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Sandeep Sinha The Telgi scam had rocked the country. The printing and sale of counterfeit stamp papers was not only an example of how the system could be subverted, but also about connivance and collusion on part of those who...

India’s Techade by Nalin Mehta. Westland. Pages 176. Rs 599 This book is the story of India’s digital transformation. It focuses on how India built the super-structure on which its digital infrastructure was created, how this played out for India’s...

Sandeep Dikshit FACEETIOUSNESS, sarcasm, black humour and biography in a book on 100 years of the subcontinent’s history are rare ingredients that make the narration less cumbersome. These elements lighten the contents in Joya Chatterji’s slightly intimidating 800-page tome and,...

Devinder Sharma IT is like walking down memory lane. For someone who has grown along with the Green Revolution days, joining a graduate programme in agriculture when the miracle dwarf wheat varieties had begun to show promise, and kept a...

Parbina Rashid AS Manipur continues to burn due to ethnic violence and India on this side of the Chicken’s Neck grapples with the dynamics between Kukis and Meiteis, Samrat Choudhury’s latest book brings out the troubled past of this most...

Claude Arpi IT is not often that one comes across a very special book. ‘Echoes from Forgotten Mountains — Tibet in War and Peace’, written by Jamyang Norbu, is one such work. We know the Tibetan author from his novel...

R Sivadasan The book ‘Shunting the Nation’ by Aniruddha Bose is a well-researched narration of events, sprinkled with interesting statistics. It is set in the backdrop of a very difficult period. Indeed, 1939-1949 is a decade that stands out as...

The Harmony of Bees and Other Charms of Creepy Crawliesby Ranjit Lal.Speaking Tiger. Pages 224. Rs 399 They dazzle us, mystify us, enthral us and astound us. Some are deadly carriers of disease. Some pollinate more than one-third of our...

Manu Moudgil How do the last 100 years of Hindi fiction on same-sex desire look like? This collection of short stories and novel extracts by Ruth Vanita offers an answer that is thankfully not straightforward. Besides big names like Munshi...

Ranjit Powar Short stories are making a comeback the world over, fitting cosily into the brief snatches of time people afford for reading in their roller-coaster-ride lives. Merely a century old, the Punjabi short story has been taken to great...

Surinder S Jodhka The popular narratives of development are mostly framed around the processes of economic growth. At the macro level, these imply the increasing volumes of national income, often described as the gross domestic product (GDP), and at the...

Translated by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Speaking Tiger. Pages 123. Rs 350 A selection of 51 abhangas (devotional poems) from celebrated Bhakti poet Tukaram’s vast oeuvre, ‘Behold! The Word is God’ is a unique translation. Each Marathi abhanga is...

M Rajivlochan A few years ago, I read an interesting book of the same title by the author, with a different cover design. It was written for school students in the United States. Something of a bestseller, within three years,...

Harvinder Khetal THis book is the polished byproduct of the research that author Manpreet J Singh undertook to bring into focus the Sikh community in the centenary year of the Komagata Maru incident of 1914, when Indians, mostly Sikhs, from...

Maninder Sidhu Chetna Maroo’s debut novel, ‘Western Lane’, is a tale of love, loss, sibling camaraderie and diasporic sentiments elegantly etched in and around the squash court. The narrator/protagonist is an 11-year-old girl, Gopi, based in London, quietly struggling to...

Vivek Katju Mani Shankar Aiyar’s ‘Memoirs of a Maverick’ covers the first 50 years of his rewarding and fulfilling life. It is an account of his childhood, youth, his years in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), which he joined in...

Bindu Menon IN 1921, CP Scott, editor of The Manchester Guardian, wrote a piece to mark the newspaper’s centenary. Laying out his thoughts on what a newspaper ought to be, Scott wrote that its “primary office is the gathering of...

Gurjit Singh THE practitioners of the art of diplomacy believe that the world is flat or at least should be, implying that upheavals should be managed, unless they are instigated. They also believe that they calibrate geopolitics. Academia believes that...

Dipankar Gupta AFTAB SETH’S ‘A Diplomat’s Garden’ is aromatic, scenic and delightful; just as every garden should be. Once we set foot on Aftab’s turf, we realise how cultivated the man is and how curated each of his passions is,...

Vikramdeep Johal HINDU-MUSLIM unity, which finds itself under severe strain in today’s India, was a vital element of the Mahatma Gandhi-led Noncooperation Movement of 1920-22. This campaign, says author David Hardiman, united Hindus and Muslims in a way that was...

Sugata Srinivasaraju’s ‘Strange Burdens’ analyses Rahul Gandhi’s ideas and leadership since he officially entered politics in March 2004. It attempts to understand his politics and predicaments, confusions and contradictions, triteness and triumph, the burdens and benignity. ...

JOINING the ever-increasing world of self-help books is ‘Unlocked: The Power of You’ by Gezim Gashi, a 33-year-old entrepreneur. Barely days old when he was thrown out of a second-floor hospital window by his mother to escape the genocide in...

THE magic of eminent artist Sobha Singh continues to live on even after his death in 1986. However, for the lack of a holistic account of his life and times, his grandson Hirday Paul Singh has taken it upon himself...

Shelley Walia THE study of music is underpinned by the question of value, with the life-enriching beliefs and ideas articulated by artists, thereby infusing civilisation with renewed energy and enhancing the understanding of the world and ourselves. However, the musician’s...

Nina Singh THE book’s title is self-revealing. It is about Sikh communities living in east and northeast India outside their cultural core, the Punjab, which before Independence included parts of northwest India and Pakistan. Studies on Sikhs in Punjab put...