Despite it being a foreign land filled with uncertainty, thousands of Indians migrated to East Africa in the late 1800s to early 1900s in order to find jobs or to trade. One such migrant was Mohanlal Kala Savani. Manu Savani, the youngest son of Mohanlal Kala Savani, shares the history of a hard-working and successful Indian migrant in East Africa through a series of vividly written vignettes, enhanced by a gallery of personal photographs. JAMBO, SAMJI KALA! offers readers a glimpse of the sociopolitical history of East Africa from 1918 onwards through the story of an ambitious man who landed at the port of Mombasa with a rudimentary elementary school education and empty pockets. Mohanlal Kala Savani was an aspiring young immigrant who worked with focus, resolve and a dauntless spirit to succeed in the world of business. The growth of the Indian film business in East Africa and overseas is an integral chapter in Mohanlal Kala’s story. With struggle and determination, in 1922 he imported an Indian silent movie with a hand cranked projector. That was a building block to the distribution of Bollywood films internationally. This detailed biography shares the story of a visionary who turned obstacles into opportunities and became a movie mogul, textile and cotton mega trader, industrialist, real estate developer and philanthropist.

Sir Ali bin Salim was a member of the Al Busaidi clan - the powerful family from Oman, who ruled over much of East Africa during the 19th century. His father, Salim bin Khalfan, served as Liwali or Governor of Mombasa during the introduction of British colonial rule. Sir Ali carried on the role into the 20th century.

How did the Kachchhi traders build on the Gujarat Advantage? In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during the dying days of the Mughal empire, merchants from Kachchh established a flourishing overseas trade. Building on a rich legacy of free trade in pre-modern times between the many ports of Gujarat and the Middle East, the Kachchhis dealt in pearls, dates, spices and ivory with the faraway lands of Muscat and Zanzibar. The Kachchhi merchants behaved much like today’s venture capitalists. They knew how to grow capital, seek new markets, and create them where they didn’t exist. They also had a phenomenal risk appetite. What they were able to practise was nothing less than the traits of globalization before its time. This new book in The Story of Indian Business series tells their fascinating story.

Learning to Love moves beyond the media and policy stereotypes that conflate arranged marriages with forced marriages. Using in-depth interviews and participant observations, this book assembles a rich and diverse array of everyday marriage narratives and trajectories and highlights how considerations of romantic love are woven into traditional arranged marriage practices. It shows that far from being a homogeneous tradition, arranged marriages involve a variety of different matchmaking practices where each family tailors its own cut-and-paste version of British-Indian arranged marriages to suit modern identities and ambitions. Pande argues that instead of being wedded to traditions, people in the British-Indian diaspora have skillfully adapted and negotiated arranged marriage cultural norms to carve out an identity narrative that portrays them as "modern and progressive migrants"–ones who are changing with the times and cultivating transnational forms of belonging.