Dharamsala, Diana and a Turkish saga
NEW RELEASES
| Ten years after her death, Princess Diana remains a mystery. Was she "the people's princess" who electrified the world with her beauty and humanitarian missions? Or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy? |
| Only Tina Brown, former editor-in-chief of Tatler, England's glossiest gossip magazine; Vanity Fair; and The New Yorker could possibly give us the truth "" or at least that's the claim made in this new memoir. |
| Brown knew Diana personally and has far-reaching insight into the royals and the Queen herself. In The Diana Chronicles, you will meet a formidable female cast and understand the society that shaped them: Diana's sexually charged mother, her scheming grandmother, the stepmother she hated but finally came to terms with, and bad-girl Fergie, her sister-in-law, who concealed wounds of her own. |
| Most formidable of them all was her mother-in-law, the Queen, whose admiration Diana sought till the day she died. Add Camilla Parker-Bowles, the ultimate "other woman" into this combustible mix, and it's no wonder that Diana broke out of her royal cage into celebrity culture, where she found her own power and used it to devastating effect. |
| Dharamsala Diaries Swati Chopra Penguin 292 pages, Rs 295 |
| In this travelogue of the spirit Swati Chopra brings alive the narrow lanes of Dharamsala which echo with footfalls of seekers from all over the world. |
| Interacting with them "" old and young, Tibetan and non-Tibetan, guru and novice "" she realises it is possible in Dharamsala to retreat within, to heal one's spirit, to learn skills for the inner life and perhaps even find answers to sticky life-questions. |
| The Dalai Lama, who lives in a house on the hem of the Dhauladhar peaks in McLeodganj, a suburb of Dharamsala, has provided this place with a certain grace and turned it into a pilgrimagefor many. |
| Tibetan Buddhism forms a part of the rich tapestry of spiritual traditions in Dharamsala and are manifest in its old Devi temples, wandering sadhus and the more recent centres for meditation, yoga and alternative therapies. Through the stories and experiences of those that pass through Dharamsala, this book explores the nature of the spiritual journey and, indeed, of life itself. |
| The Bastard of Istanbul Elif Shafak Viking 378 pages, L4.25 |
| One rainy afternoon in Istanbul a woman walks into a doctor's surgery. "I need to have an abortion," she announces. She is 19 years old, and unmarried. What happens that afternoon is to change her life, and the lives of everyone around her. |
| Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. It is a house of women, among them Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother, Zeliha; Banu, who has newly discovered herself as a clairvoyant; and the hypochondriac Feride. |
| And when Asya's Armenian-American cousin Armanoush comes to visit to trace her family's heritage, long-hidden secrets and Turkey's turbulent past begin to emerge. |