Shri Mataji writes that “India is a very ancient country and it has been blessed by many seers and saints who wrote treatises about reality and guidelines on how to achieve it.” This is just such a book. This book is both an introduction to Sahaja Yoga, describing the nature of the subtle reality within each of us, and a step-by-step handbook on how to be a good Sahaja Yogi, the nature of Sahaj culture, how to be a leader and how to raise children. “The knowledge of Sahaja Yoga cannot be described in a few sentences or one small book, but one should understand that all this great work of creation and evolution is done by some great subtle organization, which is in the great divine form.”

This book presents a feminist mapping of the articulation and suppression of female desire in Hindi films, which comprise one of modern India’s most popular cultural narratives. It explores the lineament of evil and the corresponding closure of chastisement or domesticity that appear as necessary conditions for the representation of subversive female desire. The term ‘bad’ is used heuristically, and not as a moral or essential category, to examine some of the iconic disruptive women of Hindi cinema and to uncover the nexus between patriarchy and other hierarchies, such as class, caste and religion in these representations. The twenty-one essays examine the politics of female desire/s from the 1930s to the present day - both through in-depth analyses of single films and by tracing the typologies in multiple films. The essays are divided into five sections indicating the various gendered desires and rebellions that patriarchal society seeks to police, silence and domesticate.

There is a part of us which neither listens to the voice of reason nor submit easily to social/moral conventions. Like a child, it relentlessly pursues whatever catches its fancy and keeps playing with fire. It can either help us actualize our heroic potential or put us on the road to self-destruction. Perhaps the key to this difference lies in what we do with our emotional/psychic wounds which are a necessary part of the growth process. The book explores the inner landscape of this part of our psyche through the mythological figures of Balarama, Duryodhana and Bhima. It also examines the present day context of human existence which has ironically enhanced both our prowess and helplessness and thereby pushed this part of ourselves into our psychic/social underbelly.

India is both blessed and accursed. It has many great leaders who have been brushed aside; and it has given too much of importance to some mediocre leaders who have been 'made' great or greatness is thrust upon them. I have made an attempt in this book to bring out the greatness as well as the follies of the people, their leaders, their institutions, customs and traditions.

Caleb Powell always wanted to become an artist, but he overcommitted to life; his former professor David Shields always wanted to become a human being, but he overcommitted to art. The stay-at-home dad (three young girls) and the workaholic writer (eighteen books) head to the woods to spend four days together in a cabin, arguing life vs. art. I Think You’re Totally Wrong is an impassioned, funny, probing, fiercely inconclusive, nearly-to-the-death debate. Shields and Powell talk about everything—marriage, family, sports, sex, happiness, drugs, death, betrayal, and (of course) writers and writing—in the name of exploring and debating their central question: the lived life versus the examined life. There are no teachers or students here, no interviewers or interviewees, no masters of the universe—only a chasm of uncertainty, in a dialogue that remains dazzlingly provocative and entertaining from start to finish. James Franco’s film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong, starring the authors, premiered in 2015.

The 1977 blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony about the heroics of three Bombay brothers separated in childhood became a classic of Hindi cinema and a touchstone of Indian popular culture. Beyond its comedy and camp is a potent vision of social harmony, but one that invites critique, as the authors show.

Bollywood movies have been long known for their colorful song-and-dance numbers and knack for combining drama, comedy, action-adventure, and music. But when India entered the global marketplace in the early 1990s, its film industry transformed radically. Production and distribution of films became regulated, advertising and marketing created a largely middle-class audience, and films began to fit into genres like science fiction and horror. In this bold study of what she names New Bollywood, Sangita Gopal contends that the key to understanding these changes is to analyze films’ evolving treatment of romantic relationships. Gopalargues that the form of the conjugal duo in movies reflects other social forces in India’s new consumerist and global society. She takes a daring look at recent Hindi films and movie trends—the decline of song-and-dance sequences, the upgraded status of the horror genre, and the rise of the multiplex and multi-plot—to demonstrate how these relationships exemplify different formulas of contemporary living. A provocative account of how cultural artifacts can embody globalization’s effects on intimate life, Conjugations will shake up the study of Hindi film.