Category: Uncategorized

Bhakti took birth in Dravidian lands,

Ripened in Karnataka,

Came to womanhood in Maharashtra,

And grew crone-like in Gujarat,

Reaching Vrindavan, she re-emerged

A nubile young woman

Between the third centuries BC and AD were written thousands of verses in Tamil that have collectively come to be known as Sangam literature. The expressions of love between a man and a woman in these love poems gave way to passionate expressions of devotional love, where the heroine became the devotee and the hero became God.

The individual outpourings and the unfettered voices of these women refused to be drowned in the din of patriarchy, gathering momentum until this became a pan India movement.

In For the Love of God, Sandhya Mulchandani delves deep into historical accounts of these women who defied societal norms, and the strictures of both literature and religion, and fell in love with God.

Here are some voices from the book that are a force to be reckoned with!

Andal

The poetess was found as a baby near a Tulsi bush, and eventually ‘married’ Lord Ranaganatha. Her works are included in the ‘Nalayira Divya Prabandham’—a collection of 4000 Tamil verses. Andal is the only woman who is acknowledged to be an Alwar.

“Soon enough, Andal blossomed into a beautiful young woman but one who refused to marry anyone else but Lord Ranganatha, the reclining form of Lord Vishnu, who resided at the great temple town of Srirangam. Legend has it that again, one night, Lord Ranganatha appeared to Vishnuchitta and asked for Andal be sent to Him in all her wedding finery. Simultaneously, the Lord also appeared before the priests at Srirangam and asked them to prepare for the coming of Andal… It is said that Andal merged with her Lord in a blaze of light.”

∼

Ammaiyar

The ghoul of Karaikal, she was one of only three women in the Saiva saints known as Nayanars. Born a beautiful woman, she came to identify herself as a peey (a ghoul) or Shiva’s gana,  the impish, grotesque creatures who were part of His entourage. She was the first saint to have written verses to Shiva in Tamil.

“Paramadathan truthfully explained to those assembled that his wife was no ordinary woman, that she was a goddess, and he could only look to her as Ammaiyar (his mother). Understanding her husband’s dilemma, Punithavathi prayed to the Lord. Her prayer was thus immediately granted, and she was transformed into a withered skeleton-like crone. Shorn of her beauty and youth, she was set free from the trappings and expectations of society.”

∼

Mahadevi

The naked mystic, Mahadevi was one of the most famous composers  of vachanas. She was married to King Kaushika who was smitten by her beauty, but reserved her passion for Shiva. She eventually renounced royal life and joined the Vira Saivas.

“One day, frustrated with his unconsummated marriage, his uncommunicative wife and her stubborn rejection of him, the king goaded her, saying that while she kept rejecting him, everything she wore, ate and lived in belonged to him and not to Shiva. It is said that she immediately discarded everything, including her clothes, shocking the court and all the people around her.”

∼

Muktabai

She along with her three male siblings—Nivruttinath, Gynandev and Sopandev—was responsible for laying the foundation of one of the best-known Bhakti cults in Maharashtra which strived for liberation from oppressive scriptural orthodoxy.

“When they saw the five-year-old Mukta, they shooed her away, believing that the little girl would be frightened seeing a dead body. Mukta however wanted to know why they were waiting outside and was told that they were waiting for Changdev to bring the dead body back  to life. On hearing this, the little girl said that she too could wake it up. Running towards the dead body, she whispered ‘Vitthala Vitthala’ in its ears, and then she simply turned and walked away. The dead body immediately sat up and started chanting ‘Vitthala Vitthala’.”

 ∼

Atukuri Molla

The daughter of a potter, she was one of the first Telugu poetesses, and the creator of the first Telugu Ramayana, which brought her great renown in the court of Krishnadeva Raya.

“Molla’s Ramayana is of special significance because she audaciously chose to rework this timeless story in colloquial Telugu stating that if the  reader could not easily understand the work, it would be like a dialogue between deaf-mute people. Written in both padyam (verse) and gadya (prose), she does not blindly follow Valmiki’s magnum opus. Taking liberties with the original, she adds fictional accounts while condensing portions that were too descriptive but goes on to write her own descriptions that are tongue-in-cheek when read in Telugu.”

∼

Kanhopatra

Born into a family of courtesans, Kanhopatra was a prostitute who despite her famed beauty and charm longed for a life of piety. Persecuted  by her father Sadashiva and a local potentate, she was finally granted the sanctuary of death at the feet of Lord Vitobha in Pandharpur.

 “Meanwhile, Sadashiva, who had not given up his pursuit of Kanhopatra, sought the help of the Bahamani badshah of Bidar. Hearing numerous tales of her beauty, the badshah ordered for her to be brought to him. When she refused him too, the badshah sent his troops to bring her by force; he laid siege to the temple and threatened to destroy it if Kanhopatra was not handed over to him. Kanhopatra requested a last meeting with Vithoba before being taken. Although the circumstances are unclear, by all accounts, Kanhopatra died at the feet of the Vithoba image.”

Read about more such powerful female saints in For The Love of God

After thirty-two years in Japan, Pico Iyer can use everything from anime to Oscar Wilde to show how his adopted home is both hauntingly familiar and the strangest place on earth. He draws on readings, reflections and conversations with Japanese friends to illuminate an unknown place for newcomers, and to give longtime residents a look at their home through fresh eyes.

Read an excerpt from his latest book, A Beginner’s Guide to Japan below:

—

WHAT LIES WITHIN

Japan likes to present itself to the world in its
collective, corporate face— in groups— and we like
to see it in terms of stereotypes. Yet everything fresh,
surprising and warm in Japan takes place at the level
of the individual: Japan’s great accomplishments may
be communal, but its treasures are its constantly
unexpected and passionate people.

*

Nowhere else I’ve been, in fact, are individuals so
disengaged from the political domain; my Japanese
friends assume they can no more address their
leaders than they can a group of look- alike men in
suits in a corporate boardroom with the doors locked
and the curtains drawn. So they turn their backs on
the public sphere, and make fantastic worlds out of
their passions, counter- societies out of their hobbies.

*

“Success and satisfaction could rarely be sought by
way of public accomplishment,” writes Krista Tippett
of East Germany in the 1980s. “In response, ordinary
people defended and grew their inner lives defiantly.”

*

Pragmatic to the core, my Japanese pals are happy
to take four- day trips around Europe, because they
know that four days of novelty can furnish forty
years of memories. Experience is less important than
what we make of it.

*

If they can’t get to Europe, they’ll find their way to a
local theme- park Eiffel Tower. Even a place that we
write off as “inauthentic,” they realize, can arouse
emotions that are entirely authentic.

*

At a Starbucks in central Kyoto, seats are lined up in
a row, so you can look out at a sixth- century temple
in a courtyard. At the National Museum of Modern
Art, not far away, chairs are likewise set out in a line
in a large empty room so you can look out at the
busy streets, the girls flowing past in spring kimono,
the cherry trees framing a thin canal.

*

No one married to a Japanese would ever call her
“repressed.” She simply has a sharp and unwavering

sense of where emotion is appropriate and where not;
she lives in the gap the British classicist Jasper Griffin
explained to his friend Ved Mehta between denying
one’s emotions and choosing not to indulge them.

*

“Have more than thou showest,” as his Fool advises
Lear, “speak less than thou knowest.”

*
Read the classic poems of Kyoto and you see that
a night of love is less important than the way
one anticipates it or the words with which one
commemorates it. What we do with our feelings
lasts longer than the feelings themselves.

*
In the most celebrated modern essay on classic
Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki
extols the beauty and suggestiveness of all you can’t
see, because that gives the imagination, the inner
world, more to work with.

*

By the time of Haruki Murakami, however, the
outside world has become such a mist, a mystery,

that one descends into the hypnotic passageways of
an inner world that seems to lead nowhere at all.

*

Four million people pass through Shinjuku Station
in Tokyo every day— it’s the busiest station in the
world— but many Japanese believe that hundreds
remain within its bowels, unable or unwilling to
come up to any of its two hundred exits. Real lives
are played out under cover.

*
As many as one million people in Japan are so estranged
from the outside world that they are shut- ins, living in
their own heads, much like the dangerous dreamers
of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, who, in Murakami’s
nonfiction book about them, inhabit the subterranean
tunnels of delusion, working to hatch utopias.

*
On being awarded the Kyoto Prize, the artist William
Kentridge was greeted by the mayor of Kyoto. The
man wore a kimono that was completely plain,
Kentridge noted. But when the mayor opened it up,
his visitors saw that the inner lining, the part almost
nobody would ever see, was fantastically embroidered.

A Beginner’s Guide to Japan is a playful and profound guidebook full of surprising, brief and incisive glimpses into Japanese culture.

The Assam Accord, signed in the early hours of August 15, 1985 at Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s residence marked the end of a bloody era in Assam, albeit temporarily, which had seen the fall of four state governments, three spells of President’s Rule—all in a span of six years due to the massive support that the signatories of the Accord received in the state.

Assam– The Accord, The Discord by Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty brings to light the moments that led to the MoU, giving a blow-by-blow account of what happened before and after the signing of the Accord.

In the interview below, Sangeeta talks about her book, NRC and more!

What inspired you to write the book?

As I said in the Introduction to the book, the initial idea was to look back at the agitation and the insurgency period from a personal stance, what we gained, what was lost, considering me and several others from my generation had left Assam in search of a better future. The state couldn’t promise us anything then – the 1980s and the 1990s.

But with the growing mainstream India attention over the update of the National Register of Citizens, mainly of the national media primarily focussing on the NRC only from the Hindu-Muslim binary in a BJP-ruled state, and lack of a book in English by a mainstream publisher that holds the multiple nuances and complexities that the festering Assam issue embraces, led me to think of writing a different book. One that takes the signing of the Assam Accord as the basis to not only talks back at the long-drawn-out ‘Assam problem’ but also define the politics of the state within the context of three important markers of history – the Partition, the Emergency and the politics that emerged from it, and the impact of the Bangladesh Liberation War. I call Assam’s anti-foreigner agitation from 1979-1985 an offshoot of Emergency politics.

How difficult was it to collect authentic information about events that occurred in the early ’80s, for instance? Any particular interview that is memorable?

Many of the memories of the agitation days and prior to it are still part of drawing room conversations, are in oral form, among the older generation. Even if you go back to Assam Accord, it is already 34 years old. So it is not difficult to find many from the younger generation in Assam wondering what really happened then. Depending on which community or valley you come from, the memories differ. I tried to include as many aspects as I could. I had to leave out some of the things because the book was getting fatter by the day!

Apart from looking at older books on Assam history, both in English and Assamese, I was also lucky to have found substantial material at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in Delhi on the state. I also conducted a series of interviews of people from different communities, the leaders who played a role not just during the agitation but also in the subsequent years. Everybody cooperated. Before the book was published, one of the two surviving signatories of the Accord, Biraj Sarma, passed away. He too helped me a lot to retrace the times apart from, now the only surviving signatory of the Accord, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.

Various interviews with politicians of the times brought out so many intrigues and the manoeuvrings of the central governments to keep the state under control. Also, personally, I found interesting tid bits from the interviews, like, how the All Assam Students Union flag was inspired by the Mukti Bahini flag fighting for creation of Bangladesh and in the subsequent times, the AASU flag became a symbol of the agitation against ‘illegal Bangladeshis’.

Do you think the provisions of the Assam Accord have been fulfilled, now that the final NRC list has been released? 

Barely an hour after the final NRC was published on August 31, all the stakeholders rejected it. Some did it saying the number it sieved was too less, some on the ground that genuine citizens are out of it while ‘illegal immigrants’ are in it. Update of the NRC, before the Supreme Court came into the picture, was a social understanding between various stakeholder communities to once and for all find a closure to the foreigner issue. But looking at the present reactions, it is sure that this NRC will find it difficult to get overall social acceptance in the state. This will give the leeway to various political forces to play and win elections.

As per the provisions of the Accord, the government was to detect, delete and deport all those found to be staying without documents in the state post March 24, 1971. It is still stuck in the detection process

Another complication is, the five-judge constitutional bench is yet to look into the validity of an exclusive cut-off date set for Assam while it is uniform for rest of India. So the fate of this NRC hangs in balance.

How do you think your own life has impacted the writing of this book?

That I come from the state has really helped me see the entire canvas. Many of the things I was already aware of. That helped me to zero in on some of the players of the times without any initial research. I was conscious of the fact that people from all communities have gone through a lot due to the unsolved issue. That, each looks at itself only as a victim and the rest as perpetrators even though each has been both a victim and a perpetrator in various times, at least in each other’s eye. That I come from the state also made many stakeholders from across the communities open up to me better. I thank all for expressing their thoughts freely and thereby enriching the book.

Want to read Sangeeta’s book? Assam – The Accord, the Discord  is available now.

Do you feel like you never have enough time or energy to get things done?

Are you stressed and exhausted just thinking about work?

Are you getting to the point where you dread Monday mornings?

These are some of the telltale signs of burnout which, if not addressed, can wreck careers and relationships. In her book, Burnout, senior psychologist and business leader Anju Jain, PhD, finds out what makes some people tenacious and energetic while others suffer from fatigue and fall by the wayside. This book offers a framework and principles to ensure that you continue to have a hard-working and productive life without getting burned out.

Have a look at this sample routine from the book, that you can apply to your home and workplace!

——————————————————————————————————-

A Sample Daily Routine

Fully recognizing that there is no one size that fits all, I am still going to share a sample daily system that includes best practices from leaders who have proactively managed to stay away from burnout. Use this protocol as a template to draft your very own and commit to practising it consistently.

The morning routine
The morning makes a critical part of the day. To channel your energies effectively, start your day right by doing the following:

1. Get up at the same time. Get enough sleep and develop a pattern of waking up at the same time every day.

2. Exercise. A workout in the morning will keep you energized through the day. Whether it is cardio, yoga or a
brisk walk, pick one that you enjoy doing.

3. No screen time. Stay away from your phone until you are done with breakfast. Instead of getting pulled into other people’s lives on social media or emails, opt to look outside, absorb the quiet, or simply attend to your breath.

4. Sit down for breakfast. A healthy breakfast energizes you, improves your short-term memory, and helps you concentrate better. Allocate fifteen minutes to calmly sit down to eat.

5. Put a smile on your face as you leave for work. This simple act will put you in a positive frame of mind.
Getting your morning started off right is critical, but it’s only half the job done. Follow a disciplined routine at work as well.

The workplace routine

1. Write your to-do list. Then prioritize and assign a time duration for each of your tasks. You will have better control over your time and output.

2. Take breaks. Performance and well-being are at their best when you alternate activity with rest. Follow the 90:20 or
52:17 rule to get the best results. And when on a break, stretch, walk or do things that relax you.

3. Plan your meetings. Meetings can take up all your time if you don’t watch out. Attend the ones that are central to your work. Ask for the agenda and any prep material beforehand so you are effective and efficient.

4. Respond to your emails at fixed times. Respond to mails in batches at set times instead of attending to them the minute they hit your inbox.

5. Single task. Focus on your priorities one at a time so you are able to complete them versus keeping all of them in flight or as work in progress.

6. Say no. While showing initiative is a good thing, it comes with a cost. Carefully assess your workload and practise saying no to yourself and others.

7. Make time for lunch. It restores blood sugar and reenergizes you. Best to eat with colleagues than by yourself or in front of your screen.

8. Delegate. Leverage the power of many to free up your time. Give opportunities for others to contribute and
develop.

9. Show you care. Recognize and thank people. Show concern. Be approachable. Be humane.

The evening routine

1. Come home with a smile. It will put you in a positive frame of mind.

2. Keep the phone away. Its mere presence can cause distraction and brain drain. Let the mind rest after a long day at work.

3. Be present. Have conversations with the family or attend to home chores with full attention.

4. Eat dinner with the family. It is good for you and the family as it keeps the communication channels open.

5. Work after dinner if you must. Once the chores are done and kids are busy with their homework or off to bed,
conclude your work tasks.

6. Shut down all gadgets. Do so at least thirty minutes before hitting the bed.

7. Wind down. Read a book or practise five minutes of mindfulness.

8. Gratitude. End the night with writing three things you are grateful for. You will realize how blessed you are and that will have a calming effect on you.

9. Be consistent. Get to bed at a consistent time. The body becomes habituated and prepares to fall asleep at the same time.

The weekend routine

1. Follow the same weekday routine. Consistency keeps the cycle going.

2. Spend time with others. Make time for family, friends or the community. Remember to smile and laugh as you do
that.

3. Outsource. Free yourself from transactional chores so you have time for other value-added tasks.

4. Prepare for the week. Assess the contents of the fridge and do other necessary prep work to ensure a smooth week ahead.

Do a mental walk-through on what you are going to wear, eat and work on. This will give you a quick start with    minimum energy spent on decision-making during the week. Leverage this protocol to build your very own personal daily system.

Get your copy of Burnout today!

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 about the people and their families whose acts of heroism, both big and small make the armed forces exemplary:

1. The Our Amazing Armed Forces show you what it takes to be in the military, not just for those who wear the uniform but for their families as well.

2. These books will make readers aware of the experiences of children who have a parent or a family member in the armed forces and the sacrifices they make for our security.

3. They describe the functions and the roles of different fields of armed forces that allow the readers to understand the sacrifice and efforts that the forces put into keeping our country safe.

4. These books will allow you to understand the ranks and positions within the forces and the descriptions of their roles in the forces.

5. They also come with details for museums and memorials where you can visit and get a closer experience with the armed forces.

6. The Our Amazing Armed Forces series describe the bases with detailed diagrams that will help you understand the daily functioning and environments of these forces.

7. The armed forces have their own special language. These books also have little dictionaries of the terms that you might encounter within these forces.

    

   ---

   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!

Financial Affairs of the Common Man presents a collage of the various aspects of personal finance management that every individual should pay heed to. It introduces the concepts that you must understand to effectively plan your finances, and provides the tools and the knowledge needed to do so.

Read this book, written with the common man in mind using easy-to-understand language, to understand the power of compounding and the effects of inflation on investments. It’s time to familiarize yourself with mutual funds and SIPs, and to gain a deeper insight into the making of personal balance sheets and income tax provisions

Here are some pointers from the book to help you invest and save smartly!

Invest in property through REITs, if not directly.

∼

Keep a small amount of liquid cash at hand.

∼

Invest some funds in easy-to-liquidate assets including a bit of gold.

∼

Invest in assets/schemes/properties that can give a regular stream of alternative income in addition to your primary source of earning.

∼

Take out an insurance policy of an adequate sum (including term plans) to protect your loved ones.

∼

Get adequate medical insurance and free yourself from the stress and financial trauma arising from unforeseen illnesses or mishaps.

∼

Devote a certain portion of your time to managing your money.

∼

Invest in income-generating assets. The assets you accumulate over time can be divided into two types: performing and non-performing assets, that is, those that generate an income and those that lie idle. Try and invest in assets that have the potential to generate income.

Get money-wise and grab your copy of Financial Affairs of the Common Man today!

The subject of historian Vikram Sampath’s new book Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar was a feted revolutionary who created an intellectual corpus of literature that inspired the revolutionary movement in India for decades. It was rare to find a combination of a poet’s heart and a revolutionary’s brain in a single man.

Here are six major ways Savarkar continues to influence Indian socio-political culture:

On the Caste System

“The liberation and unification of countries across the world, be it America or Europe has been possible only by unshackling these false divisions between peoples. Why can a similar approach not be achieved in our nation?”

Despite being born in an orthodox and religious Chitpawan Brahmin community, Vinayak despised the caste system right from childhood. From temples, streets, houses, jobs, village councils, to institutions of law and legislature, it has only injected a spectre of eternal conflict between two Hindus; weakened our unity and resolve to stand against any external threats.

∼

On Cow Protection

“History is replete with examples of how our enemies and invaders have used this innocent sentiment of ours against us by using the cow as a shield even in wars. To save a few temples, a handful of Brahmins and some cows, we ended up sacrificing our entire country to foreign powers. Does this augur well for any nation?”

Our ancestors might have elevated the cow to a divine status to induce a sense of responsibility towards its protection. But we took that too literally. We should bear in mind that the cow is an object of utility for the human being and not vice versa. Doing do degrades the status of human beings. The object of worship should be greater than its worshipper.

∼

On the Age of Machines

“But science and scientific temper rely on cold logic and reason. These are physical phenomena that can be experienced and repeated under controlled conditions. If water is boiled to a known temperature, it will turn to steam, irrespective of any God’s wishes or your failure to read the mantras or namaz! The scientific temper is the foundation and cornerstone of the machine age and modernization, which will lead to prosperity for India.”

Are machines a boon or a bane? Those berating machines as a bane must realize that each of our human senses is several times more potent than any machine can ever hope to be. The machine acts as a handmaiden of man. If he uses it for destructive purposes, it can cause mass destruction. However, the same machine if put to good use by a virtuous and intelligent human mind can work miracles. It is through science, modern thoughts and industrialization that we can ensure that every man and woman in India will have a job to do, food to eat, clothes to wear and a happy life to lead.

∼

 On Cinema

“Films can even be used to educate our youth. We see life reflected very well on screen.”

There is no better example of the use of modern technology than the movies, and that is why I will never back any restrictions on them. The film industry to should believe that it would do everything possible for the progress of the entire nation. The youth should be inspired by the movies that focus on the positive side of things.

∼

On Inter Caste Marriages

Vinayak postulated that the Hindus are not merely citizens of the Indian state because of the love they share for their motherland; it is because of the bonds of common blood. They are not only a rashtra, or nation, but also a jati (race). He finds absolutely nothing amiss therefore among intermarriages between people of various castes- “a stand much ahead of its times.”

∼

On Hindutva

“Here a ‘Hindu’ did not mean someone who merely followed the religion; he was primarily a citizen- either in himself or through his forefathers who had revered this land as his motherland…. Thus, a nationalism led by cultural integration was another essential component of this ‘Hindu-ness’ that had run unbroken over millennia.”

Hindutva was not a word for Vinayak but an entire history of the land and its people. The related term- ‘Hinduism’- was ‘only a derivative, a fraction, a part of Hindutva’. Inability to understand this difference, he opined, had ‘given rise to much misunderstanding and mutual suspicion between some of those sister communities that have inherited this inestimable and common treasure of our Hindu civilization.’

Read this well researched biography to know more about Savarkar’s views and negotiate whether they hold a relevance in today’s world!

As children, we understand instinctively that we are at our best when we are ourselves. However the world slowly places us in boxes with labels slapped on them, and we spend the rest of our lives living up to those suffocating and limiting categories.

Jane De Souza’s delightfully whimsical prose puts these things that children instinctively know into prose that actually speaks to them, in her new book, Flyaway Boy.

Here are some insightful lessons that can be learned from the Flyaway Boy!

We all live in little color-coded boxes of our own making that hinder us from interacting with ‘boxes’ that appear different!

“Everyone lived in boxes. They just didn’t know that. So the world was made up of billions of boxes, all avoiding each other. For how could a grey box go and stack up near a set of pink boxes? What would the pink boxes think? Would they close into themselves, pile up and form a wall? Or maybe they would open a fold and peep out?”

 ∼

 Sometimes when we slap a really big label on someone it stops us from discovering some incredible things about them!

“A bit about Zaira, (who may not come into the story at all) who lived next door and was working in an environmental architecture office, whose box was labelled ‘Pretty’ so no one else saw beyond that: that she was a tree climber or a guava eater, for example.”

 ∼

When we try and live based on what others think we out to be we limit our own progress.

“‘Pssst,’ whispered Kabir’s line. ‘I had the chance to be so much more. To be a telephone wire on which birds rated the juiciness of worms they’d just caught. A yellow line in the middle of a road going on and on forever. A string keeping a kite from getting lost. Maybe even a horizon. But now, I’m like every other one. A line.’”

 ∼

 Being upside-down simply means you are different, not ‘wrong’.

“So, Raz was right. The ulti-matum was upside down, Kabir thought. He was upside down. Nothing was right about him. His Ma and Pa tried so hard to make him right, but he was all wrong.”

 ∼

 It might be tempting to imitate others to try and fit in but it just doesn’t work!

“All went past and Kabir tried hard to be what he was not. He tried to fit in. He tried to talk with a loud American accent like Dhruv did, flattening his vowels like chapattis. ‘I cayn do that, you cayn’t.’ He tried to squint at the blackboard like Shayan with his thick glasses did. He tried to draw straight lines like Kalyani did.”

 ∼

Most of our fears arise from ‘labelling’ something or someone as ‘Not Familiar’.

“He was the one. The reason the child had gone. What else could it be? The rest of the law-abiding citizens in this town were all known. This man was not. His box said ‘Not Familiar’. We should be afraid of anything that’s not familiar, that’s not like us, shouldn’t we?”

 ∼

Sometimes we want the people we love to ‘be’ a certain way, but it’s more important to let them be who they are.

“I did the same to Kabir. I did not let him be what he was. I wanted him to be successful, street-smart. When he’s back, I will let him just be. He will be back, it will all be okay.’ She was talking to herself, and then she suddenly turned on Pa, ‘Why would you say he’s not okay?”

  ∼

We can’t let the labels that other people put on us stop us from exploring our own capacities!

“Then Kavni began to write out her clues again, in what turned out to be a poem. Which stunned her, because she definitely wasn’t the poetic type. Everybody said that Kabir was the creative one in the family, not her. Yet, in writing this poem, Kavni, to her own surprise, shook off this label from her box—the ‘Not Creative’ label was one she’d never wear again.”

  ∼

 …And when we finally look beyond all the labels, we can envision a brighter and better ‘Fewture’!

And amid the laughter, the other kids too began to see not only what was, but what could be.

Spirited and powerfully imaginative, Flyaway Boy is a story about embracing everything that makes you uniquely you.

The First Aryan, by Paramu Kurumathur is a one-of-its-kind murder mystery set during an age when Vedic gods were worshiped, religious sacrifices were performed regularly, commerce flourished and kings were guided by their loyal head priests.

Follow the trails of Kasyapa and Agastya, two priests in training, who have been have tasked with identifying a common thread between seemingly unconnected murders and along the way, discover interesting facts about pre- historic India!

Read on to know a few of these facts about the Vedic Period:

• The Sarasvati River was the lifeline of the Aryan Civilization and it flowed because the god Indra released its waters after killing the demon Vr̥tra. The releasing of these waters was a turning point in the history of the Aryans as it helped establish their civilization.

• On the first day of the year, which was also officially the first day of the winter season, a sacrifice session, called the Cows’ Walk, was organized. Under this session, oblations were offered to appease the gods so the year ahead may be auspicious.  The Aryans believed that if a sacrifice was done properly the gods have no option but to grant them what they asked for.

• The Aryans and the Dasyus were once the same people. They split when there was a schism in their religious beliefs . Aryans were Indra worshippers while the Dasyus were Varuna worshippers.

• The seven steps of marriage were very important and central to Aryan marriages for many generations: the first step was for strength, the second for vigour, the third for increase of wealth, the fourth for happiness, the fifth for children, the sixth for the seasons and the seventh for sealing the friendship.

• For the Dasyus, the warriors, and not the priests, were the most powerful. For them, anyone who went to the temple could commune with the gods.

To discover more such facts and to know who the murderer was, grab your copy of The First Aryan today!

Why does a group of stranded paratroopers call for Bofors’ fire upon its own position? 
Why is an old man in Palampur fighting for justice for his dead soldier son? 

Interviewing war survivors and martyrs’ families, Rachna Bisht Rawat tells stories of extraordinary human courage, of not just men in uniform but also those who loved them the most.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

In May 1999, twenty-five-year-old tall, slim and soft-spoken Flying Officer Gunjan Saxena, posted at Udhampur with 132 Forward Area Control (FAC) Flight, gets orders to move to Srinagar.

The daughter of an Army officer, Gunjan is looking for action and happy to go to Srinagar. Before leaving she calls up her parents, Lt Col. (retd) A.K. Saxena and Mrs Saxena, who are settled at Lucknow, and tells them that she is being sent out of Udhampur on deployment and might not be able to call them for some time. Being an Army officer himself, Lt Col. Saxena is not unnecessarily perturbed by his daughter’s adventures. He wishes her well and puts the phone down.

At that time, the intrusions in Kargil have just started coming to light and no one has any inkling about the magnitude of the operation. When Gunjan moves to Srinagar she too believes India is facing a small incursion by the mujahedeen.