Publish with Us

Follow Penguin

Follow Penguinsters

Follow Penguin Swadesh

© 2020 Penguin India

Category: Excerpts

The Generous Nawab- An Excerpt from ‘Bahawalpur’

Posted on by Penguin India

In the seventy or so years since Independence, much less has been written about the Princely States which acceded to Pakistan than those that remained in India. The name of the once great State of Bahawalpur is no longer remembered among its well-mapped peers over the border in Rajasthan.

Bahwalpur by Anabel Loyd is a record of the conversations between the author and Salahuddin Abbasi who reminisces about his family and sheds light to stories of Bahawalpur’s princes from old records, letters, and the accounts of British travellers and civil servants. The following is an intriguing excerpt from the book:

—

Nawab Bahawal Khan had ruled for long enough to see his enemies fail, fall or die off. He had avoided confrontation with Ranjit Singh through judicious advice to the Sikh leader during his siege of Multan, being rewarded with gifts of an elephant and a shawl, added to several instalments of ‘friendly messages’.

 

Bahawal Khan’s most inveterate enemy, the makhdoom of Uch, died and was succeeded by his son, Makhdoom Shams ud-din and his brother who was recognized by the nawab when he rode to Uch in person to perform the ceremony of placing the ‘Turban of Recognition’ on his head. In 1808, Mountstuart Elphinstone came to Bahawalpur en route to Kabul on the exploratory journey he described  in An Account of The Kingdom of Caubul and Its Dependencies in Persia, Tartary and India.

The Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I had raised, for the first time, the fear of overland invasion of India by Russia in alliance with the French bogeyman, and the governor general, Lord Minto, sent Elphinstone to Afghanistan, with other envoys to Persia and to Ranjit Singh, to gain promises of cooperation in the event of French incursions.

It is unsurprising that Elphinstone was impressed by Bahawal Khan. He must have been impressive to have successfully maneuvered a path through the hurdles, both of the tribal enmities of his times and greater invading powers. Before ‘we enter on the narrative of the passage of an embassy from the British Government’, it is too irresistible not to digress to Shahamet Ali’s rose-tinted description of England, where the roads of London are ‘paved with stones of various colours’, the town always kept in ‘clean order’ while the suburbs ‘are said to be covered with delightful gardens and noble buildings’ and ‘it is a fixed rule with every citizen, rich or poor, to whitewash his dwelling once a year’. That cloudless image might have surprised those breathing in the Great Stink and living through the cholera pandemic of the time.

Elphinstone described Bahawal Khan when he first met him on 1 December 1808 as a ‘plain, open, pleasant man, about forty-five or fifty years of age, he had on white tunic, with small gold buttons, over which was a white mantle of a very rich and beautiful gold brocade and over it a loongee. About six of his attendants sat; the rest stood round and were all well dressed and respectable’. The following day, ‘the Khan received us in a handsome room with attic windows and ‘conversed freely on all subjects’. He ‘praised the King of Caubul’ but had never seen him and ‘please God he never would’. He was a ‘desert dweller and feared the snows of Caubul’. Instead, ‘he could live in his desert, hunt his deer, and he had no desire to follow courts’. The nawab then demonstrated the skills of his people with a ‘curious clock’ made in Bahawalpur and gave Elphinstone parting gifts of greyhounds, two horses, ‘one with gold and one with enameled trappings’ and a very beautiful matchlock ‘with a powder flask in the English fashion’.

Elphinstone added, the nawab ‘has been liberal and kind to us without over-civility or ceremony’, with ‘an appearance of sincerity in everything he said’ and had shown ‘a spirit of kindness and hospitality which could not be surpassed’. Elphinstone was astonished that, unlike other princes he had encountered, they did not have to ‘struggle against the rapacity of the Nawab’, who, on the contrary, ‘would take nothing without negotiation’ and was himself almost embarrassingly generous in his gifts, sending a profusion of sweetmeats, flour, nuts and raisins, ‘a vast number of baskets of oranges’ and, most difficult to accept, five bags of rupees to be divided amongst the servants. 

It appears the ambassador and the nawab were pleased with each other—certainly this meeting and the first treaty of friendship between Bahawalpur and the British was the start of a remarkably close friendship.

Anyone with a penchant for history and politics would definitely consider the book, Bahawalpur an insightful read, shedding light on the troubled history of Pakistan which has clouded a clear picture of it and shrouded its component parts. Give it a read tell us what you think!

 

So Many Gods! Richard Dawkins’ Quest into Faith and Spirituality

Posted on by Penguin India

Author Richard Dawkins was fifteen when he stopped believing in God. Deeply impressed by the beauty and complexity of living things, he felt certain they must have had a designer. Learning about evolution changed his mind.

In Outgrowing God, Dawkins, as a bestselling science communicator, gives young and old readers the same opportunity to rethink the big questions.

Find an excerpt from the book below, where he introduces the historic and current frameworks of god and religion within which we need to rethink questions of faith, religion, and spirituality.

 

Do you believe in God?

Which god?

Thousands of gods have been worshipped throughout the world, throughout history. Polytheists believe in lots of gods all at the same time (theos is Greek for ‘god’ and poly is Greek for ‘many’). Wotan (or Odin) was the chief god of the Vikings. Other Viking gods were Baldr (god of beauty), Thor (the thunder god with his mighty hammer) and his daughter Throd. There were goddesses like Snotra (goddess of wisdom), Frigg (goddess of motherhood) and Ran (goddess of the sea).

The ancient Greeks and Romans were also polytheistic. Their gods, like the Viking ones, were very human-like, with powerful human lusts and emotions. The twelve Greek gods and goddesses are often paired with Roman equivalents who were thought to do the same jobs, such as Zeus (Roman Jupiter), king of the gods, with his thuderbolts; Hera, his wife (Juno); Poseidon (Neptune), god of the sea; Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love; Hermes (Mercury), messenger of the gods, who flew on winged sandals; Dionysos (Bacchus), god of wine. Of the major religions that survive today, Hinduism is also polytheistic, with thousands of gods.

Countless Greeks and Romans thought their gods were real – prayed to them, sacrificed animals to them, thanked them for good fortune and blamed them when things went wrong. How do we know those ancient people weren’t right? Why does nobody believe in Zeus any more? We can’t know for sure, but most of us are confident enough to say we are ‘atheists’ with respect to those old gods (a ‘theist’ is somebody who believes in god(s) and an ‘atheist’ – a-theist, the ‘a’ meaning ‘not’ – is someone who doesn’t). Romans at one time said the early Christians were atheists because they didn’t believe in Jupiter or Neptune or any of that crowd. Nowadays we use the word for people who don’t believe in any gods at all.

 

Outgrowing God asks pertinent and highly relevant questions on life and human connection. Concise and provocative, it is a crucial guide to thinking for yourself.

Standing By One’s Principles- An Excerpt from ‘Excellence Has No Borders’

Posted on by Penguin India

Have you ever hit a point so low where hope was your only option? Dr B.S. Ajaikumar did too. He lost twenty million dollars and he almost lost his son. He hit a point where he stopped feeling that life was worth living but what brought him back was his zeal to never give up. His innate tendency to test the limits of his mental endurance. His tenacity for his principles. His family. Himself.

Meet Dr. Ajai Kumar in Excellence Has No Borders: 

—-

As a young adult, I was not immune to these social upheavals. With my tendency to stand up for the underdog, my internal volcano seemed to bubble up at the slightest hint of injustice. At St John’s, I was known to be an unapologetic leftist who stood for values. I was just over sixteen years old, the youngest in my class. I do understand that sixteen years was very young to get into medical college. Fortunately, I was able to get several double promotions in my primary and middle school due to new educational rules. I used to sit in the second bench and was very nervous, since it was my first year at university. All the other students in my class were adults, street-smart and hostel boarders.

 

One incident that transpired among the hallowed portals of St John’s changed things considerably. The physics teacher had a bit of an accent and used to pronounce ‘cc’ (cubic centimetres) as ‘sheeshee’. One day, unable to control myself, I ended up covering my mouth and laughing. Face contorted with anger, the lecturer strode up to me.

 

‘Take your books and get out!’

 

I sat there in silence, without moving.

 

‘I said take your books and get out,’ he repeated.

 

Finally I found my voice. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong. When I’m not guilty, I won’t go out.’

 

Anger turning to mortification, the lecturer blurted, ‘I will report you to the Father, who is the head of the department of physics!’

 

‘Please do.’ I felt strangely calm.

 

I was reported to the head of the department and summoned by the Father. This was a matter of principle for me. I was ready to stand up for it. 

 

I told the principal, ‘Father, I will not leave the classroom when I’ve done nothing wrong.’

 

I was able to hold my ground, and no action was taken against me. My older classmates began to treat me with respect after this incident. It crystallized for me the importance of standing like a rock by one’s principles. Coupled with my internal volcano of tenacity and my hunger for challenges, this gave my emerging personality multiple dimensions. I would no longer stand with my head bowed when injustice slapped me in the face. I would not take indignities lying down. I would not shy away from taking someone on when they threw down the gauntlet to me. In the coming years, it would be one or more of this triad of personality traits that would come to the fore when it came to life decisions or whenever I found myself at a crossroads.

Dr. Ajaikumar has always stood for what he believes in and has had a tactful, problem solving approach to every hurdle that has stood between him and his goals. His book reflects the strength he’s had to gather to face every hurdle that has been thrown at him.

Read more about him and his experiences in his book, Excellence Has No Borders.

Deemed Public Issue or Doomed Investment? An Extract From ‘Going Public’

Posted on by Penguin India

Upendra Kumar Sinha has contributed significantly to shaping India’s capital markets. He has been the guiding force behind reforms to protect the rights of investors and make stock exchanges more secure. Under his leadership, SEBI successfully fought a long legal battle with Sahara, and led the crackdown on other institutions which conducted unauthorized deposit collections.

Reiterating the importance of joint efforts of the government and regulatory bodies, Sinha in Going Public writes, ‘When there is a crisis or the financial stability is at stake, the government and the regulators have to mutually reinforce each other.’

Read on for a glimpse of how companies lure investors-

In spite of clear legal provisions, many companies have deliberately resorted to raising funds from hundreds of thousands of members of the public by taking recourse to the private placement route even though it was restricted for issue made to less than fifty subscribers. The maximum number of subscribers in a private placement has now been enhanced to 200 under the Companies Act, 2013. The main intention of companies that violate this rule has been to mislead investors and avoid stricter public scrutiny. Subscribers are denied full information about the true financial condition of the company and its actual business. They are not aware how much money is being raised, how many subscribers there are, the duration of the issue, or the corporate purpose for it. In addition, there is often a strong push from agents and salesmen. Investors are often duped into making these investments without any idea about the risk factors, or the remedy or guarantee available to them in case of refund or redemption.

In most cases, the preferred instrument is debt instead of equity. Generally, debentures or bonds (both terms are used interchangeably) are issued as these contain provisions of an assured rate of interest. People find these assurances very attractive. The rates of interest offered are very high so that these debentures can be easily sold. Several complications can be built into these instruments. A debenture can be convertible into equity, either partially or fully. The conversion into equity shares can take place at the option of the investor, compulsorily after a period or be linked to an event in future, such as the share prices of the company crossing a certain band. But, instead of highlighting these complications, agents push the instrument on the strength of the high rate of interest being offered.

Although many companies have taken recourse to it, the Sahara case is the biggest example in the country of a deemed public issuance. The surprising fact, however, is that neither SEBI nor any other government agency such as the RBI or MCA raised any red flag about such a large amount of money being raised from the public in utter violation of the law. Had Sahara Prime City Ltd (a group company) not decided to list on the stock exchange and thereby be forced to make disclosures to SEBI regarding its group entities such as Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd (SHICL), the matter would never have come to light. It is also significant that the process of issuing these optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs) started around the same time as the RBI placed severe restrictions on the working of Sahara India Financial Corporation Ltd (SIFCL), a non-banking finance company of the group. SIFCL had been asked by the RBI not to raise any fresh deposits from the public and to close all existing deposits and reduce its public liability to nil in a given time frame. It is no coincidence that around the same time, these new instruments were issued by two companies of the Sahara group.

According to their own admission, the net amount raised by the two companies was more than Rs 24,000 crore from more than three crore investors.

 

Upendra Kumar Sinha is known to have been the longest-serving chief of SEBI. He also served as the chairman and managing director of UTI Mutual Fund and was head of the Capital Markets division in the Ministry of Finance. In his candid and historically important memoir Going Public, Sinha reminisces on his journey through India’s changing financial landscape.

To know more, read Going Public!

A Diwan with Foresight- An Excerpt from ‘The Magnificent Diwan’

Posted on by Penguin India

The Magnificent Diwan by Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy waxes eloquent about Hyderabad’s truly magnificent Diwan, Sir Salar Jung I. A Diwan with a foresight who was one of the firsts to establish an organized system of government in Hyderabad, Jung restored its prosperity and developed its resources to such an extent that the nizam’s dominions were as orderly as any other part of India. 

Reintroduced to a generation that doesn’t have an inkling about him, Dadabhoy in the introduction of the book writes –

To understand Salar Jung, we must understand that his most dominant sentiment was devotion to the nizam. He did not hesitate to oppose the nobles of the court, and to reform every department of the disorganized administration, because he realized that the strength of the ruler lay in the firmness of the administration. His loyal attitude during the Mutiny was but a part of this well-considered policy. Throughout his career, the mainspring of his policy was the interest of his master, the nizam. His loyalty to the British, notwithstanding his childhood influences, sprang from a deliberate conviction that the maintenance of British authority was the best pledge of safety to the dynasty he served so faithfully. At the risk of his own popularity, and often at the risk of his own life, he refused to align with fanatics. For the nizam’s sake, he bore the humiliation he received from the British which resulted from his persistence on the restoration of Berar. He bore with meekness the frequent indignities to which he was exposed in the palace, and waged a constant and unequal battle against fanatics and other malcontents. Till Afzal-ud-Daula’s death, Salar Jung had never left Hyderabad, a fact which makes his administrative reforms still more remarkable, since they were accomplished in spite of the opposition of a capricious nizam, and hostile nobility. His strong individuality, firmness and caution gave him an ascendancy in Hyderabad which no previous diwan had attained.

The difficulties he faced, unusually trying and complicated in themselves, were compounded by the fact that he was never able to rely on the support of the court because he was identified with a policy of reform which threatened vested interests. Imbued with a liberal education and outlook thanks to the English influence in his formative years, Salar Jung honestly believed in the superiority of British administration. He adopted the fundamentals of British principles of administration in his reforms which covered almost every sphere of activity: land revenue, police, judiciary, administration and education. Sir Richard Temple, who was resident in 1867, believed that Salar Jung, as a man of business and in matters of finance, had no rival among Indian ministers. European influences had greatly moulded his thinking, and Temple recognized that he was a great imitator. Whatever improvement the British government introduced, he would sooner or later adopt, to good effect.

It is no surprise that British influence preponderated, since apart from his own predilections, he was encouraged and advised by successive residents who wanted to foster good government, not only in Britain’s own interest, but for a principle as well. Carrying ‘civilization’ to India was both an imperial necessity and a mission of pride in the nineteenth century.

To read more about Sir Salar Jung I’s reign, check out his biography, The Magnificent Diwan. We’d love to know what you think!

Lambton’s Cartographical Adventure- An Excerpt from ‘Mapping The Great Game’

Posted on by Penguin India

While ‘the game for power’ between Imperial Russia and Great Britain was being played out in the 19th century, a self-educated cartographer named William Lambton began mapping the Great Arc, attempting to measure the actual shape of the Indian subcontinent. It was completed four decades later by a fellow officer working for the Survey of India, George Everest, who would have a special mountain named in his honor.

Featuring forgotten, enthralling episodes of derring-do and the most sincere efforts to map India’s boundaries, Mapping the Great Game is the thrilling story of espionage and cartography.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

—–

Now, nothing stood in Lambton’s way: he could embark on his cartographical adventure, and attempt to solve a key question of geodesy he had pondered for many years. It originated from a knotty problem known as ‘spherical excess’, which arises because the earth is essentially a sphere. In effect this means the angles of a triangle, rather than adding up to 180 degrees as they would on a flat surface, actually exceed this figure, albeit ever so slightly. If the triangles being marked out are relatively small, then this impact is minor and can be ignored, as Mackenzie was doing in his Topographical Survey. Conversely, as the land area being surveyed becomes larger than 10 square miles, the mathematics of trigonometry must be adjusted for this effect. Thus, a survey across the whole peninsula would obviously need to take spherical excess into account. But this was only the first part of the conundrum, and actually the simpler of two problems concerning the earth’s shape.

The second and more complex problem arises from the well-understood fact that the earth isn’t a true sphere, but is flatter at the poles as it spins on this axis. Isaac Newton had postulated this in the late seventeenth century, as a natural consequence to his theory of gravitation. It had been proven in the 1730s, by two separate expeditions sent out from France—at great expense—to measure one degree of latitude at two different points on the earth’s surface. This exercise, which took a number of years to complete and involved much hardship, determined a degree to equal 68.7 miles close to the equator, whereas near the Arctic Circle it measured 69.6 miles. This difference proved beyond doubt that the effect was significant, and must be corrected for if a large-scale survey was to be credible.

The geodetic problem for Lambton boiled down to a similar question: what was the length of one degree of latitude around the tropics where Madras lay? If he knew this, he would have the information needed to determine the extent of spherical excess in this part of the world. Such a discovery would not only improve the accuracy of his own survey, but also, as he put it, ‘determine by actual measurement the magnitude and figure of the earth’. It wouldn’t be just an academic exercise either, as ascertaining this dimension would have immense practical value: for example, it would improve the compilation of navigation tables and sea charts. Moreover, by measuring the actual shape of the earth on the subcontinent, the true positions and heights of all its places, including its towering mountains, could be fixed.

Once he had acquired his precious instruments and measured out the base-line, this question was finally answered in 1802, although it would require a year of painstaking work. First, he triangulated a short arc* just over 100 miles long, equivalent to almost 1½ degrees of latitude. Working down the south coast from Madras, this exercise gave him the arc’s precise ground distance, measured in miles. Next, he determined the latitude of both its extremities through astronomical observations and, by subtracting one from the other, determined the arc’s span in degrees. Since these two values were determined independently of each other, by dividing the length of the arc in miles by its span in degrees, he was able to deduce the precise length of one degree of latitude. In this way, he was able to finally determine the spherical excess figure that had eluded him for so long.

Grab your copy of  Mapping The Great Game  and discover forgotten and enthralling episodes of the most sincere efforts to map India’s boundaries!

The Game of Business: Excerpt from Simon Sinek’s ‘The Infinite Game’

Posted on by Penguin India

In today’s world lead by young entrepreneurs, what does competition in businesses actually mean?

An optimist, motivator and author, Simon Sinek lays out a clear framework to help us navigate the world of business – which he presents as an ‘infinite game’, with no clear finish lines, losers or winners.

Read on for an excerpt that introduces this idea.

The Infinite Game of Business

The game of business fits the very definition of an infinite game. We may not know all of the other players and new ones can join the game at any time. All the players determine their own strategies and tactics and there is no set of fixed rules to which everyone has agreed, other than the law (and even that can vary from country to country). Unlike a finite game, there is no predetermined beginning, middle or end to business. Although many of us agree to certain time frames for evaluating our own performance relative to that of other players – the financial year, for example – those time frames represent markers within the course of the game; none marks the end of the game itself. The game of business has no finish line.

Despite the fact that companies are playing in a game that cannot be won, too many business leaders keep playing as if they can. They continue to make claims that they are the “best” or that they are “number one.” Such claims have become so commonplace that we rarely, if ever, stop to actually think about how ridiculous some of them are. Whenever I see a company claim that it is number one or the best, I always like to look at the fine print to see how they cherry-picked the metrics. For years, British Airways, for example, claimed in their advertising that they were “the world’s favourite airline.” Richard Branson’s airline, Virgin Atlantic, filed a dispute with Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority that such a claim could not be true based on recent passenger surveys. The ASA allowed the claim to stand, however, on the basis that British Airways carried more international passengers than any other airline. “Favourite,” as they used the word, meant that their operation was expansive, not necessarily preferred.

To one company, being number one may be based on the number of customers they serve. To another, it could be about revenues, stock performance, the number of employees or the number of offices they have around the globe. The companies making the claims even get to decide the time frames in which they are making their calculations. Sometimes it’s a quarter. Or eight months. Sometimes a year. Or five years. Or a dozen. But did everyone else in their industry agree to those same time frames for comparison? In finite games, there’s a single, agreed-upon metric that separates the winner from the loser, things like goals scored, speed or strength. In infinite games, there are multiple metrics, which is why we can never declare a winner.

Are you playing an inifinite game or finite game? Read The Infinite Game to find out!

Fear of Transience: Excerpt from Shaheen Bhatt’s ‘I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier’

Posted on by Penguin India

‘I don’t write about my experiences with depression to defend the legitimacy of my pain. My pain is real; it does not come to me because of my lifestyle, and it is not taken away by my lifestyle,’ says Shaheen Bhatt in her multidimensional philosophical tell-all book, I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier.

A poignant illustration of her day-to-day struggles with depression, Shaheen Bhatt’s memoir is crucial in starting a conversation that has been hushed for too long.

Read on to find an excerpt to begin a dialogue around mental health in India.

**

Perpetual bliss does not exist and anyone who peddles the belief that it does, or tries to convince you that there is a secret path through the woods that leads to an oasis of unending peace and happiness is either deluded, or a liar.

For too long we’ve been convinced that the emotional fairy tale—the perfect state of emotional well-being— exists, and that it’s tantalizingly close but just out of reach. We’ve been convinced that it exists and we’ve been convinced that there’s something fundamentally wrong with us for not being able to attain it.

It’s high time that we realize that there’s nothing wrong with us.

There’s something wrong with the fairy tale. Perpetual bliss does not exist, and saying that does not make me a nihilist.

I sit on the same see-saw that we all do and it continuously goes up and down, shifting between darkness and light—it’s the same for us all. Some of us simply stay down a little longer in a dark that’s just a little darker.

Transience is something we’re all so afraid of, and we live in perpetual fear of a new, different reality.

But thank God for transience because even though it means that happiness doesn’t last it also means that pain eventually passes.

It means that neither heaven nor hell are permanent.

There is nothing glorious or freeing or romantic or lovely about depression. Depression is a monster, a villain and thief, but even the worst of experiences teach you something. Depression has taken a lot from me and it has also given me a lot, but only because I eventually demanded it. I demanded my lessons and I took them head on.

‘You must not allow your pain to be wasted, Shaheen,’ my father said to me. I chant that quietly to myself—‘My pain must not be wasted,’ I say—and I try to learn, I try to do. I grieve and cry and hurt but I also take my medication and go to therapy. I watch my soul being bent and twisted into painful, unnatural shapes and marvel at how I’ve never seen it from those angles before. There are still days and weeks and months when I am also consumed by depression, when I forget all my lessons, when I forget everything but the pain. And that’s also when I turn to the very idea I’m afraid of: transience.

I remind myself if happiness is fleeting, then so is sadness.

I remind myself depression is the weather, and I’m a weather-worn tree.

I remind myself even the worst storms pass.

I remind myself I’ve survived them all.

 

**

A topic of massive interest to anyone with mental health disorders, I’ve Never Been (Un)Happier stretches out a hand to gently provide solace and solidarity. Go get your copy today!

Dear reader: A letter from Jojo Moyes

Posted on by Penguin India

Bestselling author Jojo Moyes’ new book The Giver of Stars is a mesmerising tale of female friendship, romance, and the wonder of books and reading, inspired by a remarkable true story.

Here’s a special letter from the author in which she gives insight into the inspiration behind her novel:

 

Dear Reader,

 

Fifteen months ago I read an article in the Smithsonian magazine about the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky — a group of young women employed by the US Government’s WPA scheme to go into the mountains after the Great Depression and take books and magazines to families who might not otherwise read a word.

 

Enduring harsh conditions and braving all kinds of dangers — snakes, dangerous mountains, moonshiners and criminals — they would saddle up and ride hundreds of miles a week to read to the sick, teach children, encourage the spread of facts in a time where religion and snake oil salesmen were able to battle for people’s minds. They often faced fierce resistance, both for their sex and from families who were suspicious of any reading materials other than The Bible, but worked together in a system that lasted seven years across several states, bringing everything from recipes to comic books biological texts to these remote families. Many of them became beloved to the people they served.

 

The photographic images of these young women were extraordinary, and their relevance to today hit me hard. I travelled to this remote area of East Kentucky on two separate research trips, rode the trails that the librarians would have ridden and stayed a week in a remote log cabin so that I could experience nature as they would have done (I got told off for moving a snake with a stick). I fell in love with the landscape and the storytelling people who inhabit it.

 

The Giver of Stars is the result — a story of five such women from very different backgrounds, brought together in a tiny community in the mountains of Kentucky. The story is fictional, but I have rested it on a skeleton of facts. I can honestly say I have never loved writing a book more, or been more inspired by my subject matter. I really hope everyone else enjoys it as much as I have.

 

Jojo Moyes

Intrigued? The Giver of Stars is available now.

Even True Love Has a Dangerous Side- The Prologue from Novoneel Chakraborty’s New Book

Posted on by Penguin India

‘I’ll gift you a love story that every girl desires, but few get to live.’

He’d told me once. And boy, did he stick to his words! Vanav Thakur is the perfect boyfriend that any girl can have. Sometimes, I wonder if I really deserve him.

I’m Aarisha Shergill and my life is about to get ripped apart because I should have known some things should be left alone.

Bestselling author Novoneel Chakraborty is back with Roses Are Blood Red. Read the prologue from the book below:

—

TOSH, HIMACHAL PRADESH Sometime Ago

It was an important day for her. Very important. He was coming down to meet her after . . . in fact, she had been counting: three months, fifteen days, eleven hours and—as she left her house—exactly nine minutes. She had told her parents that she would stay with her bestie from college— Pragya—that night. Pragya, obviously, had no idea about her subterfuge.

He had selected the venue for their clandestine meet. It was only two blocks from her house to the small tea shop that would have closed for the day by then.

Despite the several layers she had on, Aarisha’s teeth chattered as she cycled towards the tea shop. The shiver was partially due to the unseasonal cold wave that had gripped the Himalayan town; she trembled more in anticipation of the impending rendezvous. Should I launch into his arms as soon as we meet? Or should I stand back and simply admire him for a bit? With an avalanche of thoughts crashing through her mind, she finally reached the location for their tryst. She stopped nineteen-to-the-dozen. Only the rarest find their harmony in silence. They were rare, she knew.

She cupped his jaw in her long-fingered hands and caressed his three-day-old stubble with her thumbs. He stretched out an arm to flick the switch on the car stereo. Ariana Grande’s husky voice softly permeated the interior of the car with one of her favourite tracks: ‘God is a Woman’. Aarisha leaned in, but before their lips could touch, he gripped her waist and stopped her descent.

‘Not so quick, Ranisa,’ he whispered.

She loved it when he called her by that name. ‘Ranisa’ meant queen—his queen.

If there was one thing she absolutely loved and couldn’t quite define, it was his enormous respect for her. It was so deep-seated that she often wondered whether she deserved to be placed on such a high pedestal.

‘You always say this,’ she whispered petulantly. ‘Don’t you want to kiss me?’

He stared at her beauty, her dark hair cascading like a cloud around her shoulders. Her eyes didn’t reflect pain, they carried a complaint.

‘D’you honestly believe that I don’t want to kiss you?’ he asked.

‘Then why don’t you?’ she sulked. ‘Also,’ she dismounted from him and scrambled back into her seat, ‘I hate it when you leave me and go away.’ He sensed the flood of tears about to burst through the dam at any moment.

‘Why?’ he asked softly.‘I feel insecure about you, about us,’ Aarisha choked.

An ironical smile touched his face. ‘You know this thing we call love, it’s like a dense forest. As you enter, you hear the growl of several wild beasts. At times, you may even encounter them. Insecurity is the most ferocious beast in this jungle. Whether to fall victim to it or vanquish it to continue one’s quest to unearth the greatest treasure ever, which is also hidden in this very forest, is the lover’s call. I’ve taken mine. What’s your call, Ranisa?’

She stared at him, amazed at the total conviction in his eyes. How could someone’s eyes always reflect such confidence? It was the kind of assurance one developed after scrutinizing life so closely that its tricks became only too predictable. She leaned over and kissed his closed eyelids.

‘I’ll fight. I promise I’ll fight all the beasts that come our way,’ she whispered.

There was a faint smile on his face as he said, ‘Don’t worry about the distance between us.’ He raised her downcast face and kissed her forehead, ‘The body is only what is. The soul is what is, what was and what will be. The scope of all the urges stemming from the body is a mere molecule compared to the intense longing that arises from the soul. And for the soul, distance is an alien concept. Distance only restricts the body.’

‘But the body is also important in its own way, isn’t it?’

‘As much as a house of bricks and mortar, because it houses the vulnerable and the fragile within. But we all know that the shelter is temporary and, as all temporary things, too transient to worry about.’

‘What’s permanent then?’ Aarisha asked.

He placed his right hand flat against her left hand, palm to palm, their fingertips splayed until they found the gaps through which the fingers slipped, and the hands clasped each other.

‘This,’ he said, tightening the clasp, ‘this is permanent.’

I wish I could tell you the number of wars I’ve fought to make this permanent, he thought.

‘D’you know, there are times in your absence when I get the feeling that I hardly know you at all. Is that good?’ she asked, resting her head on his shoulder.

‘You’ll know. You’ll know very soon. It’s just a matter of one more year.’

‘One more year?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Yes. In one more year I’ll gift you a love story that every girl desires, but few, if any, get to live,’ he whispered.

‘What do you mean?’ she drew back to look at his face. There was no response. She raised her head—and suddenly she felt a tug on her hair.

‘Ouch!’ she yelled. Before she realized what was happening, she felt a punch on her face that broke her nose and lacerated her lips. The second punch that buried itself in her gut almost made her throw up. Aarisha fell unconscious, her face a bloodied mess. Three more punches followed: one to her jaw, another landed in her ribs and the third, in the stomach again. He shoved her away from him with force. The side of her head slammed against the window. He yanked down her jeans, slipped them off her legs and tossed them out of the window. He tugged her panties down to her knees and from his pocket he extracted a vial of semen. He smeared

some of the semen on her panties, on her dress and emptied the rest on her bare abdomen. He made sure nobody would ever track down whose semen it was. For a doctor, it wasn’t even a task. He dressed her back in a hasty manner.

As soon as he was done, he used his cell phone to call the local police station. Emotionlessly, he relayed the information, ‘A girl has been raped and abandoned on the road.’ He gave them the approximate location before hanging up. He glanced at Aarisha’s unconscious battered face and muttered, ‘The first thing you should know about me is: I…Don’t…Let…Go…’

He turned on the ignition, opened the passenger side door and pushed the girl’s insensate body out. He put the car into gear, gunned the engine and sped away into the night. After half an hour of driving, he stopped. He alighted from the car and stood at the edge of the abyss, gazing into the darkness. He dialled the police again. They informed him that the girl had been rescued and countered with their own questions about his identity. In reply, he flung the phone into the abyss as far as it would go. He looked up at the night sky— at the constellations of stars—they had mocked him enough. They thought she would never be his. And now, he would win her from everything—and everyone.

He extended both his middle fingers skywards and bellowed a bloodcurdling war-cry against destiny.

Vanav Thakur was no ordinary man. He was soul-deep in love with a girl. And he was a man with a plan.

Curious to know what happens next?  Mysteriously thrilling in its essence, Novoneel Chakraborty’s Roses Are Blood Red is a haunting story of a passionate and eternal love.

 

error: Content is protected !!