Book Review

Life Of Pi – By Yann Martel

Thursday, 24 February 2011 17:30 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Pi Patel lives in Pondicherry, where his father owns a zoo. When he is sixteen, his parents decide to emigrate to Canada, taking their large family with them, but tragedy strikes when the cargo ship carrying them sinks during a terrible storm. One solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific.

In it are five survivors: Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orangutan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger. The scene is set for an extraordinary adventure.

Month: January 2011.

Earthbound: Navdanya’s Guide to Easy, Organic Cooking

Thursday, 24 February 2011 17:29 Ushasri Ponnaganti

As more homes turn to organic food, Navdanya - the organization that brings farmers’ organic produce in new and creative ways to your table - serves you a compilation of tasty traditional Indian recipes that enable you to best use organic fruits and vegetables.

Apart from the obvious advantages of organic food - they have not been doused with pesticides or genetically modified - organically grown fruits and vegetables are unarguably more flavourful and mouth-watering. Besides, organic foods can be more nutritious, richer in vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids than non-organic.

Covering the rich diversity of Indian cuisine, Navdanya brings to the health-conscious a collection of recipes that makes organic cooking easy, as well as delicious. With this book, Navdanya comes full circle in connecting the seed to the table, the farmer to the kitchen.

Month: January 2011.

SOMEWHERE @ NOWHERE by Nikesh Rathi

Tuesday, 30 November 2010 17:26 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Life at times can be a roller-coaster ride.

What would it be like taking a few weeks break and planning an unplanned travel across the length and breadth of the country and explore the vastness and diversity of India?

Aditya Khanna is a confused jobless ex-investment banker with an IIT-IIM lineage who does the same – except that nothing goes as he had expected.

There were different kinds of people, each having a different tale to tell. From encounters ranging from meeting a know-it-all sadhu in the Himalayas to getting kidnapped by naxals to meeting a girl on the run whose only aim in life was to die. There were experiences of varied hues and shades in this roller coaster of a journey – experiences that could have made the trip a memorable one; and the experiences that had the power to break and change a person and in the process probably discover oneself.

Month: December 2010.

Ambani & Sons - by Hamish McDonald

Tuesday, 30 November 2010 17:24 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Ambani & Sons is the riveting story of one of the wealthiest families in the world. Dhirubhai Ambani was a rags-to-riches tycoon whose company, Reliance, is now one of India’s major corporations. The Ambani tale contains a bigger story about modern India.

‘The Reliance drama by now had almost every element of an Indian soap opera. It had wealthy tycoons, brothers fighting each other, sleazy political netas (patrons), clever financiers, angry wives, religious seers, a disputed inheritance, private eyes, allegations of forgery and phone-tapping, officials pretending to be active, frustrated investigators and a chorus of reporters besieging the main characters. Most important of all, it had the mother, respected and loved by all for her innate and unsophisticated wisdom, able to cut through to the main emotional issue.’

Month: December 2010.

Cloud 9 Minus One - by Sangeeta Mall

Wednesday, 03 November 2010 11:05 Ushasri Ponnaganti

Busy looking after her writers’ colony and hoping for a holiday in Spain with her husband and children, Shruti Narayan is startled to find a rather unwanted email in her inbox one morning. It is an invitation to a reunion at her college in Bangalore. It takes her a second to delete the mail. After all, why would she want to leave her life in Philadelphia to visit the past that she has left behind, to go back to Priya, the best friend she deserted, and to Jaggu, the old flame she once rejected? But as luck would have it, her husband finds out about the reunion and Shruti and family find themselves at the gates of her college. Desperate to ensure that family does not learn about her past escapades, yet unable to prevent herself from revisiting old memories, Shruti is caught in a guilty whirlpool of emotions and desires, as she struggles to reconcile past and present loyalties.

Month: December 2010.

More Articles...