India Memoir

The audio edition of On the Grand Trunk Road is finally available, revised and updated with new material. Focusing on Coll's journeys in conflict-ridden India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan as a bureau chief for The Washington Post, On the Grand Trunk Road reveals a little-seen area of the world where violence, corruption, and greed have had devastating effects on South Asians from all walks of life.

We begin with a man off balance: one in one thousand, the only child in town whose polio leads to partial paralysis. We meet his future wife, chanting Hai Rams for Gandhiji and choosing education over marriage. On one side of the line that divides this book, we follow them as their homeland splits in two and they are drawn together, moving to Canada and raising their children in mining towns and in crowded city apartments.

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments - his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.

On 20 January 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the Vice President of the United States of America, making her the first person of Indian descent, and the first woman to reach this position. This was hardly surprising, for Kamala - the daughter of a breast-cancer scientist Indian mother and a Stanford University emeritus professor of economics Jamaican father - has been known to blaze a trail for herself in her chosen fields.

Best-selling and Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie offers incisive, often humorous takes on literature, culture, and world events in this New York Times Notable Book. In these stimulating pieces, Rushdie addresses a variety of subjects, including the death of the novel, India, soccer, and the Rolling Stones.

On 20 October 1962, high in the Himalayas, on the banks of the fast-flowing Nam Ka Chu, over 400 Indian soldiers were massacred, and the valley was overrun by soldiers of China's People's Liberation Army. Over the course of the next month, nearly 4,000 soldiers were killed on both sides, and the Indian army experienced its worst defeat ever. The conflict (war was never formally declared) ended because China announced a unilateral ceasefire on 21 November and halted its hitherto unhindered advance across NEFA and Ladakh.

In 2010, just as the Indian government was stepping up its counterinsurgency operations in the country's Naxal-affected areas, Alpa Shah set out on a seven-night march with a guerrilla platoon across 250 kilometres of the same territory. An anthropology professor, she wanted to understand why, against the backdrop of a shiny new India, the country's poor had shunned the world's largest democracy and united with revolutionary ideologues.

Never Cheat a Holy Man is my memoir about the three enlightening adventure-filled years in the mid-60s when my family and I lived in East Pakistan. As "memsahib", my job was to supervise a Muslim all-male household workforce. When the cook warmed the toast in his armpits and chilled the chicken in the refrigerator - still alive, I realized I was not communicating adequately. I acquired new skills mediating between cook and laundryman who were at constant odds.

Mumbai, 2008. On the night of November 26, Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists attacked targets throughout the city, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, one of the world's most exclusive luxury hotels. With a deep understanding of the region and its politics and a narrative flair reminiscent of Midnight in Peking, journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy vividly unfold the tragic events in a real life thriller filled with suspense, tragedy, history, and heroism.

Dara Shukoh - the emperor Shah Jahan's favourite son, and heir-apparent to the Mughal throne prior to being defeated by Aurangzib - has sometimes been portrayed as an effete prince, incompetent in military and administrative matters. But his tolerance towards other faiths, and the myths and anecdotes surrounding him, continue to fuel the popular imagination. Even today, over 350 years after his death, the debate rages on: if this 'good' Mughal had ascended the throne instead of his pugnacious younger brother, how would that have changed the course of Indian history?

Sally, a beautiful young pregnant woman, came to the hospital supposedly for pre-term labor pains but delivered a fully mature, healthy boy. Her face, smiling with relief after the stress of delivery, quickly changed to apprehension. “Doctor, what will you tell my husband and family? Can you please tell them that the baby is premature?” She asked. “How can I?” Dr. Thomas replied helplessly. “The baby is fully grown and mature, as anyone can see.”

Zeyad Masroor Khan was four years old when he realized that an innocent act of clicking a switch near a window overlooking the street could trigger a riot. As the distant thud of a crowd grew closer and calls for murder rent the air, he got his first taste of growing up in Upar Kot, a Muslim ghetto in Aligarh. Khan's world was far-removed from the Aligarh of popular imagination-of poets, tehzeeb and the intellectual corridors of the Aligarh Muslim University.

Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers, or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets. There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.

Basta decir que la historia lo conoce como El Chacal, y que es por aclamación el villano mayor en la galería de los presidentes de México. Sin embargo, es mucho más que eso: en su juventud, ese indígena huichol se convirtió en uno de los mejores astrónomos de su época y fue un brillante matemático, geógrafo, alpinista, cartógrafo y uno de los mejores militares mexicanos. Jamás perdió una batalla, algo único en la historia del país.

25 AUGUST 2015 was to be a happy day for Indrani Mukerjea—a birthday celebration had been planned in the family. But everything changed when she was accosted by a group of officers of the Mumbai Police in plain clothes as she exited Anand Ashram that day. The charge: the murder of her daughter, Sheena Bora.

Sanjeev Kumar was the antithesis of the typical Bollywood hero doing romance and action. Not one to crave glamorous roles, he was more interested in versatility. From his mature roles in films like Mausam and Aandhi to his comic timing in Angoor or the angst of person with disabilities in Koshish-he was truly a thinking man's actor. His expressive face, inflections and pauses, natural ease for lip-syncing, all of it made him the complete package.

Driven by family values and Indian ethos, yet wholly contemporary and pioneering in their thinking and best practices, Hero firms today are renowned for putting mutually beneficial relationships at the very core of their business philosophy. The book goes deep inside the 'family spirit' that brought employees, customers, channel partners, suppliers and local communities together to create success, welfare and well-being for millions over the past seven decades. A rare story that proves how a principle-driven organization can create exceptional value for society.

Before the Soviet invasion of 1980, Enjeela Ahmadi remembers her home - Kabul, Afghanistan - as peaceful, prosperous, and filled with people from all walks of life. But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.

From being Champion of Champions to one of the world's top cricket commentators to Team India's head coach, Ravi Shastri has an incomparable perspective when it comes to the game of cricket. In Stargazing: The Players in My Life, the legendary all-rounder looks back at the extraordinary talent he has encountered over the years.

Driving terrified me; I hadn't done it in a decade. But if I could drive in India, I could drive anywhere. If I drive a tuk-tuk, I could drive anything. And if I said yes, I'd get to spend 10 days with her. Would that be enough time to find out who she was, what she wanted, and then convince her to abandon that and want me instead? There was only one way to find out.