, both struggling to make ends meet. A woman's terrible secret comes full circle, changing her daughter's and granddaughter's lives as well as her own. An illiterate village woman's simple question rattles an army officer and forces him to set her husband free. A young girl loses her lover in his fight for the motherland, leaving her a frightful legacy. And a caterpillar finds wings.From the mythical to the modern, Laburnum for My Head is a collection of short stories that embrace a gamut of emotions. Heartrending, witty and riddled with irony, the stories depict a deep understanding of the human condition.

    Rohit is not just his party’s next Prime Ministerial candidate, but also a reluctant heir to his family’s political legacy. Soon after, the wreckage of the plane is discovered scattered over the Rajasthan desert, sending the media as well the nation’s public into a tizzy. As Rohit’s sister sweeps the general elections, riding a massive wave of public sympathy, some uncomfortable questions remain. Who is behind this audacious plan? What could be the reason behind this high-profile assassination? The proverbial finger seems to point at India’s geopolitical enemy, Pakistan, but not everyone is convinced. Anwar Islam reunites with his mentor Colonel Vijay Gupta, and his friend Vishal Karandikar to find the missing pieces of this puzzle. As the trio explores the dark alleys hidden behind the façade of India’s seat of power, unbelievable conspiracies come to light. A gripping thriller, The Sympathy Wave takes it reader into the heart of political India to uncover a nest of intrigues.

    The stories in this collection seem sometimes like poetry, sometimes like detective fiction and sometimes like a novella, but in the end the reader knows that it is a after all, a short story.

    It is this changing world of Mysore which Mahesh Rao's novel speaks about. In this story, Mysore is gearing for an international remake with the construction of HeritageLand, Asia's largest theme park. Citizens and government officials alike prepare themselves for a complete makeover, one that not everybody welcomes. An elderly widow finds herself forced into a secretive new life, and another woman is succumbing to the cancerous power of gossip as she tries to escape her past. Another woman must come to terms with reality as her husband's troubling behaviour steeps out of hand. In Mysore, where the modern and the eclectic fuse to become something else entirely, everyone must hang on to their own escapes or find themselves swept under the carpet of the sublime change called development.

    Volume 1 includes three fast paced stories which are bound to keep you hooked - THE LAST SKYPE: What do you do when you are thousands of miles away from the person you love? You Skype.But what if what you see isn't what it actually is?IN MY HEAD: All killers have a motive. People don’t kill out of necessity; people kill because they want to kill. Would a mother murdering her own child have a motive too? He has seven days to find out.THE RITUAL:It's been 33 years. The comet is returning. His god is returning. The time is right for The Ritual. Will his god come home?

    In spite of seeming completeness, he suffered from inner chaos and restlessness which resulted in constant panic attacks. And suddenly everything stopped and he was helpless. He recognizes his incurable illness and decides to end his life but fortunately he fails before the attempt. But, his destiny unfolds a rare experience and he sees things which he thought did not exist. He leaves everything that he possessed behind and sets off on a random journey. Jako travels and experiences things which were beyond his imagination. He meets people who deceive and delude him, though he travelled to find answers, Jako returns home with treachery and delusion. On his way back, Jako reaches a small town with an isolated beach. He stays there meets a mysterious traveler; at first, Jako was confused to consider this man as a guardian angel or a mentalist. But as time passes they get along and this mysterious man solves all the riddles that surround Jako. They both sit at the beach and discuss life, Destiny, Freewill, Dreams, Dejavu's, Reality, Hypocrisy, Philosophy, Pleasure, God, Beauty, Love, Infatuation, Psychology, Wisdom, Intellect, Happiness, Boredom. Jako throws strange questions at this man and he answers them with wise stories. Jako answers all his questions by himself. Jako finishes his remarkable journey and returns home rehabilitated. P.S. : Kindly write a few words/lines review about this book. It will inspire others to read it.

    A thought provoking novel, in which the normal and the abnormal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, illusion and reality, resignation and desire rub shoulders.

    Mounting it, he puts one foot on the pedal, the other on the threshold, and waits for Teresa. This was how he used to wait for her at the station two years ago. He used to be in love with her then… Sahitya Akademi-awardee Damodar Mauzo is one of the most prominent, prolific and feted figures in contemporary Konkani literature. His writing spans an enormous range, straddling both urban and rural geographies, and runs the gamut of human emotion—the paralyzing helplessness of the small farmer in the face of implacable nature; the eternal ebbs and flows of the man-woman relationship; and the many humiliations, small and large, of raising a differently abled child. In the title story, an ineffectual husband finally reaches his boiling point; ‘Coinsanv’s Cattle’ is a heart-breaking depiction of how a farmer couple must make the impossible choice—send their beloved animals to slaughter or face starvation; and, in the quietly humorous ‘A Writer’s Tale’, a senior author becomes the unwitting subject of a woman’s fiction. Compiled with care, and smoothly, felicitously translated by Xavier Cota, Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa brings to readers tales which are as compellingly local in their flavour as they are universal in the ideas and emotions they evoke. This volume is a must-read.