Tag Archives: Non Fiction

In My Hands Today…

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Masala Lab : The Science of Indian Cooking – Krish Ashok

Ever wondered why your grandmother threw a teabag into the pressure cooker while boiling chickpeas or why she measured using the knuckle of her index finger? Why does a counter-intuitive pinch of salt make your kheer more intensely flavourful? What is the Maillard reaction, and what does it have to do with fenugreek? What does your high school chemistry knowledge, or what you remember of it, have to do with perfectly browning your onions?

Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd’s exploration of Indian cooking with the ultimate aim of making the reader a better cook and turning the kitchen into a joyful, creative playground for culinary experimentation. Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a suboptimal way of learning how to cook.

Exhaustively tested and researched, and with a curious and engaging approach to food, Krish Ashok puts together the one book the Indian kitchen definitely needs, proving along the way that your grandmother was right all along.

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Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir – Farah Bashir

Rumours of Spring is the unforgettable account of Farah Bashir’s adolescence spent in Srinagar in the 1990s. As Indian troops and militants battle across the cityscape and violence becomes the new normal, a young schoolgirl finds that ordinary tasks—studying for exams, walking to the bus stop, combing her hair, falling asleep—are riddled with anxiety and fear.

With haunting simplicity, Farah Bashir captures moments of vitality and resilience from her girlhood amidst the increasing trauma and turmoil of passing years—secretly dancing to pop songs on banned radio stations; writing her first love letter; going to the cinema for the first time—with haunting simplicity. This deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir portrays how territorial conflict surreptitiously affects everyday lives in Kashmir.

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my Hanuman Chalisa – Devdutt Pattanaik

Reflecting on one of Hinduism’s most popular prayer for positive energy
Acclaimed mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik demystifies the Hanuman Chalisa for the contemporary reader. His unique approach makes the ancient hymn accessible, combined as it is with his trademark illustrations.

Every time we experience negativity in the world and within ourselves, every time we encounter jealousy, rage, and frustration manifesting as violation and violence, we hear, or read, the Hanuman Chalisa. Composed over four hundred years ago by Tulsidas, its simple words in Awadhi, a dialect of Hindi, and its simple metre, musically and very potently evoke the mythology, history, and mystery of Hanuman, the much-loved Hindu deity, through whom Vedic wisdom reached the masses. As verse follows verse, our frightened, crumpled mind begins to expand with knowledge and insight, and our faith in humanity, both within and without, is restored.

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The Mind of a Terrorist: David Headley, the Mumbai Massacre, and His European Revenge – Kaare Sørensen, translated by Cory Klingsporn

David Headley, the American-Pakistani also known as Daood Gilani, lived a double life. One day he would stroll through Central Park in his tailored Armani suit as a true New Yorker, and the next he would browse in the bazaar in Lahore wearing traditional Pakistani clothes. One day he would drink champagne at the most extravagant clubs; on another, he would prostrate himself in prayer in remote Pakistan and pledge fidelity to Allah.

Born in 1960, the son of an American mother and Pakistani father, with one blue eye and one brown, Headley grew up between East and West. He was attracted to both worlds, even working as an informant for the US government, until one day he found he had to choose between the place of his birth and a radical form of Islam preaching global jihad. This is the disturbing story of the mastermind behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people—who two months later flew to Copenhagen to plan another act of terror with the help of al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Europe.

Veteran journalist Kaare Sørensen has reconstructed his movements and planning in a tense feat of reportage. His account, based on extensive reporting, eyewitness interviews, and documentation including wiretaps, court transcripts, and emails by Headley accessed from a chat room cache of nine thousand messages, offers unprecedented insight into the mind of the terrorist. The author has provided updates and a new preface for the English-language edition.

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Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin, and the Miraculous Survival of My Family – Daniel Finkelstein

Daniel Finkelstein’s grandfather Alfred Wiener was a German Jewish intellectual leader who tolled an early warning of the impending Holocaust and became anarchivist of Nazi crimes.

He relocated his family to safety in Amsterdam, where they became close with Anne Frank’s family. But they were eventually separated, and Daniel’s mother Mirjam was sent to Bergen-Belsen with her mother and sisters while Alfred worked feverishly to free them. Finkelstein’s father, Ludwik, grew up in a prosperous Jewish family in Poland where his father was a patriotic hero of the Great War.

But when Stalin took control, Finkelstein’s grandfather was deported to Siberia, while Ludwik and his mother were sent to face freezing winters and harrowing forced labourm conditions in Kazahkstan.

Love and Murder is a page-turning account of ingenuity, bravery and the incredible coincidences that brought Daniel’s parents together as refugees in Britain. The story features secret archives, forgery and theft, and sweeps across Europe to show the expanse of the war. Moving, engrossing and inspiring, Love and Murder will profoundly touch all who read.