How could a President, seen as a political time-server, have manoeuvred things to a stage where he could strike fear into the heart of a prime minister who, only two-and-a-half years before, had been elected with the largest majority in history?
Effusive in his praise for Indian team's head coach Ravi Shastri, former India captain Sunil Gavaskar on Saturday called him an "incredible" mentor with an "unbelievable" ability to motivate youngsters even in their lowest phases.
Gianiji had crafted his moves with the meticulous planning of a chess grandmaster. He did not know whether a checkmate was feasible, as his time was running out, but he wanted Rajiv Gandhi to smell the fear of loss. A fascinating excerpt from K C Singh's The Indian President: An Insider's Account of the Zail Singh Years.
Gopichand also wondered to why the legendary Padukone, India's first badminton superstar 'never had anything positive to say about him'.
'Mary just stopped talking to me. Maybe she did not like the fact that she was the gold medallist, but it was me (Sarita), not her, who was getting all the attention.'
'The ladies, Maya Govind and Rani Malik, were criticised for writing sexist, crass or vulgar songs.'
Bhubaneswar-based Akshaya Rautaray and Satabdi Mishra are on a mission to promote reading.
Few debut novels in recent times have been received with such critical applause as Akil Kumarasamy's Half Gods. 'The prose itself is a marvel,' declared The New York Times Book Review. A glimpse of Akil Kumaraswamy's ability to 'distill the mysteries of the human soul', revealed in this excerpt from her story The Office of Missing Persons.
'The pipeline of new industrial projects is the best I've seen in the last 10 years, and it looks solid enough to sustain for at least a few quarters,' points out Naushad Forbes, adding, 'It is only when we get back to the same labour force participation we saw before Covid that the economy will have truly recovered.'
The star was chosen to deliver the Penguin Annual Lecture.
'With Punjab and Kashmir in flames, it would not have been politically wise to alienate the West.' 'It would have inclined Western countries towards Pakistan.' 'It would have been a self-goal.'
In his afterword to the book, Pink: The Inside Story, Pink's writer-producer Shoojit Sircar explains why the movie was a turning point in his personal and professional life
'James Crabtree ignores the emergence of a nexus between business and politics going back to the 1920s and talks of it as a new child of 21st century India,' says Shivanand Kanavi.
Presenting 5 simple tips on how you can take charge of your health and stop agonising about your weight.
Epic Retold has the mighty Bhima tweeting his story as he lives it -- in first person, from the day he first meets his arch enemy Duryodhana, all the way through the Kurukshetra war and beyond.
Aarti Kelshikar tells you just how to navigate your way safely through the Indian workplace.
In The Coward And The Sword, Prince Kadis of Kofu is scared of everything... of stepping out of his castle, of meeting people, of falling sick, of training in warfare and almost everything else imaginable.
Patel, who headed the RBI from September 2016 till his sudden resignation in December 2018, says in his book thta the government seemed to lose enthusiasm for the new bankruptcy law in the middle of the year he left the central bank. Though Patel does not name anybody in the book, the mid-2018 period he refers to is the time when Piyush Goyal held temporary charge of the finance ministry between May and August.
The strongest emotion he had felt in the company of his father Vijay, also a cricketer who played for nearly a decade for India, was fear, said ex-Test player Sanjay Manjrekar at the launch of his autobiography 'Imperfect' in Mumbai on Wednesday.
'I wasn't getting the roles I wanted to play and the respect I thought I deserved as a senior actor, so I cut myself off from the industry for a while and moved to the US.'
'Only when India's adversaries are convinced that India has both the necessary political and military will and the hardware to respond to a nuclear strike with punitive retaliation that will inflict unacceptable loss of human life and unprecedented material damage, will they be deterred,' says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
Devdutt Pattanaik, who has simplified the ancient Indian scriptures for millions of readers, highlights what our scriptures have to say about homosexuals and transgenders.
'All selectors must be sufficiently thick-skinned and prepared to take criticism.' T C A Srinivasa Raghavan checks out Ravi Shastri's first book.
'Unquestionably, the spirit behind the Panchsheel agreement and the 'Hindi Chini bhai bhai' slogan were thrown overboard by the Chinese, and a trust deficit was injected between the two nations.' A revealing excerpt from General J J Singh's The McMahon Line: A Century Of Discord.
'Kashmir is the main issue between the two countries.' 'We have not been able to resolve it bilaterally.' 'As the two major countries in South Asia, we have to go back to the drawing board and start engaging.'
Rupert Murdoch-led News Corp has acquired 25 per cent stake in real estate portal PropTiger.com for $30 million.
Who better than India's beloved storyteller to teach you how to spin a yarn?
'Consider Mrs Gandhi's view of her opponents: Traitors, anti-nationals, rumour-mongers.' Does the spirit of the Emergency-era Indira Gandhi still rule India? asks Vir Sanghvi.
Author and tarot fortune teller Karmel Nair tells you what to expect in 2019.
Nervous about your first kiss? Keep these pointers in mind.
The Tablighi Jamaat avoided confrontation, stayed clear of conversion of non-Muslims, abjured politics and focused only on religious attainment. >A fascinating excerpt from Ziya Us Salam's Inside The Tablighi Jamaat.
'Never before in Bengal had a single party been re-elected with two-thirds of the assembly,' notes Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien.
Manmohan Singh had joined a pre-medical course as his father wanted him to become a doctor but pulled out after a couple of months, losing interest in the subject, according to a book on the former prime minister by his daughter.
We pay homage to Bhanu Athaiya by celebrating her best creations.
'Extravagant new promises can buy him time, but far from solving the problem, they compound the risk.' 'His main alternative is to stress not aspirations, but resentments.' 'He has already de-emphasised aspirational appeals: Nothing has been heard for over two years of the coming of achhe din,' points out James Manor.
'ISI's leverage on the Kashmir insurgency turned out less than successful...'
Saving for your future, older self is one of the main reasons why you should invest. Since one day you will either be unwilling or unable to work, investing allows you to have a pool of resources you can draw upon in old age.
For a PM who hasn't completed even one term yet, the ability to spark a publishing trend single-handed is a remarkable achievement, writes Kanika Datta.
Jugal Hansraj on his children's novel The Coward and the Sword.
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