Believe

Suresh Raina’s story is fascinating — son of parents from J&K and HP, he grew up in Muradnagar in Uttar Pradesh, where his family relocated in the early 1990s due to the threat to Pandits in Kashmir. As a child, his family closely knew financial hardship. He rose through the ranks, taking the Sports Hostel route — the fee for Suresh to join was Rs 10,000, and his father had to take a loan. Suresh didn’t let his talent or his family down, rising to play for India, being part of the team that won the 2011 World Cup. He played 322 matches for India, including 18 Tests. Coaches had predicted even greater things — Raina, however, is a contended man for he believes in destiny, writing: “I believe I played exactly the number of Test cricket I was meant to play.””

With actress-producer Mindy Kaling securing the TV rights for ‘Gold Diggers’, here is a novel worth picking. Spanning two continents, two coasts, and four epochs, Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel balances social satire and magical realism, asking what a community must do to achieve the American dream. It tells the story of Neil Narayan, a floundering teenager whose immigrant parents’ expectations are high. He wants their version of success, but mostly, just wants to be with his neighbour Anita Dayal. But Anita has a secret: she has been brewing an ancient alchemical potion from stolen gold that transfers the ambition of the original owner to the drinker. As Neil joins in the plot, events spiral into a tragedy that rips their community apart.

A decade ago, Steven Bartlett, an 18-year-old university dropout, was shoplifting food. Today, he is a 28-year-old whose social media company has been listed on the stock exchange, valued at roughly a quarter of a billion pounds. How did things turn around for the black kid from a bankrupt family? Perhaps because 10 years ago, three weeks after he had dropped out of college, he had told himself that he will be a millionaire by the age of 21. Considered one of Europe’s most talented and accomplished young entrepreneurs, in this book he promises to dismantle the most popular, unaddressed lies about happiness that we have been led to believe.

The author calls this book a weapon, a toolkit to help separate fact from myth in understanding how we are similar and how we are different. He wants to equip you with the scientific tools necessary to tackle questions on race, genes and ancestry. And he then wants you to take bigotry head-on with science and history as powerful allies. In ‘How to Argue With A Racist’, geneticist and broadcaster Dr Adam Rutherford says the appeal to science to strengthen racist ideologies is on the rise — and increasingly part of the public discourse on politics, migration, education, sport and intelligence. The book is his attempt to debunk racial pseudoscience as also casual racism on the rise around the world.