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Tag: family

Books to Read Together, this Father’s Day

Posted on by Penguin India

Every day is father’s day but let’s be extra nice and make this a super special day for him! Shower him with lots of love and pampering. We believe one of the best gifts you can give your loved ones is quality time. How about a lovely evening at home (hello, social distancing!) with a good book to read?

We’ve put together a list of books for you to choose from and enjoy a cozy reading- eve along with your family! There’s something for everyone, even the little ones! Many of these books explore unique relationships with fathers, and all are topics your father might enjoy! Whatever your preference, we’re sure you’ll find something you love.

The Man Within My Head by Pico Iyer

Ever since he first read Graham Greene, Pico Iyer has been obsessed by the figure of the writer and by one of the great themes of Greene’s work: what it means to be an outsider. Wherever he has travelled-usually as an outsider himself-Iyer has found reminders of Greene’s life, observed scenes that might have been written by Greene, written stories that recall Greene. Yet, as Iyer recounts the history of his obsession, another phantom image begins to assert itself, one that Iyer had long banished from his inner life-that of his father.

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Red Lipstick by Laxmi

Struggling with existential questions, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, eminent transgender activist, awakens to her true self: She is Laxmi, a hijra. In this fascinating narrative Laxmi unravels her heart to tell the stories of the men-creators, preservers, lovers, benefactors, and abusers-in her life. Racy, unapologetic, dark and exceptionally honest, these stories open a window to a brave new world.

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An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma

Ram Karan, a corrupt official in the Delhi school system, lives in one of the city’s slums with his widowed daughter and his eight-year-old granddaughter. Bumbling, contradictory, sad, Ram is a man corroded by a guilty secret. An Obedient Father takes the reader to an India that is both far away and real – into the mind of a character as tormented, funny, and ambiguous as one of Dostoevsky’s anti-heroes.

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Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik

Among the many hundreds of characters who inhabit the Mahabharata, perhaps the world’s greatest epic and certainly one of the oldest, is Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son. This extraordinary novel is his story.

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We That Are Young by Preti Taneja

Jivan Singh, bastard son, returns to Delhi after fifteen years of exile to find a city on fire with protests and in the grip of drought. On the same day, Devraj, father of Jivan’s childhood playmates, founder of India’s most important company, announces his retirement, demanding daughterly love in exchange for shares. Sita, his youngest child, refuses to play, turning her back on the marriage he has arranged. Her sisters Gargi and Radha must take over the Company and cement their father’s legacy. As they struggle to make their names, a family and an empire begin to unravel.

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? Yuval Noah Harari challenges everything we know about being human in the perfect read for these unprecedented times.

Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it: us.

In this bold and provocative book, Yuval Noah Harari explores who we are, how we got here and where we’re going.

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Ikigai: The Japanese secret to a long and happy life by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

We all have an Ikigai. It’s the place where your needs, desires, ambitions, and satisfaction meet. Finding your ikigai is easier than you might think. This book will help you work out what your own ikigai really is, and equip you to change your life. You have a purpose in this world: your skills, your interests, your desires and your history have made you the perfect candidate for something. All you have to do is find it.

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Feel Better In 5: Your Daily Plan to Feel Great for Life by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee

Feel Better in 5 is the first daily 5-minute plan that is easy to maintain, easy-to-follow and requires only the smallest amount of willpower. Drawing on Dr Rangan Chatterjee’s twenty years of experience and real-life case studies from his GP practice, Feel Better in 5 is your daily plan for a happier, healthier you at no extra cost.

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The Body by Bill Bryson 

Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.

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The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger

This book is about the relentless curiosity that has driven Iger for forty-five years, since the day he started as the lowliest studio grunt at ABC. It’s also about thoughtfulness and respect, and a decency-over-dollars approach that has become the bedrock of every project and partnership Iger pursues, from a deep friendship with Steve Jobs in his final years to an abiding love of the Star Wars mythology.

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For the little ones:

Looking for the Rainbow by Ruskin Bond

At age eight, Ruskin escapes his jail-like boarding school in the hills and goes to live with his father in Delhi. His time in the capital is filled with books, visits to the cinema, music and walks and conversations with his father—a dream life for a curious and wildly imaginative boy, which turns tragic all too soon.

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In My Heart by Nandana Dev Sen

A very special story to be read with loved ones, In My Heart takes us on a child’s journey of discovering who she really is and where she comes from. Warmly illustrated and deeply felt, this is a fearless and tender celebration of the magical ways in which different kinds of families are born.

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Pops by Balaji Venkataramanan

My name is V. Arun. I am seven years old. My father’s name is Venkatesh. He is very good. He never gets mad at me. He buys me a lot of toys and chocolates… I love My father. That’s a big bluff. Arun has never met his dad. He has only seen his photograph in the wedding album. And he hates him. Then one day, his father comes back.

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My Daddy and theWell by Jerry Pinto

As a child in Goa, Daddy used to jump in a well, to water the bananas. Years later, the bananas are gone. But the pump is there, the well is there, Daddy is there… Splash! The hook books are for very small readers, aged five and above (for being read to) and six and above (for reading independently). written by some of the best-known writers for children, and illustrated in exuberant colour by some of India’s most-loved illustrators. Hawaldar hook is the endearing mascot of the hook books.

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Puffin Classics: Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster

A trustee of the John Grier orphanage has offered to send Judy Abbott to college. The only requirements are that she must write to him every month and that she can never know who he is. Judy’s life at college is a whirlwind of friends, classes, parties and a growing friendship with the handsome Jervis Pendleton. With so much happening in her life, Judy can scarcely stop writing to ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’, or wondering who her mysterious benefactor is…

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Puffin Classics: Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Little Heidi goes to live with her grandfather in his lonely hut high in the Alps and she quickly learns to love her new life. But her strict aunt decides to send her away again to live in the town. Heidi cannot bear being away from the mountains and is determined to return to the happiness of life with her grandfather.

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Where’s Home, Daddy Bear? by Nicola O’Byrne

From the creator of open very carefully, Nicola o’byrne, comes a tender, touching story that voices all the worries a child has about change, and celebrates the loving bond between father and daughter. Making her debut to the Walker list, bestselling author Nicola O’Byrne tells a heartfelt, emotionally true tale inspired by her own experience. Particularly pertinent for children who may be going through some kind of change – whether that be moving to a new house, a new school, or a new country.

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A novel that explores the tragedy of racism in the 1930s and the dramatics of the ‘Great Depression’, Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is a tale that infuses humour and sorrow into a touching story that lives on eternally in the minds of the readers. Set in a town that has its roots in a history of prejudice, violence and hypocrisy, the story follows the lives of Scout and Jem Finch as they come of age and experience the discrimination that floods their society. They watch their father (a lawyer) struggle for the justice of a black man who is charged with the rape of a white girl.

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Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian

Young Willie Beech is evacuated to the country as Britain stands on the brink of the Second World War. A sad, deprived child, he slowly begins to flourish under the care of old Tom Oakley – but his new-found happiness is shattered by a summons from his mother back in London.

Let us know which book you pick!

Three Families Who Show Why the Sindhi Way of Doing Business is Successful

Posted on by Penguin India

Sindhis have braved adversities like Partition, fled from one nation to another and weathered ups and downs in the economy and have yet set up some of the biggest companies in the world with the help of their sharp business acumen.
In Paiso, Maya Bhatija captures the stories of five companies, built painstakingly by many generations by five Sindhi families.
Here are three families who show how the Sindhi way of doing business has led them to success:
Harish Fabiani, Americorp Ventures and India Land Properties

Jitu Virwani, Embassy group

Ramola Motwani,  Merrimac Ventures

Aren’t these stories inspiring?

Orhan Pamuk’s ‘A Red-Haired Woman’: An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk’s tenth book ‘The Red-Haired Woman’ is a mysterious story of a well-digger and his protégé near Istanbul, excavating stretches of barren earth only to find an unusual oasis in the form of a red-haired woman, who ultimately becomes the cause of their estrangement.
Here is an excerpt from the novel:
I had wanted to be a writer. But after the events I am about to describe, I studied engineering geology and became a building contractor. Even so, readers shouldn’t conclude from my telling the story now that it is over, that I’ve put it all behind me. The more I remember, the deeper I fall into it. Perhaps you, too, will follow, lured by the enigma of fathers and sons.
In 1984, we lived in a small apartment deep in Beşiktaş, near the nineteenth- century Ottoman Ihlamur Palace. My father had a little pharmacy called Hayat, meaning “Life.” Once a week, it stayed open all night, and my father took the late shift. On those evenings, I’d bring him his dinner. I liked to spend time there, breathing in the medicinal smells while my father, a tall, slim, handsome figure, had his meal by the cash register. Almost thirty years have passed, but even at forty-five I still love the smell of those old pharmacies lined with wooden drawers and cupboards.
The Life Pharmacy wasn’t particularly busy. My father would while away the nights with one of those small portable television sets so popular back then. Sometimes his leftist friends would stop by, and I would arrive to find them talking in low tones. They always changed the subject at the sight of me, remarking how I was just as handsome and charming as he was, asking what year was I in, whether I liked school, what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My father was obviously uncomfortable when I ran into his political friends, so I never stayed too long when they dropped by. At the first chance, I’d take his empty dinner box and walk back home under the plane trees and the pale streetlights. I learned never to tell my mother about seeing Father’s leftist friends at the shop. That would only get her angry at the lot of them and worried that my father might be getting into trouble and about to disappear once again.
But my parents’ quarrels were not all about politics. They used to go through long periods when they barely said a word to each other. Perhaps they didn’t love each other. I suspected that my father was attracted to other women, and that many other women were attracted to him. Sometimes my mother hinted openly at the existence of a mistress, so that even I understood. My parents’ squabbles were so upsetting that I willed myself not to remember or think about them.
It was an ordinary autumn evening the last time I brought my father his dinner at the pharmacy. I had just started high school. I found him watching the news on TV. While he ate at the counter, I served a customer who needed aspirin, and another who bought vitamin- C tablets and antibiotics. I put the money in the old- fashioned till, whose drawer shut with a pleasant tinkling sound. After he’d eaten, on the way out, I took one last glance back at my father; he smiled and waved at me, standing in the doorway.
He never came home the next morning. My mother told me when I got back from school that afternoon, her eyes still puffy from crying. Had my father been picked up at the pharmacy and taken to the Political Affairs Bureau? They’d have tortured him there with bastinado and electric shocks. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
Years ago, soldiers had first come for him the night after the military coup. My mother was devastated. She told me that my father was a hero, that I should be proud of him; and until his release, she took over the night shifts, together with his assistant Macit. Sometimes I’d wear Macit’s white coat myself— though at the time I was of course planning to be a scientist when I grew up, as my father had wanted, not some pharmacist’s assistant.
When my father again disappeared seven or eight years after that, it was different. Upon his return, after almost two years, my mother seemed not to care that he had been taken away, interrogated, and tortured. She was furious at him. “What did he expect?” she said.
So, too, after my father’s final disappearance, my mother seemed resigned, made no mention of Macit, or of what was to become of the pharmacy. That’s what made me think that my father didn’t always disappear for the same reason. But what is this thing we call thinking, anyway?
By then I’d already learned that thoughts sometimes come to us in words, and sometimes in images. There were some thoughts— such as a memory of running under the pouring rain, and how it felt— that I couldn’t even begin to put into words . . . Yet their image was clear in my mind. And there were other things that I could describe in words but were otherwise impossible to visualize: black light, my mother’s death, infinity.
Perhaps I was still a child, and so able to dispel unwanted thoughts. But sometimes it was the other way around, and I would find myself with an image or a word that I could not get out of my head.
My father didn’t contact us for a long time. There were moments when I couldn’t remember what he looked like. It felt as if the lights had gone out and everything around me had vanished. One night, I walked alone toward the Ihlamur Palace. The Life Pharmacy was bolted shut with a heavy black padlock, as if closed forever. A mist drifted out from the gardens of the palace.
Grab your copy of ‘The Red-Haired Woman’ here today.
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5 Things You Didn’t Know About Divya Dutta

Posted on by Penguin India

In a career spanning more than two decades, Divya Dutta has appeared in multiple Hindi, Punjabi, Malayalam and English films. She is noted for playing a wide variety of roles in various film genres, and has established herself as one of the leading actresses of parallel cinema.
Here are a few things you may not have known about the IIFA Award winner.
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Find out more about Divya Dutta in her memoir Me and Ma.
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