Last month, our Publishing Director, Renu Kaul Verma, who set up Vitasta exactly 20 years ago and who never misses coming to office, unexpectedly lost her young son, 18-year-old Advaitha in a heart-numbing tragedy. At the prayer meeting held in young Advaitha's memory, it became apparent to the packed auditorium at the India International Centre that the family had lost a kind, compassionate, fun-loving, exceptionally talented young singer-and-sportsman in Ankush as he was lovingly called by all who knew him.
It took us a while to begin turning our attention back to work and understandably longer for Renu to return to the office, but it is often said that it is work that keeps a person going and props one up to face life. That is what Anuj Dhar, Vitasta's best-selling chronicler of Subhash Chandra Bose's mysterious death, What Happened to Subhash Chandra Bose? besides Conundrum and India's Biggest Cover-Up said to all of us when he came by to meet Renu in the office. 'Keep yourself busy with work; that is the only way to come to terms with this….' he had said to Renu. And we, at Vitasta, can only hope that keeping busy with books is what will help her find her resilience….
As life limped back to some semblance of normalcy, the team at Vitasta began concentrating on books again—last month's releases were taken up again by the marketing team as Dr Aruna Kalra's book, I Want a Boy that was released last month, picked up sales. Her bold, autobiographical book on the Indian obsession with a male child is gradually challenging people to change their way of thinking. She had an event just two days ago in the capital with The Bookworms of Delhi and Coffee Bond at GK 1. The meet sparked off a heartfelt discussion on the preference for a male child in our society, always an evergreen topic. But changing mindsets in our country is like an eternal, uphill battle. That's the reason we believe that books like I Want a Boy can make a difference.
Up for release this month is Oswald Pereira's Beyond Autobiography of a Yogi, a comprehensive take on the popular yogi who is credited with introducing Americans to yoga and meditation a century ago. Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi is well-known in all corners of the world but not enough is known of his teachings and his life in America in the thirty years he spent there. Pereira, a disciple of Yogananda bridges that gap and brings to the reader, a racy account of Yogananda's spiritual adventures in America after the yogi moved there. The author's pithy, journalistic style brings the guru's teachings contained in several of his works into one, easy-to-read volume. The book also presents an abridged version of Autobiography of a Yogi, compressing and demystifying its flowery prose into simple, contemporary language for the lay reader who is not so familiar with spiritual concepts.
Another America-based author and filmmaker, Kay Rubacek has chronicled life in Communist China in her book, Socialist Democracy: Grim Realities of Contemporary China. The author, Kay Rubacek, weaves together exclusive interviews with CCP insiders and key government officials into this compelling narrative backed by extensive research, which is presented with wry humour giving readers a rare peek into the contemporary China of today, a devious and dangerous world built on a foundation of lies, money-lust, and blurred moral boundaries.
The book is a warning to citizens of the Free World of what can become of us if we fail to understand the culture and implications of a typical Marxist state.
Vitasta sent an advance copy of the book to eminent professor of Chinese Studies at JNU, Srikanth Kondapalli. Here's what he had to say: 'Rubacek perfectly dissects the cultural language of the CPC through its 'two skins of cultural thinking.' Rubacek's interviews with former high-ranking CCP officials indeed lift the veil on the Marxist culture that has moulded the thoughts and actions of the Chinese for over seventy years and resulted in a culture that has created China's 'Walking Dead.'
Till next month, it's goodbye from all of us here at Vitasta.