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Renowned journalist Jyotirmoy Dey, fondly known as J, Dey, was murdered by members of the Chhota Rajan gang in 2011. A few months later, a fellow journalist and crime reporter Jigna Vora was arrested in connection with the murder. Seven years later, some of which were spent in prison, Jigna was acquitted of all charges.

Here are 10 things about the resilient author that you may not have known:

Jigna Vora studied Law from Ruparel College, Mumbai. She also did a one-year diploma course at Somaiya College, where Velly Thevar, her faculty and a well-known crime reporter working for the Times of India, sparked her interest in crime reporting.

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At the behest of her parents, Jigna was forced to give up an internship with a reputed law firm to agree to a marriage with a man who, she was told, was an engineer and ran a printing press in Bharuch, Gujarat. She later discovered the claims to be false and this set the course for a tumultuous marriage that eventually ended on a bitter note.

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In May 2004 Jigna moved back to her maternal home in Ghatkopar, Mumbai, where, as a single mother to a four year old son, she decided to pursue a career in media.

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Jigna Vora joined the Free Press Journal (FPJ) in November 2005 and in her role as a court reporter her first assignment was to cover gangster Abu Salem’s case at the TADA court situated inside Arthur Road Jail.

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After ten months in the Free Press Journal, Jigna Vora bagged a position with Mumbai Mirror as a court reporter, where her assigned beat was the sessions court at Kala Ghoda, Mumbai. Her interaction here with many accused and known criminals helped her step into the role of a crime reporter.

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Jigna Vora covered her first underworld story in December 2005 when Sujata Nikhalje, dreaded gangster Chhota Rajan’s wife, was arrested for extortion threats against a builder under the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act.

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Jigna Vora worked for Mid-Day as a senior correspondent for the sessions court. Her big story about the controversial encounter specialist Pradeep Sharma sent shock waves across the country.

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May 2008 marked another milestone in Jigna’s career when she joined Asian Age, which was the publication part of Deccan Chronicle, a revered brand of south India.

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During her stint at Asian Age, Jigna covered the sensational story of Jaya Chheda, who had master-minded the murder of her ex-husband Suresh Bhagat – Mumbai’s matka king – in a bid to gain control over his thriving business.

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Year 2011 changed the course of Jigna Vora’s life and brought her promising career as a journalist to a screeching halt. She was catapulted into a media storm when crime journalist J. Dey was shot and killed in Mumbai by the hitmen of underworld don Chhota Rajan.

Having survived the most challenging phase of her life, Jigna now practises healing, tarot card reading and astrology. She is currently researching for and writing web series and movies.

Her book, Behind Bars in Byculla, is available now!

If you have ever wondered what it’s like to be part of the armed forces, let the Our Amazing Armed Forces take you through this experience. From moving homes to making new friends, from deployment to reunion, from patriotism to tender family moments, these books go on to describe the daily lives of armed force officers and cadets.

Brimming with facts and impactful stories, read on to find out how an individual can rise through the ranks:

Indian Airforce

Is Air Chief Marshal senior to Air Vice Marshal? Zoom in to find out!

Indian Navy

Is Captain the boss of the Navy? This handy infographic will tell you

Indian Army

Major or General? Who is ranked higher? Zoom in to find out!

My Father Is In The Indian Army,  My Mother Is In The Indian Air Force and My Sister Is In The Indian Navy– Our Amazing Armed Forces series is available now!

The Indian subcontinent along with the rest of the world, faces the urgent threat of a dwindling wildlife population with 6,127 species deemed as critically endangered, as per an International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN)​ report. Benita Sen’s ​One Lonely Tiger​ perfectly captures this modern day threat of ecological extinction, via a children’s story that doubles as a wakeup call for audiences young and old alike. The story features a lonely tiger as its protagonist, whose attempts at finding someone to play with end in unforeseen consequences, bringing out Sen’s brilliant use of satire to invoke action.

The Bengal tiger, India’s national animal and the pride of the nation, is revered for its agility and majestic appearance.

The tiger is a symbol of majesty, grace, and strength. The Indian subcontinent, rich and diverse in its ecology, has always recognised the importance of flora and fauna, with carvings of animals like tigers and elephants being found in the remains of the Chola Empire and the Indus Valley Civilization. Elaborate sculptures, paintings, and modern day stamps, have featured these majestic creatures, arising from the belief that human beings and animals must coexist in harmony. However, colonization, and the period following it, played a significant role in the rapid decline of the ecology, with animals like tigers suffering a huge hit in population.

The colonizers believed in exploiting nature for the purpose of recreation and development, a trend that has somewhat stayed.

Trophy hunting of tigers as a leisure activity was popularized during the British Raj, an activity which was believed to represent man’s might over the fiercest of animals. The majestic tiger was seen as a symbol of prestige, with its head mounted on the wall considered as the ultimate symbol of pride. The introduction of western science and technology during Industrialization worsened the situation for the tiger and the general animal and plant population, with dozens of square feet of forest being cleared for factories. The advent of Industrialization acted as a catalyst to the already dwindling population of tigers, as the animals were already being hunted as big game.

Poaching and deforestation for developmental and agricultural purposes have significantly reduced the number of most animals, including the tiger.

Sen’s story focuses on the lonesome state of a seemingly enthusiastic tiger, who spends his time in search of friends to play with.

The tiger in Sen’s story chases his own shadow, the ‘strange black cat’, out of the desperate need for companionship. He attempts to make friends of animals like, the ‘frisky jackals’, and an elephant named Jumbo, but all in vain.
Sen’s children’s story serves the hard hitting truth of the increasingly lonely state of India’s national animal, the tiger, while commenting on the general state of degradation faced by wildlife. The tiger population of the country has come down from a whopping estimate of one lakh in 1900, to about 3000 in the present day. This dwindling wildlife population is testament to a history of irresponsible decisions made by human beings in the past years. Project Tiger (1973) salvaged the species from complete extinction. The programme increased the population by about 2,226 tigers in a little over three decades. The number of tigers as estimated in 2018 stands at 2967. Today, India is home to the largest population of tigers in the world.

Sen’s tiger showcases animals’ yearning for contact and a stable home free from human intrusion. The continuous exploitation of animal and plant species has led to many ‘lasts’ in the ecology.

The narrative addresses the issue of deforestation, and the loss of wildlife habitats due to human construction. It hints at what more animal corridors could help with: easy and safe passage from one forest to the next.

The narrator poses a very important question to readers in the beginning of the story.

At times, he got a little bored— Yaaawn—where could he go?

(​One Lonely Tiger,​ 2019, p. 7)

“..where could he go?” this troublesome question is raised to alert action, by highlighting the need to return the animals’ homes to them. Ecological degradation has reached an ultimate high with 130,000 square km of forest land being cleared every single day, according to a World Wildlife Fund for Nature report. Human demand is failing to keep up with supply, leading to the extensive exploitation of natural resources, subsequently making these very resources scarce.

Human intrusiveness is the root cause for environmental degradation, with forest land being cleared for construction, farming, and mining purposes.

He looks down where the forest was And lets out a long, sad sigh. ‘Where did my home go?’ he cries. ‘Where and why, oh why?’

(​One Lonely Tiger,​ 2019, p. 34)

Chased by lumberjacks, who would “…leave nothing to count, No grass or hedge or sedge.” the tiger hops off earth to Mars. The animal is shown leaving the planet where it was abused.

The tiger represents the state of most animals in the world, who are either in queue to become endangered or on the verge of becoming extinct, with the problem of loneliness not remaining limited to humans alone.

Continuous exploitation has forced several animals to live in isolation, devoid of interaction with their fellow species members, as a consequence of their homes being felled, and poaching. The story of George, a lonely tree snail, the last of his kind in the Hawaiian region, is a sad reminder of the cost of economic development. The snail was bred in captivity, and required a male mate found in the natural environment to procreate and regenerate the species. However, the absence of a mate lead to a sad ending for his species of snails.​ ​Other species of animals like the Black Rhinoceros, the Yangtze softshell turtle, and the Amur Leopard, among many others, are resigned to lonely lives as the last few of their kind remain.

The growing loneliness of wildlife species, and the dire condition of the ecology is a major concern for not only the present, but for future generations as well. Stories like ​One Lonely Tiger aim at raising awareness about pertinent environmental issues for younger generations to better understand the situation of the planet, with the hope that it will guide individuals towards more responsible courses of action.

But the story is not all desolate. There is lots of gentle humour as the animals interact. The illustrations by Sekhar Mukherjee match word with visual. The end result is a keepsake. The book ends on a strong note of hope as the human beings realise what they have done and get their act together.

Most of us have grown up reading at least one of Ruskin Bond’s stories. He is iconic and his stories are delightful and easy to consume. So maybe it is time to introduce your little ones to the same imaginative world?

Read this short story from Ruskin Bond to your child and uncover how two little boys formed their own zoo:

There was no zoo in the small town where Mukesh lived. So, he decided to take matters in his own hand with the help of his friend Teju!

‘But you don’t have any birds or animals,’ said Dolly, his little sister.

‘I’ll find some,’ said Mukesh. 

A zoo where there was an assortment of house lizards, a ‘religious’ parrot, a rare black dog with yellow eyes, a white rabbit and Sitaram’s donkey aka ‘a wild ass from Kutch’!

A zoo where children were allowed in free, but grown-ups had to buy tickets at fifty paise each. 

A zoo that went awry!

Grab your copy of Mukesh Starts A Zoo to read your child a funny and illustrated story and find out what happens. It will make you feel nostalgic and your child feel happy!

India was proactive in the Cold War, even though India’s role has classically been defined as having been rather minimal.

In India and the Cold War, edited by Manu Bhagavan, contributors draw upon a wide array of new material, from recently opened archival sources to literature and film, and meld approaches from diplomatic history to development studies to explain the choices India made and to frame the decisions by its policymakers.

Read on to know some lesser known facts about India and the Cold War.

India was viewed as a potential but prickly strategic asset.

The 1950s proved challenging in other ways. While there were no doubt diplomats and politicians in both the United States and the Soviet Union who genuinely believed that India was an honest broker and were grateful to have an open channel to the opposing camp, others were more hard- nosed. They saw both India and Nehru as naïve, pompous, and overbearing. From this perspective, India was seen as a potential but prickly strategic asset, a geographically important, large state that was too reluctant to pick a side.

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At the beginning of the Cold War, India had military expeditionary capabilities despite of not belonging to a superpower bloc.

At the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, India was one of the few countries among the original fifty-one U.N. members that had the military expeditionary capability to conduct operations well beyond its borders and did not belong to a superpower bloc.

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The period from India’s independence – 1947 to 1956 – laid the foundation for Indo-Soviet relations.

Indo Soviet ties did begin to open up especially in the context of the Moscow Economic Conference organized in April 1952, to which India sent one of the largest delegations present, comparable to those from France, Great Britain and China…The Soviet Union reciprocated soon after by sending a delegation to Bombay to the International Industrial Exhibition held in May 1952.

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Indira Gandhi and the Cold War.

External pressure from Cold War U.S. economic statecraft thus contributed to exposing and deepening political cleavages within the previously Congress- dominated polity and within the Congress Party itself. This had several major political and policy outcomes. The tensions within the Congress Party came to a head after Gandhi moved to nationalize commercial banks in 1969.

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India and Pakistan’s early contacts with the US were based on similar objectives.

Both countries were tempted into their positions in the Cold War by a combination of similar ingredients: colonial precedent, a hunger for funding and developmental infrastructure and a precarious question of how to justify this in the eyes of critical domestic audiences.

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Hindu Nationalists and the Cold War.

Surprisingly little has been written about the diversity of Indian views on International Relations in the Cold War era (page 230)…. Hindu nationalists initially expressed a clear preference for the West. But over time this became a guarded preference because Hindu nationalists came to doubt U.S. willingness to countenance India’s rise and because they fretted about the consequences of materialism and Westernization.

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India was at the forefront on initiating and establishing U.N. Peacekeeping.

During the Cold War, India (under Nehru) became an accidental rule shaper for U.N. Peacekeeping. This is not because it needed to but because it could. Nehru not only encouraged U.N. peacekeeping initiatives in the General Assembly but also supported efforts in the field.

During the Cold War, India’s achievements were significant, and its misfires were notable. To know more about them, grab your copy of the book today!

150 years ago, a man was born who gave all of us our most prized possessions – political freedom and social equality. These changed the history of India forever. With his round-rimmed glasses, white dhoti and walking stick, he is an enduring symbol of non-violence, freedom, peace and simplicity. He is the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

Here are 6 facts about Gandhiji that you may not have known from Arthy Muthanna Singh and Mamta Nainy’s Gandhi in 150 Anecdotes:

Observing Gandhiji’s compassion towards those in need and his empathetic response towards the suffering of his people, poet Rabindranath Tagore gave him the title ‘Mahatma’.

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In his early years, Gandhiji was deeply moved by the mythological tale of King Harishchandra who sacrificed his kingdom and family to follow the path of truth. Inspired by this story, Gandhiji resolved to be unwaveringly truthful throughout his life.

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According to the custom of the region at that time, Gandhiji was married at the young age of thirteen to a spirited young girl called Kasturba Makhanji, whom  he affectionately called ‘Ba’. However, as an adult, Gandhiji objected to the tradition of child marriage.

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Despite being born into a strictly vegetarian Hindu family, young Mohandas surrendered to the temptation offered by a friend who encouraged consumption of meat as a source of strength required to win against the mighty British. Gandhiji enjoyed eating meat dishes but his guilt at the dishonourable act of cheating on his devout parents brought this episode to an end. His resolve to eat vegetarian food continued during his time in England where he depended on raw, unsavoury vegetables and bread for sustenance till he bought a cooker and learnt to cook his own food, especially his favourite carrot soup!

Gandhiji refrained from indulgence in food to focus on his spiritual goals. But there was one luscious fruit that Bapu had a special weakness for –  mangoes!

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A fact about Gandhiji not known to many is that he was a great football enthusiast. During his time in South Africa, he formed two football clubs – both named the Passive Resisters – inspired by the political philosophy in the writings of Henry Thoreau and Leo Tolstoy.

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German physicist and Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Albert Einstein, once expressed his admiration for Gandhiji in a letter. He wrote: ‘You have shown [that] it’s possible to succeed without violence, even with those who have not disregarded the method of violence. We may hope that your example will spread beyond the borders of your country and will help to establish an international authority, respected by all, which will take decisions and replace war conflicts. I hope that I will be able to meet you face to face some day.’

‘You can open any page in this book and go back to an exciting time in our country’s history, when one man made a life-changing difference to millions of lives,’ write Arthy Muthanna Singh and Mamta Nainy.

Peppered with fascinating trivia and rare insights into the life of a man who inspired not just a nation but the greatest minds in the world, Gandhi in 150 Anecdotes offers its young readers an opportunity to know more about their beloved Bapu.

When it comes to knowing about dishes, Indian foodies are increasingly on par with the rest of the world. For home cooks, the wider integration of India into the global food scene has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the kinds of ingredients available.

In Vir Sanghvi’s The Indian Pantry, readers will get to find out some fun facts about everyday food items and dishes:

The sweet-sour flavour tango which is the true test of a good tomato is rarely found in Indian tomatoes.

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You can cook the potato any way you like. You can boil it, roast it, bake it, fry it or cook it in a subzi, and it will still taste as good.

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In European cooking, peas are valued for their taste largely because chefs don’t use the kinds of masalas that our cooks have access to.

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The term corn doesn’t actually mean anything. Europe, it is used as a generic for any kind of cereal grain, one reason why there appear to be so many different kinds of corn.

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The food of the Middle East, and the Mediterranean region as a whole, uses lots of baingan. Melanzane Parmigiana, one of the world’s most famous Italian dishes, for instance, is based on baingan.

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As a general rule, wild mushrooms have more flavour than the cultivated variety; even a morel is much more flavourful than the white button mushroom you get in the shops.

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The Pimiento de Padron—a bright-green chilli from the town of Padron in north-west Spain—has travelled around the world in recent decades as part of the global tapas craze.

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The tamarind is not of Indian, or even Asian, origin. It originated in Africa and was brought to Asia by traders.

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The guava comes from Brazil and was brought to Asia by the Portuguese. In Malaysia, it is called Jambu Portugis.

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The Mango is a purely Indian plant even though it is now cultivated in many other parts of the world. There were mangoes in India over 4000 years ago and it crops up in ancient Sanskrit texts.

As the Indian middle class discovers the world, it finds that it has money to spend, that new prosperity is finding its first expression in its food choices.

The food boom is a symptom of a nation that is now confidently exploring the world, if not with its mind, certainly with its stomach! Get your copy of The Indian Pantry for the very best of (rude) food!

The Battle for Pakistan by Shuja Nawaz showcases a marriage of convenience between unequal partners. The relationship between Pakistan and the United States since the early 1950s has been nothing less than a whiplash-inducing roller-coaster ride. Surrounded today by hostile neighbours and with Afghanistan under increasing Indian influence, Pakistan does not wish to break ties with the US. It also does not want to become a vassal of China and get caught in the vice of a US-China rivalry, or the Arab-Iran conflict.

Based on extensive travel in the region, frequent policy interactions and many on-the-record interviews with key leaders, The Battle for Pakistan untangles the complex US relationship in the past decade. Here’s an excerpt from the preface.

Salvaging a Misalliance

The US–Pakistan relationship has often been compared to a bad marriage. Some have also described the relationship using the Chinese and Japanese sayings about an estranged couple that share the same bed but dream different dreams. It has been a true misalliance that is hurtling towards a bad break-up, but one that needs to be rescued for the sake of both parties and for the region in which Pakistan is located and where it can play a crucial role.

The French word ‘mesalliance’ was borrowed by George Bernard Shaw’s brilliant satirical play on the class battle in British society. It was based on an unequal partnership between the daughter of a businessman who made his money selling underwear, and the son of an upper-crust British proconsul in an Indian province. Indeed, the Shavian commentary from the father of the boy may also apply to the case of Pakistan and even Trumpian America today: ‘Democracy reads well; but it doesn’t act well.’ In many ways, the seventy-year-old US–Pakistan relationship, with its many ups and downs, alternately filled with both tantrums and fulsome praise for each other, has become a tragicomedy on a regional political stage, with numerous bad actors and confused heroes and heroines. Meanwhile, the sorry chorus of their hoi polloi tries to make sense of the ‘tangled web’ that the often-cynical leadership of both countries has woven. Pakistan continues to struggle to craft a democracy, as its successive governments continue to battle for supremacy with the military, even while they pretend to be ‘on the same page’. It also faces a hostile, much larger India to the east that continues to inform its security policy and its regional relationships. The US fails to fully appreciate this aspect of Pakistan’s existential struggle.

The internal Battle for Pakistan forms one side of a triangle of turmoil that reflects the country’s roller-coaster relationship with the US. The other two sides are the US relationships with the civil and the military in Pakistan. Today, as at critical junctures in the past seventy years, the US is trying to shape a new global strategy that involves preparing for economic and even military conflict with potential enemies in distant parts of the world. China is one major target of the administration of President Donald J. Trump, reflected in the Indo-Pacific alliance with India and preceded by the pivot to the Pacific of President Barack H. Obama. The US brushed off all Pakistani concerns about its tilt towards India. Russia may be another US target, though Trump, whatever his reasons, remains silent on that very real and growing conflict. The US persists in stumbling into the darkness of an ill-defined ‘war on terror’, as it struggles to place the Band-Aid of military intervention on numerous wars across the world against irregular forces of extremist Islamic warriors. It is trying to fight ideologies with military weapons. And failing. At the same time, it is preparing to confront poor Central American civilians attempting to breach its southern frontier in search of economic and political freedom. For seventeen years, the US struggled to find a direction in the seemingly endless and losing war inside Afghanistan. How it manages its military exit out of that battlefield will determine its relationship with Pakistan, Afghanistan’s larger neighbour to the east, and the US’s role in greater South Asia.

Grab your copy of The Battle for Pakistan today!

It’s 1998. And Mansoor Visram has lived in Canada for 25 years, ever since dictator Idi Amin expelled South Asians from Uganda. As a refugee with a wife and child, Mansoor has tried his best to recreate the life they once had, but starting over in Canada has been much harder than he expected. He’s worked as a used-car salesman, as a gas-station attendant, and now he runs a small dry cleaner in suburban Calgary. But he’s hatching plans for a father-and-son empire that will bring back the wealth and status the Visrams enjoyed in Uganda. Mansoor’s wife, Layla, has spent the past decade running her own home-cooking business and trying to hold her family together. But Ashif, their son, rarely comes home to visit, and Mansoor’s pride has almost ruined their marriage.

Read on to sense the undercurrents beneath the tremulous world of Mansoor, Ashif, and Layla from Night Of Power:

“Get up, Visram!” he orders himself. “Move!” Instead he falls, curls in the soft snow, and drifts off again.

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“Mark my words, son. We were kings in Uganda, and we will be kings yet again in Canada.”

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The flight was packed with stateless Asian men, men who now belonged nowhere.

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He was exactly where his father had been when he landed on the shores of Zanzibar sixty years ago. A pauper with nothing to his name.   

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Layla yearns to see her son’s face, to hold him, the way she used to when he was a child. This is, she is sure, how all mothers separated from their children must feel, a constant sense of loss and longing.

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When he saw Layla’s bruised face, he dismissed her injuries, cordoned them off to the far recesses of his mind. He had nothing to do with that.

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No, but where are you really from? As if they are border guards and he’s trying to enter the country illegally. It leaves him feeling that he doesn’t belong here.

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He doesn’t feel at home anywhere. He feels untethered, even to his own body. As if he might float away at any second.

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He plants his hands on the snow and struggles to stand, his veins a map of  frozen rivers.

Finalist for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Danuta Gleed Literary Prize, Anar Ali is a Toronto based screenwriter and a master storyteller. In the Night of Power her words help us envision the Visram family’s exhilarating experiences in Uganda and their life changing journey to Canada.

On 26 May 2014, millions of Indians glued to their television sets and smartphones followed every single moment of the swearing-in ceremony of the Narendra Modi–led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). After Modi became the fifteenth prime minister of India, all eyes turned to the person who was sworn in as the first cabinet minister of the Modi sarkar—Rajnath Singh. As the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rajnath Singh had led the party to its biggest electoral victory until then, but more importantly, he delivered on the biggest gamble of his four-decade-long political career when he put his weight behind Narendra Modi as the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate in the face of stiff opposition both within and outside the alliance.

Gautam Chintamani’s Rajneeti takes us through the journey of the man behind Modi.

Singh’s statesmanship unencumbered Modi to seek the electorate’s mandate and return with an impressive victory.

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Modi’s term as the longest-serving chief minister of Gujarat and the achievements of his government were an affirmation of the path that Singh had envisioned for the BJP.

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The appointment of Amit Shah as in-charge for Uttar Pradesh for 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Singh’s own home turf and one of the most important states in the grand scheme of things, hinted at how Singh was thinking. ……. entrusting Amit Shah with UP showed that Singh meant business.

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Both Singh and Modi are quintessential organization men who put the party before everything else. Both had taken up the responsibility they were given through the course of their public life and focused on doing what was right, which, at times, could come at the cost of what others in the party felt.

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Singh continued to maintain there was no doubt about Modi being a popular leader and had projected a successful model for development in Gujarat but added that it was the BJP’s Parliamentary Board that would take the final call.

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In September 2012, as Modi undertook his month-long Vivekanand Yuva Vikas Yatra, Singh was present to extend his support for his colleague’s journey through 182 assembly constituencies of Gujarat.

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Singh’s last moment announcement appointing Modi as the chief of the party’s election campaign commission for 2014 at the BJP’s Goa National Executive was seen as bringing Narendra Modi one step closer to being made the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

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As swayamsevaks, Singh as well as Modi were proud of the Sangh’s influence on their thought process and their careers but that was where the influence ended.

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For Rajnath Singh, winning the 2014 Lok Sabha election meant delivering on a promise that he had made to himself half a decade ago..The thumping victory would become a part of Rajnath Singh’s political legacy as would his unwavering dedication to push Narendra Modi as his party’s prime ministerial candidate.

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On 26 May 2014, Narendra Modi took oath as the prime minister and Rajnath Singh was sworn in as home minister of the republic of India.

Get your copy of Rajneeti today!