# data[].attributes.name
Beyond Apu - 20 Favourite Film Roles of Soumitra Chatterjee

# data[].attributes.description
One of India's Finest Actors Talks His Most Iconic Roles<br/>Soumitra Chatterjee became internationally famous with his debut in Satyajit Ray's Apur Sansar. In an era when Uttam Kumar ruled the minds and hearts of Bengali film audiences, Chatterjee carved a niche for himself, emerging as one of the finest actors, not only in India, but also in the world. Beyond Apu - 20 Favourite Film Roles of Soumitra Chatterjee looks at the cinematic life of this thespian through twenty of the most iconic characters he has essayed. Handpicked by the star himself, and brimming over with vintage anecdotes, this is a fascinating read on the art and craft of a master at work. Including insightful essays on his theatre and other artistic achievements, this book not only introduces the reader to an icon of Indian cinema but also offers a unique insight into the mind of a genius.

# data[].attributes.description
The story goes, apocryphal perhaps, that one day the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, told his foreign minister that the country's name must be changed to Idi, and he should inform the UN and all other international bodies. A week passed. President Amin then summoned the minister and asked, 'Did you carry out my orders?' He replied saying that there was a problem. 'What problem?' the president inquired. 'Your Excellency, there is a country called Cyprus. The people are called Cypriots. If Uganda were to be called Idi, we would be called Idiots.' There are few leaders that K. Natwar Singh, in a diplomatic career spanning more than three decades, has not known - and fewer still about whom he has no story to tell. In Walking with Lions: Tales from a Diplomatic Past, Singh puts together fifty episodes that entertain, inform and illuminate. Featured here is Indira Gandhi as a statesman and friend, alongside other renowned figures such as Fidel Castro, Haile Selassie and Zia-ul-Haq. Singh analyses some personalities with disarming candour, among them Morarji Desai and Lord Mountbatten; at other times, his admiration for leaders like C. Rajagopalalchari and Nelson Mandela shines through. In these pages you will also find a rare, fascinating glimpse of Godman Chandraswami and his cohort Mamaji, and their interaction with a surprisingly submissive Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher. Besides, there are short tributes to artists, writers, cricketers and film stars, like M.F. Husain, Nadine Gordimer, Don Bradman and Dev Anand. Recounted with empathy and humour, this collection of stories from contemporary history is a warm, unaffected and reassuring reminder that the great too can be as fallible as the rest of us.

# data[].attributes.description
An engrossing, personal view of the public events that have shaped India's recent history From Partition to Operation Bluestar provides an engrossing, personal view of the public events that have shaped India's recent history, written by a man who had a ringside view of these. As we follow Som Nath Dhar's career in journalism, government and the world of covert intelligence, the book transports us from pre-Partition Punjab to Delhi and Kashmir, with side trips to East Africa and Europe. Dhar writes in a compelling, journalistic style about the turbulence of Partition; the heady experience of working closely with India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru; the dramatic events leading up to the 1947 invasion and accession of Kashmir; and later developments such as Indira Gandhi's accession to power, her fall from grace and eventual return to power, and much else. Full of charming anecdotes, the book deepens our understanding of recent Indian history and provides insights into the character of many of the personalities who shaped it.

# data[].attributes.description
A book about how to donate money or fund causes and people in need In The Art of Effective Giving, R.M. Lala, director of the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust for eighteen years, shows how the choice to give enriched the lives of leading businessmen who practised philanthropy with the same passion that they showed as entrepreneurs. These pacesetters can serve as examples for us to follow in our own small ways, for compassion is greater than wealth and learning to care is all that is necessary to making a difference. The Art of Effective Giving is about spreading the circle of people willing to reach out to others - for the sheer joy of giving.

# data[].attributes.description
Sixty years ago, journalism wasn't a glamorous profession in India. There were only a few reporters driven by a sense of adventure and the willingness to travel the world in search of news.Harish Chandola was one such young man who moved from the Garhwal hills to start out as an editorial assistant with the Hindustan Times in Delhi in 1950. Not content with staying in the newsroom, he used his annual leave to journey through Tibet on foot--just when China was beginning its 'incursion' into the region--and was detained by Chinese soldiers for three months.In a major scoop, he became the first journalist to notice 'a new kind of Chinese army in Tibet' in 1954. Prime Minister Nehru dismissed the report as a figment of Chandola's imagination, but it was later discovered that the men were constructing a 1,700-km highway from Lhasa to the Chinese mainland.What followed thereafter was a six-decade-long career in journalism which took him to the frontlines of conflicts in Kenya and Cambodia, the Algerian War of Independence and the middle of a military coup in Indonesia. Back home, he played a role in sensitive negotiations with underground Naga leaders on Lal Bahadur Shastri's request, and was a trusted adviser on some key political issues to Indira Gandhi.At Large in the World tells the stories behind the headlines and makes startling disclosures as it paints a compelling and honest portrait of India in eventful times over the last half-century.

# data[].attributes.description
In 1952, at the age of twenty-seven, Mohan Rakesh undertook a journey to south India, travelling by bus, train and steamer along the western coast from Bombay to Kanyakumari. Young and ardent, he dreamt of the wide expanse of sea that would make up for a childhood spent in Amritsar's narrow lanes, and had visions of comely guides who would look kindly upon his wandering. But once he set out from Delhi on a train to Bombay, his visions slipped away and complex reality took over. To the Farthest Rock is a remarkable account of the hope and despair that characterized post-Independence India. Rakesh had only published a few short stories when he quit a teaching job in Shimla in order to travel, but readers who know his later work will recognize his skill with portraits of people and his exceptional ability to render fluctuations of feeling. Set against the verdant coastal landscape of Goa and Kerala, this absorbing travelogue is a fine introduction to the mind of one of Hindi's greatest novelists and playwrights.

# data[].attributes.description
One day before he is assassinated, Gandhi steps out of Birla House into newly independent Delhi, wanting his approaching death to be a final, redemptive message; Sasi begins to clean up the crime scene after her lover leaves to arrange for the disposal of her husband's body, but suddenly, the wall clock begins to tick backwards, setting off a dramatic reversal of events; resurrected from death by her brother, Nallathangaal roams the forests with her seven children for decades until the love of a carousel man frees her from the curse; Cheenu returns to his beloved wife to find that the years of warped urges in jail have changed him irrevocably. Farewell, Mahatma brings together ten tales that introduce us to the brilliance and distinctiveness of Devibharathi's imagination and craft. These stories explore the dark and dichotomous realities of our history and present, our social and individual lives, deeply probing themes such as freedom, need, desire and the volatile spaces between man and woman. At once unnerving and illuminating, these are short stories at their best.

# data[].attributes.author
Devibharathi, N Kalyan Raman, N Kalyan Raman

# data[].attributes.description
The never-before-told story of the rock music scene in India of the 1960s and '70sIndia in the 1960s and early 1970s: a nation of perennial shortages. Into the staid and conservative landscape come floating in the sounds of 'Love, love me do'. Four young boys from Liverpool in 1962 set off a storm that swept teenagers in every remote corner of the world. In socialistic India, too, youngsters put on their dancing shoes to groove to this new sound, so different from anything they had heard till then. Some grew their hair, put on their bell-bottoms and picked up their guitars and the Indian pop and rock revolution was born. But it was not just the music that was important.As Sidharth Bhatia's colourful and incisive book tells us, it was an attempt by a new, post-independence generation - midnight's children - to assert their own voice. Theirs was a voyage of self-discovery, as they set out to seek freedom and liberation from older attitudes and values. At the end of this era, nothing - politics, society and fashion - would ever be the same again.

# data[].attributes.description
One of the foremost Karnatik vocalists today, T.M. Krishna writes lucidly and passionately about the form, its history, its problems and where it stands todayT.M. Krishna begins his sweeping exploration of the tradition of Karnatik music with a fundamental question: what is music? Taking nothing for granted and addressing readers from across the spectrum - musicians, musicologists as well as laypeople - Krishna provides a path-breaking overview of south Indian classical music.

# data[].attributes.description
S.D. Burman was singer, musician, composer and teacher all at once - a trailblazer in the truest sense of the term. He was a prince who lived a commoner's life, a singer who created tunes instead, a classically trained musician who composed for the lay listener. His incredible career in Hindi cinema spanned three decades - through all the years of which his spirit was as fresh and young as when he started. His compositions were filmed on succeeding generations of stars to unflaggingly wonderful effect. This chronicle of the life of S.D. Burman tells his story through a kaleidoscope of montages from the inner and outer worlds he inhabited. Fragmented memoirs of his days in the sylvan surroundings of Comilla, interviews, press clippings and archival material piece together the story of the man who created some of Hindi cinema's most enduring songs. Facts and records are knitted into a multidimensional narrative that carries the reader into the little-known world of a man whose contradictions made him unique and gave him a place all his own in music. Sun Mere Bandhu Re ... The Musical World of S.D. Burman is a biography unlike any you have read before.

# data[].attributes.description
If for any reason at all he fails, virtually the entire public sector will have to be written off for the next twenty years, noted the panel that chose V. Krishnamurthy as the Business India Businessman of the Year in 1987. Management of a business enterprise in India is a lot more difficult than in other countries. There are far more uncertainties that an Indian manager has to encounter while performing his tasks-even more so in state-owned companies, often synonymous with inefficiency, than in private ones. But Krishnamurthy, through his exemplary stewardship of three enterprises, emerged as the pride of India's public sector in the 1970s and 1980s. At Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, he saved the company from imminent disintegration and dispelled Indira Gandhi's impression that Indian managers do not have the ability to manage large organizations. At Maruti Udyog, he was given the responsibility of not just manufacturing a car but of modernizing the automobile industry itself. Steel Authority of India was almost a sunset company when he took over but he shook up the organization from its very foundations and put it back in a leadership position. At the Helm is the story of how a boy from the temple town of Karuveli in Tamil Nadu starts out as a technician at airfields during the Second World War but goes on to script the biggest success stories of young India's fledgling public sector over the next five decades.

# data[].attributes.description
Anant, a thirty-five-year-old small-time photographer in Ahmedabad, has a recurring nightmare. In it, a three-legged bitch is chained to his ankle, slowing his step and dragging angrily behind him. Try as he might, he is neither able to free himself of the mongrel in the dream nor the dream itself. What does the dog signify? Raashee, his one-time lover who now exists only in online chat windows? Or Diane Arbus, the legendary 1960s' photographer whose groundbreaking ideas have no takers in Ahmedabad? Or his father, with whom he has a strained relationship? When psychologists and Google fail him, Anant embarks on a Kafkaesque journey through the city to find the answers that elude him. 35 and Sexless in Ahmedabad is a darkly comic story about a lonely man's quest for real connections in times of virtual connectivity -- a misfit artist's alienation in a conservative city, here Ahmedabad but could be any other. But the most hopeless of situations often have simple solutions. As Anant discovers, his three-legged dog is actually a profound problem with a surprisingly primal answer.

# data[].attributes.description
'Riveting story, intelligently told with sly humour' - Kunal Basu 'Avik Chanda's debut novel is a relentless, heartbreaking roller-coaster played out against the ticking of a clock, which grows ever more ominous as the hours go by, minute by minute. His is a tale of greed, terror and death, but also of heroism and love. Chanda's exploration of the depths of man's inhumanity is made even more stark by passages of quiet beauty that take the breath away.' - Joan Harcourt, Literary Editor, Queen's Quarterly<br/> A firebrand ex-Naxal who seems to have gone missing at a critical juncture. A veteran journalist accompanied by a young and naive sub-editor determined to find the truth. A suave but ruthless politician with a hidden agenda, equally determined to stop the truth from getting out. A gang of hardened criminals ready to do his bidding in cohorts with the police. Helpless villagers who are mere pawns in a bigger game. And a group of anxious editors waiting in the claustrophobic newsroom of The Sentinel for the night to pass and the next day's 'anchor' to unfold in the killing fields of a village on the outskirts of Kolkata. Over the course of an unforgettable, stifling, rain-soaked night, the lives of these characters intertwine, clash and are changed inexorably. In Anchor, Avik Chanda presents a picture of Kolkata in the late 1990s, and serving as its foil, a tiny fictional village, where people risk losing their homes, land - and finally, even their lives.

# data[].attributes.description
A moving portrait of a community reduced to being tourists in their own homeland.It has been twenty-five years since around 3.5 lakh Kashmiri Pandits were uprooted from their homes in the Kashmir valley due to militancy and changed circumstances. Many of them had to face the ignominy of living in tents, then in one-room tenements or flats, as refugees in their own country. They felt let down by both the state and central governments and by Indian society as a whole -- as well as by the Muslims of the valley. There was to be no going back for them.From Home to House is an anthology of short stories, essays and writings by Kashmiri Pandits in exile, vividly bringing out their nostalgia for Kashmir, their sense of betrayal, their attempts to pick up the pieces and carve a new life for themselves. These are the reflections of a lost and scattered people in what for them is an alien land. The writings show both their vulnerability -- their helplessness as they see their culture and way of life getting eroded -- and their resilience -- as the younger generation of Pandits spreads its wings and builds a whole new life for itself. This anthology holds a mirror to the troubled valley of Kashmir, a mirror from which the reflection of a section of its population is now missing.

# data[].attributes.description
Interpretations of Valmiki's poem about the epic battle between Raman and his nemesis, Ravanan, tend tofocus on the glory and virtues of the hero. But in the Malayalam modern classic Oorukaaval - translated hereas The Vigil - Sarah Joseph tells a turbulent tale: that of Angadan, who believes that Raman killed his father Vali against all principles of dharma.Unlike the celebrated central characters who are blind to or choose to ignore that which is inconvenient,Angadan is acutely aware of the silent sufferings of the weak and disempowered. Over and over, the tormentedyoung vanara prince sees Raman act against justice and fair play, not the least of which is his consent toSita's fire ordeal. Ultimately, though, it is the person most wronged by Raman - Sita - who provides himredemption from his searing quest for revenge. In The Vigil, the familiar rhythm of the original poem is stirred up by Angadan's ascetic touch. Sarah Josephprovides a new spin to the grand old story, bringing in contemporary concerns such as the environment, peaceand women's empowerment, and provides a new path, a fresh way of understanding it.

# data[].attributes.description
Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to accounts of India's Secret History. Appearing daily as tantalizing pamphlets on the walls of the city's residential neighbourhoods, Secret History claims to reveal India's suppressed past. Rhetorical and rhythmic, dark and depressing, violent and vengeful - are these accounts true or fictional? Who writes the Secret History? These questions do not engage Rasheed Halim, who is grappling with the possibility of imminent death and cancer recurrence. He becomes a recluse, waiting to die, popping tranquillizers to get through his days. Not even a night of rioting, in which not a drop of blood is spilt, shakes him out of his melancholy. In desperation, he turns to a helpline, where a mysterious voice kindles in him the desire to live and join a band of people whose mission it is to identify the author of Secret History. The search takes Rasheed into a world where madness masquerades as rationality, suspicion is the impulse of human action, and politics and history are tools of torment forged in the fire of personal suffering. Is redemption possible in this world? What does it mean to return to lost thoughts? Does Rasheed encounter the author of Secret History?Thought-provoking and suspenseful, The Hour Before Dawn is the remarkable story of a terminally ill man's search for meaning and his eventual quest to understand how deep the lust for blood runs.

# data[].attributes.subtitle
Travels through India's Wrestling Landscape

# data[].attributes.description
'When I'm on the mat, I am so filled with this awareness that the slightest touch feels like electricity to my body, and my body reacts to that the same way it would have reacted if I touched a livewire.' Wrestling, kushti, rules the farmlands, as it has for centuries. It had pride of place in the courts of Chalukya kings and Mughal emperors. It was embraced by Hinduism and its epics, and has led its own untroubled revolution against the caste system. The British loved it when they first came to India, then rejected it during the freedom struggle. No, wrestling has never been marginal -- even if it is largely ignored in modern-day narratives of sport and culture. From the Great Gama to Sushil Kumar -- whose two Olympic medals yanked the kushti out of rural obscurity and on to TV screens -- and the many, many pehalwans in between, Enter the Dangal goes behind the scenes to the akharas that quietly defy urbanization. It travels to villages and small towns to meet the intrepid women who fight their way into this 'manly' sport. Beyond the indifferent wrestling associations and an impervious media is an old, old sport.Enter the dangal, and you may never leave.

# data[].attributes.description
A biography of Ahmedabad from a winner of the Sahitya Akademi award <br/>There are many legends around the founding of Ahmedabad. One has it that some time in 1411 AD, a dog was looking for easy prey on the banks of the Sabarmati when a hare attacked him and drove him away. Sultan Ahmed Shah witnessed the scene and, impressed by the hare's spirit, decided to build a city right there.Now, six hundred years later, Ahmedabad is a city at the intersection of the old and the new. Centuries-old dargahs and havelis stand alongside high-rises and glitzy shopping malls. Once known for its textile mills, it is now one of the world's fastest developing cities. But while the fortifications of the walled city crumbled long ago, divisions between its varied groups have come to the fore, pulling them apart.Esther David, a member of Ahmedabad's small Bene Israel Jewish community, is a storehouse of city stories. In Ahmedabad: City with a Past, she takes the reader on an intimate rickshaw ride through a city full of life and wondrous contradictions.

# data[].attributes.description
The definitive history of a cricket team the world loves to watch, but is at a loss to explain The story of Pakistan cricket is dramatic, tortured, heroic and tumultuous. Beginning with nothing after the Partition of 1947 to the jubilation of its victory against England at the Oval in 1954; from earning its Test status and competing with the best to sealing a golden age by winning the World Cup in 1992; from their magic in Sharjah to an era-defining low in the new millennium, Pakistan's cricketing fortunes have never ceased to thrill. This book is the story of those fortunes and how, in the process, the game transformed from an urban, exclusive sport into a glue uniting millions in a vast, disparate country. In its narration, Osman Samiuddin captures the jazba of the men who played for Pakistan, celebrates their headiest moments and many upheavals, and brings to life some of their most famous - and infamous - contests, tours and moments. Ambitious, spirited and often heart breaking, The Unquiet Ones is a comprehensive portrait of not just a Pakistani sport, but a national majboori, a compulsion whose outcome can often surprise and shock, and become the barometer of everyday life in Pakistan, tailing its ups and downs, its moods and character.

# data[].attributes.description
A brilliant study of one of the greatest epics of Indian cinema Mughal-e-Azam (1960) embodies grandeur in Indian cinema like no other film. The imagination and hard work of the makers is evident in every scene. The gigantic setting, the great performances, the poetic language, the brilliant technical quality and the sublime music contribute to its enduring appeal. However, Mughal-e-Azam is much more than just lavish entertainment. The movie takes a historical legend and converts it into a film epic that is enriched by several artistic and cultural traditions. The film also corresponds to the progressive ideas that defined the first decade of independent India. In Mughal-e-Azam: Legend as Epic, film-maker and scholar Anil Zankar unravels its cinematic strength through an understanding of the script, mise en scene, music and the nature of the conflict in the film.