Categories: Nonfiction

Meow Meow: The Incredible True Story of Baby Patankar

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Call her a police informant, a slumlord, a successful businesswoman, a caring grandmother-but do not call Shashikala ‘Baby’ Patankar a drug dealer.On 9 March 2015, a constable in the Mumbai Police force, Dharmaraj Kalokhe, was arrested by the local police for possession of a white powder believed to be the synthetic drug Mephedrone. His partner, Shashikala ‘Baby’ Patankar, was the informant. Later she was arrested by the police, too. In the days that followed, the Maharashtra Police declared her a criminal and the media labelled her ‘drug queen’, but Baby always considered herself an innocent. Unearthing new facts about the case, this book is a blow-by-blow account of Baby’s capture and the investigation that followed. It is also the story of Mephedrone – better known as Meow Meow – which, when it entered the schools, colleges and pubs of Mumbai, changed the rules of the game and the enforcement of narcotics laws in the city.Fast and pacy, Meow Meow is the tale of one of Mumbai’s most baffling crime and the intriguing life that Baby Patankar led.

How Women Work: Fitting In and Standing Out in Asia

₹444.11 M.R.P.:₹ 499.00 You Save: ₹54.89  (11.00% OFF)
Are the rules that define women leaders in Asia different from those in the West? How are women leaders perceived across Asia? What are the cultural barriers and biases that they grapple with? How is ambition displayed and aspiration cloaked? These are some of the questions addressed in How Women Work: Fitting In and Standing Out in Asia. From China to India, Singapore to the Philippines and Japan to Thailand, this book observes working women through a pan-Asian lens, using their triumphs and tribulations to present readers with lessons and learnings on leadership and success. ‘Fitting in’ and ‘standing out’ are seemingly contrarian ideas, but, from all accounts, Asian women don’t view them as ‘either/or’. Successful Asian women leaders do both on their own terms. With observations from women leaders as well as their male counterparts, How Women Work enriches and deepens our understanding of women leadership in one of the most dynamic regions of the world. It lays down the skills and strategies that work and the pitfalls to avoid for the modern working leader as she navigates the intricate ties between leadership and culture in the Asian hemisphere.

A Constitution to Keep: Sedition and Free Speech in Modern India

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When we think of the Indian Constitution, we think of the glorious chapter on fundamental rights which guarantees paramount civil liberties such as freedom of speech. But there is also a tension, because freedom of speech is compelled to co-exist with laws such as sedition – contained in Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). In 2021, numerous individuals petitioned the Supreme Court to take sedition off the law books. But, what is sedition? What is its provenance? How was sedition used in colonial India against nationalist leaders? Is there any constitutional justification for its continuance? In A Constitution to Keep, Rohan Alva answers these timely and relevant questions which every Indian should be asking. The book also makes a case for why political speech must be constitutionally protected and how the Supreme Court can do this while ensuring the purity of political discourse.

India's Blind Spot: Understanding and Managing Our Cities in a Post-COVID World

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Indian policy has been characterised by a denial of urbanization. This has prevented us from meaningfully addressing the blizzard of policy issues that come with the phenomenon: from governance deficit to infrastructure shortfall, from effective management of land to lack of focus on growing city economies; from access to potable water to incessant flooding; from traffic congestion to sufficient urban green and public spaces; and from lack of safety to marginalization of urban poor, migrants, and vulnerable communities. Consequently, cities have truly become India’s blind spot. And blind spots can be fatal. India’s Blind Spot will explore our understanding of Indian cities and how we have reached this point of exasperation. The book illustrates that cities are critical to achieving India’s promised destiny and provides policy solutions and innovations to tackle complex issues in our cities. The book vividly explains that Indian cities will be at the frontier of driving key global political-economy trends in coming decades. This is a comprehensive study on the phenomenon of Indian urbanization, and what comes with it.

Plastic Free: The Inspiring Story of a Global Environmental Movement and Why It Matters

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In July 2011, Rebecca Prince-Ruiz challenged herself to go plastic free for the whole month. Starting with a small group of people in Perth, the Plastic Free July movement has grown into a 250-million strong community across 177 countries, empowering people to reduce single-use plastic consumption and create a cleaner future. This book explores how one of the world’s leading environmental campaigns took off and shares lessons from its success. From narrating marine-debris research expeditions to tracking what actually happens to our waste to sharing insights from behavioral research, it speaks to the massive scale of the plastic waste problem and how it can be tackled. Interweaving interviews from participants, activists, and experts, Plastic Free tells the inspiring story of how ordinary people have created change in their homes, communities, workplaces, schools, businesses, and beyond.

The Indian President: An Insider’s Account of the Zail Singh Years (1982-87)

₹629.10 M.R.P.:₹ 699.00 You Save: ₹69.90  (10.00% OFF)
A study of the institution of the President of India, this book is based on the author’s term as Deputy Secretary to the seventh president, Giani Zail Singh. In particular, it examines the President’s role when authoritarian governments are voted in power. Things are all the more challenging for a president with a popular prime minister who has an overwhelming majority, as happened in the case of Zail Singh and Rajiv Gandhi. The book recounts how the guardrails painstakingly created by the first two presidents – Rajendra Prasad and S. Radhakrishnan – were partly resurrected by Zail Singh. Richly anecdotal and incisively observed, The Indian President makes a compelling case for why the Zail Singh years are crucial to understanding both the limits and the possibilities of the country’s highest office.

Ārambha: A story of the Vijayanagara Empire’s birth

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When Hakka and Bukka are taken prisoner by Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq in the battle at the Fort of Hosadurg in 1327, they begin to forge a relationship with their captor. Over time, Tughlaq installs Hakka as the Governor of Kampili, the kingdom where the brothers had initially been captured by the Sultan’s army. Slowly, Hakka and Bukka break free of the Sultanate and begin to establish their influence in the South. Over forty years, they lay the foundation for the Vijayanagara Empire – an empire that would last for more than two and a half centuries. This is a story of skill and rapid conquest, as two brothers carve out an empire in the subcontinent. Most of all, it is a story of exceptional people who played a role in building this new entity – the Vijayanagara Empire.

The Garden of Tales: The Best of Vijaydan Detha

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A seth who lends money by mortgaging the borrower’s next birth… A bride who, after the wedding, discovers her husband is actually a woman… A jogi dwelling in the skies who quells his lust by imprisoning women in his Cloud Palace…Vijaydan Detha is undoubtedly the most important writer of Rajasthani prose in the twentieth century. He draws the reader into the complex and quirky world of the common folk of Rajasthan, while bringing alive the magic of folklore and fable. Traversing landscapes that are both earthly and cosmic, his tales, while being about the rich and poor, the saint and sinner, are also populated by trees, animals, the wind and the rain, gods and goddesses, and even ghosts. And between them, they explore humanity in all its myriad manifestations: love and desire, innocence and cunning, wisdom and folly, greed and deceit, righteousness, valour and the illusion of power. Translated masterfully by Vishes Kothari, The Garden of Tales is a definitive selection of Detha’s work that will amuse and absorb you until the very last page.

An Order from the Sky and Other Stories - PB

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A man offering curses and prayers, gifts and threats to his favourite deity before embarking upon a day of thieving…A woman in a packed bus, desperate to get home before her clothes are soaked with menstrual blood, but also determined to save a seat for a fellow woman…A loyal, ageing party worker, hoping to finally contest an election, but discovering instead the worm in the apple of democracy…Set for the most part in the small towns and villages of present-day Tamil Nadu, these stories describe the aspirations and agonies of the men and women living and working there: what they want is to survive and thrive as human beings. Imayam – winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award, and one of the most significant Tamil writers today – peers into their lives and observes them with rare empathy and attention. Written in spare, modern prose spiced with pungent regional dialect, and brought brilliantly to new life in Vasantha Surya’s luminous translation, An Order from the Sky and Other Stories redefines the possibilities of Indian fiction.

Meanwhile

₹273.00 M.R.P.:₹ 350.00 You Save: ₹77.00  (22.00% OFF)
Meanwhile is a collection of poems that explores the light and shadow of the everyday: the quiet anxiety that plays out on the bedroom ceiling moments before sleep, the forgetfulness that lingers in doorways, the loneliness of clothes on the laundry line begging for the meaning of ‘clean’, the way changing seasons evoke memories of long ago winters as though they were about to repeat themselves.If our more dramatic moments are beads on a necklace, Meanwhile concerns itself with the thread that connects them. Sometimes it is soft, silken. Sometimes it pulls and tightens around your neck. A beloved heirloom. A pretty noose. Because sometimes the ordinary is far from mundane.