Biography
1332 books
It is said that Prophet Muhammad was given two kinds of knowledge. One, that was given to him in the form of the Ayats (verses) and was collected in the form of the Holy Qur'an and the second in the form of esoteric knowldge, which was transmitted from heart-to-heart to his companions and the Sufis. This esoteric knowledge formed the basis of various Sufi Orders. There are about 41 known Sufi Orders, the Naqshbandi, Chishti, Suhuravardi and Qadri Orders being the ...
Bhagat Ram Talwar, a Hindu Pathan from the Northwest Frontier Province of British India, was the only quintuple spy of World War II, spying for Britain, Italy, Germany, Japan and the USSR. His exploits and the people he worked with were truly remarkable. His spying missions saw him walk back and forth 24 times from Peshawar to Kabul eluding capture and certain death. He fooled the Germans so successfully that they gave him £ 2.5 million, in today’s ...
A single man who was pursued by 1,700 policemen of four states for fifteen years! A man who ruled the Chambal ravines and roamed 8,000 square miles, leading the police on a wild goose chase every time they plotted to nab him! Loved by the underprivileged and feared by the rich, he was eventually shot dead when cornered by a company of Gurkhas. Read the thrilling tales of his adventures and the legends of a man who was called ‘Raja’ because of his ...
Akka Mahadevi is one of the foremost feminist and spiritual icons of Indian history. Her powerful vachanas, written in twelfth-century Karnataka, trace a radical journey. Unlike other women bhaktas, Mahadevi worked within the female body, not around it – eventually walking naked, ‘breast to breast with the cosmos’, and moving beyond all binaries, including male–female, devotee–God. Steered by her own inner experiences, Mahadevi cut ...
This book is an Autobiography of Mrs Vijayalakshmi Banerjee, a National Florence Nightingale Awardee and an excellent nurse, administrator and educator with distinguished service to patients for the last over 46 years. She has been instrumental in helping set up two of India's premier hospitals, viz. Escort Heart Institute and Research Centre in 1988 and Medanta-The Medicity in 2009. Mrs Banerjee also has had over a decade of rich experience in the Indian army ...
The book tells the reader how after Second World War, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, the tallest Indian freedom fighter, slowly petered out in captivity in former Soviet Union, while Kremlin, taking full military advantage of Bose's presence in their land created fear in American and British political and military strategists and among the post-Independence Indian politicians. The research has also been an outcome of British and Indian Government documents and long ...
My Allahabad Story recollects the author's privileged childhood in a prominent family of the city he is obsessed with. He traces his growing years in the large middle class Kayastha family bringing out in amusing detail, some quaint social customs and traditions that existed half a century ago.
The author wonderfully describes the changed complexion of the city with a tinge of despair. Life and times and what happened to Allahabad has been graphically described ...
A stereotype image of Nara Chandrababu Naidu has been formed in the last 40 years. His story is remarkable at every level. But often questions, which is the important story? The one where he evolves into one of the extraordinary leaders in Indian politics over four decades? Or that of an ordinary man from a farming family who worked his way to the top by keeping his family and political party together? That which reflects his political acumen, intellect, and ...
Story of a middle-class Bengali boy whose impatience became the reason for his success.
Bikram Dasgupta has seen it all-from a boy who joined IIT Kharagpur for ‘serious fun’ to selling oxygen cylinders in his first job; from being dubbed as an ‘ideas man’ by IT doyen Shiv Nadar to co-founding India’s number one PC company of its time, and then going solo with his own entrepreneurial venture.
I Did it My Way is not a rags-to-riches ...
The lilting rhythms of Punjabi folk songs, the Siapewalli, and Naani wailing about her bad kismet caused by the chudail and dain. Partition changed the old traditions of Punjabiyat but in the pages of this book they come alive..
The invisible cost of the Partition of the Punjab in 1947 - besides the violence, loss of life and property - was that it destroyed the psychic equilibrium of the displaced population. This is the story of one such woman, Shakunt, who ...
The girl who loved cycling along the tree-lined avenues of a brand new Lutyens' Delhi could never have dreamt that five decades later she would govern, and transform, Delhi as its chief minister - not once, but thrice consecutively.
When a politician like Sheila Dikshit, with a career spanning over three decades, chooses to let the reader get a glimpse of her life's journey, the opportunity brings along an element of surprise. In a fascinating account of her ...