Kolar Gold Fields is a small mining town in the erstwhile Mysore State (now known as Karnataka) in India. It was owned by the John Taylor and Sons Company, a British Mining Firm for more than a century. It was well known for its Colonial ambience and was called Little England due to its British and Anglo-Indian population. It was one of Indias earliest industrialized towns and was unique for its secular and egalitarian society. Aptly named Kolar Gold Fields Down Memory Lane the book undertakes a nostalgic journey right from the days of the origins of the Kolar Gold Mines, its historical and mythological connections, its golden progress through the years under the John Taylor and Sons Company, its gradual decline, and the final closure of the once prosperous Kolar Gold Mining Company in 2003. Thus ending a golden chapter in History, which now lies buried in the annals of time. It then moves on to the Anglo-Indian Community (a living legacy of the British Raj) in the early days of KGF. It brings out vividly the glorious and cosmopolitan life led by that tiny vibrant community in KGF who lived in sprawling bungalows with beautiful gardens and domestic helpers at their beck and call. It recalls the grand Christmas Balls and Dances held at the Skating Rink and the Jam Sessions and Pound Parties in Buffalo Lodge. It finally focuses on the author's childhood memories of growing up in KGF in the 1950s and 60s. It reminds one of lifes many simple pleasures home, family, school, playmates, entertainments, games, etc. It recalls memories of old familiar haunts and landmarks of KGF and the people who were an indispensable part of life in those days. It succeeds in preserving the nuances of a bygone era.

A COLLECTION OF SIMPLE ANGLO-INDIAN RECIPES is a revised, consolidated version of four earlier Recipe Books of Bridget White, namely Bridgets Anglo-Indian Delicacies, A Collection of Anglo-Indian Roasts, Casseroles and Bakes, The Anglo-Indian Snack Box &The Anglo-Indian Festive Hamper. More than 350 Recipes of traditional, popular and well loved, Anglo-Indian Dishes have been specially selected from these earlier Cook Books and featured in this Omni-bus Edition. This single Consolidated Imprint of easy- to- follow Recipes features Soups, Pepper Water & Vindaloo, Curries & Fries, Roasts & Stews, Chops and Cutlets, Croquettes & Rissoles, Foogaths and Vegetarian Delights, Rice Dishes & Pilafs, Pickles & Relishes, Casseroles and Baked Dishes, Snacks & Short Eats, Nibbles & Finger food, Sweets & Desserts, Custards & Puddings, Christmas Cakes & Festive Treats, Curry Powders, etc. The huge selection of Anglo-Indian dishes featured in this Cookery book will surely take one on a sentimental and nostalgic journey down memory lane of old forgotten Anglo-Indian Culinary Delights. All the old dishes cooked during the time of the Raj have now revived to suit present day tastes and palates. This Cookery Book would also serve as a Ready Reckoner and a useful guide for teaming up dishes for everyday Anglo-Indian Meals as well as for festive and special occasions.

The Great Indian Food Trip is an entertaining and erudite adventure through culinary landscapes, showing how three decades of eating, drinking and travelling have helped Zac O’Yeah to understand India, his home of many years. This fast-paced yet profound account charts a writer’s untiring quest for new cultural and culinary experiences. We accompany O’Yeah on a ‘spare parts’ tour of Shivajinagar, Bengaluru’s slaughterhouse area. He shares the pleasures of drinking beer in Karnataka, toddy in Kerala; eating boiled vegetables and masala-less curries in the Mahatma’s ashram, and savouring the rich red lal maas (spiced goat) of princely Rajasthan. He discovers Goa’s literati sipping cashew feni with Orhan Pamuk and Amitav Ghosh, and finds two of his favourite foods—mushrooms and cheese— in Bhutan’s shamudatsi. Whether you’re a lover of Indian cuisine, at home or abroad, or a wanderer seeking inspiration for your own voyage of discovery, this multi-course meal promises many delightful surprises about India’s delicacies, their origins and their locales. O’Yeah captures India in a nutshell—a big, coconut-sized one.

Anglo-Indians are a mixed-race, Christian and Anglophone minority community which arose in South Asia during the long period of European colonialism. An often neglected part of the British Raj, their presence complicates the traditional binary through which British imperialism is viewed – of ruler and ruled, coloniser and colonised. The book analyses the processes of ethnic group formation and political organisation, beginning with petitions to the East India Company state, through the Raj’s constitutional communalism, to constitution-making for the new India. It details how Anglo-Indians sought to preserve protected areas of state and railway employment amidst the growing demands of Indian nationalism. Anglo-Indians both suffered and benefitted from colonial British prejudices, being expected to loyally serve the colonial state as a result of their ties of kinship and culture to the colonial power, whilst being the victims of racial and social discrimination. This mixed experience was embodied in their intermediate position in the Raj’s evolving socio-racial employment hierarchy. The question of why and how a numerically small group, who were privileged relative to the great majority of people in South Asia, were granted nominated representatives and reserved employment in the new Indian Constitution, amidst a general curtailment of minority group rights, is tackled directly. Based on a wide range of source materials from Indian and British archives, including the Anglo-Indian Review and the debates of the Constituent Assembly of India, the book illuminatingly foregrounds the issues facing the smaller minorities during the drawn out process of decolonisation in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and researchers of South Asia, Imperial and Global History, Politics, and Mixed Race Studies.

The standard image of the Raj is of an aloof, pampered and prejudiced British elite lording it over an oppressed and hostile Indian subject population. Like most caricatures, this obscures as much truth as it reveals. The British had not always been so aloof. The earlier, more cosmopolitan period of East India Company rule saw abundant 'interracial' sex and occasional marriage, alongside greater cultural openness and exchange. The result was a large and growing 'mixed-race' community, known by the early twentieth century as Anglo-Indians. Notwithstanding its faults, Empire could never have been maintained without the active, sometimes enthusiastic, support of many colonial subjects. These included Indian elites, professionals, civil servants, businesspeople and minority groups of all kinds, who flourished under the patronage of the imperial state, and could be used in a 'divide and rule' strategy to prolong colonial rule. Independence was profoundly unsettling to those destined to become minorities in the new nation, and the Anglo-Indians were no exception. This refreshing account looks at the dramatic end of British rule in India through Anglo-Indian eyes, a perspective that is neither colonial apologia nor nationalist polemic. Its history resonates strikingly with the complex identity debates of the twenty-first century.

With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his seniormost Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity. Equally, the book candidly explores the man behind the public figure— his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which made him channel his energy into public service. Drawing from documents—scattered, unread and unresearched until now—and with unprecedented access to Menon’s papers and his taped off-the-record and explosively frank interviews—this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being.

Bishop Cotton Boys’ School, Bangalore, which completes 150 years in 2015, was founded in the memory of Bishop George Edward Lynch Cotton (a master at Rugby). The school has transitioned from a Victorian school conceived in Tom Brown’s School Days to one that has sought to keep the public school relevant in modern India. The book encompasses profiles of the people and the times, right from the 1860s, covering spheres as varied as the armed forces, public service, police, education, academia, law, medicine, the arts and the offbeat. Peppered with extracts from old letters, oral history and archives, the narrative features an eclectic range of prominent personalities, such as Lieutenant William ‘Leefe’ Robinson (the first Victoria Cross in an air operation), General K.S. Thimayya, Admiral V.S. Shekhawat, Dr Raja Ramanna, Lord Colin Cowdrey, Leslie Claudius, Lucky Ali, Sam Balsara, Feroz Khan, Nandan Nilekani, and several others. With chapters dedicated to those martyred in the World Wars as well as linking the journey of the school with the city of Bangalore, The Order of the Crest traces the alumni of Bishop Cotton over this period, profiling those old boys who have accomplished eminence or otherwise remained unsung, but not without touching others’ lives.

In this book, Bill Aitken provides a fascinating and vibrant account of his travels through the Deccan. In examining the interplay between topography and theology, he reveals the region's cultural, religious, and economic history.