Twenty-five fascinating stories from the inimitable Gulzar A suicide bomber in a small town plans out her last day, getting herself photographed before she goes and blows up the prime minister. A drunkard in a Mumbai slum tries to compete with the torrential rain, even as it washes his dwelling away. An army man at the border has become so accustomed to speaking over the wireless that he now ends every sentence with ‘Over!’ And in the title story, a cop drags a dead cow from Vinayak Rao Patwardhan Road to the adjoining Bapu Road since the latter is so much easier to spell. From real-life stories about Javed Akhtar, Sahir Ludhianvi and Kuldip Nayyar to tales set in Kashmir, in the hinterland, in the modern megalopolis and on the LoC, from anecdotes of love and betrayal to fables of courage and conviction, this is an enthralling collection available in English for the very first time.

Weekly letters from a leprosy hospital in the foothills of the Himalayas form the basis of this memo of an English family living in Nepal in the 1970s. Battling with language learning; bartering in the bazaar; tackling home schooling for two boys and helping to run an international playgroup - these are just a few of the challenges Barbara Collier faces.Later, travelling with three children through Thailand and Burma proves an eventful experience. Sickness brings complications and the alteration of plans in their final year.

This book contains a large variety of intriguing puzzles with detailed ingenious solutions generally not found elsewhere. This book is a great treasure for everybody who enjoys the beauty of fascinating world of recreational mathematics. Puzzles in the book can be browsed at random as these are not grouped in any orderly manner. Apart from puzzle enthusiasts and mathlovers, the book is considered of immense value for aspirants of Math Olympiad, CAT/MBA and job interviews of big companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, NVidia, Oracle, Adobe, Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg, etc. The title of puzzles has been suitably framed. Repetition of similar type of puzzles has been avoided to keep the book in a concise form. However, important aspects of similar puzzles, if any, have been covered in comments section. This book is divided into four chapters (Chaps. 1–4): Chapter 1 contains 25 short riddles and brainteasers. These puzzles vary from simple but tricky to challenging ones. Chapter 2 contains detailed solutions to all the short riddles and brainteasers given in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 contains 125 creative puzzles of varying difficulty level covering arithmetic and algebraic puzzles on clock, calendar, weight, age and digital puzzles, geometric puzzles, logical reasoning puzzles, and combinatorial puzzles, match puzzles and game puzzles like “kaun banega crorepati” (who will become a Decamillionaire), new year winner, winning numbers, etc. Some famous and old puzzles like Cheryl’s birthday, Bachets weight, liquid decanting, crossing bridge/river/desert, etc., have also been included so that readers can find all types of puzzles at one place. Only basic mathematics is required to solve these puzzles, but most of these puzzles are tricky and can be simplified by ingenious ideas. Chapter 4 contains detailed solutions to all the creative puzzles given in Chapter 3.

Can a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress "audacious raconteurs": skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. By drawing attention to the vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of colonialism—formed by concepts of colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledge—is dismantled. Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion, culture, and history that are closer to their lived understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life. Underlying these ideas, Prasad's personal interactions with the narrators' descendants give weight to her innovative argument that the audacious raconteur is a necessary ethical and artistic figure in human experience. Thanks to generous funding from Duke University, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.