Sometimes it’s animals, sometimes it’s humans, but, today too, the person coming to Olivia’s restaurant holds painful memories in their heart.Olivia, who runs a soup restaurant outside of town on the edge of the forest, has a secret she can’t tell anyone. She can hear animals’ and humans’ inner voices. This ability left her alienated from her family to the point that they sent her away to a convent when she was only five years old. After escaping while en route, sh...

Aurangzeb 'Alamgir (r. 1658–1707) was the last of the so-called 'great' Mughal emperors. He remains a controversial historical figure: castigated for religious intolerance and placed at the centre of a narrative of Mughal decline by some; considered a great Muslim hero by others. In this richly researched exploration of Aurangzeb 'Alamgir's life and times, Munis D. Faruqui contests such simplistic understandings to unearth a more nuanced picture of the emperor and his reign. Drawing on a l...

Animals, a husband who understands her, a new encounter… Olivia has just taken her first step out of her small world into one that steadily expands.Olivia is a woman who embraced loneliness because of her ability to hear the inner voices of humans and animals, and Arthur is a former mercenary who’s spent his life staring death in the eye. These two wounded newlyweds join each other at the dinner table, drawing close as the seasons pass. Olivia, having just begun to...

Bringing together a range of South Asian perspectives on rising China in a comparative framework, an attempt has been made, for the first time, to identify and examine the political, economic and socio-cultural stakeholders and constituencies that influence the respective policy of individual South Asian countries towards China. The essays also project how their mutual relations are likely to be shaped by these. The book is especially relevant today owing to China’s growing weight in Asian...

Shape Memory Composites Based on Polymers and Metals for 4D Printing is a thorough discussion of the physics and chemistry behind this developing area of materials science. It provides readers with a clear exposition of shape-memory-composite (SMC) preparation techniques for 3D and 4D printing processes and explains how intelligent manufacturing technology may be applied in fields such as robotics, construction, medical science, and smart sensors.The book covers fundamenta...

Los Angeles. World Heavyweight Championship Match. Salih is trying to stay on his feet in the corner of the ring — his legs won't support him, his vision is blurring. But it's not over yet.Years ago, he lost everything: his family, his home, his childhood. On the road from the orphanage to the ring, from Kastamonu to America, every punch was not an act of revenge, but a search for meaning.What happened in the championship match? Did Salih win, or...Beyond the boxing...

The Grasshopper's HeartIn a garden, beneath the trees, an invisible world stirs. When little Sapçık finds himself alone and lost in a garden he has never known, he begins to struggle simply to exist. Grasshoppers, ants, crows, and humans — all share the same world, yet none of them can truly see one another.The Grasshopper's Heart is a fable about identity, belonging, and the price of love — the story of one small heart facing one impossible choice...

"What Rama says once he carries out; there is no looking back.” Rama to Kaikeyi “Only the timid and the weak leave things to destiny but the strong never bank on destiny or luck.” Lakshmana to RamaThe epic poem, by Maharishi Valmiki Muni, narrates the life of Lord Rama, a legendary prince of Ayodhya city in the kingdom of Kosala. The epic follows his fourteen-year exile to the forest urged by his father King Dasharatha, on the request of Rama's stepmother Kaikeyi. He traveled across forest...

This book features an ancient system of yoga presented as a journey of 108 steps. The substance of this journey comes from the author’s own experimentation with yogic principles and practices conveyed to him by his teacher, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, during the 37 years he lived and served in his monasteries. The system of yoga that Muni was taught is a harmonious blend of many yogas—hatha yoga, karma yoga, japa yoga, nada yoga, bhakti yoga and raja yoga—dedicated to the attainment o...

Success….not succession…..but if you wish to have succession….then success in this nature is REASON to develop this nature….

A Monk’s Tale chronicles the life of Philip Johnson (later named Muni Natarajan) as he meets his spiritual teacher, Subramuniyaswami, affectionately known as Gurudeva, and spends 37 years living as a monk, practicing an ancient and traditional system of yoga. As a story that is true, fascinating and full of much more adventure than one might expect from a monk’s tale, this book provides a candid, behind-the-scenes look at a modern-day yogic lifestyle that is still thriving today within the...

This book encompasses the characterisation of meteorological drought by the newly invented index called “SPI Standardised Precipitation index” approved by World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in June 2011. It is a simple index with precipitation as the only parameter and can be computed for different scales (1-3-6-12-24 months) and compared across regions with different climatic zones. The author has depicted graphs with regard to trends, onset, end, magnitude with dates of occurrence of ...