But what went unreported in the media was the nuclear fallout that had lasting impact on the inhabitants of Pokhran, especially Chaitanya.It quickly becomes clear that the conspiracy surrounding this radioactive fallout runs pretty deep in the establishment. Those who have had a hand in covering it up are willing to go to great lengths to ensure that the secrets stay buried.Chaitanya sets on a journey to expose the truth. With Zara by his side, he is sure to bring justice to his people. But when fate snatches Zara away from him, he is consumed by revenge. Undeterred by threats, he embarks on a mission that takes him from the deserts of Pokhran to those of Syria, and into the halls of MIT.A heady page turner, at its very core, Pokhran is an exceptional journey of revenge, courage, love and the unbeatable human spirit.

    These finely nuanced stories provide a rare glimpse into the complex and mysterious inner lives of human beings.Happy Birthday was longlisted for the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award 2014. It has also been voted the TOP title on Flipkart’s editors picks for this month: http://www.flipkart.com/books/~editor...A dedicated friend undertakes one last labour of love for a childless woman. Nadia - married into money - finds herself facing uncomfortable truths about her comfortably numb marriage. A Mumbai slum-girl dreams of speaking words valuable enough to be translated into English. An American tourist seeking nirvana sets off a sudden chain of events when his bag is stolen, and destiny plays her hand. A retired civil servant of modest means struggles to support his snooty foreign-returned daughter.Meghna Pant’s knife - sharp stories are compelling, emotionally intelligent and provide a rare glimpse into the strange workings of the human heart. They evade neat categorization andare the perfect read for all curious spirits."These are stories with a large heart and a keen eye, deeply aware of the complex, sometimes uncomfortable realities of India, its many layers. Meghna Pant knows how to create characters that will surprise and move you." – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni "Deft, merciless and expertly-tuned parables for the new Indian century."– Jeet Thayil"Meghna Pant pierces one’s heart with the reality and depth of her stories, wrapping up her tales with unanticipated yet undeniable flourish. Exceptionally thought-provoking narratives that manage to be provocative and inspirational in the very same breath."– Ashwin Sanghi"These intimate stories juxtapose a range and register of aerial and emotional perspectives, with craft, delicacy and an intensely human sensibility."– Namita Gokhale

    These caustic poems with their black humour, sharp sarcasm, tart repartees, semantic puns and semiotic plays irritate, shock and sting the readers until they are provoked into rethinking the ‘time-honoured’ traditions and entrenched hierarchies at work in contemporary society. The poet stands myths and legends on their head to expose their regressive core. She uses words, images and metaphors as tools of subversion, asserting, in the process, her caste, gender and regional identities while also transcending them through the shared spaces of her socioaesthetic practice. She de-romanticises the world and de-mythifies religious and literary traditions by re-appropriating the hegemonic language in a heretical gesture of Promethean love for the dispossessed. The poet interrogates the tenets of a solipsistic modernism to create a counterpoetic community speech brimming with emancipatory energy.

    Circling themes of intimacy and time, they return to the urgency of conversation: that fragile bridge across the frozen attitudes that divide our world. But at the heart of the collection is a deeper preoccupation, with those blurry places where humans might walk with gods, where the body might touch the beyond, where the enchanted might intersect effortlessly with the everyday. Where one stumbles upon what the poet simply calls ‘love without a story’.

    An untouchable himself, he led a resolute and adroit struggle against untouchability andattempted to reformulate the terms of nationalist discourse in India. This selection draws from his major works, speeches, letters and memoranda.These writings span across forty years (1915-1956) and are organised into eleven sections: reminiscences, concepts, methodology, ideology, religion, caste, untouchability, identity, economics, nationalism, constitutionalism and law. The introduction by the editor Valerian Rodrigues provides aglimpse of his momentous life,the framework and content of his writings, and the reasons for his growing stature in India over the years. Every section and excerpts included within it are introduced and endnotes support citations and incomplete references in the excerpts. Suggestions for furtherreadings are offered through a classification of all his writings and speeches and writings on him and his work. The chronology of events anchors the context of the writings.The work is the first of its kind on Ambedkar and is a representative collection of the whole range of issues that engaged his attention. as the most comprehensive compilation on him and his works, this volume is going to be an indispensable reference for concerned students, scholars and activists.

    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.

    Together, the 4 boys set about irreverent, sometimes hilarious rebellions against their regimented fishbowl existence at a brown-sahib institution in a turbulent, changing India.

    His handicraft imports business has unexpectedly collapsed and cash is drying out quickly, his wife thinks he is a loser and society considers him irrelevant. Meanwhile, his closest friends and family all seem to be running flourishing businesses and living luxurious lives in Surat, the diamond capital of India. A trip to China to scout for a new consumer goods business offers a glimmer of hope. But Raghu instead gets sucked into the black-market trade in the back alleys of Beijing. Everything about this new opportunity goes against his god-fearing, vegetarian, middle-class mindset - can he quash his natural instincts to make a success of it? Darkly comical, 'Made in China' is a soul-stirring and thrilling entrepreneurial journey of a man willing to do anything he can to make it big.

    Ghias Beg isn’t traveling light; he has with him a pregnant wife and three small children. When his family stops at Qandahar—which is today in modern-day Afghanistan, at that time was on the outer fringe of the Mughal Empire—his wife gives birth to a baby girl named Mehrunnisa. Thirty-four years later, this winter child will become an Emperor’s wife and the most powerful woman in that Mughal dynasty. Mehrunnisa is The Twentieth Wife of Emperor Jahangir, Akbar’s son, a woman so beloved of her husband that he grants her most of the powers of sovereignty. She signs on imperial documents called farmans and mints coins in her name and truly comes into power during the sixteen years of her marriage to Jahangir in The Feast of Roses . Mehrunnisa’s niece (her brother’s daughter and Ghias’ granddaughter) marries one of Jahangir’s sons, Prince Khurram who becomes Emperor Shah Jahan after his father’s death. When this niece dies in childbirth in June of 1631, Shah Jahan builds the Taj Mahal in her memory. But it is Mehrunnisa’s grand-niece (and Ghias’ great-granddaughter) Princess Jahanara who takes center stage in the third novel of the trilogy, Shadow Princess . She’s seventeen years old when her mother dies and her father, in his grief, leans upon her to the extent that she’s never allowed to marry. Throughout her life, Jahanara has to pacify warring brothers who each want the throne after their father, and engages in a rivalry with a sister, Roshanara—in supporting differing brothers politically, and in falling in love with the same noble at court, Najabat Khan. Powerful in her father’s harem, immensely rich with half her mother’s estate bestowed upon her and all of her mother’s yearly income, Jahanara still fails to turn the course of India’s history and has to find love with Najabat Khan in unconventional ways.

    In Nishkriti (Deliverance), the strong-willed Shailaja, the youngest daughter-in-law in a joint family, is made an outcast as a result of a misunderstanding; much later, her elders realize their mistake, just in time to save the family from disintegration.

    Master administrator. Author of the Arthashastra. But before the legend, there was the boy: Vishnu Gupta. Pataliputra, capital of the great Nanda empire, is teeming with crime and corruption. Granted unlimited authority by the hedonistic emperor Mahapadma Nanda, evil mastermind Maha-amatya Kartikeya has the city in a vice-like grip. But another name bubbles up through the chaos; there is talk of a young genius, Vishnu Gupta. When the Maha-amatya investigates the rumours, he recognises a future rival in the boy. He is determined to destroy this competition from the roots – family and all. Vishnu must gather all his wits and his formidable knowledge to protect everything he holds dear. The holy scriptures, his brilliant interpretations of the Vedas and the power of his unmatched mind: these are the only tools he has against the might of the most powerful man in the empire. Epic storyteller Ashok K. Banker imagines the life and formative years of India’s greatest genius, a man whose influence persists down the ages. In this first instalment of a thrilling trilogy, he recreates Chanakya’s early struggles and triumphs.

    Lying and killing for the sake of peace and order, Indra felt he was unworthy of being king of heaven. A new king was installed on his throne! Now it was up to Indra’s wife Shachi to ensure that his honour survived. Would the gods ever regain their respect for her beloved?

    The stories in this book have their roots in the Indian culture but express universal emotions that are experienced across the boundaries of regions, caste, and creed. Varied emotions of love, heartbreak, aloofness, anxiety, fear, and longing are expressed in this book.There is one story in which movie star Dilip Kumar breaks the heart of a young girl. There is another where a man pushes off another from a moving train. Raavi Paar also tells the story of a Muslim man whose wish is to be cremated after death and not be buried. There is also a story about a married woman who realises that the only reason for her husband to marry her was to use her as cheap labour.The title of this book is an incident from the author’s own life. During the India-Pakistan partition, the author was mistakenly claimed as their own child by another family. Raavi Paar consists of stories which will touch the reader’s hearts due to the simplicity and intricacy of emotions portrayed by the author.

    This is his second time in Mayong, in rural Assam, since 1998, when he had come for a few days to attend his father's best friend's funeral. As the wedding preparations gather pace, Pablo is amused as well as disturbed by squabbling aunts, dying grandmothers, cousins planning to elope for love and hysterical gossips. And on this heady theatre of tradition and modernity hovers the sinister shadow of insurgency and the army's brutal measures to quell militancy. In the days leading up to the wedding, which ends in an unspeakable tragedy, Pablo finds first love, discovers family intrigues and goes through an extraordinary rite of passage. Written with clinical precision, this gripping first novel announces the arrival of one of the most original voices from India's North-East.

    When Khela, the oppressive king of the neighbouring Vrishabhavati, begins to overwhelm and invade Ashtagani, Avishi rises to protect her settlement but at a high cost.Separated from her love, her settlement broken, with a brutal injury needing an amputation of her leg, what can Avishi do to save herself?Will her disability let her continue to be the warrior that she was?Can she fight Khela and save everything dear to her?