India House

The girls' names were Padma and Lalli, but they were so inseparable that people in the village called them Padma Lalli. Sixteen-year-old Padma sparked and burned. Fourteen-year-old Lalli was an incorrigible romantic. They grew up in Katra Sadatganj, an eye-blink of a village in Western Uttar Pradesh crammed into less than one square mile of land. It was out in the fields, in the middle of mango season, that the rumors started. Then one night in the summer of 2014 the girls went missing; and hours later they were found hanging in the orchard.

The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as Sarasvati in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, this river was rediscovered in the early 19th century through topographic explorations by British officials. Recently, geological and climatological studies have probed its evolution and disappearance, while satellite imagery has traced the river's buried courses....

Drawing from a vast range of original archival documents across India and abroad, this biography in two parts - the first focusing on the years leading up to his incarceration and eventual release from the Kalapani - puts Savarkar, his life, and his philosophy in a new perspective and looks at the man with all his achievements and failings.

In Delhi's Ridge Forest lies Malcha Mahal, which was home to a family cloaked in mystery: Begum Wilayat Mahal and her children, Princess Sakina and Prince Ali Raza—self-proclaimed descendants of the House of Awadh. From their dramatic arrival at New Delhi Railway Station in 1975, where they squatted for a decade, to their last years in a decaying monument—their story weaves together colonial injustices, Partition's upheaval and modern India's struggles with identity. Were they true heirs to a lost kingdom, delusional outcasts, or cunning impostors?

Everybody Loves a Good Drought is the established classic on rural poverty in India. Twenty years after publication, it remains unsurpassed in the scope and depth of reportage, providing an intimate view of the daily struggles of the poor and the efforts, often ludicrous, made to uplift them. An illuminating introduction accompanying this 20-anniversary edition reveals, alarmingly, how a large section of India continues to suffer in the name of development so that a small percentage may prosper.

Shashi Tharoor shows compellingly that India stands at the intersection of the most significant questions facing the world today. If democracy leads to inefficient political infighting, should it be sacrificed in the interest of economic well-being? Does religious fundamentalism provide a way for countries in the developing world to assert their identity in the face of Western hegemony, or is there a case for pluralism and diversity amid cultural and religious traditions?

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments - his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.

My India: Ideas for the Future is a collection of excerpts from Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's speeches in his post presidency years. Drawn from Dr. Kalam's addresses to parliaments, universities, schools, and other institutions in India and abroad, they include his ideas on science, nation-building, poverty, compassion, and self-confidence. Dr. Kalam draws on the lives of stalwarts such as Marie Curie and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai to encourage and inspire his young listeners. Through these speeches, he shares many valuable lessons in humility, resilience, and determination.

The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich and inspiring one. This volume, a sequel to the India's Struggle for Independence, analyses the challenges India has faced and the successes it has achieved in the light of its colonial legacy and century-long struggle for freedom.

Rebels Against the Raj tells the story of seven people who chose to struggle for a country other than their own: foreigners to India who across the late 19th to late 20th century arrived to join the freedom movement fighting for independence from British colonial rule.

Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society including military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, literature, and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil’s game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by different popes, rabbis, and imams. In his wide-ranging and ever fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity.

The first decade after India's independence, 1947-1957, was probably the most crucial in the nation's history. Opening a window to this period, this book weaves a story out of the complex ideas and events that have largely remained beneath the surface of public discourse. Thought-provoking, argumentative and thoroughly enjoyable, 1947-1957, India: The Birth of a Republic is a must-listen for anyone interested in Indian political history.

Night Jasmine Tree, a Somerset award-winning contemporary novel, describes the hidden backstory of an Indian man’s immigration to the U.S. The high caste protagonist fell in love with a lower caste girl in college, but she was rejected by his very conservative family. They married, but deep emotional wounds continued to torment him even after they were well settled in the U.S. The past cannot be willed away. Later, the arresting stories of his childhood and youth he innocently tells his American grandchildren, reveal the silent torment and struggles that originated in India. These ...

In this story, a poor boy's dream of having a drum takes him on an unlikely path. He meets several people who guide him along the way. In time, he learns to make his own magic in this world. Illustrated by Tom Wrenn.

Decades after his death, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar continues to uniquely influence India's political scenario. An optimistic advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity in his treatise on the 1857 War of Independence, what was it that transformed him into a proponent of "Hindutva"? A former president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar was a severe critic of the Congress's appeasement politics.

Published to coincide with Pope Francis' Year of Mercy and the Vatican's canonization of Mother Teresa, this new book of unpublished material by a humble yet remarkable woman of faith whose influence is felt as deeply today as it was when she was alive offers Mother Teresa's profound yet accessible wisdom on how we can show mercy and compassion in our day-to-day lives.

In this guide, I covered all four corners of this great country, but not every city in every state. Instead, I covered cities and states with the most popular and prominent tourist attractions. I hope you will find this audiobook valuable in more ways than one, as I not only discuss what to see in India, but how to get prepared, how to apply for a visa, what to expect, how to plan your trips from a financial point, what type of travel agencies you can trust, what modes of transportation are the best, important cultural aspects, what food choices are safe, and so much more.

New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis.

Rahul Pandita was fourteen years old when he was forced to leave his home in Srinagar along with his family. They were Kashmiri Pandits—the Hindu minority within a Muslim-majority Kashmir that was by 1990 becoming increasingly agitated with the cries of 'Azaadi' from India. Our Moon Has Blood Clots is the story of Kashmir, in which hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were tortured, killed and forced to leave their homes by Islamist militants and to spend the rest of their lives in exile in their own country.

From the oldest rocks, formed three billion years ago in Karnataka, to the arrival of our ancestors 50,000 years ago on the banks of the Indus, the author meticulously sifts through wide-ranging scientific disciplines and through the layers of earth to tell us the story of India, filled with a variety of fierce reptiles, fantastic dinosaurs, gargantuan mammals and amazing plants.