HT Picks; New Reads

On the list of good reads this week is a book that traces the history of coffee in India, true crime based on a 30-year-old case, and a new biography that traces the arc of a great man’s life

The story of coffee in India

The reading list this week includes the story of coffee in India, a book that brings to life a three-decade-old murder investigation, and a new biography of the father of India’s Constitution. (HT Team)

288pp, ₹699; Bloomsbury (An enjoyably informative story of coffee in India starting at the very beginning and working its way to the present)

What is coffee’s origin story? When and how did coffee reach India? When did plantations come into being? How did the beverage take root in the culture? How did it become so popular? Cherry Red, Cherry Black tells an enjoyably informative story of coffee in India starting at the very beginning and working its way to the present. With a storyteller’s flair Kavery Nambisan sets the scene with the history of the origins of coffee, its serendipitous entry into India, early planting by village communities of the Mysore and Malabar provinces and the foray of British who scented commercial gains and began large scale plantations. In 1922, the plantations amalgamated into the Consolidated Coffee Estates. In 1990, it was acquired by the Tata Group to become Tata Coffee, the only corporate venture that deals with coffee from cultivation to processing, curing, packaging, sales and retail. Cherry Red, Cherry Black features profiles of major players in the field including some on experts who work as coffee tasters, while also the listing the varied and delectable ways of making and drinking coffee. *

A thrilling tale of true crime

200pp, ₹499; Hachette (The book is based on author V Sudarshan’s extensive interviews with the CBI officer K Ragothaman)

Corrupt officers. Incompetent police. A corpse. And lots and lots of paperwork. Bangalore, 1987. A nondescript advocate from Kerala attempting to correct a “typographical error” is brutally murdered. When two post-mortems and multiple police inquiries yield nothing, CBI officer Kuppuswamy Ragothaman must intervene to crack open this cold case and lead an investigation spanning three states, wade through bureaucratic red tape and step into the murky world of politics as he tries to build a case against the state home minister, the police and his own colleague. Will he be able to bring justice to the victim, or will forces much more powerful than him control the outcome? This thrilling tale of true crime is based on author V Sudarshan’s extensive interviews with the CBI officer K Ragothaman, and brings to life a murder investigation that shook the country over three decades ago.*

240pp, ₹599; Aleph (Tracing the arc of the great man’s life)

Babasaheb Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, MA, MSc, PhD, DSc, DLitt, Bar-at-Law, is today among the most revered of Indians, his statues across the country second only in number to those of Mahatma Gandhi. He even overtook Gandhi in a recent poll to determine the “greatest Indian” of modern times, in which over 20 million votes were cast. All the major political parties vie with one another to claim him as their own. To the Dalits, he is a revered figure who was chiefly responsible for outlawing untouchability and fighting to give dignity to the community. Most of all, he is hailed as the father of India’s Constitution, the principal reason why India continues to remain a democracy with liberal, secular, plural values (although all these are under siege at the present time) that seeks to uphold the rights of the individual and uplift the downtrodden. Writes Shashi Tharoor: “Dr Ambedkar’s greatness cannot be reduced to any one of [his] accomplishments, because all were equally extraordinary.”In this new biography, Tharoor tells Ambedkar’s story with great lucidity, insight, and admiration. He traces the arc of the great man’s life from his birth into a family of Mahars in the Bombay Presidency on 14 April 1891 to his death in Delhi on 6 December 1956. He describes the many humiliations and hurdles Ambedkar had to overcome in a society that stigmatized the community he was born into, and the single-minded determination with which he overcame every obstacle he encountered. We are given insights into the various battles Ambedkar fought to make untouchability illegal, his disputes with the other political and intellectual giants of his era, including Gandhi and Nehru, and his determination to invest India with a visionary Constitution that enshrined within it the inalienable rights of the individual and modern conceptions of social justice. “In so doing,” writes Tharoor, “he transformed the lives of millions yet unborn, heaving an ancient civilization into the modern era through the force of his intellect and the power of his pen.”Deeply researched, searching, and insightful, Ambedkar: A Life offers readers a fresh and profound understanding of one of the greatest Indians who ever lived.*

All copy from book flap.