This unusual autobiography The Story of My Experiments with Truth, is a window to the workings of Mahatma Gandhi’s mind, a window to the emotions of his heart, a window to understanding what drove this seemingly ordinary man to the heights of being the father of a nation-India.

Starting with his days as a boy, Gandhi takes one through his trials, turmoils, and situations that moulded his philosophy of life-going through child marriage, his studies in England, practicing Law in South Africa-and his Satyagraha there-to the early beginnings of the Independence movement in India.

He did not aim to write an autobiography but rather share the experience of his various experiments with truth to arrive at what he perceived as Absolute Truth-the ideal of his struggle against racism, violence, and colonialism.

Truly, over the course of its long and ongoing life, the Gita has meant an astonishing number of things to an astonishing number of people.

Architects of war and apostles of peace, ordimary folk and extraordinary people, atheists and believers alike have found the Gita a source of wisdom, guidance and consolation, a powerful instrument of justification for troubling actions or a bulwark for weathering storms of doubt.

What could the Gita, a nonmodern text, tell us about the particular phase of contemporary existence we call globalised life or global capitalist modernity?

Two events in the 1960s underlined the urgent need to restructure and revitalise India’s Intelligence system: the 1962 war against China, and the one against Pakistan in 1965, both shocking instances of failures in information gathering. The officer who would be given charge of this task was R.N. Kao-someone as unlike romanticised ideals of spies in films and novels as possible.

The founder-chief of India’s Research and Analysis Wing lived and operated from the shadows. Understated and gentlemanly, he may not have looked the part, but Kao undoubtedly put Indian Intelligence on the world map. In this riveting book, authors Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket trace the roots of modern Indian espionage, and describe the newly formed R&AW’s integral role in the liberation of Bangladesh.

Kao had one goal, to build an Intelligence-gathering agency that would ensure the security and integrity of India. And eventually, the legend of the ‘Kaoboys’-the nickname given to the team he built-would spread far and wide. This is the compelling tale of how it started3; of covert operations, courage and quick thinking; and of how wars are won as much off the battlefield as on it.