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Category: Specials

Meet the Protagonist of this Modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice

Posted on by Penguin India

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin, is a big-hearted, captivating, modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice, with hijabs instead of top hats and kurtas instead of corsets. It introduces us to Ayesha, a woman who has a lot going on.

Her dreams of being a poet have been overtaken by a demanding teaching job. Her boisterous Muslim family, and numerous (interfering) aunties, are professional naggers. And her flighty young cousin, about to reject her one hundredth marriage proposal, is a constant reminder that Ayesha is still single. Ayesha might be a little lonely, but the one thing she doesn’t want is an arranged marriage. And then she meets Khalid… How could a man so conservative and judgmental (and, yes, smart and annoyingly handsome) have wormed his way into her thoughts so quickly?

Before you read the story, here are a few things to know about her:

She’s always in a hurry!

“Khalid had seen her several times since he had moved into the neighbourhood two months ago, always with her red ceramic mug, always in a hurry.”

~

She has a very demanding teaching job

“They’re not my class, Ayesha thought. They need a circus trainer, not a teacher. She flushed, wiped sweaty palms on her pants and tucked the purple notebook back inside her bag. Mary stood outside, a look of pity on her face.”

~

She likes writing (bad?) poetry

“The other teachers were teaching, not hiding and writing poetry. She squinted at the page, rereading her words. Correction: writing bad poetry.”

~

She’s a little inexperienced but dreams of falling in love

“She remained silent about the other two items – exploring the world, falling in love- the first as impossible as the second. She had no money, and falling in love would be difficult when she had never even held someone’s hand before.”

~

She believes that CHAI is life

“All she wanted now was to go home, drink a cup of very strong chai and reconsider her life choices.”

~

She likes to PARTAY

“But not tonight. Tonight she was going to party like she was still an undergrad. Which meant takeout pizza and old Bollywood movies.”

~

She immigrated to Canada at young age and understands the importance of family

“ When they’d first immigrated from India to Canada, Ayesha and her family had moved into the three-bedroom townhouse with Hafsa’s family. It was a tight fit for everyone, but her uncle Sulaiman insisted on hosting them. He had immigrated as a young man almost two decades before, and he was happy to have his family join him in Canada, despite the devastating circumstances.”

~

She’s willing to make sacrifices for her best friend

“ The only thing she was looking forward to tonight was an early bedtime. But loyalty ran deep in the Shamsi clan, and Clara deserved a best friend who could stay up past eight.”

Ayesha at Last is enchanting, achingly funny and uplifting.

Who are the Characters in Tanaz Bhathena’s New Book?

Posted on by Penguin India

Susan is the new girl and Malcolm is the bad boy. Susan hasn’t told anyone, but she wants to be an artist. Malcolm doesn’t know what he wants-until he meets her.

Love is messy and families are messier, but in spite of their burdens, Susan and Malcolm fall for each other. The ways they drift apart and come back together are the picture of being true to oneself.

Meet the characters from Tanaz Bhathena’s new book, The Beauty of the Moment! 

Susan

An academically brilliant young girl born in Saudi Arabia, Susan is living in Canada now. She dreads failing her upcoming driving test as failure has never been an option in her family. Her parents want her to be either a doctor or an engineer but Susan’s real desire and passion is art.

~

Malcolm

Malcolm has been through a rough patch in life when he lost his mother to cancer. As a fifteen-year-old he used to drink, smoke and do drugs, but has now come out of that phase. However, his reputation as a troublemaker still remains. He adores his younger sister, Mahtab, even though his sister teases and annoys him with her chatter.

~

Amma (Susan’s Mother)

Amma is a storyteller. She loves to share with her friends how she ran away to get married to the man who is now her husband and the father of her only child. She lives in Canada with her daughter and refuses to believe that her Happily Ever After is filled with long distance calls, fights and anger and despair.

~

Alisha

Alisha Babu is Susan’s best friend who still lives in Jeddah. She and Susan talk everyday inspite of the distance and the time difference and share every detail of their daily lives. She has strict conservative parents who want her to create a profile on a matrimonial site the year she turns eighteen.

~

Mahtab

Mahtab is Malcolm’s little sister who is very protective of her elder brother. She is the stronger one amongst the 2 siblings who held her grit even after losing their mother. She is the perfect Parsi girl with her daily prayers, her involvement in the ZCC Youth Committee and her perfect Parsi boyfriend Ronnie Mehta.

Find out more about the characters and their story in Tanaz Bhathena’s new book, The Beauty of the Moment!

5 Reasons You Can’t Run Away from Harlan Coben’s’Run Away’

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You’ve lost your daughter, and she’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to be found…And then you see her – living on the edge, frightened and clearly in trouble.

You approach her, beg her to come home.

She runs.

And you do the only thing a parent can do. You follow her into a dark and dangerous world you never dreamed existed.

Here are 5 reasons to read Run Away by Harlan Coben:

This is Coben’s 31st Novel. 


Harlan Coben was the first ever author to win all three major crime awards in the US.This makes the new standalone thriller from the master of domestic suspense a must read!

~

The author was inspired to write the first line when he was in the exact same location 

“Simon sat on a bench in Central Park- in Strawberry Fields, to be more precise- and felt his heart shatter.”

~

Coben’s wife is a pediatrician, just like Ingrid, Simon’s wife, in the book. Does art imitate life in more ways? 

“…Ingrid, a wonderful mother,a caring pediatrician who dedicated her life to helping children in need, said, “I don’t want her back in this house.”

~

The book showcases how dealing with the seedier underbelly involves sticking to their unlikely schedules.

” Dave texted him:
11AM today. I never told you. I ain’t a snitch.
Then:
But bring my money at 10AM. I got yoga at 11.“

~

Simon is a man on a mission, and that mission is getting his daughter back.

” ‘Is Paige hiding from us?’
‘I’m not going to tell you that.’
‘Would you tell me for ten thousand dollars?’ Simon asked.
That caused a hush.”

Run Away is a brilliant new thriller from the international bestselling author described by Dan Brown as ‘the modern master of the hook and twist’.

Know Sadhguru, the Yogi, Mystic and Visionary –A Spiritual Master With a Difference 

Posted on by Penguin India

Yogi, mystic, and visionary, Sadhguru is a spiritual master with a difference. His book Flowers on the Path offers insights that spark you with their incisive clarity, delight you with humour, or even render you in profound stillness within. Whether the subject covers social issues and worldly affairs, individual challenges, or dimensions of the beyond, Sadhguru’s ability to delve to the root and look at life in its totality is evident.

Here we give you some interesting facts about Sadhguru:

 

Get your copy of Flowers On The Path today!

The Begum-Rediscovering Shared History

Posted on by Penguin India

A conversation between the Indian and Pakistani authors of The Begum, Deepa Agarwal and Tahmina Aziz Ayub

Deepa:

Dear Tahmina, writing this book has been an amazing process of discovery for me and I’m sure for you too. I had heard a lot about Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan while growing up in the small town of Almora in Kumaon. Her name was mentioned in awestruck tones—the fact that this local girl, Irene Pant, had married Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan and after his death, served as ambassador to different countries and been the governor of a province was the stuff of legends. My father was close to her younger brother Norman Pant so there was a connection with her family, which created a personal interest in me. However, since she never visited her home town after marrying Liaquat Ali Khan in 1933 and left for Pakistan in 1947 my image of her was hazy and distant. When the idea of her biography came up, I felt it would be a fascinating to find out how she had travelled so far from her birthplace. The events of her life convinced me that she was a woman whose story needed to be told. What was the source of your interest in Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, Tahmina, this woman who played an significant role in sub-continental history, but is unknown in India and almost forgotten in Pakistan today?

 

Tahmina:                                     

Deepa dear, first of all I must share with you my delight at the choice of the words for describing this joint blog of ours, “Rediscovering Shared History”. Yes, and this is precisely the reason for my spontaneous response in accepting this writing cum research project when it was offered to me by Namita Gokhale in August 2016 during our meeting in Thimpu at the Mountain Echoes, Bhutan’s Lit Fest.

We here in Pakistan had heard about the achievements of this great lady in so many fields and yet we knew so little about her roots and her early life in India.   So for the first time this biography would manage to bring to light so many of those facets of her life which helped to shape her personality and prepare her for the tests of time she was to face in her later years.

The other aspect that made me wake up to the need for this biography was the fact, as you rightly pointed out, that many people of the present generation had mostly forgotten about the unusual and amazing story of this great lady and more so the trials and tribulations she had to face and soon after their arrival here, especially when she was to lose her husband to an assassin’s bullet.

 

Deepa:

The freedom movement was a long drawn out struggle, which ended in the Partition of India and Pakistan. While researching the life of Begum Ra’ana I uncovered many facts that I had only been superficially acquainted with. For example, the history of the Muslim League and Liaquat Ali Khan and Ra’ana’s contribution to its revival and growth and their relationship with Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Also, the undercurrents among the political parties that led to the formation of separate countries and the role World War II played in bringing freedom from colonial rule. Your research must have led you through the growing pains of a new nation and the movement for women’s emancipation to which Ra’ana made a huge contribution. You also discovered the extraordinary personality of a woman who was determined to soldier on against all odds. What have you taken away from the experience of writing this book?

 

Tahmina:

Yes, my primary take away from this experience of charting her life’s journey that it was no easy task that she fulfilled all that she had decided to undertake. It was obvious that she was no ordinary woman but one who had always a goal ahead that she was to focus on which took her far beyond the confines of her own personal existence. She left no stone unturned and allowed nothing to stand in her way in order to fulfil the mission she had started, along with her husband right from the early years of her marriage to him. She was indeed a unique personality and stands tall even today among the pantheon of leaders of Pakistan’s history.

 

Deepa:

For me one of the most fascinating experiences in writing this book was that it led me through the journey of the development of education for women in India. Ra’ana’s life is an outstanding example of how education transformed the career course of one particular woman. She was the product of missionary institutions like Wellesley School in Nainital, Lal Bagh and Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow. Her closest lifelong friend and companion, the British lady Kay Miles, was the principal of Karamat Husain College set up for the education of Muslim girls in the same city. Irene/Ra’ana later taught in Gokhale Memorial School in Kolkata and Indraprastha College, the first women’s college in Delhi. Sifting through my sources, it was a revelation to learn how difficult it was for the pioneers in this field to find qualified women for teaching jobs, as Leonora G’meiner, the Australian principal of Indraprastha College bemoans in her correspondence. Then the hostility from the patriarchal system which early educators had to counter—from Isabella Thoburn’s need to hire guards against irate opponents when Lal Bagh School began, to Ra’ana’s own experiences of harassment during the course of her MA in Economics at Lucknow University. Do you think these early battles honed Ra’ana’s fighting mettle and prepared her for the greater challenges that she had to face in Pakistan?

 

Tahmina:

The first part of her story which you so painstakingly researched and penned Deepa tells us about her steely determination to secure a firm educational base for herself and later a career too as lecturer in her chosen subject of Economics. In this respect she was far ahead of her times as this was a subject that did not interest females in general at the time.  Interestingly many years later my own M Phil thesis would be on the subject of Women’s Labour in Agriculture as was hers in her M.A. thesis. Her firm belief in the role of formal education in the substantive lives of women led her to adopting this as her primary mission for helping women adopt a meaningful role in the fledgling state of Pakistan. She was an instrumental figure in setting up many centers of learning both formal and non- formal all over the country for the benefit of women, in the very early years of the development of new state of Pakistan.

Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan was the wife of Pakistan’s first prime minister. Three religions-Hinduism, Christianity and Islam-had an immense impact on her life, and she participated actively in all the major movements of her time-the freedom struggle, the Pakistani movement and the fight for women’s empowerment. She occasionally met with opposition, but she never gave up. It is this spirit that The Begum captures.

The Essential Mom Bookshelf for this Mother’s Day

Posted on by Penguin India

This Mother’s Day, Penguin brings you a list of books to read and navigate through the different stages of motherhood.

As Michelle Obama says, “My most important title is still ‘mom-in-chief.'”

Take a look at this essential list specially curated for all the moms-in-chief!


All You Need To Know About Parenting

As parents, we all face fear and doubt about bringing up children. It helps to have a guide who can prepare and take us through every single aspect of the formative years. You can rely on All You Need to Know about Parenting to be your guide, best friend and window into this world, knowing you’re not the only one who’s on this incredibly difficult but also rewarding journey. From the day you step into the hospital and welcome your baby to the time they become toddlers, this book will help you develop your parenting instinct.

Own the Bump

Motherhood is a life-changing event in a woman’s life. Keeping in mind the fast-paced lives of nuclear families and sometimes unhealthy lifestyles, Bollywood’s most celebrated yoga expert, Payal Gidwani Tiwari, brings to fore the importance of preparing the body and soul for such a change. From pre-pregnancy to post-natal, Gidwani utilizes her age-old knowledge of yoga and provides essential advice to take care of oneself before, during and after the birth. Her workout sessions are especially designed for modern parents.

Birthing Naturally

Birthing Naturally is a comprehensive book on pregnancy wellness that aims to increase the chances of expecting mothers in giving a successful and less-stressful natural birth. This book will help you as a friend and as an antenatal caregiver so you can enjoy your pregnancy, and provide valuable tips for your postnatal period to complete your experience of motherhood.

Drama Teen:A Cool-Headed Guide for Parents and Teenagers

In Drama Teen, Lina Ashar explores concepts from both sides of the fence. Helicopter parenting, parent–teen conflicts and ways to resolve them, and the habits that lead to a successful life are among the topics discussed here. She also explores ways to minimize the pain and trauma the ‘drama-teen’ phase can cause both to the teens and their parents. Packed with practical advice, tips, what-not-to-dos and activities, Ashar expertly guides you to keep your cool through those complicated years. ”

Picky Eaters: and Other Meal-Time Battles

Does your child revolt at the mere thought of eating greens? Are you running out of nutritious lunch-box ideas?

In Picky Eaters, celebrity chef and culinary expert Rakhee Vaswani guides parents and kids on how they can make everyday food fun, exciting and yummy. From delicious, healthy recipes to party-planning and cooking together, this book will tell you how to get your child to eat right. So banish all those mind-boggling questions about what to feed your children—and start cooking!

#MomsNeedABreak-Books to gift this Mother’s Day

Posted on by Penguin India

This Mother’s Day, Penguin presents a list of books to gift and help mothers escape their daily grind. After all, moms need a break too!

Take a look!

Sitayana

Countless retellings, translations, and reworkings of the Ramayana’s captivating story exist-but none are as vivid, ingenious and powerful as Amit Majmudar’s Sitayana. Majmudar tells the story of one of the world’s most popular epics through multiple perspectives, presented in rapid sequence-from Hanuman and Ravana, down to even the squirrel helping Rama’s army build the bridge.

I Owe You One

Fixie Farr can’t help herself. Straightening a crooked object, removing a barely-there stain, helping out a friend . . . she just has to put things right. So when a handsome stranger in a coffee shop asks her to watch his laptop for a moment, Fixie not only agrees, she ends up saving it from certain disaster. To thank her, the computer’s owner, Sebastian, scribbles her an IOU – but of course Fixie never intends to call in the favour. Soon the pair are caught up in a series of IOUs – from small favours to life-changing debts – and Fixie is torn between the past she’s used to and the future she deserves.

 

Kaifiyat: Verses on Love and Women

Kaifi Azmi’s literary legacy remains a bright star in the firmament of Urdu poetry. His poetic temperament-ranging from timeless lyrics in films like Kagaz Ke Phool to soaring revolutionary verses that denounced tyranny-seamlessly combined the radical and the progressive with the lyrical and the romantic. This beautifully curated volume brings together poems and lyrics that reflect Kaifi’s views on women and romance.

The Mister

The thrilling new romance from E L James, author of the bestselling Fifty Shades trilogy..

London, 2019. Life has been easy for Maxim Trevelyan. But all that changes when tragedy strikes and Maxim inherits his family’s noble title, wealth, and estates, and all the responsibility that entails. But his biggest challenge is fighting his desire for an unexpected, enigmatic young woman who’s recently arrived in England, possessing little more than a dangerous and troublesome past. The Mister is a roller-coaster ride of danger and desire that leaves the reader breathless to the very last page.

The Travel Gods Must be Crazy: Wacky Encounters in exotic lands

Dreaming of glorious sunrises and architectural marvels in exotic places, Sudha often landed up in situations that were uproariously bizarre or downright dangerous. Tongue firmly in cheek, she recounts her journeys through the raw wildernesses of Borneo and the African savannah, into the deserts of Iran and Uzbekistan, and up the Annapurna and the Pamirs, revealing the quirky side of solo travel to side-splitting effect. Punctuating her droll stories with breathtaking descriptions and stunning photographs, Sudha invites readers on an unexpected and altogether memorable tour around the world!

Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells

Returning to his long-time home in Japan after a sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office, watching the maples begin to blaze, engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. As he does so, he starts to unfold a meditation on changelessness that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and he and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away.

The Begum: A Portrait of Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s Pioneering First Lady

Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan was the wife of Pakistan’s first prime minister. Always intelligent, outgoing and independent, she was teaching economics in a Delhi college when she met the dashing Nawazada Liaquat Ali Khan, a rising politician in the Muslim League and an ardent champion of the cause for Pakistan. In August 1947 they left for Pakistan. Ra’ana threw herself into the work of nation building, but in 1951 Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated, and the reasons for his murder are still shrouded in mystery.

Ra’ana continued to be active in public life-and her contribution to women’s empowerment in Pakistan is felt to this day. She occasionally met with opposition, but she never gave up. It is this spirit that The Begum captures.

Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities

 Trees are storehouses of the complex origins and histories of city growth, coming as they do from different parts of the world, brought in by various local and colonial rulers. From the tree planted by Sarojini Naidu at Dehradun’s clock tower to those planted by Sher Shah Suri and Jahangir on Grand Trunk Road, trees in India have served, above all, as memory keepers. They are our roots: their trunks our pillars, their bark our texture, and their branches our shade. Trees are nature’s own museums.
Drawing on extensive research, Cities and Canopies is a book about both the specific and the general aspects of these gentle life-giving creatures.

The Satapur Moonstone

India, 1922. A curse seems to have fallen upon the royal family of Satapur,  where both the maharaja and his teenage son have met with untimely deaths. The state is now ruled by an agent of the British Raj on behalf of Satapur’s two maharanis, the dowager queen and her daughter-in-law.

When a dispute arises between the royal ladies , a lawyer’s counsel is required to settle the matter. Since the maharanis live in purdah, the one person who can help is Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer. But Perveen arrives to find that the Satapur Palace is full of cold-blooded power play and ancient vendettas.

Too late she realizes she has walked into a trap. But whose?

Queens of Crime: True Stories of Women Criminals from India

Dysfunctional families, sexual abuse, sheer greed and sometimes just a skewed moral compass. These are some of the triggers that drove the women captured in these pages to become lawbreakers.
Queens of Crime demonstrates a haunting criminal power that most people do not associate women with. The acts of depravity described in this book will jolt you to the core, ensuring you have sleepless nights for months.
Based on painstaking research, these are raw, violent and seemingly unbelievable but true rendition of India’s women criminals.

The Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan

Acclaimed historian Ruby Lal uncovers the rich life and world of Nur Jahan, rescuing this dazzling figure from patriarchal and orientalist cliches of romance and intrigue, while giving a new insight into the lives of the women and the girls during the Mughal Empire, even where scholars claim there are no sources. Nur’s confident assertion of authority and talent is revelatory. In Empress, she finally receives her due in a deeply researched and evocative biography that awakens us to a fascinating history

 

Are Marriages Arranged in Heaven? ‘Ayesha at Last’ Clarifies!

Posted on by Penguin India

Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her boisterous Muslim family, and numerous (interfering) aunties, are professional naggers. And her flighty young cousin, about to reject her one hundredth marriage proposal, is a constant reminder that Ayesha is still single.

Ayesha might be a little lonely, but the one thing she doesn’t want is an arranged marriage.

Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin sheds some light on arranged marriage in the Muslim community. Read on to find out if Ayesha should give arranged marriage a chance…

Love is a part of the equation but not before marriage

“Love comes after marriage, not before. These Western ideas of romantic love are utter nonsense. Just look at the American divorce rate.”

~

The guest list requires a lot more thought than expected

 “The wedding will be in July. Everyone will want an invitation, but I will limit the guest list to six hundred people. Any more is showing off.”

~

Mothers can get a little carried away during the process

“Because while it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Muslim man must be in want of a wife, there’s an even greater truth: To his Indian mother, his own inclinations are of secondary importance.”

~

Sometimes it is the only way some people can find a partner

“He had been raised to believe that non-related men and women should never get too close- socially, emotionally and especially physically. “ When an unmarried man and woman are alone together, a third person is present: Satan,” Ammi often told him.”

~

Religion is not part of the process but is an integral part of the individual’s identity

“His white robes and beard were a comfortable security blanket, his way of communicating without saying a word. Even though he knew there were other, easier ways to be, Khalid had chosen the one that felt most authentic to him, and he had no plans to waver.”

~

First impressions are very important

“Well, I hope you aren’t comparing your situation to our little Hafsa’s many rishta proposals. Even if you are seven years older and only received a handful of offers. Only consider Sulaiman’s status in the community and Hafsa’s great beauty, her bubbly personality.”

~

Everyone who participates doesn’t believe in the ‘Happily Ever After’

“A woman should always have a backup plan, for when things fall apart. You must know how to support yourself when they leave.”

Ayesha at Last is a big-hearted, captivating, modern-day Muslim Pride and Prejudice, with hijabs instead of top hats and kurtas instead of corsets. .

What’s in a Name?

Posted on by Penguin India

By Kuber Kaushik

It’s an idea I’ve come across time and again. In everything from mythological tales to Harry Potter, the idea is repeated. Names have power.

It makes sense. Names are more than what we call each other. They are nouns and basic words. They are the foundation of all human languages. They are how we make sense of the world.

But most importantly, a name is a story. Whenever I encounter or conjure up a name, I always try and think about the story behind it. Ultimately, that’s what makes it unique.

Sun Alice – the first protagonist of The Children of Destruction – is acutely aware of her name. Raised for most of her life in Hong Kong, the name sets her apart from her peers, and it colors her perception of herself. She’s even aware of the Alice in Wonderland comparisons as she plunges headlong into a similar (if less surreal) story. It goes deeper though. Even though she complains about her parents’ choosing the name, ‘Alice’ is also her late grandmother’s name, and it connects her to her family. It becomes a touchstone for her in turbulent times, even if she doesn’t realize it.

The other characters in the book have similar stories or influences that go with their names. For the second protagonist – Khadim – his name, ‘servant of god’, is something he avoids thinking about, with most calling him by his last name ‘Kharsan’.

A name can have many purposes though. Take the shape-shifting vixen of a Trickster who introduces Alice to the world of the weird. She goes by ‘Kit’, a simple abbreviation of Kitsune (Japanese fox-spirit). It’s an obviously false name, intended simply to keep others at arm’s length and to protect her secrets and stories (and after being alive for a few thousand years, she has more than her share of both).

Leaving the book behind for a moment, I have often given thought to my own name ‘Kuber’, and I have my own rocky history with it. It is an uncommon enough name that I am glad of it. However, as was kindly pointed out to me during my school years (by obviously well-meaning classmates), it is also the name chosen for a rather pervasive brand of chewing tobacco. The name does lose some of its shine after a few hundred times seeing it on discarded packets tossed on pavements as litter. On the balance of things, though, I remain content with it.

Names change in the voices of others though. To friends and acquaintances through the years I have also been Kato, Kay, Kubi, BearCub and, oddly enough, Cuba, and that’s not even including family nicknames and the like. They all have different tones of familiarity and bring with them a different meaning and a different story.

This brings me to my last point – the meaning of names.

Sooner or later, almost all of us look into where our names come from or are told stories about them. The name ‘Kuber’ has a few shades of meaning to it. Most would ascribe ‘god of wealth’ to it (something which I have found quite ironic when considering my personal finances over the years). A more accurate meaning may be ‘treasurer of the gods’ – a divine banker, if you will.

Perhaps more important than the meaning of a name, though, is the meaning that we take from it. I wondered what it is that a god might treasure. Surely it had to be something more than gold or wealth. Having little divine insight, I settled instead on what I would treasure – words, imagination, ideas… stories. A keeper of stories – that is the meaning that I chose.

Names are the basis of identity, and yet, in the end, just a word. They are given and they are taken. They are earned, borrowed, stolen, changed, and discarded. They are burdened with regrets and nostalgia, lightened by hopes and ambitions. They have power, yes, but only the power that we give them. They are beginning and the end of each of our stories.

So… what does your name mean to you?

Kuber Kaushik is the author of The Children of Destruction, where, between a blind and telekinetic mass murderer, a girl bound to a shadow-demon and a genetically engineered pseudo messiah, a whole generation of weird is ready to come of age. And when it does, the world will change….To know what happens, grab a copy!

9 Ways in which China has influenced the world that you didn’t Realise

Posted on by Penguin India

For decades, the West has dismissed Maoism as an outdated historical and political phenomenon. In Maoism: A Global History, Julia Lovell re-evaluates Maoism as both a Chinese and an international force, linking its evolution in China with its global legacy.

Read on to find out 9 ways in which China and Maoism have influenced the world:

Mao inadvertently hastened the end of the Cold War
“Mao’s schemes for world revolution – built upon(often puzzlingly) ferocious rivalry with the Soviet Union- would hasten the end of the Cold War.”

~

China sowed the seeds for insurrection in Asia and Africa
“In presenting Mao – in glossy magazines,technicolour posters and documentaries- as the genius of world revolution, it would sow the seeds of insurrection across Africa, Asia and Latin America, and sink billions of dollars of Chinese aid into these regions.”

~

China shaped the course of the Vietnam War
“Without the Sino-Soviet Split and the competitive Chinese and Soviet aid packages, the intensification of the Vietnam War also becomes hard to imagine. This duel turned the Vietnam War into the hottest conflict of the global Cold War.”

~

China’s foreign policy experiments resulted in the 1965 Indonesian mass killings
“Indonesia was the test case in China’s post-Soviet foreign policy: a key strategic target for exploring the wisdom and superiority of the Maoist model. Leading Indonesian Communists were intoxicated by the militant rhetoric of Mao’s revolution in the early 1960s.It encouraged and inspired them to confront the Indonesian military; this decision in turn gave the army a pretext to trigger the horrors of 1965.”

~

China provided a lot of aid to Africa (at times putting their needs over their own citizens!)
“…Mao-era China spent a greater proportion of income on foreign aid-including in Africa- than did either the US (around 1.5 per cent of the federal budget in 1977) or the USSR (0.9 per cent of the GNP in 1976)”

~

Their outreach to Africa resulted in conspicuous failures
“The outcome of these experiments-famine in Tanzania; one party thuggery and economic calamity in Zimbabwe- contrasts the charismatic appeal of Mao’s ideas and models of rebellion and self-reliance, with their manifest failure to create stable, responsive institutions for governance.”

~

The Maoist insurgency in India was supported by China
“The Maoist insurgency in central eastern India today would not have been possible without…the eagerness of the Chinese Communist Party to support rhetorically (and in limited ways materially) an Indian revolution inspired by Maoist revolutionary strategies.”

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China was a catalyst for change in many countries including the West
“The Cultural Revolution’s rhetoric of anti-authoritarian rebellion inspired revolts outside China that took aim at a broad range of political, cultural and social custom: at domestic and foreign policy; colonial rule; electoral representation; relations between the sexes; education, film and literature.”

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China is gearing up to take the place of USA (thanks to Donald Trump)
“In the context of a global great power vacuum created by the inward turn of the United States under Donald Trump, China under Xi has an unprecedented opportunity and ambition to shape the contemporary world.Early evidence suggests that the CCP is deploying strategies…to increase its influence abroad, especially in Australia and New Zealand.”

Maoism: A Global History explores how the power and appeal of Maoism have extended far beyond China.

 

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