टाटायन [Tatayan]


Girish Kuber - 2015
    It starts in the nineteenth century with Nusserwanji Tata - a middle-class Parsi priest from the village of Navsari in Gujarat, and widely regarded as the Father of Indian Industry - and ends with Ratan Tata - chairman of the Tata Group until 2012. But it is more than just a history of the industrial house; it is an inspiring account of India in the making. It chronicles how each generation of the family invested not only in the expansion of its own business interests but also in nation building. For instance, few know that the first hydel project in the world was conceived and built by the Tatas in India. Nor that some radical labour concepts such as eight-hour work shifts were born in India, at the Tata mill in Nagpur. The National Centre for the Performing Arts, the Tata Cancer Research Centre, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research - the list about the Tatas' contribution to India is a long one. A bestseller in Marathi when it was first published in 2015, this is the only book that tells the complete Tata story over two hundred years.

The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa


Kālidāsa
    The work is divided into two parts, Purva-megha and Uttara-megha. It recounts how a yakṣa, a subject of King Kubera (the god of wealth), after being exiled for a year to Central India for neglecting his duties, convinces a passing cloud to take a message to his wife at Alaka on Mount Kailāsa in the Himālaya mountains. The yakṣa accomplishes this by describing the many beautiful sights the cloud will see on its northward course to the city of Alakā, where his wife awaits his return.

Unposted Letter


Mahatria Ra - 2009
    Each letter contains deep and profound reflections on many topics related to life, work, situations, and attitudes. Each page contains ideas and concepts that can change the readers' view on many things and make their life richer and more enjoyable.The book contains simple lessons and principles and practical ideas that, if implemented, can make life more fulfilling and adverse situations easier to face. Whatever the reader is looking for - a resolution to a conflict, a personal or professional dilemma, practical advice, dealing with the loss of material possessions - they will find something that is useful and practical.Incorporating philosophy, concepts, ideas, and thoughts from various sources like the Bible and Bhagavad Gita and from great leaders and thinkers of the past and present, the book contains inspirational life lessons.These writings were published in the magazine Frozen Thoughts. Frozen Thoughts is a self-development journal that focuses on self-awakening, spirituality, and relationships. The magazine also covers a wide variety of personality development related subjects like parenting, psychology, management, religion and science, and stress management.About T. T. RangarajanT. T. Rangarajan (Rajan) is a New Age guru and spiritual expert. He is also involved in writing self-help books and is a personality development expert.Rajan is the Editor of Frozen Thoughts. The magazine contains his teachings and messages, and is now read in several countries across the world. He helps people in their quest for self-realization, and preaches that every individual leaves his own imprint on the world, through his life experiences. Rangarajan founded Alma Mater, an organization that teaches holistic personality development techniques. It is not affiliated to any religion or any political organization. Its ideology is t

समांतर [Samantar]


Suhas Shirvalkar
    The story keeps us guessing about the details until the last page and is a pacy read.

Makam


Rita Chowdhury - 2013
    The novel, by award-winning writer Rita Chowdhury, documents the struggles, suffering, and tragedies of the Chinese Assamese over the past two centuries, culminating in their wrongful expulsion from India during the 1962 Sino-Indian War.Based on interviews with more than one hundred Chinese Assamese, Chowdhury’s moving narrative blends nineteenth century history with the tragedy of 1962, revealing how the Chinese were brought to India decades earlier by the British in order to work as laborers on the tea plantations. Once there, the Chinese married into different communities and began to speak with a mix of their native and local languages. However, during the Sino-Indian war, the Chinese Assamese, though now completely assimilated, were brutally and unjustly forced to leave India because of their Chinese origin. Around fifteen hundred Chinese Assamese from Makum, a small town in upper Assam, were imprisoned as spies and prisoners of war, before being deported to China. The untold story of this terrible incident, captured here in Makam, created an uproar in India when first published.

Dhandha: How Gujaratis Do Business


Shobha Bondre - 2013
    But there is no other community that fully embodies what the term stands for than the Gujaratis. Shobha Bondre’s Dhandha is the story of a few such Gujaratis: Jaydev Patel—the New York Life Insurance agent credited with having sold policies worth $2.5 billion so far; Bhimjibhai Patel—one of the country’s biggest diamond merchants and co-founder of the ambitious ‘Diamond Nagar’ in Surat; Dalpatbhai Patel—the motelier who went on to become the mayor of Mansfield County; Mohanbhai Patel—a former Sheriff of Mumbai and the leading manufacturer of aluminium collapsible tubes; and Hersha and Hasu Shah—owners of over a hundred hotels in the US. Travelling across continents—from Mumbai to the United States—in search of their story and the common values that bond them, Dhandha showcases the powerful ambition, incredible capacity for hard work, and the inherent business sense of the Gujaratis.

Untouchables: My Family's Triumphant Journey Out of the Caste System in Modern India


Narendra Jadhav - 1993
    For thousands of years the untouchables, or Dalits, the people at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, have been treated as subhuman. Their story has rarely been told. This remarkable book achieves something altogether unprecedented: it gives voice to India's voiceless. In Untouchables, Narendra Jadhav tells the awe-inspiring story of his family's struggle for equality and justice in India. While most Dalits had accepted their lowly position as fate, Jadhav's father rebelled against the oppressive caste system and fought against all odds to forge for his children a destiny that was never ordained. Based on his father's diaries and family stories, Jadhav has written the triumphant story of his parents -- their great love, unwavering courage, and eventual victory in the struggle to free themselves and their children from the caste system. Jadhav vividly brings his parents' world to light and unflinchingly documents the life of untouchables -- the hunger, the cruel humiliations, the perpetual fear and brutal abuse. Compelling and deeply compassionate, Untouchables is a son's tribute to his parents, an illuminating chronicle of one of the most important moments in Indian history, and an eye-opening work of nonfiction that gives readers access and insight into the lives of India's 165 million Dalits, whose struggle for equality continues even today.

2014: The Election That Changed India


Rajdeep Sardesai - 2014
    . . anyone who wants to understand Indian politics or think they do should read it’ -Indian Express‘Delightfully written . . . he has a sharp eye for details, especially the actions of political leaders’ -India Today‘Captures the drama of 2014 and the men who powered it’-Open‘Holds you to your seat, often on the edge . . . A procession of India’s colourful political characters—Lalu Yadav, Amit Shah, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and many more come intimately close through the author’s accounts’ -The Hindu‘Candid and forthright . . . and deliciously indiscreet’ -Hindustan Times‘A racy narrative that goes beyond recording immediate political history’ -TehelkaThe 2014 Indian general elections has been regarded as the most important elections in Indian history since 1977. It saw the decimation of the ruling Congress party, a spectacular victory for the BJP and a new style of campaigning that broke every rule in the political game. But how and why? In his riveting book, Rajdeep Sardesai tracks the story of this pivotal election through all the key players and the big news stories. Beginning with 2012, when Narendra Modi won the state elections in Gujarat for a third time but set his sights on a bigger prize, to the scandals that crippled Manmohan Singh and UPA-II, and moving to the back-room strategies of Team Modi, the extraordinary missteps of Rahul Gandhi and the political dramas of election year, he draws a panoramic picture of the year that changed India.

Jejuri


Arun Kolatkar - 1978
    Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.

A Book of Women Poets: From Antiquity to Now


Aliki Barnstone - 1980
    Here in one volume are the works of three hundred poets from six different continents and four millennia. This revised edition includes a newly expanded section of American poets from the colonial era to the present."[A] splendid collection of verse by women" (TIME) throughout the ages and around the world; now revised and expanded, with 38 American poets.

Silence! The Court is in Session


Vijay Tendulkar - 1968
    In some ways typical, in others uncharacteristic, this play was written for a Rangayan performance in 1968. Drafted mere days before its staging, it has since been broadcast by the BBC in English and made into a film by Satyadev Dubey. This edition of the play, titled Silence! The Court is in Session and translated by Priya Adarkar, also features an introduction by Kumud Mehta.

Classic Tales and Fables for Children


Leo Tolstoy - 1905
    At the age of twenty-one, he started a school for peasant children on his family's estate, and after returning from a stint in the military, he founded another, experimental school with the motto, "Come when you like, leave when you like."Fascinated by the simple charm and the fresh innocence with which the children of his schools told stories, several years later, when Tolstoy began writing about his own childhood, he emulated the uncomplicated narrative style and disarming directness of the tales told by the children of his acquaintance. After completing War and Peace, he incorporated these stories in a series of easy readers, and continued to work on them even while writing Anna Karenina. Known as The ABC Book (Azbuka) and subsequently The New ABC Book (Novy Azbuka), these marvelous readers were widely adopted in Russia and were still in use in the Soviet era.The tales and fables in this volume come mainly from these two well-loved primers. Part I consists of stories about his own childhood, all told with beautiful simplicity. Part II contains Tolstoy's free adaptations of fables from Aesop and from Hindu tradition. Part III is devoted solely to his longest and most famous children's work, the fairy tale "Ivan the Fool and His Two Brothers."Never patronizing and often humorous, these small gems reveal Tolstoy's deep appreciation for and understanding of children's artistic and moral sensibilities.

The Prisons We Broke


Baby Kamble - 2008
    The Prisons We Broke provides a graphic insight into the oppressive caste and patriarchal tenets of the Indian society, but nowhere does the writing descend to self-pity. With verve and colour the narrative brings to life, among other things, the festivals, rituals, marriages, snot-nosed children, hard lives and hardy women of the Mahar community. The original Marathi work, Jina Amucha, re-defined autobiographical writing in Marathi in terms of form and narrative strategies adopted, and the selfhood and subjectivities that were articulated. It is the first autobiography by a Dalit woman in Marathi, probably even the first of its kind in any Indian language.

शाळा [Shala]


Milind Bokil - 2004
    He attends the same private tuitions as his classmate, Shirodkar, just for a glimpse of her, and follows her back home every day. Sadly, she has not a clue that he is pining away for her, because in their society, boys and girls don't interact freely, much less talk about love. When he's not negotiating the tricky alleys of love, Mukund sits around the school field or loafs about town with his close friends, Surya, Chitre and Phawdya, railing against the education system, and debating ideas such as discipline and Bohemianism. Set in a small Maharashtrian town during the Emergency of 1975, Shala is a heart-warming, nuanced novel about the adolescent struggles that are as tortuous in real time as they are amusing in retrospect.

एक होता कार्व्हर


Veena Gavankar - 1981
    His courage and conviction, to get an education in spite of growing up in a society ridden with prejudice and reeking with the aftermath of the apartheid, is astutely covered by the author.Short, simple and neatly written, Gavankar has touched every aspect of the life and struggles of Carver, his achievements and his many talents. Known as the Peanut Man in America and all around the world today, Carver is said to be the man behind the development of the quintessential American spread, the peanut butter. His message - about persevering in the face of adversity and making something out of whatever one has in life - is simply but clearly depicted, and this biography has served as an inspiration to hundreds of Indians all over the country.Ek Hota Carver, which began as a result of a mother’s search for bedtime stories for her children, has been on the best-selling Marathi literature for over 30 years, from the time it was first published. Soon to be available as an audiobook, Ek Hota Carver has also had the distinction of being run into 34 editions.