Step into the boots of fearless surveyors as they trek across forests, mountains and monsoons—facing disease, wild animals and gruelling terrain—to chart the subcontinent with astonishing precision.
This was the Great Trigonometrical Survey, an ambitious mission to map India using triangulation—a brilliant method that helped them measure every inch with accuracy. Along the way, they calculated the height of the world’s tallest mountain and revealed the true shape of the earth.
Packed with adventure, ingenuity, mishaps and the unsung heroes of science, this is the epic true story of mathematics, grit and discovery.
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, this book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Any depiction of smoking in this book is for representational purposes only. Penguin Random House India does not promote or endorse tobacco use
बाज़ारवादी युग में दरकते इंसानी रिश्तों पर लिखी आलोक श्रीवास्तव की ग़ज़लें उनके निजी अनुभवों का आईना हैं। आसान की कई रचनाओं में सामाजिक सरोकार के सबूत मिलते हैं। यह पुस्तक पन्नों के कैनवास पर शब्दों के रंग बिखेरने का एहसास कराती है, जिसमें पाठक काव्य की हर विधा में निपुणता के साथ किसी सूफ़ियाना ख़्याल को सिर्फ एक दोहे में समेट देने के हुनर से रू-ब-रू होते हैं। पुस्तक की रचनाएँ पाठकों के मनोभाव में ऐसे प्रवेश करती हैं, जैसे वह उनकी ही भावनाएँ हों। विद्वान रावण द्वारा विरचित ‘शिव तांडव स्त्रोत’ और गोस्वामी तुलसीदास के लिखे ‘रुद्राष्टक’ का हिंदी भावानुवाद भी आसान में समाहित है।
Arundhathi Subramaniam’s poems map a wobbling world, trying to find its axis in the season of change. Fabric tear, lands splinter, stances harden, loved ones die, names dissolve. But wandering through these pages are some extraordinary women – women who vault nimbly over borders, walk naked, walk aslant and sometimes upside down. Leaping from the past into global present, these exuberant voices offer tips on how to retain one’s spine through life’s giddiest rollercoaster rides.
Blurring the divide between the mundane and the magical, the historical and the imaginary, they point to a new world that might lie within the folds of the old. A world that requires a new set of skills: how to find the right nicknames, ‘how to gatecrash into the present’, how to ‘go skinny-dipping in the self’. These are songs of bewilderment, insight and startling freedom.
Upendranath Brahmachari conjured a potent drug to vanquish the spectre of kala-azar, saving millions from the deadly disease. Ram Nath Chopra explored ancient ayurvedic knowledge, extracting a natural compound from sarpagandha to treat seizures and high blood pressure. Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose etched a novel cipher for fingerprints, birthing the science of forensics with their elegant method. Though pilfered by Scotland Yard, it found mention in the intricate plot of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of the Four. Yellapragada Subbarow sculpted five monumental discoveries that reshaped modern medicine, saving countless lives—yet, in a poignant twist of fate, could not save his own.
These stories are not mere chronicles of inventions, but sagas of lives devoted to the pursuit of brilliance. They bring alive the history and sociocultural milieu of the times these men lived in, how they changed the landscape of Indian science and how they proved that the only difference between the ordinary and the great is this: the ordinary think they are great and the great think they are ordinary.
Chaotic Butterfingers, aka Amar Kishen, and his misadventures return in this second collection of comic stories. From saving bees to catching bank robbers to solving the mystery of a haunted house to pulling off a wildly ambitious history exhibition— Butterfingers does it all!
- The Heebee Jeebees are set to perform, but can Amar help them find the secret ingredient for their show?
- A trip to Ooty during Halloween takes a rather unexpected turn with a bank robbery and a haunted house mystery!
- Disaster strikes when Amar and his friends are tasked with setting up a history exhibition, leaving everyone with a case of the giggles.
So, drop everything and jump into this book . . . it’s no surprise that where there’s Butterfingers, there’s bound to be fun, thrills and, of course, spills.
Bagging seeds to relax our eyes, making a cloth pad as self-care, draping a saree like trousers to go upside down, drawing to feed ants: can ancient rituals, practices and their objects work as modern ‘tools’ to ‘declutter’ our almost overloaded senses?
Clutter—real and virtual—is a part of our life now. These cleansing rituals and healing practices are believed
to have old-world history, rooted essence, purgative properties, health benefits, and zero or minimal waste.
If tweaked, it can even help us declutter to stay on top of our body–mind game.
Laced with nostalgia and punctuated with delightful memories, explorations and failures, The Art of Decluttering takes you through nine retellings of clothing, home and body, which make aspects of ancient Indian ritualistic life relatable to the modern reader.
In the remote Mahamaya Valley in the Himalayas, wildlife biologist Tara has vanished. Hunting for answers, Tara’s best friend Mansi sets out to retrace her whereabouts in the days before her disappearance. The prime suspect Bhaskar sits in police custody, his obsession with Tara laid bare, his testimony a labyrinth of contradictions and half-truths. As the investigation deepens, the valley reveals its own mysteries—a backpacker paradise where the timeless and the ephemeral collide, where technology and nature clash, and where a woman’s voice can be silenced in countless ways.
Rendered in exquisite prose, Real Life is a gripping mystery that transforms into a masterful exploration of love and loss, visibility and erasure, AI and surveillance and the never-ending tussle between individual desires and societal demands.
In an age of surveillance and enforced conformity, what does it mean for a woman to seek a more authentic, real existence?
What’s in a name? Plenty.
Agassi Joel Roy hates his first name and wants everyone to call him Joel. He hates tennis too—and most other sports. But when he hears about the cycling competition in his town, he decides to take part.
So what if he doesn’t know cycling? Or doesn’t own a working cycle? With a borrowed cycle—accompanied by a rather unexpected companion—and ample courage, Joel begins his lessons, with his neighbour Zeba as his tutor.
Will Joel reach the finish line or will cycling join the list of most hated sports?
A collection as unprecedented as it is captivating, Lapbah—a title inspired by Lapbah Sohra, Sohra’s monsoon deluge—is a magnificent anthology in two volumes that brings together fifty-seven compelling tales by fifty-two of the finest writers from the North-east. It presents, for the first time, voices from all eight states of the region, seamlessly blending original works in English with masterful translations of those written in the regional languages.
The collection offers a rich tapestry of themes and styles through writing by the likes of Easterine Kire, Janice Pariat, Bhabendra Nath Saikia, Mitra Phukan and Arupa Patangia Kalita. The stories, emanating from the many different linguistic, literary and ethnic cultures, range from the traditionally heart-rending tales of Arup Kumar Dutta and Rashmi Narzary to the darkly humorous social and political satires of S.J. Duncan and Wan Kharkrang and the fantastical worlds of Jahnavi Barua and Harekrishna Deka, where reality mixes freely with the surreality of dream and fantasy.
Lapbah, compiled and edited by Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih and Rimi Nath, is a celebration of voices as diverse and multifaceted as the region itself, offering readers a profound and moving literary experience.
