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Selected Satire: Fifty Years of Ignorance brings together about 20 satire pieces of eminent Hindi writer, Shrilal Shukla. Most noted for his novel Raag Darbari, for which he received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Shukla also wrote several collections of satirical essays and short stories. The pieces in this volume include his socio-political and cultural satires, where he caricaturizes politicians, mocks the bureaucracy (many of whom were his friends), and picks on the so-called developmental schemes of the government. A couple of pieces are also about small town attitudes and pretentions of intellectuals. The overall flavour is of an irreverence to authority and humour drawn from everyday occurrences.

Description When Durgadas, an ordinary businessman from Delhi, is arrested for murder in Lucknow, the lives of the people he left behind-his family and friends- unravel in unexpected ways. As they fight to prove his innocence and deal with the upheaval in their lives, they find themselves turning against each other. Taranath, his eldest son, searches for meaning and strength in religion and ritual when the law seems to fail him. Rajnath, his younger son, finds his marriage with his wife, Neela, coming undone when they decide against having a child until Durgadas is acquitted. His youngest daughter, Chaand, struggles with her attraction towards Vimal, the much older family friend and Durgadas's confidant. Vimal's integrity and Chaand's loyalties are tested as people around them try to drive them apart. Fragments of Happiness follows the tumult of ordinary people learning about their own power and helplessness in the face of extraordinary circumstances. Originally published in Hindi in 1973 as Seemayein Tootati Hain-five years after the cult classic Raag Darbari-with this novel Shrilal Shukla proves himself to be as great a master of tragedy as he was of satire.

Annotation Fakir Mohan Senapati's Six Acres and a Third, originally published in 1901 as Chha Mana Atha, is a wry, powerful novel set in colonial India.

A visionary look at the evolution and future of India In this momentous book, Nandan Nilekani traces the central ideas that shaped India's past and present and asks the key question of the future: How will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? As a co-founder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nilekani has actively participated in the company's rise during the past twenty-seven years. In Imagining India, he uses his global experience and understanding to discuss the future of India and its role as a global citizen and emerging economic giant. Nilekani engages with India's particular obstacles and opportunities, charting a new way forward for the young nation.

Seventy years on, the Partition of India fades from memory. Can it be restored?

After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru's diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion, and anti-Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream, with religious minorities living in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India's past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi's decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name.

In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Teheran to Oxiana--the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. The Road to Oxiana offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures, but also a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers.