07 January,2023 02:38 PM IST | New Delhi | IANS
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A new year beckons a new reading list. Here are the latest titles to get your hands on and begin the new year with steadfast commitment.
We live in a world where there is a new fad diet, superfood, supplement or nutrition theory every month. There are so many tricks to optimising workouts, peak performance, burning fat, living longer, sleeping better and biohacking your immune system. Wellness has become a part of mainstream discourse like never before, and the result is an overwhelming barrage of seemingly contradictory information.
But here's one simple truth: good health impacts every aspect of life, be it productivity at work, interpersonal relationships or a balanced family life. In Hacking Health, Mukesh Bansal takes on the mammoth task of demystifying the science, simplifying the research and tracing the story of our relationship with our body. Through a combination of personal experience and cutting-edge science, this is a book that draws from ancient wisdom and also debunks unscientific myths to help you make smart choices in pursuit of good health. From nutrition and fitness to sleep and immunity, weight management and mental health to ageing and longevity, this book delves into the breadth and depth of holistic health and helps you navigate the lines between science and pseudoscience.
Can we use science to hack the human body's functioning and be our most efficient, fittest and happiest selves? Hacking Health takes a 360-degree approach to answer this very question and help you unlock your body's potential.
In Search of an Adarsh Indian State. In India, public policies are all around us. Questions are rarely asked of the Indian State-the institution that makes rules, bends them and punishes others for breaking the laws it creates. The privileged can afford not to think about the State because we have given up on it. The not-so-privileged have resigned themselves to a State that provides short-term benefits. Either way, we seldom pause to reflect on why the Indian State works the way it does.
Missing in Action aims to change such perceptions through sketches from everyday experiences to illustrate India's tryst with public policymaking. It acquaints the reader with some fundamental concepts of the public policy discipline. It explains the logic (or the lack of it!) of the Indian State's actions, shortcomings, constraints, and workings. Jargon-free and accessibly written, the book achieves the difficult task of both entertaining and educating.
An ode to the majestic life of the late Lata Mangeshkar, Lata: A Life in Music celebrates art in its totality and tells the life story of India's most loved vocal artists. The result of Yatindra Mishra's decade-long dialogue with the great singer, it also explores the lesser-known aspects of the great artist, introducing the readers to Lata Mangeshkar as an intellectual and cultural exponent and providing a rare glimpse into the person behind the revered enigma.
At the confluence of cinema, music and literature, this is the most definitive biography of the voice of the nation that also documents sociocultural changes from the late British era through post-Independent India right up to the twenty-first century. This is the story of the various myths, mysteries, truths and contradictions which make a human an icon and also make an icon incredibly humane.
One sultry Mumbai night, business tycoon Mihir Kothari takes a bite of a souffle and drops dead. According to the CCTV footage, celebrity chef Rajiv Mehra is the killer. It seems like an open-and-shut case.
Or is it? A catastrophic accident on the day the chef is to be hanged allows him to escape and, driven by an inner calling, pursue a new life. Chased by shadows he thought he had left behind, torn by spurned love, the chef
returns in search of the real killer so that he can prove his innocence. But there is a problem. Unknown to him, the killer has chosen his next target: the chef himself!
Souffle is a rich, layered thriller that explores life, love and the passions that motivate people to do unexpected and impossible things.
'If this psychological, compelling and unpredictable novel doesn't keep you hooked, give up reading' - ASHWIN SANGHI
Paradise: that elusive place where the anxieties, struggles, and burdens of life fall away. Most of us dream of it, but each of us has very different ideas about where it is to be found. For some it can be enjoyed only after death; for others, it's in our midst-or just across the ocean-if only we can find eyes to see it.
Traveling from Iran to North Korea, from the Dalai Lama's Himalayas to the ghostly temples of Japan, Pico Iyer brings together a lifetime of explorations to upend our ideas of utopia and ask how we might find peace in the midst of difficulty and suffering. Does religion lead us back to Eden or only into constant contention? Why do so many seeming paradises turn into warzones? And does paradise exist only in the afterworld - or can it be found in the here and now?
For almost fifty years Iyer has been roaming the world, mixing a global soul's delight in observing cultures with a pilgrim's readiness to be transformed. In this culminating work, he brings together the outer world and the inner to offer us a surprising, original, often beautiful exploration of how we might come upon paradise in the midst of our very real lives.
Kannappan is posted to Perumalpuram as the new schoolteacher. The village lies in the black soil region of Tamil Nadu where the river Tamirabarani flows. He's an outsider in this village with Veerayyan, a local farmer, as his only guide and friend.
Once settled in his role, Kannappan observes the everyday brutality faced by the farmers at the hands of the sadistic, all-powerful landlord-the Master. Child marriage is common in the village and so is the appalling practice of marrying young lads to older women who then serve as their father-in-law's consort. Through his gentle yet probing conversations with the villagers, Kannappan tries his best to show the villagers a better way of life. The farmers who had begun protesting the excesses meted out to them by the upper-caste landlord soon find an ally in Kannappan. The schoolteacher's sympathies for their cause bolster their waning spirits and replenishes their resolve to fight back.
Ponneelan's first novel is a tour de force. Now translated for the first time, Black Soil lays bare the atrocities faced by the farmers and the human cost of building a better tomorrow.
There are many challenges facing business corporations today-the pandemic we have barely moved on from, economic recession, rapid changes in consumer behaviour and technological and competitive disruptions. These challenges stick out like the visible tip of an iceberg, while culture, the biggest challenge, is like the slow-moving, gigantic mass that lurks deep under the surface. We cannot deal sufficiently with superficial problems if we do not understand the depths that drive them.
'Culture eats strategy for breakfast' is a widely accepted saying in the business world, often attributed to Peter Drucker. This is as true for corporate India as it is for its consumers. Yet, we spend more time and money studying our consumers and their cultures than we do ourselves.
The Company We Keep is a market research-based exploration of Indian corporate culture. It looks beyond the glamour and jargon of the business world to individual stories that share real personal insights into the aspirations, vulnerabilities, pressures and possibilities of corporate careers and lives. These are urgent conversations we need to keep having as we reflect, review and decide where we can go from here.
Is Pluto a planet? Or a dwarf planet? The controversy rages. But this planet, on the fringes of our solar system, has immense astrological significance, unexplored by the Vedic and Western astrologers. Author and scientific astrologer Greenstone Lobo believes Pluto symbolises destruction and regeneration-as the mythological Rudra Shiva.
In a scary and uncertain world-on the edge because of a pandemic, economic crises, ecological disasters and pandemonium in politics, Lobo looks towards Pluto to make sense of the past, present and the future. He describes the planet's journey over the last 250 and the next fifty years, as well as the grand scale on which it can operate. Exploring its character and impact, Lobo discusses his techniques for predictions, the cyclical nature of Pluto, how it changed the world order and its relationship with astrological signs.
From his unique insider's perspective-as someone familiar with the ways of Pluto through his research-Lobo predicts what to expect and how to prepare for it through 91 predictions. What will the next fifty years bring? When will the world see the last of the pandemic? Who will lead India next? Can India win the next Cricket World Cup? What does the future hold for Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt? What lies in store for star kids Suhana Khan, Hrehaan Roshan, Aarav Akshay Kumar and Aaradhya Bachchan? What about Messi, Angelina Jolie, Rihanna, Beyonce and others who hold our imagination today? Through these predictions of good fortune and disasters, scandals and affairs, readers will gain an intimate sense of the rogue planet and its centrality to astrology.
The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries - from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.
In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl's mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana's comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world.
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that Parvati set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry - with Pampa Kampana at its centre. Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.
Reservation or affirmative action is a hugely controversial policy in India. While constitutionally mandated and with historians, political scientists and social activists convinced of its need, many resist it and consider it as compromising 'merit' and against the principle of equality of opportunity. In These Seats Are Reserved, Abhinav traces the history and making of the reservation policy.
How were groups eligible for reservations identified and defined? How were the terms 'depressed classes' and 'backward classes' used in British India and how have they evolved into the constitutional concepts of 'Scheduled Castes', 'Scheduled Tribes', and 'Other Backward Classes' in the present day?
The book delves into the intellectual debates that took place on this matter in the Constituent Assembly, the Supreme Court and Parliament. Several contentious issues are examined dispassionately: are reservations an exception to the principle of equality of opportunity? Do quotas in government service undermine efficiency? Can 'merit' really be defined neutrally? What is the thinking behind the rule that no more than 50 per cent of the available seats or positions can be reserved? Deeply researched and ably narrated, this volume is a compelling addition to every thinking individual's library.
Written by the poet Thiruvalluvar, the Kamattu-p-pal is the third part of the Tirukkural - one of the most important texts in Tamil literature. The most intimate section of this great work - it is also, historically, the part that has been most heavily censored. Although hundreds of male translations of the text have been published, it has also only ever been translated by a woman once before. Tirukkural is award-winning writer Meena Kandasamy's luminous translation of the Kamattu-p-pal.
Meena Kandasamy delves into this classic and provides the first feminist interventionist translation into English-remaining true to the desire throbbing through the lifeblood of the text, while retaining the drama that pervades the quintessential Tamil world of exaggerated hurt, lover's quarrels and evenings lost to longing.
With her trademark wit, lyricism and passionate insight, Meena weaves a magic spell: taking the reader on a journey through 250 kurals, organised under separate headings - 'The Pleasure of Sex', 'Renouncing Shame', 'The Delights of Sulking' - the result is a fresh, vital, and breath-taking translation that conveys powerful messages about female sensuality, agency, and desire. It is a revolution 2000 years in the making.
Dr Oliver Harding is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani law professor.
Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver's long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew arrives to stay with her. Drawn to them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent-both metaphorically and in Ruhaba's spirited engagement with the student movements on campus.
After protests break out demanding diversity across the university, Oliver finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems to fade in and out of reach, Oliver reacts in ways shocking and devastating.
Sonora Jha has created a complex character both in tune and out of step with our time, an erudite man who first inspires and then challenges our sympathies. As the novel reaches its shocking conclusion, Jha compels us to re-examine scenes in a new light, revealing a depth of loneliness in unlikely places, the subjectivity of innocence, and the looming peril of white rage in America.
An explosive and tense work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens.
Fitness looks hard. Weight maintenance looks difficult.
It is a culture that has normalized conversations that have been internalized so deeply that we forget that many are the same half-truths or untruths repeated for so long that they become part of our conditioning.
Normalise this: fitness is easy.
This book will show you that all it takes is ten minutes a day to start that journey and will be packed with exercise plans, movement ideas and lifestyle changes punctuated by stories of real journeys of real people. Get up. Move with Yasmin Karachiwala. And see how your body and your life changes.
The first definitive anthology of Gopinath Mohanty's short stories
Oblivion and Other Stories is an anthology of twenty short stories of Gopinath Mohanty, the doyen of Oriya (now Odia) literature. The stories, written across a half-century (1935-1988), sample his oeuvre of writings and the variety of his themes-from Da (mid-1930s) to Oblivion (1951) to The Upper Crust (1967) to Lustre (1971) and Festival Day (1985).
They capture the forgotten others, the banality of marginal living on life's edge-of the poor, the tribals and ordinary people-invisible in the feudal landscape of Orissa in the twentieth century.
Originally written in Oriya by the Padma Bhushan awardee, these have now been translated for the first time into English and recreate the social life of mid-twentieth century India.
The embellished past in the stories is not one of nostalgia but a full-toned portrait of society. Marginalization is the running thread: dispossession, disenfranchisement, class/caste social exclusivity and lack of education.
'I could hear wild animals, as hungry as I was, growling down below, having caught my human smell. They attempted to scale the rocks. If there was one among them that could climb the cliff, my helplessness would turn me into its dinner tonight.'
On the eve of Independence Day, Mahesh reads a small news item about a mysterious forest dweller who appeared in the middle of a rainforest out of nowhere and disappeared without a clue. Immediately, he recognizes the man to be Freddie Robert, their friend, guide, leader and the one they had all named Yudhisthira, who had disappeared into the forest several months ago, in search of a rare new bird. Mahesh and his four friends, each named after a Pandava brother, and Panchali, or Meera, decide that the only way they can ascertain whether the man was indeed Freddie is to return to the forest and search for him.
Thus begins Dattapaharam, a powerhouse of a novel by the critically acclaimed and bestselling Malayalam author V.J. James. A rumination on solitude, man's connection with nature and the strings that attach us to this world, this is a surreal novel where the author's imagination soars like an eagle and words flow like the untouched springs in a rainforest. At times a fable on the modern world, at times a search for identity amid a quest of discovery, and on the whole a moving tale that takes the reader deep into the forests to understand what really makes us human, Dattapaharam is a powerful novel for our anthropocentric age, written by one of the most exciting voices to emerge from the Indian subcontinent.
From the bestselling, award-winning author of Funny Boy and The Hungry Ghosts comes a breathtaking reimagining of ancient India through the extraordinary life of Yasodhara, the woman who married the Buddha.
In this sweeping tale, at once epic and intimate, Shyam Selvadurai introduces us to Siddhartha Gautama-who will later become "the enlightened one," or the Buddha-an unusually bright and politically astute young man settling into his upper-caste life as a newlywed to Yasodhara, a woman of great intelligence and spirit. Mansions of the Moon traces the couple's early love and life together, and then the anguished turmoil that descends upon them both as Siddhartha's spiritual calling takes over and the marriage partnership slowly, inexorably crumbles. Eventually, Yasodhara is forced to ask what kind of life a woman can lead in ancient India if her husband abandons her-even a well-born woman such as herself. And is there a path she, too, might take towards enlightenment?
Award-winning writer Shyam Selvadurai examines these questions with empathy and insight, creating a vivid portrait of a fascinating time and place, the intricate web of power, family and relationships that surround a singular marriage, and the remarkable woman who until now has remained a little-understood shadow in the historical record. Mansions of the Moon is an immersive, lively and thrilling feat of literary imagination.
The Sufi Scientist is the most definitive English language biography of Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose, the father of modern science in India. In his time, he came close to, and many believe was robbed of, his due to winning at least two Nobel Prizes, if not one, for his work on wireless communication and the discovery of nervous system in plants. This biography will carefully reconstruct his life, times, work, legacy, childhood, early years, influences and paint an intimate portrait of the father of modern science in India.
On a rainy night of June 25, 1976, in a bizarre turn of events, Aslam Sher Khan was born in an abandoned bungalow at the outskirts of Motihari, India. Interestingly, George Orwell had also been born in the same house exactly 73 years earlier. Aslam's birth was facilitated by a mysterious midwife who vanished into thin air just after Aslam's birth. Later, Aslam begins to believe that he has some supernatural connection with George Orwell and tries to become a writer. His literary ambitions bring him to America where he meets Jessica, an ex-pornstar, and now an actor and activist, and falls hopelessly in love with her. This novel is about these two unlikely characters and their journeys. Their love story is heading towards a fairy tale end when Aslam gets tangled in a political event in India, and something happens that changes his life forever.
The Navarasas are the nine human emotions that guide and direct our daily lives. First mentioned in the ancient Hindu scripture the Natya Shastra, the rasas have defined the core of Indian aesthetics; our art, dance, theatre, and literature are drawn from the navarasas and comprise our primal human emotions. These are:
Shringara or love; Vira or heroism; Hasya or humor; Karunya or compassion; Raudra or fury; Bhayanaka or fear and terror; Adbuta or wonder; Bibhatsa or disgust and Shanta or peace.
AND Haksar translates 20 verses corresponding to each rasa from ancient Sanskrit texts such as the Subhashitavali by Vallabhadeva (15th century Kashmir); the Sharngdharapaddhati by Sharngadhara (14th century Rajasthan); and the Suktimuktavali by Jalhana (13th century Deccan).
This collection moves away from a mere interpretation of the rasas (on which there are many, such as books that discuss the navarasa in dance, or theatre) to an actual translation from original sources.
Anirudha Bhattacherjee
The man who championed feel-good Hindi cinema
The enigma of Basu Chatterji was that his films did not have the box office ingredients that could make them a distributor's hot pick, nor were they over-the-top Art House stuff that needed mindless unravelling over tasteless cups of tea. In other words, he was the quintessential 'middle-of-the-road' filmmaker, a genre that he founded in Bollywood. His films were about the common man and "common" problems like finding employment and love, marital issues, social and economic inequalities, and joint family conflicts - sans the gravitas of say, a Bimal Roy, or the gloom identified with Guru Dutt's later films. They were also sans the excesses that commercial Hindi cinema was all about.
Hrishikesh Mukherjee once said it was Basu, and not he, who spearheaded the 'middle-of-the-road' cinema (also referred to as the 'other cinema') in the 1970s. Interestingly, Basu Chatterji made more films - and more successful ones, too - in the 1970s than Mukherjee, Basu Bhattacharya and Gulzar combined. Yet, his artistic and commercial merit remains undervalued.
As a person, Basu was much like his "common man" too: mild, unobtrusive, and media shy. He was not a super achiever in the real sense of the term, but he was empowered enough to make a difference to the people around him. He preferred not to scout for stars. Like Satyajit Ray, he mostly made his films with rookies, who were often amateurs, and gave them respectability as artists. But for names like Amol Palekar, Vidya Sinha, Pearl Padamsee, Vijayendra Ghatge, Zarina Wahab, Nandita Thakur, Girish Karnad, Rakesh Pandey, Bindiya Goswami, Bharti Archrekar, Ranjit Chowdhry, among others, Indian cinema would be poorer.
Basu Chatterji: The Face of the Common Man is an effort to go behind the scenes of his films. Anecdotal in nature, the book places Basu's cinema in the context of the changing times, like the emergence of Rajesh Khanna, of Kishore Kumar and of Amitabh Bachchan, the Emergency, the return of Sarat Chandra's stories, and the introduction of disco and the sudden decadence of Hindi cinema in the 1980s.
"What should I study to best prepare me for success in today's working world?"
This is the most common question I get from young people (and the parents of those) who are making the transition from their school to college education. They want to know what fields they should study, what universities or programs to attend, and what career track will give them the best chance to succeed.
While most people are looking for a simple, practical response, my answers are far from straightforward.
Why?
Because the professional world isn't as straightforward as it once was, especially in India. The modern workplace is changing rapidly. While many of my generation chose a career in engineering, or medicine, or business and then stuck to it, most people entering college today will end up changing careers at least once, if not many times. And many of the careers that young people will have in the future don't even exist yet.
Making educational choices in this brave new world can often feel like trying to hit a moving target. Many of the old assumptions about education and careers are becoming outdated, and our educational institutions are struggling to provide young people with the support and guidance they need to thrive in this rapidly changing environment.
Today's students, and their parents, need new guides and frameworks to make decisions about what educational opportunities to pursue and what to focus on as they embark on their professional journeys.
Drawing on his experiences of working in the field of education for nearly 25 years as the founder of ISB, Ashoka University, Harappa, and several other programs, Pramath Sinha pulls together the best and most practical advice available for young people (and their parents) who are facing some of the most important-and challenging-choices of their professional lives.
A landmark addition to contemporary Tibetan letters
This anthology of contemporary Tibetan literary essays in English will bring together the best and most well-known Tibetan writers from both Tibet and the diaspora, writing in Tibetan, English and Chinese.
Modern Tibetan literature is only just over thirty years old. Scholars and writers date its birth to 1980, when the first Tibetan language journal, Tibetan Art and Literature, was published in Lhasa. Since then, the essay has become one of the primary modern Tibetan art forms-all the major Tibetan writers, whatever their primary genre, tend to write personal essays as well. For instance, Pema Bhum is primarily a memoirist, Kyabchen Dedrol primarily a short story writer, and Tenzin Tsundue and Bhuchung D. Sonam are primarily poets. Then of course there are other writers like Jamyang Norbu and Sengdhor who are known and celebrated for the art of the essay.
After all, as rich as Tibetan literature is, with subgenres ranging from guidebooks and travel writing (lamyig) to songs of praise (totsok), epic poetry, and the novel, the essay as a piece of deeply reflective and personal writing is a new and noteworthy occurrence in Tibetan letters. Therefore, this much-needed book of personal essays by Tibetan writers has the potential to become a landmark addition to contemporary Tibetan letters, as well as a welcome contribution to global literature.
Among the writers are Pema Bhum, Tenzin Tsundue, Bhuchung D. Sonam, Woeser, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Kyabchen Dedrol, and Jamyang Norbu, some of the most respected and well-known Tibetan writers working today.
"This is going to be the most unique cricket tour since the Second World War."
Ravi Shastri's prophetic words came true as India won the historic India-Australia series after 32 years in 2021. Bharat was known as the 'Eyes and Ears of the Tour' as he was the only journalist covering this event live and seeing the drama unfold in real time. He drove the length and breadth of Australia chasing the series with the unnerving shadow of Covid always trailing after him. His camaraderie with the Indian team and his standing as the most respected journalists in the world now makes this book incredibly special.
Filled with anecdotes from on and off the field, including conversations with coaches, players and other stars of the show, and inputs from his colleague Gaurav Joshi, this book hopes to transport you to the battleground of this never-imagined script. it promises to bring to life the most unique cricket tour, not just since World War II, but perhaps from the time when the sport was conceived.
When everything is taken away from you, love and courage are all you have left.
In 1938, the Nazis come to Vienna. They hate anyone who is different, especially Jewish people.
Fritz and Kurt's family are Jewish, and that puts them in terrible danger.
Fritz, along with his father, is taken to a Nazi prison camp, a terrible place, full of fear. When his father is sent to a certain death, Fritz can't face losing his beloved Papa. He chooses to go with him and fight for survival.
Meanwhile, Kurt must go on a frightening journey, all alone, to seek safety on the far side of the world.
In this extraordinary true story, Fritz and Kurt must face unimaginable hardships, and the two brothers wonder if they will ever return home . . .
A retelling of the Sunday Times bestselling The Boy Who Followed his Father into Auschwitz, a Daily Mail and Sunday Express book of the year:
'Shattering, astonishing' Daily Mail
'Extraordinary' Observer
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