The Ladoo Crew exists to protect women, if they can manage both their strict rules and their steep fee. Kavita holds hope that The Ladoo Crew would provide shelter for her family, although she has no way to afford the expense. If the Ladoo Crew won't protect her, she prays that Durga will. A tale of survival and adventure, The Ladoo Crew takes you on a journey to discover what matters most in this life.
This story began long ago in the back seat of a Harvard WWII trainer, and ended years later in the cockpit of an Airbus A320. In between, the author flew World War II cargo airplanes in the Arctic, crop-dusted and crashed in Idaho, flew whore-house charters to Nevada in a DC-3, DC-6s and DC-7s across the Pacific and Atlantic. He had a closet full of uniforms when, in 1966, he was hired by Pan Am The Worlds Most Experienced Airline. Twenty-three years later, the once-proud airline was on its knees. Fortune blessed him again, and he took up residence in southern France, employed as an instructor and test pilot with Airbus Industrie. This is a fictional account of some of that journey the central player, Clay Hutchinson. We see Clay: Confronting inauspicious beginnings and frequent, humbling failures. We see him crawling out of a dark hole, and setting off on a long trip, learning along the way how to become a better human being. This is a recollection of an unfinished journey during which, Clay discovers Afghanistan. And there, he grows up a little. Not entirely. Never entirely.
Swati has spent her entire life trying to live up to her family's expectations of her. She has learned it is easiest to just do what is asked of her, without resistance; a skill that has helped her survive in the early years of the Knights, an authoritarian regime. When her mother has a request for Swati, she agrees to it as it is the only way to help her young niece have some sort of future. An emotional page turner, The Chai House explores the complexity of the desire to be true to yourself in a world where familial, societal, and political values guide you towards staying small and staying silent.
‘God once told me life is absurd. How else can two boys land up in America and not find any girls?’ Karl and Kunal are just two ordinary Mumbai boys who like ordinary things: bunking class, films, food and pornography. Intent on attaining stardom they fly off to the legendary Lee Strasburg Acting Studio to sharpen their craft in acting and in chasing girls. They fail on both counts but come back with a jackpot: their maiden movie role. In Bollywood, they meet Yusuf Khan, who at forty-six is still the undisputed king of college romance. Being losers doesn’t get in their way and soon the trio become a hit team, churning out blockbuster after blockbuster. Before they know it, Karl and Kunal get their own spot boys, the defining moment in every Bollywood actor’s life, feature in an TV commercial with Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi, and are even invited to meet Bill Clinton on his visit to India. But all this is not enough for Karl, who knows that it’s really politics which is the ultimate destination for all ‘great’ actors. As Pajama Party’s nominee from south Mumbai, Karl makes his debut as a politician. Will he hit the box office again? A novel about celebrities, Bollywood and politics, Karl, Aaj aur Kal is a hilarious novel from India’s best known funny man.
Look We Have Coming to Dover! is the most acclaimed debut collection of poetry published in recent years, as well as one of the most relevant and accessible. Nagra, whose own parents came to England from the Punjab in the 1950s, draws on both English and Indian-English traditions to tell stories of alienation, assimilation, aspiration and love, from a stowaway's first footprint on Dover Beach to the disenchantment of subsequent generations.
Abbey and Money Singh are better known as The Modern Singhs, Kiwi social media celebrities with a rich and tangled love story to tell. Shared through the eyes of this inspiring duo, The Modern Singhs reveals their experiences as migrants to New Zealand as they struggled to find footing in new surroundings. They describe how they met and pursued a relationship that was forbidden by Money's culture, where he felt he had to choose between his family and the love of his life. The couple opens up about the difficult birth of their son, their journeys with mental health, a complicated sense of home, and what it's like to raise bilingual children across three cultures. The rest is history - or at least uploaded to YouTube, where Abbey and Money's joyful outlook and celebration of tradition unites 1.3 million viewers from all over the world, encouraging others to embrace difference with open hearts.
