S&S India – förlag

From a marketing expert with nearly three decades of worldwide brand development experience working with some of today’s most recognizable and successful brands—including Dove, McDonald’s, and Vicks—comes a comprehensive and accessible guide to brand-building in today’s global marketplace.Spark demystifies the process of building a brand in today’s increasingly competitive, crowded marketplace. Written by marketing expert Paddy Rangappa, who has worked with some of the most successful global brands—including Dove, McDonald’s, and Vicks—this book provides a practical framework to help readers navigate the various stages of brand-building, including: — How to cultivate insight to address a specific business challenge — How to construct a full business plan around that challenge — How to leverage a plan for revenue growth Filled with case-studies of how successful global brands were established from the ground up and featuring brand strategies and tips for developing successful brand campaigns with ad agencies, Spark is a helpful and practical guide for any professional committed to growing and nurturing a powerful brand.

From an acclaimed economist and politician, a unique, never-before-seen look at the life of one of India’s most well-known prime ministers—Indira Gandhi—and her work to protect the environment and champion the preservation of nature and the climate.Indira Gandhi, prime minister of India for sixteen years, was as charismatic as she was controversial—both admired and criticized for her political judgments and actions. Yet what has never been fully revealed is her lifelong commitment and love for nature and how that defined her very being. Weaving personal, political, and environmental history, politician and scholar Jairam Ramesh presents a compelling portrait of an extraordinary public figure. He chronicles how and why she made a personal passion a public calling; how her views on the environment remained steadfast even as her political and economic stances evolved; how her friendships with conservationists led to far-reaching decisions to preserve India’s biodiversity; how she urged, cajoled and persuaded her colleagues in making significant decisions regarding forests and wildlife; and how her own finely developed instincts and initiatives resulted in landmark policies, programs, and laws that have endured to this day. Drawing extensively from unpublished letters, notes, messages and memos, Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature is both a lively, engaging narrative about the little-known parts of Indira Gandhi’s life, and also sheds important light on climate change and sustaining the environment—today’s most pressing global issues.

‘How did she die? How did she die . . . like that? It has to be poison of some kind. No disease can possibly kill in this manner.’   Kanimozhi has a meltdown—she collapses, thick spurts of blood erupting from her mouth, ears and nose. Mumbai-based journalist Hormazd, who has borne witness to the horrifying episode, flees the scene, only to develop a persistent cough. Elsewhere, the young admin manager Amod’s body burns, while Altaf, a low-wage worker struggling to return to the Middle East, is found dead, his skin covered in a mosaic of rashes.   Within days, large swathes of Mumbai seem to be battling a toxic invader, an enemy without a name, a disease, with a long list of alarming symptoms, that is hastily named Bombay Fever.   Before it annihilates an entire city, three men of science, Sairanjan Rout, Aayush Vajpeyi, and Anil Bansal, must isolate the adversary. Will they succeed? Or will Bombay Fever claim them first? Find out in bestselling author Sidin Vadukut’s latest offering—a heart-stopping medical mystery. 

As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ... Lockdown Liaisons is a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down each story an unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. There is an exhausted woman who wishes her husband saw her as something more than an outlet for his sexual needs, there is a weaver in Benaras who has a magical relationship with his loom which changes as the lockdown proceeds and there is a young married couple who grow increasingly disenchanted with each other as the lockdown shows no signs of letting up. Read these stories and more, in this moving and relatable collection of love stories by Shobhaa De.

As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ... Lockdown Liaisonsis a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down each story an unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. In this little collection of diverse stories you will meet tired but spunky women who refuse to accept unsatisfactory relationships during lockdown. Then there is the travails of the man who is stuck with a woman he has been casually dating because of the suddenness of the lockdown. And in one other story we see how the uncertainties unspooled by the lockdown impact the wedding plans of a couple planning their destination wedding.

As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ... Lockdown Liaisonsis a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down each story an unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. Through these stories you will meet a host of interesting characters, dealing with the lockdown in ways that are unusual and unique. There is the woman who measures her life against the whistles of her neighbour's pressure cooker, the doctor who tries to feebly justify a hard decision that she takes and the Bollywood star who is stuck in his lavish weekend home and raves and rants to no avail! Yet another narrative tells us about a wealthy and difficult old woman who is forced to spend lockdown in her caregiver's small flat.

As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ...LockdownLiaisonsis a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down each story a unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. In these pages ofLockdown Liaisons,we have the touching story of a special little boy and how he negotiates his intimate relationship with Ganpati during the lockdown. Then there are the deluded and feisty ruminations of a snobbish old lady who never understood why her husband left her for the woman that he did. In another story, entertaining and satirical, a single man struggles to manage life under lockdown with his young son and tries to forge a relationship with an attractive neighbour whose daughters go to school with his son. And then in ';In Malibu Mansions'we have a woman coping with losing her high profile job during the lockdown and the news that a neighbour has died by suicide by jumping off her balcony.

As the world is shaken by a virus, Shobhaa De a writer who understands the human heart and how it beats felt the need to document not just what she is going through personally but what the entire world is experiencing. And out of this need emerged many unique narratives ...LockdownLiaisonsis a collection of short stories, from the varying perspectives of both men and women young and old, brave and cowardly, cheerful and weighed down each story a unique offering from a writer who understands how very fragile human relationships can be as they break, suffer and are redefined under trying circumstances. In the grand finale of Lockdown Liaisons we have the story of a girl who was sweet and inconsequential earlier but realizes her own potential for success and fame during the lockdown. Then there is the man who finds true love at a juice stall near his office in the days before the lockdown starts but, then, ends up alone at home with his parents, writing letters to a lover who will never read them. We read about the young married couple who find the solution to their woes in a manner that promises them love and happiness, while in the last story of Lockdown Liaisons a ten-year-old writes a sweet and admonishing letter to Uncle Corona!

‘But now, having travelled to the frontier of the world of sins, I no longer hesitated in trampling over the remnants of the goodness in my heart.’Manada, Maani didi, Feroza Bibi, Miss Mukherjee – the jostling identities of our beguiling and charming protagonist as she glides through a life that can be seen as exploitative yet, also, curiously, empowering and honest. Manada’s fascinating life story takes her from her wealthy cossetted upbringing to a life of debauchery and prostitution after she elopes with her married lover when in her mid-teens. She is capable, attractive and doesn’t ask for pity as she struggles with illness, poverty and abandonment, but ensures that she emerges relatively unscathed and carves a niche for herself in her profession.Manada matures and settles into a life of prostitution, entertains barristers, doctors and other men of high society. She describes her colourful life with relish but is often introspective as she places her own position as a sex worker in the context of the times, calling out young sanctimonious patriotic men who maintain a high standing in society yet secretly fancy prostitutes. Rather tantalisingly she takes no names, only occasionally hinting at their identities, to avoid scandals and protect the double lives of men who are well-known in Calcutta in the 1920s. Weaving together multiple strands, looking beyond ideas of morality and accusations, we are presented a life of immense beauty and endurance, which is both grand in its scope and deeply intimate in its portrait.

The year is 2032. China declares war on India. Pillage and plunder ensues. The war comes to an abrupt halt when a supernatural event saves the obscure town of Lalbag from annihilation. Even as China renews its efforts to invade Lalbag, a greater calamity awaits this sleepy town. A Chinese cop stumbles upon a dangerous secret that threatens to end the town’s immunity. A fierce and forbidden love between a servant and his mistress destroys two families. Meanwhile, the town’s richest man becomes afflicted with a terrible disease, the town beauty goes mad when her love betrays, and a psychic turns water into blood, sending the town and its people deeper into tragedy.   A dystopian never-been-done-before tale set in – and between – China and India, The Man Who Lost India is a powerful portrayal of love, strife and family in the wake of 21st century’s biggest war. Incantatory and atmospheric, this is Meghna Pant’s most ambitious novel yet, full of beauty, bloodshed and undeniable feminist power.

A cross between a collection of philosophical investigations and idle banter, In Praise of Laziness and Other Essays, is a celebration of what Milan Kundera defined as ‘Mystification: the active form of refusing to take the world seriously’. From an Erasmian encomium to laziness, a literary forensic report on the adult years of Sukumar Ray’s Pagla Dashu and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the joys of staying indoors, to the exquisite pleasures of an electric blanket—and with a science fiction story on colonisation bunged in—this book is the equivalent of a meandering river in which the reader dips his or her toes in, not knowing whether a dolphin will come by or a piranha take a snap. This is a book that’s equal parts serious as well as frivolous, except you never quite know which parts are which.

Dhruvi Rajput is a psychotherapist who has lost the two most important people in her life. She is trying to move on, get her life back together. Then she gets a call from a man identifying himself only as Yama. And her life turns upside down. Basheer Ali, a Senior Inspector at the CBI, has captured many criminals. But he has seen many more walk free. So, even as he works to track down Yama—a vigilante killer bringing the corrupt and guilty outed on social media to fatal justice—he finds himself grudgingly siding with a killer. Through the dark and gritty streets of Delhi, Dhruvi and Basheer chase this spectre of the God of Death, each step leading up to a final choice that makes them question their own morality.Can one man decide another's fate? Is rage the real way to justice? 

A still, dense, ancient forest. A dark cave deep within. And in it a woman-child whose beauty can move the most pious to sin. Who is she and why did she jump from a moving train to land in the biggest cremation ground teeming with Aghori Sadhus?In this story spanning generations and redolent with Gothic imagery, Shivani urf Gaura Pant tells the story of a womans life, her moral and mental strength and her resilience. She also examines the choices women have in her beautiful, descriptive prose. With an erudite foreword by her daughter and scholar, Mrinal Pande, and a preface by the translator, this book is Shivani for the 21st-century reader.

Roughly 200 million today, Indian Muslims are greater than the population of Britain and France or Germany put together. According to the Indian Constitution, Indian Muslims are treated as political equals, which is what India’s secular polity promised after its independence, encouraging more than 35 million Indian Muslims at the time of Partition to choose India as their motherland over Pakistan. However, the supposed relationship of equality between Hindus and Muslims as scripted in the constitution is being increasingly replaced by the domineering tendencies of a Hindu majority in India today.   The author describes the current state and position of Indian Muslims (the seeds for which were sown when the BJP came to power in 2014) as the thirdpolitical moment; the second he believes was in 1947 when the community was given equal status in the Indian Constitution; and the first, was in 1857 when Indian Muslims learnt to live under the British colonial state. As he states, there is no denying that political circumstances for Indian Muslims were not completely ideal or full of democratic energy prior to the rise of the Hindu Right since the late 1980s. With numerous layers defined by language, ethnicity, region, etc., Muslims have the most heterogeneous identity, representing India’s quintessential diversity. And yet, Muslims are perceived as the most enduring well-grounded threat to the majoritarian project of the Hindu Rashtra.   Indian Muslims are perceived or presented as perpetrators of violence and violators of law, even if they are at the receiving end. They are viewed as an internal enemy, who need to be dealt with for political, social, historical, and ideological reasons. Going forward, the community must formulate the language of democratic rights of  Indian Muslims as equal citizens and define the ethics of human dignity in their struggle to reassert their place in India’s political power structures at all levels: from panchayat to Parliament. While the economic future or cultural rights of Indian Muslims have been debated since 1947, it is the political future that demands attention because only as an equal and participatory community in the politics of the nation, can economic and cultural futures be addressed. This book explores the political future of Indian Muslims in this context.   From Shaheen Bagh to Hindu-Muslim riots, from the unique position of Muslim women in India to the Sachar Report and the Muslim backwardness debate, Mujibur Rehman analyses, confronts and discusses the urgent concerns of Indian Muslims in a manner that is nuanced and globally relevant.

In the early 1990s, Rupa Sharma founds a magazine and pens her first – and last – editorial:The future has never looked brighter. The fires of communal tension appear to have been vanquished. More women are entering the workforce than ever before, and everywhere I look, I see new possibilities. I see dialogue, I see tolerance, and I see openness. I see hope for myself and my colleagues, and for the two daughters I am bringing up to be fearless inheritors of this earth.Decades later, her daughter Siya travels to Delhi in the wake of her reclusive mother’s death, leaving behind a failing relationship and an unravelling life. Waiting at home are her estranged sister Maya and a crumbling Lutyens behemoth that is proving too cumbersome to maintain.The two sisters rattle around the house until a cryptic note falls out from their mother’s papers: I saw last night as a meeting between old friends. That you considered my conduct overfamiliar fills me with endless regret. As Siya and Maya try to decipher the words and piece together what happened, they find themselves uncovering both dreams and long-buried secrets, finding new resolve as they look to breathe fresh life into their mother’s shattered vision.Shocking, poignant, and life-affirming, Civil Lines is a family saga that explores belonging and is also an ode to every girl in every generation who dreams that a brighter future lies within her grasp.

Venture Capital is a marriage between 'people with money and no ideas' and 'people with ideas and no money'. It is a high-risk investment vehicle with the potential for manifold returns and the possibility of a complete investment written-off. Although it is essentially private money and smaller in size than traditional financing pillars, its impact has been phenomenal, even to the extent of transforming the way we live in the modern world. Yet the fact remains that the business of venture capital is not fully understood by startup founders and fund managers are also not familiar with the inner workings of other venture funds. And, as more public or tax-players’ money flows into this asset class, it begs a shift from the existing esoteric styles to more transparent and predictable operations. It would also be beneficial if the craft of venture capital is well understood by the business community and most importantly, policymakers as Demystifying Venture Capital: How it works and How to get primarily written to address these concerns, and to explain the subject in a nontechnical manner, as far as possible. A handbook for fund managers, startups, academicians interested in the subject, policy makers, and aspiring entrepreneurs, this book is unique as it has been written along with the top 25 venture funds in India as co-authors. The first part builds the concepts and theoretical framework of venture investing throughout the venture capital life cycle, giving readers a robust academic backdrop while the second part offer 25 first-hand accounts of how VCs invest, where they invest, what they look for while investing, providing invaluable insights into the minds and methods of VCs. All in all, this prototype is a first-of-its-kind endeavour to deliver a 360-degree + view of the Venture Capital universe.

Did you ever feel stuck in life? Everyone does, occasionally or all the time! The solution is a personality update – an update that can reboot you into a smarter version of yourself. But how? Just as smartphones have smart apps, smart people have smart ‘Life-apps’. Where do I download these life-apps from? Don’t worry – this book shall be your one-stop app store where you will find 14 life-apps to excel in all spheres of life- the life compass app to help you make prudent decisions; the habits reprogramming app to rebuild your personality bit by bit; the time treasurer app to invest your time wisely; the forgive to live app to heal and deal with emotional injuries; the friendships forever app to build the truly unsinkable ship of close friendships; and many more.These smart life-apps are zipped in with relevant concepts, models, wisdom tales and worksheets to enable faster assimilation and application. So why wait? Make the smart move to read this book today and become the Smarter You.

Amongst the multitude of tombs in the City of the Dead in Cairo, there lies buried a lone Indian a scholar, writer, debonair statesman and a leader of the freedom movement. Who is he? How did he get there? For a man who used both the lectern and the pen to devastating effect during the Indian Independence movement led by the likes of Gandhi and Nehru, little is known of Syud Hossain. Born to an aristocratic family in Calcutta, he forayed into journalism early in life and became the editor of Motilal Nehru's nationalist newspaper, The Independent. After a brief elopement with Motilal's daughter, Sarup (aka Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit), Hossain, under immense pressure from Nehru and Gandhi, annulled the marriage and stayed away from the country. Thus began several years of exile. Eventually, he landed in the United States. Flitting from one place to another, making homes of hotel rooms, he imparted Gandhi's message across the country. He fought for India's cause from afar, garnering support in the United States and decrying British oppression. Syud Hossain inspired and irked in equal measure; with every speech he delivered and every editorial he penned, he sent a shiver down the spine of the colonial ruler. In addition, Hossain took on the fight for Indian immigrant rights in the United States, one that successfully culminated in President Truman signing the Luce-Celler Bill into an Act in 1946. Hossain returned to India to witness the triumph of her independence as well as the tragedy of Gandhi's assassination. Thereafter appointed India's first ambassador to Egypt, he died while in service and was laid to rest in Cairo.A Forgotten Ambassador in Cairo offers an illuminating narrative of Hossain's life interspersed with historical details that landscapes a vivid political picture of that era. Through primary sources that include Hossain's private papers, British Intelligence files, and contemporary correspondence and newspapers, N.S. Vinodh brilliantly brings to life a man who has been relegated far too long to the shadows of time.

'But the return is not always easy, especially when the world has moved on without you, when the people who were rooting for you have now found other heroes to sup­port.'   When Pullela Gopichand had to undergo a risky arthroscopic surgery, chances of his full recovery were not great. His return to the badminton court seemed a far-fetched dream. The odds were stacked against him. Then, in 1998, he won the bronze in the Commonwealth Games. His biggest win was yet to come. In 2001, Pullela became the second Indian to win the All England Championship.  This is the story we know. From not being able to walk to winning the most prestigious title in badminton, this is Pullela the player. But his success hasn’t stopped at just him. The Pullela Gopichand Badminton Academy, set up in 2008, boasts of a host of World No. 1s including Saina Nehwal and Srikanth Kidambi and World Badminton Champion PV Sindhu. What is it about his teachings that propels players right to the top?  In his official autobiography, we meet Pullela the coach. Through his own voice, as well as those of his students, mother, and wife, we get a look at the mind that revolutionised the game. We are shown not only what it takes to get to the top, but also, and more importantly, how to stay there.  With the principles of his play laid bare, we are invited to apply them to our own everyday lives. In doing so, we ask questions, take accountability for our actions and perhaps find the answer to the greatest question of all—what does it take to become a champion?

This book charts the course ofKaushikBasu's career over seven years, as he moved out of the cloisters of academe to the frenetic world of policymaking, first in India as Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government and after that as Chief Economist at the World Bank in Washington.The Indian years were a period of high inflation, growth challenges (as the global financial crisis arrived in India), and also a remarkable growth recovery story, with India moving past China's GDP growth rate. There were corruption scandals breaking, causing widespread street protests, a lot of late-night decision-making, which one knew would rock the stock market the next day, and getting to know politicians who were outstanding as statesmen in the midst of all this, and also many who were not.The World Bank years weren't that close to actual policymaking, but nevertheless breath-taking in their scope. They ranged from interacting with policymakers in tiny remote countries like Samoa to gigantic nations with comparable heft, such as China. It entailed sitting down with leading researchers to compute and announce global numbers on extreme poverty and rankings on how easy it is to do business in different countries (fully aware that there would be calls from irate finance ministers as soon as these were published). And there was the handling of politics within the World Bank, which could actually be as enjoyable as any global economic problem!This book is a revised version of the diary thatKaushikBasukept for seven years. Revised because he often wrote the diary in a hurry at the day's or even week's end. He has now inserted some reflections in retrospect, without altering any descriptions of what actually happened.

‘What does it mean when someone says they have Anxiety?’‘I’m stressed and nervous all the time, do I have Anxiety?’‘Will I ever get better?’These are some of the questions we want to answer in this book. Is this the Age of Anxiety? Well, how could it not be – when so many millions of us feel that persistent combination of heart palpitations, impending doom, dread, even lack of control, as one of our contributors describes it. The question is, what can we do about it?Through this book we will learn how to distinguish between anxiety as 'an attack of the nerves' or something that will come and go, and Anxiety as a disorder, which will need treatment, including possibly therapy or medication. The conversations are even more pertinent given the global Covid-19 pandemic, prolonged periods of social isolation and an increased focus on mental health and wellness. We learn from coping with Anxiety Disorders, sharing their journey to healing, explaining exactly what would have helped them along the way, as they seek to bust common myths and misconceptions.

Myths and legends jostle with the contemporary in these stories where social issues of our times resonate with the inevitability of the past. The lyricism of Carnatic ragas permeate the pages of this quiet and powerful book in which love is rendered in all its immeasurable avatars—parental, carnal, platonic, romantic, divine. There is the woman who reinvents the notion of love in a unique way that amalgamates technology and spirituality through the internet; a man full of love who can sing Bulleh Shah and the woman who has lost her all in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots; the woman in the title story who stands by her deaf daughter but understands why her husband must leave the home they have built with love all these years; the man who finds out what it is to be a woman after a dip in the pond... These short stories are shorn of sentimentality but have a deep understanding of what it means to live, to love and to die. CS Lakshmi, writing under the pseudonym Ambai, has been a significant voice in Indian literature for the past four decades. A Red-necked Green Bird is the writer’s seventh collection of short stories.

December 19 wasn't a good day for Indian cricket. No one could fathom what hit them after 36 all out in Adelaide. Summer of 42 seemed like ancient history! But then something changed and January 19 happened. Adelaide was a nightmare but Brisbane was surreal. A lot changed between 36 all out and 329/7. Everyone saw the performances but what went into putting in that kind of an effort isn't something people are aware of.     What was going through Ravi Shastri's mind and what exactly was that phone call with his best buddy Bharat Arun? What did R. Sridhar tell Hanuma Vihari when he hobbled back during tea break in Sydney? And who are these players? The disappointment of Rishabh Pant before those highs, Rohit Sharma's desperation to be out there, Shardul Thakur's grit or the politics that Navdeep Saini faced in his formative years. Why Shubman Gill was always destined to play cricket? How did R. Ashwin turn the corner for one of his finest seasons? What are the tragedies and tough times that made Cheteshwar Pujara who he is today?Every moment has a story as well as a back-story where it all started for this team.Boria Majumdar and Kushan Sarkar track that journey, bringing back their life story in flesh and blood.

"A timely book that can help us have potentially life-saving conversations" - DEEPIKA PADUKONE, Actor & Founder, LiveLoveLaugh“A shocking fact and huge wake-up call is that suicide is the leading cause of death for young Indians. As a country — across all our expertise and fields of interest — we need to pay closer attention, and this book urges us to do just that, with clear policy level suggestions and a call to action.” -ABHINAV BINDRA In India we tend to have a fatalistic attitude towards suicide, tending to believe that nothing can be done to prevent it, focusing only on the politically volatile issue of farmer suicides, or periodically, when there is a death by suicide of a prominent personality or suicides in vulnerable groups (for example, students especially after Board exam results), there is a hue and cry in the popular press with opinion makers demanding immediate action.Why should you care? Because a disproportionate number of young Indians die by suicide and these are preventable deaths.The resulting knee-jerk reaction from policymakers is to offer some immediate solutions (appointing counsellors in colleges, etc.) which have little evidence of success. After a while, everyone forgets the issue, until the next such event and the cycle repeats itself.This book aims to present evidence-based strategies to tackle suicide, using interviews, case studies and conversations that lay readers can make sense of, while proposing an outline of steps that policymakers, journalists and key stakeholder groups can collaborate on to provide better solutions and save precious lives in India.

In a village in rural Assam, quiet, unassuming Paridhi grows up witnessing domestic violence at close quarters. The conservative society she inhabits, shapes and befuddles her. Her rebellion is silent—she submerges herself in a world of colour. Pebbles turn into objects of art in her hands. She writes and reads extensively to escape her cloistered life. But to what end? Is it really ever possible to escape one’s confines?   The house she’s lived in ever since her childhood, now infested with termites, is her responsibility now. With an ageing mother, an ailing uncle and an absentee brother, Paridhi feels like she has no one to depend on. Except perhaps Bondeep. But with passing time, there are growing concerns—will Bondeep’s family ever be able to accept her? She could always confide in the vivacious Juroni, her best friend, neighbour and confidant. But Juroni has secrets of her own, which she keeps close to her heart until the inevitable, devastating end.   Peopled with characters great and small, Beneath the Simolu Tree follows Paridhi as she navigates life, confronts injustices and comes out stronger but not embittered. Stories and realities are brought into sharp conflict in this tale of human yearning, as Pritam explores the depths of her innermost desires. At the heart of this novel lies the one question we spend our entire lives searching an answer for—what is it to love and be loved?

A social media trial can break you. There were 100,000 tweets of abuse for days on end, all premised on a set of untruths pushed by someone hugely powerful because he had played for the national team. Against the entitled, I never stood a chance. The online trial forced me and the family to draw on every last bit of inner strength, and yet left permanent scars. Having served the ban, I wanted closure in the form of this book. But no one knows better that there will never be a full stop. I will not get back the two years of opportunities that I lost, or the days and evenings when I was almost a stranger to my daughter. For two years, my wife and I never had a quiet dinner where we could just relax. There was not one evening when we didn’t discuss the issue and the book. Which outsider can quantify the impact it had on the mental health of my family? On my wife, my mother, my sister and my daughter? I became cynical about a number of things, and it will be tough to change that. Writing this book and putting the truth out there has drained and exhausted me. The truth is that the falsehoods piled up against me, ratified by all-knowing social media trolls, changed my life and that of my family. There is no going back to what we were. This was our Long Covid.

Obliterated from the pages of history, as women often are, Odisha’s first woman Chief Minister, Nandini Satpathy, known also as the Iron Lady of Orissa, was born to a family of revolutionaries and intellectuals. During her teenage years in the ‘40s, this petite girl in a starchy cotton saree was jailed for pulling down the Union Jack from atop the edifice of Ravenshaw College. Thus began the makings of a force to be reckoned with. Coming up through the ranks to ultimately reach the hallowed halls of the Rajya Sabha at the mere age of 31, this grassroots student politician went on to become the I&B minister in Indira Gandhi’s first government, where she facilitated the working of the Free Bangla Radio that played a key role in the information war that was ’71. She hobnobbed with the likes of Raj Kapoor, Nargis, and Meena Kumari as India produced films around socialist films and warmed up to Russia. And still, in Delhi circles, she is best remembered as ‘Indira Gandhi’s friend’. Nandini’s political career was as tumultuous as her friendship with Indira Gandhi. They were a close-knit duo, brought together by circumstances and kept together by a strong sense of affection and loyalty. That was until the Emergency. Where once she had enjoyed the proximity to the PMO and all the privileges that it came with, Nandini’s opposition to the Emergency led to a fall from grace. This loss was not just the loss of a friend; it also meant the loss of her political career. During her chief-ministerial tenure, she implemented radical land reforms and tore down the tobacco trade mafia. These were actions that made her a lot of enemies. Once protected by her friendship with the prime minister, she was now subjected to brutal vendetta. In the twilight years of her life, Nandini succumbed to the deep grief of losing her husband and the ignominy of political obscurity.   This is the story of Nandini Satpathy.

Munna Jhingada, Farid Tanasha, Baba Reddy… hitmen and executioners all. Each with haunting tales to tell.   The executioner has no remorse. He is the man who strikes the fear of his boss in everybody’s heart. While he has no criminal empire of his own, his barbaric bio-sketch could fill several police case diaries. Those who live by the bullet die by the bullet – almost every last one of them. But in their short reign of terror, they leave a trail of devastation in their wake. In this no-holds-barred book, India’s No. 1 crime writer, S. Hussain Zaidi, backed by years of behind-the-scenes work, provides an insight into the lives of twelve of the most vicious and fearless hitmen of Mumbai, giving readers a first-hand insight into what fuels the men behind some of the bloodiest battles and showdowns in the city.