Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Essays

Are the illustrious clans of the Mahabharata from Surya Vansh or Chandra Vansh? Which yuga does the Ramayana occur in, and does it occur only once? What do haldi, kumkum, bhasm or chandan signify in a puja thali? After the sensational response to Season 1 of EPIC Channel’s Devlok with Devdutt Pattanaik, Devdutt invited his viewers and fans to ask him questions about Hindu mythology, which he has answered over thirty thrilling episodes. Prepare to be educated, entertained and moved as Devdutt delves into the exhilarating variety of Hindu mythology.

Meena Menon was The Hindu's correspondent in Islamabad till she was expelled by the Pakistani authorities in May 2014. In spite of her truncated stay and the restrictions placed on her movements, Menon managed to write on a range of subjects covering swathes of life in Islamabad.

The critic and essayist Meghan O'Gieblyn was born into an evangelical family, attended the famed Moody Bible Institute in Chicago for a time before she had a crisis of belief, and still lives in the Midwest, aka "Flyover Country". She writes of her "existential dizziness, a sense that the rest of the world is moving while you remain still", and that rich sense of ambivalence and internal division inform the 15 superbly thoughtful and ironic essays in this collection.

Gregory Pardlo's father was a brilliant and charismatic man - a leading labor organizer who presided over a happy suburban family of four. But when he loses his job following the famous air traffic controllers' strike of 1981, he succumbs to addiction and exhausts the family's money on more and more ostentatious whims. In the face of this troubling model and disillusioned presence in the household, young Gregory rebels.

Series editor Andrew Leckey and guest editor Marshall Loeb have scoured the print media and have consulted with editors of major business and general-interest publications and with the deans of several schools of journalism in order to find the 30 best business stories from the past 12 months. Among the articles selected: Ken Auletta on Herb Allen's CEO retreat, from The New Yorker; Diane Brady on Martha Stewart, from Business Week; and Steve Silberman on creating a borderless global cyber-marketplace, from Wired.

What does it really mean to be a good father? What did your father tell you that has stayed with you throughout your life? Was there a lesson from him, a story, or a moment that helped to make you who you are? Is there a special memory that makes you smile when you least expect it?

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's wife suggested that perhaps it was time to move to New England.

From the matter of environmental jurisprudence and custodial deaths to the controversial topic of reservations, the author deals extensively with each case in the 10 essays and points out the effects that the Supreme court’s final verdicts produced. The book describes how the Indian judicial system is capable of impacting the lives of the millions that thrive under this democracy and succeeds in restoring the listener’s faith on the legal system of the nation. The internal affairs that go about in each case, which otherwise escape scrutiny, have been shed light on through the book.

Das weaves a compelling narrative soaked in philosophical, historical, and literary ideas. Here, in his magnificent prose, he examines how to cherish desire in order to live a rich, flourishing life, arguing that if dharma is a duty to another, kama is a duty to oneself. It sheds new light on love, marriage, family, adultery, and jealousy as it wrestles with questions such as these: How to nurture desire without harming others or oneself? Are the erotic and the ascetic two aspects of our same human nature? What is the relationship between romantic love and bhakti, the love of god?

The eight business maharajas profiled here are among Asia's most powerful industrial tycoons. Their combined turnover runs into billions of rupees, and between them they employ some 650,000 people, while indirectly affecting the lives of millions more. Sip a cup of tea, drive to work, listen to music, build a house and the chances are that in these and a myriad other ways you are using products that they manufacture or market. By any yardstick, the achievements of these men would rank among the great business stories of our time. How did these men build their enormous empires?

Ever suffered the collective flatulence of 80 c-passengers while sailing on a serene Asian river? Or called out for rescue in true Bollywood style while locked up in a minaret in Persia? Or had to cross a pack of hyenas en route to the loo?

In February 2017, Gurmehar Kaur, a 19-year-old student, joined a peaceful campaign after violent clashes at a Delhi University college. As part of the campaign, Kaur's post made her the target of an onslaught of social media vitriol. Kaur, the daughter of a war martyr, suddenly became the focal point of a nationalism debate. Facing a trial by social media, Kaur almost retreated into herself. But she was never brought up to be silenced.

Spread over 15 of the country’s 28 states, India’s Maoist movement is now one of the world’s biggest and most sophisticated extreme-left movements. Hardly a week passes without people dying in strikes and counter-strikes by the Maoists - interchangeably known as the Naxalites - and the police and paramilitary forces.

India's is a tale of private success and public failure. Prosperity is, indeed, spreading across the country even as governance failure pervades public life. But how could a nation become one of the world's fastest-growing economies when it's governed by a weak, ineffective state? And wouldn't it be wonderful if India also grew during the day - in other words, if public policy supported private enterprise? What India needs, Gurcharan Das argues, is a strong liberal state.

From adventure to indenture, martyrs to merchants, Partition to plantation, from Kashmir to Kerala, Japan to Jamaica and beyond, the many facets of the great migrations of India and the world are mapped in India Moving, the first book of its kind. To understand how millions of people have moved - from, to and within India - the book embarks on a journey laced with evidence, argument, and wit.

One of the great icons of our time, Khushwant Singh, 95, is a man of contradictions. An agnostic who's well-versed in the holy scriptures; a vocal champion of free speech who supported the Emergency; a "dirty old man" who sees "the world in a grain of sand and beauty in a wild flower". Born in 1915 in pre-Partition Punjab, Khushwant Singh has been witness to almost all the major events in modern Indian history and has known most of the figures who have shaped it.

My India: Ideas for the Future is a collection of excerpts from Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's speeches in his post presidency years. Drawn from Dr. Kalam's addresses to parliaments, universities, schools, and other institutions in India and abroad, they include his ideas on science, nation-building, poverty, compassion, and self-confidence. Dr. Kalam draws on the lives of stalwarts such as Marie Curie and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai to encourage and inspire his young listeners. Through these speeches, he shares many valuable lessons in humility, resilience, and determination.

On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivaled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes listeners on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers, and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.

When Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman, News Corporation, blew up more than $870 million buying Star TV from Richard Li in the early 1990s, analysts were dismayed. Why on earth had Murdoch invested in a pan-Asian broadcaster that was neither fish nor fowl? More than 25 years later, with revenues of over $2 billion, Star India is one of the country's three largest media firms. Murdoch's instinct had done what a hundred investor summits could not: showcased the potential of the Indian media market to the world.

Kargil: Untold Stories from the War takes you into the treacherous mountains where some of the Indian Army's bloodiest battles were fought. Interviewing war survivors and martyrs' families, Rachna Bisht Rawat tells stories of extraordinary human courage, of not just men in uniform but also those who loved them the most. With its gritty stories of incomparable bravery, Kargil: Untold Stories from the War is a tribute to the 527 young braves who gave up their lives for us - and the many who were ready to do it, too.