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Was it Love
Leila Rajput is a young girl, struggling with life and relationships, dealing with the trauma of a past life-event. Unaware of her true potential, she has almost given up on life, till she meets this dynamic, near-perfect Vikrant Rao via internet. He indentifies her potential and offers her a strange arrangement to be her mentor. He teaches her the basics of life, makes her realize her dreams and helps her in achieving them step by step. Under his guidance, she evolves into a confident and independent woman. They eventually fall in love and Vikrant relocates to her city, where he meets her friend Maya. While he solves Maya's life conflicts and helps her elope with Shahan, he charges a fee none could ever imagine. Is Vikrant a villain or a victim of greed? Did he truly love Leila or was she just a puppet to reach his next victim? Was it Love? is a story of Leila's journey through emotions, trials, betrayal and the devil called love.
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Love is for Life & Beyond
“Love is like a storm. It hits you without a warning and it affects you till your last breath.” Nikhil is relishing a perfect life – a family that loves him beyond measure, a dream that he is sure to fulfil, and the love of his life Shanaya. The day he thinks life couldn’t have been better, it unravels its plots one by one, cracking the very foundation of his perfect life and breaking his heart into a million pieces. Just when he decides to give up, he crosses paths with Ridhima – a girl with a stained fate, who finds in him her fulfillment. Will Nikhil forget his first love, whom he promised to love for life and beyond? Love is for Life and Beyond is a story of love, destiny and dreams, which will wobble your perceptions about love and will coax you to taste the holiness of love. In an era where love can be just a swipe away, can true love find its way back?
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Like a Bird on the Wire
Nethra Kaul is sharp, efficient, beautiful and single. A quintessential “good girl”, she believes in doing the ‘right thing’, always. Only, her life isn’t all that right. A broken heart? Check. Misfit at work? Double-check. Hopeless romanticism? Not enough checks in the world! Avinash Rathore, her batchmate from the IAS, is the man she had loved and wanted, very much. Avinash is a high-flyer and his life looks picture perfect at the moment – a soaring career, a lovely wife and a beautiful child. What more could he possibly want? What more, other than the intense, sublime love that had once blossomed in the salubrious environs of Mussoorie, where Nethra and Avinash had trained as probationers? The tentacles of fate are closing in fast as Nethra and Avinash come together, one more time, for something that will prove to be as disastrous as it is enticing. How will Avinash get trapped in a labyrinth spawned out of animosity? Does a woman need a man in her life to feel complete? Will Nethra find solace, will she find love?
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Missing Presumed Dead
In a dysfunctional marriage, it may seem convenient when the wife commits suicide, but things aren’t always what they seem... Battling both a fractured marriage and the monsters in her cranium, Aisha leads a sequestered life on the outskirts of a town in the hills of North India. She struggles to stay functional, and tries to wean herself off the pills that keep her from tipping over the edge. Meanwhile, Prithvi, the husband she once loved, seems as eager to be rid of her, as she is to flee from him. Only her children keep her tethered to her hearth. One rainy afternoon, Heer, Aisha's half-sister, her father's illegitimate daughter from another woman, appears. Despite her misgivings, Aisha goes into town and never returns. Seemingly unperturbed, Heer slips into her missing sister's shoes effortlessly, taking charge of the house, the kids-even Prithvi, who responds to her overtures willingly. A note found in Aisha's wallet states that she has killed herself, although strange happenings leave room for doubts. But, if she is not dead, where is Aisha? Did she really commit suicide? has she been abducted, or is she hiding? Why does Prithvi not grieve fr his deceased wife? And why does Heer vanish without a trace one day, leaving no forwarding address? Examining the destruction a dystopian marriage and mental illness leave in their wake, 'Missing Presumed Dead' confronts the fragility of relationships, the ugly truths about love and death, and the horrifying loss of everything we hold dear, including ourselves.
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Seductive Affair
Prisha Khatri is a regular college graduate, focused on her career, desperate to finally move out of her parents’ house… and freshly dumped by her successful fiancé. When she lands a job at a prestigious media house, she’s glad to have something to take her mind off her heartbreak. What she doesn’t expect is to be landed on a business trip with a famously fiery reporter Rajesh Lagheri. He’s travelling to a business conference for a story, and doesn’t seem impressed by her involvement. But as soon as they’re out of the office, things change, and it becomes clear that there is more to Rajesh’s trip than meets the eye. As Prisha is drawn into the story he’s trying to hide from their editor, their hunt for the story grows more intense, and she finds herself growing closer to Rajesh. As their chemistry threatens to overwhelm them and Prisha is pulled deeper into the Seductive Affair, she must decide what matters most to her – matters of the head, or of the heart.
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The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be “positive” all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people For decades, we’ve been told that positive thinking is the key to a happy, rich life. “Fuck positivity,” Mark Manson says. “Let’s be honest, shit is fucked and we have to live with it.” In his wildly popular Internet blog, Manson doesn’t sugar-coat or equivocate. He tells it like it is—a dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is his antidote to the coddling, let’s-all-feel-good mind-set that has infected American society and spoiled a generation, rewarding them with gold medals just for showing up. Manson makes the argument, backed both by academic research and well-timed poop jokes, that improving our lives hinges not on our ability to turn lemons into lemonade, but on learning to stomach lemons better. Human beings are flawed and limited—“not everybody can be extraordinary, there are winners and losers in society and some of it is not fair or your fault.” Manson advises us to get to know our limitations and accept them. Once we embrace our fears, faults and uncertainties, once we stop running and avoiding and start confronting painful truths, we can begin to find the courage, perseverance, honesty, responsibility, curiosity and forgiveness we seek. There are only so many things we can give a fuck about so we need to figure out which ones really matter, Manson makes clear. While money is nice, caring about what you do with your life is better, because true wealth is about experience. A much-needed grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-look-you-in the-eye moment of real talk, filled with entertaining stories and profane, ruthless humor, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k is a refreshing slap for a generation to help them truly lead contented, grounded live
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Flights
Flights, a novel about travel in the twenty-first century and human anatomy, is Olga Tokarczuk's most ambitious to date. It interweaves travel narratives and reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of the human body, broaching life, death, motion and migration. From the seventeenth century, we have the story of the Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyen, who dissected and drew pictures of his own amputated leg. From the eighteenth century, we have the story of a North African-born slave turned Austrian courtier stuffed and put on display after his death. In the nineteenth century, we follow Chopin's heart as it makes the covert journey from Paris to Warsaw. In the present we have the trials of a wife accompanying her much older husband as he teaches a course on a cruise ship in the Greek islands and the harrowing story of a young husband whose wife and child mysteriously vanish on a holiday on a Croatian island. With her signature grace and insight, Olga Tokarczuk guides the reader beyond the surface layer of modernity and towards the core of the very nature of humankind.
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Preface to Shakespeare
Preface to Shakespeare is a classic Shakespeare studies text by Samuel Johnson. That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.
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Culture can Kill
Why do certain societies advance and others fall behind? Why did a European discover India rather than an Indian discovering Europe? Taking India as a specific example, this book affirms that Culture Counts. Some beliefs, though helpful in personal life, can have disastrous long-term consequences on groups. Many popular beliefs blocked India's progress. They still do. This book spells them out. Divided into four sections, in a stepwise exposition, it defines India's Disease, describes Symptoms, analyzes Causes and suggests Remedies. Environment, economics, fate, foreigners, sins or genes did not cause the downfall of this once magnificent civilization into depths of destitution today and despair in the face of foreign aggressions in the past. India's much vaunted culture---beliefs, values, goals, attitudes---killed her. Surprised? Shocked? As they always say, the devil is in the detail. Can we Indians reverse the course of history? Yes. We must shed our vanity in our distant hazy past. Fleeting localized successes should not blind us to the grim realities of everyday life in India today. We must transform our culture and religion from a theoretical, pessimistic, defeatist philosophy to a positive, forward looking, action-based outfit. We must modernize our minds genuinely, not just cosmetically. This book elucidates this unconventional, basically rationalist, approach. It examines in laser light everyday problems that educated Indians casually discuss in their drawing rooms, arrive at a dead end and disperse without direction. Intellectually robust, boldly challenging, freshly innovative, this book revisits ancient assumptions and myths believed in by a billion people---nuclear armed, shooting for the moon and starving in the streets. And in the process, it illuminates the way to a brave new world of the future for an ancient culture desperately struggling to emerge into modernity.
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Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google
You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and thrown in a blender. The blades start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do? If you want to work at Google, or any of America's best companies, you need to have an answer to this and other puzzling questions. Are you Smart Enough to Work at Google? is a must read for anyone who wants to succeed in today's job market.
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When Breath Becomes Air
When Breath Becomes Air chornicles the life of Paul Kalanithi who after having completed a decade long training as a neurosurgeon is confronted with being diagnosed of lung cancer. From being one who treated serious patients to being a patient with a terminal disease, Kalanithi started penning this auto-biography after he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and was counting days. It is a moving story about Kalanithi’s own life: from being a student pondering over the meaningfulness of life to a famous neurosurgeon who operated brains that deals with the core of human identity, to being a new father at a time when his own life is awaiting an uncanny end. In writing about his own life, Kalanithi puts forth some reflecting questions: what is a person supposed to do when his life is catastrophically cut off? What makes a life admirable and worth living right in the face of death? And, finally, what does it mean to have a child right when one’s own life is on the verge of perennial slumber? Paul Kalanithi passed away while working on the book yet 'When Breath Becomes Air’ is regarded as a profound reflection on the acceptance of mortality and on the relationship between a patient and a doctor, all from an author, who had to face it all.
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In Hot Blood
At lunchtime on 27 April 1959, the handsome naval commander Kawas Nanavati was told by his English wife Sylvia that she was having an affair with their flamboyant businessman-playboy friend, Prem Ahuja. Later that evening, armed with a revolver, Nanavati stormed Ahuja's bedroom and shut the door behind him. Three gunshots were heard going off inside. Ahuja was dead. Ahuja's murder set in motion an extraordinary public frenzy ֠thousands descended on the streets of Bombay chanting in favour of the hero Nanavati, and the jury, swept off their feet by the dazzling naval officer in the dock, returned a 'Not Guilty' verdict. This trial was the death knell of the jury system in India. It hurtled a judiciary keen on preserving justice into confrontation with an executive bending to the will of hysterical crowds and tabloids and Nanavati's powerful friends in the establishment. In this laboriously researched book ֠part thriller, part courtroom drama and legal history, and part social portrait of post- Independence Bombay ֠Bachi Karkaria gives a most comprehensive account of the Nanavati case and the Constitutional crisis to which it gave birth.]
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1Q84
The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing something very dangerous. And in this world, there seems no way to save them both. Something extraordinary is starting.
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After Dark
The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari's help. Meanwhile Mari's beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is 'too perfect, too pure' to be normal; it has lasted for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the television screen in her room, even though it's plug has been pulled out. Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night?
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A Wild Sheep Chase
It begins simply enough: A twenty-something advertising executive receives a postcard from a friend, and casually appropriates the image for an insurance company’s advertisement. What he doesn’t realise is that included in the pastoral scene is a mutant sheep with a star on its back, and in using this photo he has unwittingly captured the attention of a man in black who offers a menacing ultimatum: find the sheep or face dire consequences. Thus begins a surreal and elaborate quest that takes our hero from the urban haunts of Tokyo to the remote and snowy mountains of northern Japan, where he confronts not only the mythological sheep, but the confines of tradition and the demons deep within himself. Quirky and utterly captivating, A Wild Sheep Chase is Murakami at his astounding best. 'A Wild Sheep Chase has the conventional hull of a thriller - a quest, a mystery, an extraordinary woman, and plenty of elegant duress - but its fantastic superstructure transforms it into something quite different...a science fiction fantasy, a romance, a metaphysical tease, or a dramatisation of philosophical ideas' Independent
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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami's characters confront loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distance between those who ought to be closest of all.
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Wind Pinball
'If you’re the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o’clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly. That’s who I am.' Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are Haruki Murakami’s earliest novels. They follow the fortunes of the narrator and his friend, known only by his nickname, the Rat. In Hear the Wind Sing the narrator is home from college on his summer break. He spends his time drinking beer and smoking in J’s Bar with the Rat, listening to the radio, thinking about writing and the women he has slept with, and pursuing a relationship with a girl with nine fingers. Three years later, in Pinball, 1973, he has moved to Tokyo to work as a translator and live with indistinguishable twin girls, but the Rat has remained behind, despite his efforts to leave both the town and his girlfriend. The narrator finds himself haunted by memories of his own doomed relationship but also, more bizarrely, by his short-lived obsession with playing pinball in J’s Bar. This sends him on a quest to find the exact model of pinball machine he had enjoyed playing years earlier: the three-flipper Spaceship.
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Underground
In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects. Murakami interviews the victims to try and establish precisely what happened on the subway that day. He also interviews members and ex-members of the doomsdays cult responsible, in the hope that they might be able to explain the reason for the attack and how it was that their guru instilled such devotion in his followers. ** Murakami’s new novel is coming ** COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE 'The reason why death had such a hold on Tsukuru Tazaki was clear. One day his four closest friends, the friends he’d known for a long time, announced that they did not want to see him, or talk with him, ever again'