Books and Authors

Namita Gokhale, director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, talks about her metafictional novel, Jaipur Journals, which looks at writers with both wicked humour and deep sympathy.

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Amit Khanna, a film industry insider for six decades, who set up Reliance Entertainment and has worked across media, talks about Dev Anand, working with four generations of entertainment and media professionals, about Nehru's dictatorial side, and about the convergence of media and entertainment.

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Farah Khan, who grew up in a tiny flat the size of her current living room carpet, offers insights in Kaveree Bamzai's book, No Regrets, as do Twinkle Khanna, Sania Mirza, and Smriti Irani, among others. Bamzai's guilt-free woman's guide to a good life tells us what NOT to do on everything from being a mother, to managing money, marriage, anger, and growing old.

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Usha Uthup talks about being the voice of disco in India, her magical connect with the audience, singing in many different languages, and about the Samy Sisters, her older siblings who were famous in 60s Mumbai!

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In his latest book, Gandhi; The Years That Changed The World 1914-1948, Ramachandra Guha looks once more at one of the most revered and most controversial figures in modern Indian history. Here, he discusses why Gandhi continues to be relevant.

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Fearless but flawed! James Hicky, editor of India's first newspaper, was passionate about freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and unafraid to take on even Warren Hastings, governor general of India. Author Andrew Otis, who spent five years researching Hicky’s life and work, talks about the man and his times, about the sorry condition of India’s priceless archives, and about how we are essentially still fighting for freedom of expression though in a vastly different new media environment.

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Growing anti-rationalism and hatred led to the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh. Here, Chidanand Rajghatta, author of Gauri Lankesh and the Age of Unreason, talks about growing up in the era of Mandal and Masjid and the roots of the illiberalism that's threatening to engulf India.

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Saba Naqvi’s eminently readable ‘Shades of Saffron’ combines straight reportage and in-depth analysis to present real insights into the rise of the BJP, which she has been covering since 1997. A first-person account of events as they happened that also goes deeper to examine the nature of our complex society, this book includes fascinating nuggets of information and great anecdotes too. Here, Naqvi talks about being a liberal Muslim woman journalist covering the BJP since the 1990s, about her tryst with gaumutra soap, and about such politicians as Vajpayee, Pramod Mahajan and Narendra Modi, whom she sees as a “solitary figure”. 

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The author talks about the dynamic empresses, queens and begums of the Mughal Empire, who are the subject of her eminently readable new book.

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