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An Excerpt from ‘Unstoppable’

How do you go from being a shopkeeper to multi-billionaire in forty years?

Kuldip Singh Dhingra, the patriarch of the Dhingra family and the man credited with building Berger Paints, has remained a mystery. He is low-profile, eschews media and continues to operate from a small office in Delhi. In this candid and captivating biography Kuldip reveals his story for the first time – Unstoppable by Sonu Bhasin narrates what a man can achieve if he pursues his dreams relentlessly.

Read an excerpt from the book below:

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The collapse of the Soviet Union was the last thing on Kuldip’s mind when he sat down to have his coffee and opened the financial daily for his morning update one late January morning.

‘I saw the news about Vijay Mallya selling Berger and I knew immediately that I had to buy that company,’ said Kuldip. ‘We had oodles of money. How much of property could I buy? We had to buy a business,’ he continued. He had been speaking with Gurbachan over the last few months about their future. The Rajdoot business had grown during the last ten years, but it was still in the range of Rs 10–15 crore annually.

‘We had many small factories, all under Rs 1 crore to reap the benefit of small scale. But the name Rajdoot was not a premium brand,’ explained Gurbachan. The two brothers had been bouncing around ideas about buying a running paints business.

‘We had been in discussions with some other paint companies.I even went to London to discuss the matter with the foreign owners of a well-known paint company,’ said Gurbachan. UK Paints was not a known company, Rajdoot was a small brand, and the Dhingras were low-profile people. The foreign promoters had a large business worldwide and were selling only their Indian operations. They did not like the idea of selling out to what they thought was a smaller company run by someone who did not understand corporate culture and had been running a shop in Amritsar till a few years ago.

‘I got the feeling that he was not even happy talking to us about it,’ said Gurbachan without any self-pity. The foreign owners eventually sold their company to a better-known and a bigger industrial family of Delhi.

‘But could you not use the money to focus on Rajdoot Paints which was your own company anyway?’ I asked Kuldip.

‘But Rajdoot would have to be managed by me if I wanted it to become even half as big as what Berger was then. And I simply did not have the time. Berger was a professionally managed company and had a good team—at least that is what I thought at that time. I believed that once we bought the company, apne aap chalti rahegi [it will run by itself],’ explained Kuldip.

Kuldip certainly did not have any time to manage any other business except his export business. The export business had given him ‘oodles of money’ as Kuldip put it, and it had also given Kuldip a world view of business. He was dealing with a cross section of professionals from around the world and he had become used to large businesses. Rajdoot, though one of the fastest-growing paint companies in India in the late 1980s, was at best a regional company. It was not a star or even an emerging star on the horizon. Kuldip, on the other hand, had become used to being a star! He was feted as an important businessman in the Soviet Union and was known as a big exporter in India. Should the export business wind down, he knew that he would continue to be very wealthy but he would feel stifled by the small, regional business of Rajdoot. He did not want to be clubbed in the ‘Others’ category in the domestic paints business. He realized he needed a larger canvas for his domestic business dreams.

‘I was doing business in hundreds of crores with the Soviet Union. And the total turnover of Rajdoot then was just Rs 10–15 crore,’ said Kuldip.

While he was exporting a variety of items to the Soviet Union, at heart he remained a paints-man. ‘There was only one business I understood well and that business was the paints business,’ said Kuldip. So when he saw the headlines about Berger Paints being sold, the instinct bulb in his head burnt bright.


Unstoppable narrates what a man can achieve if he pursues his dreams relentlessly.

Meet M.N. Buch, the author of An India Reimagined

An India Reimagined by M.N. Buch, is a well-thought anthology of the many aspects of governance namely IAS, reforms (police, judiciary and electoral system), economics, social challenges (health corruption and reservation), and environment. Giving a holistic idea of the management of India in the present day, the well celebrated author and administrator M.N. Buch provides though-provoking ideas and issues concerned with India; and how change can be brought about.

Here we list a few things about the author, who was well-respected and appreciated for his work throughout the country:

M.N. Buch is a former Indian Administrative officer and had joined the service in 1957.
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M.N. Buch graduated in Economics from the Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College in the year 1954.
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M.N. Buch is known to be the architect of new Bhopal and was instrumental in founding of the National Centre for Human Settlements and Environment in Bhopal.
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M.N. Buch was conferred with the Padma Bhushan award in the year 2011.
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An alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge University, M.N. Buch was also a Fellow at the the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton University.
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After assuming the post of principal secretary at the government of Madhya Pradesh, M.N. Buch opted for a voluntary retirement in the year 1984.
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M.N. Buch was made the Vice President of Urbanisation Commission with the late prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi giving him the rank f a cabinet minister.
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M.N. Buch was known for his acumen in the field of housing, forestation, town planning and environmental protection.
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In the year 2002, M.N. Buch was accorded with the title of Doctor of Science (DSc) from Rajiv Gandhi Technical University of Information Technology and Management, Gwalior.
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M. N. Buch was also awarded the UNEP award in the year 1995, for the implementation of desertification control program.

An India Reimagined by M.N. Buch is a collection of twenty articles that have been divided into six major themes. Get your copy today!

Ruskin Bond on friendship and farewells

‘It was 1947, and life was about to change quite dramatically for most of us’

In the third part of his memoir, thirteen-year-old Ruskin Bond is back at school, doing what he loves – reading, goal-keeping, spending time with his friends and eating lots of jalebis. But things seem to be rapidly changing all around him. Whispers of a partition haunt the corridors of his school. Does the formation of a new, independent India mean saying goodbye to old friends-and, with it, the shenanigans they got up to?

In Ruskin Bond’s inimitable style, Coming Round The Mountain gives us some wonderfully wistful and poignant snapshots of friendship and the farewells brought on by the relentless change at the end of an era. Here are some of them:

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The fearsome-sounding cliques one forms in childhood

‘I was turning thirteen in May that year. My best friends were Azhar Khan, who was my age; Brian Adams, who was a year younger; and Cyrus Satralkar, who was the youngest. We called ourselves the ‘Fearsome Four’, although there was nothing very fierce about us.’

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The best friends are those who extend a hand when we need it most, whether or not we know precisely that we need them

‘I’d been going through a different period, adjusting to my stepfather’s home in Dehra and learning to cope with the world at large. Although a shy boy, I needed friends, and I was quick to respond to those who offered me friendship.’

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The irrelevance of cultural barriers in schoolboy comradeship

‘We were not in the least interested in each other’s religions or regional backgrounds. Adults seemed to think it important; but at thirteen, friendship and loyalty seemed to matter more.’

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When adversity (or at least a compatibility of vices) brings you together

‘The catalyst for our bonding was that early -morning rouser for PT. For some reason— or different reasons—the four of us overslept one morning and failed to turn up on the first flat for our exercises. Our absence was duly reported by a senior prefect, and we were summoned to the headmaster’s study for the usual punishment. At least three strokes of the cane were to be expected.’

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A friend who feeds is a friend indeed

‘World War II had been over for more than a year, but some food items—butter, cheese, chocolates—were still hard to come by. Brian divided his Kraft cheese into four portions, and each of us had his share. Now, there was a friend!’

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The difficult feelings of older people who have to see enormous upheaval in all they have held dear

‘Dunda Hawkes had been deeply affected by the division of India. He was a simple man who, like my father, had been to army school and spent most of his life in barracks or on the march. He had become a boxing champion and was responsible for making sportsmen and athletes out of most of us.’

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The poignant uncertainty of goodbyes in that year of changes

‘Azhar was beside me, his arm around my shoulders. ‘Time to say goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’ll write to you. We’ll meet again—some day, somewhere.’ Surely we would meet again. The world hadn’t come to an end. But the light was going out in a lot of lives, and it would be some time before it came on again.’

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 When the absence of a friend seems like a removal of an aspect of one’s own being
Front cover of Coming Round the Mountain
Coming Round the Mountain || Ruskin Bond

‘Sometimes we don’t really value our friends till we have lost them. Azhar’s departure left quite a gap in my life. He had been someone to whom I could talk freely, someone to whom I could confide and share my dreams.’

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The love of a friend does not need to be put in words for one to know that is there 

‘Send me lots of beautiful postcards,’ I said. We shook hands. In those days we were not given to hugs and demonstrations of affection. But I loved my friends, and they knew it and loved me too.’

Six Things We Learn About the Creative Process From Ramanujan

The A.K. Ramanujan Papers, stored since 1994 at the Special Collections Research Center at the Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, contain hundreds of catalogued files ordered chronologically from 1944 to 1993 in seventy-one boxes. Since 2014 an additional set of personal diaries and journals, kept in series V of the Papers, became accessible to researchers. The book Journeys: A Poet’s Diary includes literary entries from A.K. Ramanujan’s travels, his thoughts on writing, poetry drafts, and dreams. His diaries and journals served as fertile ground where he planted the seeds for much of his published work.

Here are some noteworthy facts about Ramanujan’s creative process!

 

Ramanujan viewed keeping a diary as part of his creative process; the entries provided a permanent repository for otherwise transient ideas, observations and language.

Ramanujan revised and re-read his notes and diaries now and again in a continuous dialogue with the past and himself; ideas, images and concepts were re-circulated and redistilled.

In all of his work, especially his poetry and translations, Ramanujan was very scientific – as a trained linguist – and almost obsessed with language and form.

He recorded scenes and anecdotes of people and his life. Between entries, he jotted quotes from writers and artists.

By recording his inner and outer life, he preserved experiences for later use; by practising verse, he honed a craft. This was the fertile ground where the seeds of his published work were planted.

He was a writer at work observing the minutiae of life, the ‘ordinary mysteries’; and at the same time the thinker struggling with the larger issues of human relations – psychologies, and our understanding of body and spirit.


Edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodríguez, Journeys offers access to Ramanujan’s personal diaries and journals, providing a window into his creative process.

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

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!

Vivaan Shah Dons Many Hats! Get to Know More About Him

Vivaan Shah is the effervescent author of murder mystery Living Hell. Did you know that writer-actor Vivaan became a director at the tender age of seventeen? In the book, he introduces us to the colourful protagonist with a twist; Nadeem Sayed Khatib, aka Nadeem Chipkali.  All Nadeem Chipkali, wants to do is stay in his apartment all day, watch some TV and ignore his mounting worries. As he races against time, a particularly unhelpful police force, the dead man’s bereaved and unusually attractive ex-wife, and the Bombay underworld, he relies on his wits and an unexpected motley crew of people who, sometimes, want him dead too.

Get to know more about the man behind Nadeem’s story, Vivaan Shah!


Vivaan Shah graduated from The Doon School in the year 2009. He went on to study Arts from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi.

As a child, Vivaan used to draw and write comic books.

Vivaan has participated in the plays of his parents’ theatre group Motley since childhood. At the young age of seventeen, Vivaan single-handedly adapted Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” into a 30-minute skit for his school’s inter-house competition and for this feat, he was awarded the Best Director and the skit fetched him the Best Play Award.

Starting out young, Vivaan has acted in plays by writers as diverse as Shakespeare, Premchand, Bertolt Brecht, George Bernard Shaw, Stephen Leacock, and Ismat Chughtai.

Vivaan Shah started acting in movies at the age of twenty with 7 Khoon Maaf, then acted in Happy New Year, Bombay Velvet and Laali ki Shaadi Mein Laddoo Deewana.  His two upcoming movies are Coat and Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar.

           

Being an experimental writer, Vivaan has written a series of Horror and science fiction short stories, one of which titled ‘Entombed’ was published in the Hindu Business Line: BLInk fiction magazine. Vivaan has also written academic essays about film history on filmmakers like Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh, Sam Peckinpah, Ken Russell, and Roger Corman, about actors like James Cagney and Jim Carrey. The essays are available online on the blogs Cafe Dissensus and A Potpourri of Vestiges.

Vivaan’s literary influences are multi-faceted, just like him and include Edgar Allan Poe, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, Damon Runyon, Joseph Conrad, Premchand and Kader Khan.

Vivaan is the younger son of the veteran actors Ratna Pathak and Naseeruddin Shah.


Don’t miss out on his debut novel, as Vivaan has put all his creative energies in this endeavour and this one promises to be a nailbiting read! Set against the backdrop of a low-life Mumbai that comes alive at night, Living Hell is a fast-paced noir murder mystery with dark humour and an accidental hero.

 

 

 

For Abba with Love – from Shabana Azmi

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.

Kaifiyat, a scintillating new translation of his poems and lyrics that reflect Kaifi’s views on women and romance is accompanied by an illuminating introduction by Rakhshanda Jalil on Kaifi Azmi’s life and legacy, as well as a moving foreword by his daughter Shabana Azmi.

Here is an excerpt from the foreword.


Early 1990s

He was always different, a fact that didn’t sit too easily on my young shoulders. He didn’t go to ‘office’ or wear the normal trousers and shirt like other ‘respectable’ fathers but chose to wear a white cotton kurta-pyjama twenty-four hours of the day. He did not speak English and, worse still, I didn’t call him ‘Daddy’ like other children, but some strange-sounding ‘Abba’! I learned very quickly to avoid referring to him in front of my classmates and lied that he did some vague ‘business’! Imagine letting my school friends know that he was a poet. What on earth did that mean—a euphemism for someone who did no work?

Being my parent’s child was, for me, unconventional in every way. My school required that both parents speak English. Since neither Abba nor Mummy did, I faked my entry into school. Sultana Jafri, Sardar Jafri’s wife, pretended to be my mother and Munish Narayan Saxena, a friend of Abba’s, pretended to be my father. Once in the tenth standard, the vice principal called me and said that she’d heard my father at a recent mushaira and he looked quite different from the gentleman who had come in the morning for Parents’ Day! Understandably, I went completely blue in the face and said: ‘Oh he’s been suffering from typhoid and has lost a lot of weight, you know’ . . . and made up some sort of story to save my skin!

It was no longer possible to keep Abba in the closet. He had started writing lyrics for films and one day a friend of mine said that her father had read my father’s name in the newspaper. That did it! I owned him up at once! Of all the forty children in my class, only my father’s name had appeared in the newspaper! I perceived his being ‘different’ as a virtue for the first time. I need no longer feel apologetic about his wearing a kurta-pyjama! In fact, I even brought out the black doll he had bought me. I didn’t want it when he first gave it to me. I wanted a blonde doll with blue eyes, like all the others had in my class. But he explained, in that quiet gentle way of his, that black was beautiful too and I must learn to be proud of my doll. It didn’t make sense to my seven-year-old mind but I had accepted him as ‘weird’ in any case and so I quietly hid the doll. Three years later, I pulled it out as proof that I was a ‘different’ daughter of a ‘different’ father! In fact, I now displayed it with such newfound confidence that instead of being sniggered at by my classmates, I became an object of envy. That was the first lesson he taught me, of turning what is perceived as a disadvantage into a scoring point.

When I opened my eyes to the world, the first colour I saw was red. Till I was nine years old we lived at Red Flag Hall, a commune-like flat of the Communist Party of India (CPI). A huge red flag used to greet visitors at the entrance. It was only later that I realized red was the colour of the worker, of revolution. Each comrade’s family had just one room; the bathroom and lavatory was common. Being party members had redefined the husband–wife relationship of the whole group. Most wives were working and it became the responsibility of whichever parent was at home to look after the child. My mother was touring quite a lot with Prithvi Theatre and in her absence Abba would feed, bathe and look after both my brother Baba and me, as a matter of course.

In the beginning, Mummy had to take up a job because all the money Abba earned was handed over to the party. He was allowed to keep only Rs 40 per month which was hardly enough for a family of four. But later when we were monetarily better off and had moved to Janki Kutir, Mummy continued to work in the theatre because she loved being an actor. Once, she was to participate in the Maharashtra State Competition in the title role of Pagli. She was completely consumed by the part and would suddenly, without warning, launch into her lines in front of the dhobi, cook, etc. I was convinced she’d gone mad and started weeping with fright. Abba dropped his work and took me for a long walk on the beach. He explained that Mummy had very little time to rehearse her part and that as family it was our duty to make it possible for her to rehearse her lines as many times as she needed to or else she wouldn’t win the competition—all this to a nine-year-old child. It made me feel very adult and very included. To this day, whenever my mother is acting in a new play or new film, my father sits up with her and rehearses her cues.

She participates in his life equally; at a price of course! She fell in love with him because he was a poet. However, she learned soon enough that a poet is essentially a man of the people and she would have to share him with his countless admirers (a large number of them female!) and friends. When I was about nine years old, I remember an evening at a big industrialist’s home. His wife, a typical socialite, announced in a rather flirtatious manner, ‘Kaifi Saheb, my usual farmaish, the “Do Nigahon Ka” something something . . . You know, folks, Kaifi Saheb has written this nazm in praise of me.’ And Abba, without batting an eyelid, started reciting this poem which was in fact written for my mother. I was outraged and started screaming that the poem was written for my mother and not for this stupid woman. A deathly silence prevailed and my mother said, ‘Hush, child, hush,’ but I am sure unke dil mein laddoo phoot rahe thay! Mummy took me into a corner and said that I wasn’t to take such things to heart—after all, ‘Abba’ was a poet and such were his ways—he didn’t seriously mean that the poem was written for this lady, etc. I would hear nothing of it. Needless to say, that was a poem Kaifi Azmi could never use again and that woman still hates me!

Amongst his female friends Begum Akhtar was my favourite. She would sometimes stay with us as a houseguest. In fact, Josh Malihabadi, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Faiz Ahmed Faiz would stay with us too despite there being no separate guestroom, not even an attached bathroom. Luxury was never the central concern of these artists; they preferred the warmth of our tiny home to the five-star comforts available to them. I was fascinated by the mehfils at home. I would sit up in rapt attention, not even half understanding what they recited, but excited nevertheless. Their beautiful words fell like music on my young ears. I found the atmosphere fascinating—the steady flow of conversation, the tinkering of glasses, the smoke-filled room. I was never rushed off to bed; in fact I was encouraged to hang around, provided I took the responsibility for getting up in time for school the next day. It made me feel very grown-up and included.

 

 


This beautifully curated volume brings together poems and lyrics that reflect Kaifi’s views on women and romance

Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan’s 10 Favourite Songs

Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan is a traditional Hindustani classical vocalist belonging to the illustrious Rampur Sahaswan Gharana, which owes allegiance to the seniya tradition.

Performing since he was eight years old, his career spans over a period of seventy-five years. He has always believed in giving back to the society, be it by identifying and nurturing some of the best musicians in India or mesmerizing the nation through music.

Here is a list of his favourite songs.

Aj hun aaye baalma saawan beeta jaaye by Mohammad Rafi

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Saathi re bhool na jaana mera pyar by Ravindra Jain Asha Bhosle

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Yaad piya ki aaye  by Bade Ghulam Ali Khan

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Piya Haji Ali by A. R. Rahman

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Jhula Kinne daala re by Shahida Khan

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Abhi mujh mein kahin by Sonu Nigam

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Tu hi re by Hariharan and Kavita Krishnamurthy

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Behti Hawa sa tha woh by  Shaan, Shantanu Moitra

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Ka karu sajni aaye na baalam by K. J. Yesudas


A Dream I Lived Alone is a heart-warming story of love, riyaz, dedication and the maestro of music, Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.

6 Quotes by Amit Chaudhuri that Showcase His Brilliance

The author of six novels, his first major work of non-fiction, Calcutta: Two Years in the City, was published in the UK and India in 2013. His first novel, A Strange and Sublime Address, is included in Colm Toibin and Carmen Callil’s Two Hundred Best Novels of the Last Fifty Years.
Here are 6 quotes by Amit Chaudhuri that’ll enrich every reader’s life.
On the nature of history.
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A poet’s view on love.
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On the bottomless depths of a woman’s heart.
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How class division changes perceptions.
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His views on writing.
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On a feeling many share.
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Amit Chaudhuri’s latest – Friend of my Youth is, like all his previous works, a treasure trove of beautiful moments and glorious quotes that’ll leave you breathless.
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