Pippa Rann Books & Media

The 3rd issue of our Newsletter is now available

You can view or download here.

You will be happy to know that the Nissim Ezekiel Centennial Volume, compiled by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, and edited by Vinita Agrawal, is expected from the printing press in the next 10 days or so.

The Indian Religions podcast (on the New Books Network), hosted by Raj Balkaran, interviewed the Publisher, Prabhu Guptara (left) on Hindu Astrology: Anthony P. Stone, “Hindu Astrology: Myths, Symbols, and Realities” (Pippa Rann Books, 2023) – New Books Network. The photo of the author, the late Dr. A. P. Stone is on the right.

On the Commonwealth Poetry Podcast, which goes to 77 countries, Sudeep Sen was the subject of the whole of an episode.

The podcast hosts are Gyles Brandreth, the famous author, broadcaster and former MP, and his daughter Aphra Brandreth, MP https://commonwealthpoetrypodcast.co.uk/episodes/episode-38-india/

Two of our authors to be featured at the 100th anniversary celebration of Nissim Ezekiel, the father of Modern Indian poetry, on August the 1st & the 2nd,
organised by the Sahitya Akademi, the Indian equivalent of the Royal Society of Literature.

Vinita Agrawal, the Editor of Nissim Ezekiel, the Poet Father (forthcoming), and Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca, the compiler of the book, daughter of Nissim Ezekiel, a poet in her own right, are to speak and Chair sessions on August the 1st and the 2nd. 

You can join the opening session, personally at the Delhi premises of the Akademi, or virtually via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJYGMyGoaNg

The programme full programme can be seen via https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10161233387320342&set=pcb.10161233360235342  and  https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10161233387645342&set=pcb.10161233360235342

Two new books are now being distributed by us

Jewels from Sikh Wisdom – Pippa Rann Books & Media

Some Kind of Wonderful – Pippa Rann Books & Media

Quarterly newsletter launched

Our new quarterly newsletter is now the best way of getting the earliest information on our activities. 

Join the mailing list by clicking here.

Welcome to the first quarterly newsletter of Salt Desert Media Group Ltd (SDMG), where you can discover our latest news, talented authors, and their forthcoming books.

SDMG was founded in the UK by Prabhu Guptara in 2019 and is a publishing house with two imprints – Pippa Rann Books & Media and Global Resilience Publishing. A Member of the UK’s Independent Publishers Guild, SDMG is committed to freedom, justice, democracy, equality, and fraternity.

SDMG’s first imprint, Pippa Rann Books & Media (PRBM) launched in 2020 in memory of Prabhu’s wife, Philippa, and publishes books about India, the Indian diaspora, and all those who have an interest in the subcontinent, its people, and its cultures.

In 2021 Global Resilience Publishing (GRP) was launched with a focus on seeking solutions to international challenges such as climate change, financial systems, multilateral governance, public-private partnership, thought leadership, system change, corporate governance, family firms, values, and philanthropy, to commercial sponsorship, emerging technologies, democracy and the challenges to Freedom. More details can be found at
www.globalresiliencepub.com

About The Founder

Prabhu Guptara is a board consultant, author, and poet. Before establishing this publishing house, he led Think Tanks at Wolfsberg (a subsidiary of Union Bank of Switzerland) on global trends in technology, politics, economics, and society. He has also been on the International Advisory Council of London Business School. He has contributed to thought leadership both as an individual and in institutions. He’s been on the founding teams and board of many
organizations. Prabhu can be found on LinkedIn.

Prabhu Guptara recalls the moment which changed his entire life, like “Luther’s moment” which changed not only Luther’s life but all of world history (nailing his Theses to the door of All Saint’s, Wittenburg in 1517 and so defying the Pope’s power).

“I was a Lecturer at the North-Eastern Hill University, in what was then the most politically-sensitive part of India, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was the University’s Chancellor, came to deliver the Convocation Address and give away the degrees, in 1976.

“As editor of the University Newsmagazine, I dutifully printed her Address in full. However, my opposition to her draconian and repressive regime was well-known, and as a way of showing that I had not become a collaborator with her regime, I included in the centre-pages of the newsmagazine, Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s entire Nobel Prize acceptance speech under the title “One Word of Liberty”. As a result my name was put on the list of those marked to be eliminated, and my name was removed from that list only because of the personal intervention of my Vice-Chancellor with Mrs. Gandhi. Within the time-frame given to me, I had to make arrangements for exile with my wife Philippa (we had been married only a few months).

So we arrived in the only other country I was at all familiar with, the U.K., which Philippa, being English, knew rather better and where she was able to work. After doing whatever work I could find (bartender, ticket-checker…), Philippa working as a typist and then a Departmental Secretary at the university, I eventually gained a foothold as a freelance journalist and broadcaster on the basis of previous work that I had done in India, before finding myself also able to leverage previous experience in India to enter the world of consultancy, which grew only very gradually as I had no professional network in the UK. “Money was always tight, but Philippa brought up our 4 children splendidly with great love and patience, instilling humane values which have stood the test of time.”

“When we lost her to cancer in 2019, my life fell to pieces, until I was shown, almost by divine command, a way of continuing my love for her by founding a publishing-house to embody and continue her principles of love, peace, and justice – which are also the values of the Indian Constitution. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the founding of Pippa Rann Books & Media”

Note: “Pippa” is the affectionate short form of “Philippa”, and “Rann” was her maiden name. She had started “Pippa Rann Books” just before we moved out of the UK to take up my dream job in Europe, and that initiative dried up under the pressures of learning a new language and bringing up the family in a culture that we had not known earlier.

Satish Kumar receives the 2023 Bicentenary Medal of the RSA (The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufactures and Commerce)

Satish Kumar, one of ‘our’ authors, received the 2023 Royal Society of Arts Bicentenary Medal in recognition of his “trailblazing” contribution to new economic and ecological learning. He co-edited the book Regenerative Learning, details of which are here.

Strong Together

by Dr. Andrea Nelson Trice

Dr. Trice is an American academic who spent part of her adolescence in the Peruvian rainforest with an NGO that taught local people basic literacy and medical treatment.

The experience was life-changing, and she spent the next decades researching the transfer of skills, practical, financial and managerial, through social and other enterprises, around the world, in the fight against poverty.

Through interviews and case studies, she has investigated the hidden landmines of cultural differences that so often defeat a purse-holder’s best intentions.
For example, she documents the basic contrasts in attitude and performance between individualistic, cold-climate cultures versus community-oriented warm-climate societies.

She shows how the two kinds of cultures produce quite different approaches to time, performance, communication, and, ultimately, to all of life. That results in mutual misperceptions and misunderstandings which determine how representatives of each of these cultures behave.

“An Ethiopian told me”, she writes, “You Americans advance your own interests. You don’t care about others, about the dignity of the human being. Westerners must understand the culture of the people they want to help. You can’t help if you define the problem your way.”

She then introduces a fascinating array of successful real-life projects which convincingly demonstrate practical solutions to the commercial and other challenges posed for anyone planning to do business outside his/her own culture. And, to spark the involvement of groups of readers, there are reflection questions at the end of each chapter.

Highlights

The book answers the following questions:

• How and why do American and Majority World leaders differ in their approach and goals for building a social enterprise and for development more
  generally?
• What are the on-the-ground implications of these differences?
• According to Majority World leaders, what are truly beneficial ways for Westerners to engage in the Majority World?

Should this book not be required reading for every educational course which touches on the Global South?

News

• Salt Desert Media Group is a now a member of ‘Bridge India’ – a British Think Tank dedicated to public policy
• Hindu Astrology by Dr. A. P. Stone was positively reviewed by Asian Voice and iGlobal two publications focusing on the Indian diaspora
• From May 2024, the book, Hindu Astrology by Dr. A. P. Stone is to be found in important libraries such as the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies
• Pippa Rann Books supported the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in the U.K. by offering, for sale at the Festival, books by the Speakers; and advanced the Festival’s aims by offering other relevant publications.
• Dr. Andrea Nelson Trice won the Silver, Illumination Book Awards, 2024, U.S.A for her book Strong Together.
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