Baba's Story


Book Description

To Mitra Milutinovic, family is everything. After taking a fall in her family home, ninety-year-old Mitra decides to uproot herself for the last stage of her life and move into Maple Retirement Place. Though her family is devasted, they respect the matriarch of their family and help her with this new transition. Mitra slowly begins to settle into her environment as her great-granddaughter, Sofija, visits Mitra every week, not satisfied that her partner-in-crime has left her home. Sofija begins to reflect on their conversations and decides to write her baba’s biography. Each visit brings more questions about Mitra’s childhood in the former Yugoslavia and the love story of her great-grandparents, leading to night-long conversations about the difference in generational traditions. While Mitra delves into her past, images of her husband, Petar, and the life they made for themselves in this new country flood her memory. Though longing to be with him, she is determined to focus on her new family at Maple Retirement Place while keeping a watchful eye on her children. Yet, when a sudden illness rocks the foundation of her family, Mitra’s faith is shaken. She prays that the strength and love she and Petar created as a family will reach beyond her children's generations to comfort the next. Baba's Story celebrates Mitra's immigration to Canada and how the next generations of her family flourish in the country she now calls home.







Dear Baba


Book Description

Maryam Rafiee was only a teenager when her father, Hossein Rafiee, was first imprisoned in Iran for expressing his political views. Unable to see or speak to him, she wrote him letters that she could never send. She recorded the things she wished she could tell him: thoughts on school, home, the family's struggle to free him, and—most importantly—her own hopes and dreams. Fifteen years later, in the wake of her father's second imprisonment, Maryam offers these letters to the world, to reveal the suffering undergone by prisoners of conscience and their families. Her story is one of hope, courage, and love in the face of tyranny.




Hagitude


Book Description

RADICALLY REIMAGINE THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE “There can be a certain perverse pleasure, as well as a sense of rightness and beauty, in insisting on flowering just when the world expects you to become quiet and diminish.” — from the book For any woman over fifty who has ever asked “What now? Who do I want to be?” comes a life-changing book showing how your next phase of life may be your most dynamic yet. As mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie describes it, midlife is the threshold to decades of opportunity and profound transformation, a time to learn, flourish, and claim the desires and identities that are often limited during earlier life stages. This is a time for gaining new perspectives, challenging and evolving belief systems, exploring callings, uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for accumulated wounds. Western folklore and mythology are rife with brilliantly creative, fulfilled, feisty, and furious role models for aging women, despite our culture’s focus on youthfulness. Blackie explores these archetypes in Hagitude, presenting them in a way sure to appeal to contemporary women. Drawing inspiration from these examples as well as modern mentors, you can reclaim midlife as a liberating, alchemical moment rich with possibility and your elder years as a path to feminine power.




Ask Baba Yaga


Book Description

Dear Baba Yaga, I think I must crave male attention too much. I fear that, without it, I would feel invisible. BABA YAGA: When you seek others this way, you are invisible nonetheless. Yr shawl is covered in mirrors in which others admire themselves; this is why they greet you so passionately. It is good to be seen, but it is better to see. Find a being to look hard into, & you will see yrself and what is more than you. In age-old Slavic fairy tales, the witch Baba Yaga is sought out by those with a burning need for guidance. In contemporary life, Baba Yaga—a dangerous, slippery oracle—answered earnest questions on The Hairpin for years. These pages collect her most poignant, surreal, and humorous exchanges along with all-new questions and answers for those seeking her mystical advice.




Enlightenment for Idiots


Book Description

A yoga teacher finds new life in India–just not the one she was expecting. Nearing thirty, Amanda thought she’d be someone else by now. Instead, she’s an ex-nanny yogini-wannabe who cranks out “For Idiots” travel guides. True, she has a sexy photographer boyfriend, but he’s usually off shooting a dogsled race in Alaska or a vision quest in Peru—or just hooking up with other girls. However, she’s sure her new assignment to the ashrams of India will change everything. What she finds, though, is an ashram run by investment bankers, a model-obsessed guru, tantra parties, and silent retreats. India, it turns out, is not the spiritual refuge she’d pictured. But she finds a friend in Devi Das, a redheaded sadhu who refers to himself as “we.” And when a holy lunatic on the street offers her an enigmatic blessing, Amanda realizes a new life may be in store for her—just not the one she was expecting.




Remembering Baba


Book Description

Rohini was barely in her teens when she lost her father and her hero, Rahul Roy. He had been a wonderful father, husband, and an upright and renowned professional in the world of finance. Yet Rohini felt she knew little about him. She spoke to relatives, friends and her father’s colleagues to rediscover the man she called ‘Baba’. The best way to remember him, she felt, would be to write about him. Piecing together the public and the personal, the facts and the memories, Rohini Roy chronicles the life of her father: from his humble roots in north Kolkata to his Welsh connection; from his days at school to the lively debater in college; from his days as an accountant to becoming the youngest president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India; and, finally, from his days as a carefree young man to a sensitive and caring individual. Along the way lie snapshots of his life that at once surprise and charm the reader.




The Purpose of Human Life


Book Description

Based on a true story, this book is about an ordinary man whose destiny placed him on a spiritual path to God in order to contact and meet with him in this lifetime. It is filled with many wondrous experiences and visions that he encountered on the way including proving the existence of God on earth. His remarkable spiritual journey has enabled him to answer the burning questions of why we took human birth, what kind of life forms we actually are, where we came from and what we are all here for. A great read that unfolds the eternal source of all divine influence, knowledge and guidance.




Tales for an Unknown City


Book Description

Tales for an Unknown City is a vibrant selection of almost fifty stories from among the many told at One Thousand and One Friday Nights of Storytelling, a weekly open gathering in Toronto begun by Dan Yashinsky in 1978 and still going strong. There are tales from Canada and many other parts of the world; each followed by a brief word from the teller, giving us the flavour of the "Friday Nights."




Veil of Wisdom


Book Description

It is purely about the journey of two friends who were contrast in spiritual ideology and how one gets convinced there is something above us in this universe to make things happen. The journey started when my beloved friend Suresh came to my office and called me "Sai Ram". “SAIRAM how are you?”, Suresh inquired and entered my office cabin with an excited smile, reflecting the happiness of meeting his friend after one year since I left my previous company where we had worked together for three years with a lot of projects, debates, and arguments, but respected each other though.