Must Read Books April 2021
Death in Colaba Bay: A Colonial Bombay Mystery
by Ambika Subramanian
Death in Colaba Bay is a thrilling tale of Victorian Bombay, a city where dreams are realized, and nightmares are lived. In the bustling and modern port city of Bombay in 1898 —home to great wealth and great deprivation—crime is ever present. Three young girls go missing from a prominent ‘native’ school in the city. Their families are frantic with worry.
Tara Bai, a young widow and heiress, with strong social connections, is an alumnus of the school. Intrigued and alarmed by the case, at the behest of the school founder and principal, she agrees to help the grieving parents. Arun Rao, a young and promising police officer, is assigned to the case. His track record of solving complex crimes has led to his transfer to the Bombay Police, from Poona. Soon, one of the missing girls is found dead on the shores of Colaba.
The current crime has uncanny similarities to older cases from Central India involving the royal family of Jaiwar. A chance encounter at the home of one of the victims brings Tara and Arun together and they join hands to unmask a murderer who has already struck once and will not hesitate to kill again.
Sita: Now You Know Me
by Sini Panicker
As she contemplates hymns and the very meaning of life, we see a woman evolved far beyond her time, a woman who speaks to us today, out of the narrative of one of the oldest epics. Set in the Vedic times of ancient India, Sita narrates the story of her turbulent life intimately, detailing her deepest despairs, grief and horrors, and her profound love for Ram. This is a spirited and enduring Sita calmly recollecting her transformation at various stages of her life, from an abandoned infant to a cherished princess, a delightful bride to a dissolute hermit in exile, a captive of an enemy to a queen, and culminating as a poor, homeless mother of twin boys in an ashram. Ancient India’s geographical, social, intellectual and cultural portraits accompany Sita gracefully, throughout her journey.
The Long Road Home: An Indian Billionaire romance
by Sapna Bhog
The Long Road Home is the fifth book in the Sehgal Family & Friends Saga, and can be read as a stand-alone. Enter a world of glamour, wealth and beautiful people. Enter the world of the Sehgal family and friends. Losing the boy she loved nearly destroyed Mehak Khanna. But letting him in a second time can be more dangerous for her. Rishi Sehgal has left a steady stream of broken hearts in his wake and if Mehak is not careful then she may just end up becoming the next victim of his dashing charisma. But Rishi is everywhere with his charm, his wit, and that devastating smile. Now Mehak has to fight a daily battle to not fall for him again.
Rishi Sehgal has never forgotten Mehak, the girl who broke his heart when he was very young. Thanks to her, he has his rules—no relationships, no staying the night, and no promises. But all his hard rules fly right out of the window when Mehak returns into his life. Now Rishi has to decide if he can open his heart to Mehak a second time.
Some things, however, are written in the stars and sometimes you have to move beyond the past and choose to believe in love. However, what destroyed their relationship the first time will once again test their love. Will they survive a second test, especially with Mehak’s life on the line? Will Rishi and Mehak learn that true love is worth fighting for?
LOCKDOWN 2020: A Psychological Study of Professionals Working Life
by Swati Singh Akhil Gupta, Kajal Priya, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Yash Srivastava
COVID-19 has shaken the core of the word by storm since 2020, but seldom studies have been conducted to understand the level of stress among working professions due to strict measures taken by various countries i.e., lockdowns to which India is no exception. Life is not a bed of roses and COVID- 19 is testament to it. COVID-19 has paralyzed the lives of people. Underlying the believe in welfare of the society the authors have tried to comprehend the adversities that this pandemic has brought in. So, it’s an endeavour to understand the psychological repercussion on the lives of people.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Coronavirus a pandemic and on March 20, 2020, the government of India took the step towards first lockdown that resulted in four phases. The present study is an attempt to assess the efficiency and level of stress among working professionals and students in India before and after lockdown regarding to work from home for the first time in history i.e., virtually. The data is from people scattered across the country residing in different states and cities. It was observed that among all the working, the ones with day-to-day income source were comparatively less efficient in their working from home experience & professionals with day-to-day income source showed higher stress levels due to work from home. Moreover, those persons who found it difficult to work from home were more likely to be able to predict the early end of lockdown than others.
The Art of A Happy Exit: How Smart Entrepreneurs Sell Their Businesses
by Srikrishna
‘So, what’s your exit strategy?’ The question often leaves most entrepreneurs stumped as running a business leaves little time to think about anything else.
While business owners recognize that they may have to exit their business at some point, few give enough thought to how they will sell it. And fewer prepare for it. Invariably, when a prospective buyer appears or an offer is made, or when an unforeseen health or financial contingency arises, they scramble to respond. Even those rare entrepreneurs who have given thought to an exit often end up with seller’s remorse.
The Art of a Happy Exit helps entrepreneurs get prepared for all that selling their business entails. The book covers not just the Outside game-positioning, prospecting, finding professional partners, negotiating, structuring, and executing, but the critical Inside game-the mental and emotional preparation needed even while retaining customers, employees, and the business.
- Srikrishna tells the stories of twenty entrepreneurs from India and the United States who’ve sold their businesses to varying degrees of happiness. Between the stories, he lays out the typical steps involved in a business sale, each with its own practical checklist. The result is a book that will help you gain greater self-awareness of what you seek and how best to go about it, and ensure the happiness of all involved with the outcome.
Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music
by Amit Chaudhuri
Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, critic, and essayist, is also a musician, trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition but equally fluent as a guitarist and singer in the American folk music style, who has recorded his experimental compositions extensively and performed around the world. A turning point in his life took place when, as a lonely teenager living in a high-rise in Bombay, far from his family’s native Calcutta, he began, contrary to all his prior inclinations, to study Indian classical music. Finding the Raga chronicles that transformation and how it has continued to affect and transform not only how Chaudhuri listens to and makes music but how he listens to and thinks about the world at large. Offering a highly personal introduction to Indian music, the book is also a meditation on the differences between Indian and Western music and art-making as well as the ways they converge in a modernism that Chaudhuri reframes not as a twentieth-century Western art movement but as a fundamental mode of aesthetic response, at once immemorial and extraterritorial. Finding the Raga combines memoir, practical and cultural criticism, and philosophical reflection with the same individuality and flair that Chaudhuri demonstrates throughout a uniquely wide-ranging, challenging, and enthralling body of work.
Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita
by Amit Majmudar
Born in the United States into a secularized Hindu family, Amit Majmudar puzzled over the many religious traditions on offer, and found that the Bhagavad Gita had much to teach him with its “song of multiplicities.” Chief among them is that “its own assertions aren’t as important as the relationships between its characters . . . The Gita imagined a relationship in which the soul and God are equals”; it is, he believes, “the greatest poem of friendship . . . in any language.” His verse translation captures the many tones and strategies Krishna uses with Arjuna–strict and berating, detached and philosophical, tender and personable. “Listening guides” to each section follow the main text, and expand in accessible terms on the text and what is happening between the lines. Godsong is an instant classic in the field, from a poet of skill, fine intellect, and–perhaps most important–devotion.
God and the World’s Arrangement: Readings from Vedanta and Nyaya Philosophy of Religion
by Nirmalya Guha, Matthew Dasti, Stephen Phillips
The work of three present-day Sankrit-philosophers, God and the World’s Arrangement allows readers to engage directly with writings of the classical Indian philosophers Śaṅkara and Vācaspati, as well as some of their most acute critics, on the question of whether the existence of a creator God can be known by reason alone. Carefully selected and annotated with the needs of students foremost in mind, these new translations will be of interest to anyone wishing to see up close a newly set gem of our philosophical inheritance from global antiquity.
A Sense of Time and Other Stories 
