Duaayein ...

Anyone who knows me, is aware we shifted back to base city less than a couple of months ago. Now, during the process of loading and unloading of our furniture etc, a lot of stuff had got damaged and we were looking for ways to dispose them. One such item was a desert cooler, which didn't have much utility in the current house anyway. So, it was just kept near the lawns for about a month when I started making noise about how ugly it's looking there and soon birds and strays will come make home inside it. I wanted it out, but it was kind of functional, so couldn't just throw it away. 

One afternoon, a young woman rings the bell. I open the door irritated because it was really hot and I wasn't happy to be pulled out of my air conditioned bedroom. (Hold that thought right there, don't call me a snob sitting in a cool room yourself!)

So well, she pointed at the cooler kept at the far end of the premises and asked if we want to sell it. I nodded, not sure if anyone would want to buy it. Before I could say more, she said, "We live in those temporary shanties behind this colony, where the new constructions are taking place. Our house has a tinned roof and it gets very hot. The fan doesn't help one bit and my little boy cries all afternoon, he sweats so much."

Ohh.

She looked at me pleadingly. I told her what all was wrong with it and that the fan and pump were in top condition, so if her man can do something with it, they can take it. Her man came and said, he can work around the damages. I asked them to come next morning and speak to S. At night, I told him the entire story and he said, "You should've let them take it then itself, would've saved them one hot afternoon." 

So the next day they came and took it, she kept thanking us profusely. 

The area next to the lawn was clean now, and I was hoping some baby is happy nearby. I soon forgot this episode.

Last evening, I was walking down from a neighbourhood shop, back home. Someone called from behind and it was the same woman with her baby. She'd seen me and come running. She thanked me and said, "...because of you, my baby can sleep peacefully. You are very kind, my home stays so cool now. Do visit us someday," she pointed at her shanty. The honesty and thankfulness in her voice made me feel so small. So freakin' small. Something I wanted to be thrown away asap, because it was looking bad sitting there, is currently the reason of so much comfort for a little 3 months old baby and happiness for his mother.

Yesterday I got buckets full of good wishes from a mother. Wishes for something I didn't even do. But it felt SO good. It came to me by fluke, but considering how many blessings I need right now ... maybe she was godsend. Just like she said I was godsend for her baby.

I don't know who helped whom, but as of today, the only reason I have smiled since morning, is thinking of the little baby, sleeping peacefully in a cool room.

Also, parents. Parents must be the only people who can run around frantic, to get the smallest and biggest comforts for us, right? Would it matter to this child, how his mother had managed to give him cool afternoons when he was only three months old? I hope it does, we do tend to forget growing up.

Tweet

Swimsuit by James Patterson

On the jacket:

A breathtakingly beautiful supermodel disappears from a swimsuit photo shoot at the most glamorous hotel in Hawaii. Only hours after she goes missing, Kim McDaniels' parents receive a terrifying phone call. Fearing the worst, they board the first flight to Maui and begin the hunt for their daughter.

Ex-cop Ben Hawkins, now a reporter for the LA Times, gets the McDaniels assignment. The ineptitude of the local police force defies belief - Ben has to start his own investigation for Kim McDaniels to have a prayer ... and for Ben to have the story of his life.

All the while, the killer sets the stage for his next production. His audience expects the best - and they won't be disappointed. Swimsuit is a heart-pounding story of fear and desire, transporting you to a place where beauty and murder collide and unspeakable horrors are hidden within paradise.

Review:

I was a bit sceptical about a co-authored book but boy, was I blown away. Swimsuit is shocking and spine-chilling, more than what the blurb suggests. It picks up pace from page 1 and believe me you, it was so difficult for me to let got of reading it, even to go brush my teeth, last night. Yes, I was turning the pages, while I was chewing on my toothbrush.

Swimsuit, as the blurb says, is about a swim-suit model being abducted. It's not as simple as it sounds, it's actually much more gory than a lot of our imaginations. Personally, I love crime fiction yet I'd not been reading them for a while for no particular reason. Now, I am soo back to them, and for good!

Intense and skilfully spun, the plot will keep you hooked. If you are a sucker for crime fiction, don't even think twice. Pick this one up!

Rating: ****/5

[This review is for Random House India. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Book Review: Arty Facts by Ankita Kapoor (e.book)

On the jacket: 

Arty Facts is the amusing story of a small town girl who lands up in Delhi and the dubious and ludicrous people she encounters, no matter where she goes or how hard she tries to stay away from them. This book is dedicated to everyone who has been harassed by their horrible bosses, loves bitching and enjoys taking this flight from reality with their bitching buddies- a god-send I'd say in this wild, wild world! So while you hop skip and jump through the jungle called life, don't forget to bitch a little!

Review:

Arty Facts is straight out of the diary of a 20 something who has recently finished college. A cribster, she has an opinion about everything and makes it a point to bitch about it all - even when her mother calls up concerned about her career which she herself had no intent on being serious about. Unexpectedly she lands herself a job and this is where a new chapter in her life begins. 

Scroll through the book and you will be reminded of your own younger days when everything bothered you and every action extracted a reaction. Very typical of the age, the way the author has written some incidents, its quite funny. The emotions are realistic. The amount the protagonist bitches about her boss, if not very common, is absolutely real and believable. 

The language however, needed editing. Us of phrases like cousin brother/real brother, dressing sense were a major let down along with vernacular sentence formations like "the plan was to save my one month's salary". There is usage of a lot of flowery language with big words but all that seem put on when one notices that the copy needs editing.

Kapoor is a good story-teller, the book did keep me in splits throughout. The anecdotes and incidents, the typical characters and the protagonists bitching about them all the time makes Arty Facts a light read. 

Rating: ***/5

[The book was received as part of Reviewers Programme on The Tales Pensieve. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Book Review: Foreign by Sonora Jha

On the jacket:

The book is a fictionalized account of the farmers suicides in contemporary India. It is set in Seattle and in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, with the two worlds tumbling together in a web of suicide, politics and betrayal. 

In a village in India, a forsaken man is about to kill himself in quiet despair. A million miles away, Katya Misra is celebrating a perfect evening in her fine, academic life in Seattle . . . until she is informed that her teenage son Kabir has run away to India in search of a father he has never met. Contemptuous of her homeland and determined to bring Kabir back where he belongs, Katya must follow her son into the home of a suicidal farmer, in a village where, every eight hours, a man kills himself. Here, as Kabirs father inspires his son with his selfless social work, Katya finds an ally in the farmers wife Gayatribai, who saves Kabirs life by damaging her own, and in return asks for Katyas help in keeping her husband alive in the suicide epidemic that has gripped this treacherously changing nation. 

Whipped up in a world of violent protest rallies, mass weddings, inglorious suicides, and a love that demands to be rekindled, Katya must learn whose life can be saved and whose she should just let go. 

Review:

This book is special to me. I am a Nagpur girl. Being in the city doesn't affect a life of a Vidharbhaiite technically, but if anyone other than the farmers of the drought hit areas, we are the ones who are majorly affected. The fight for separate statehood is mainly so that we can use our own resources, for our own people instead of giving a cushy life to rest of Maharashtra.

Ok, emotions aside, Foreign was a touching read. A book that started with an elite social gathering in Seattle is soon transitioned to India and then to the heart of Vidarbha, a region famous of farmer suicides. In her quest to find her runaway son Kabir, Katya Misra finds herself in the midst of suicides, rallies and face to face with Kabir's father, whom he had run away from home to find. 

A gripping story, not only about human relations, but also a fair mirror to what is actually happening and why, how can these suicides be prevented and how. How much have these suicides affected out society, how deep does the desperation which makes men kill themselves go and how helpless the rest of us are. Reading Foreign will not only give you a good read, it will change your perspective about quite a few facts around us.

Rating: ****/5

[This review is for Random House India. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Book Reading: Exposure by Sayed Kashua

On the jacket:

In Jerusalem, two Arabs are on the hunt for the same identity. The first is a wealthy lawyer with a thriving practice, a large house, a Mercedes and a beautiful family. With a sophisticated image to uphold, he decides one evening to buy a second-hand Tolstoy novel recommended by his wife - but inside it he finds a love letter, in Arabic, undeniably in her handwriting. Consumed with jealous rage, the lawyer vows to take his revenge on the book's previous owner.

Elsewhere in the city, a young social worker is struggling to make ends meet. In desperation he takes an unenviable job as the night-time carer of a comatose young Jew. Over the long, dark nights that follow, he pieces together the story of his enigmatic patient, and finds that the barriers that ought to separate their lives are more permeable than he could ever have imagined.

As they venture further into deception, dredging up secrets and ghosts both real and imagined, the lawyer and the carer uncover the dangerous complexities of identity - as their lies bring them ever closer together.

Review:

Exposure is one of the finest books I have read. The blurb had me curious about the story and once I began reading the book, I was hooked. Moving from a page to another was quick, because I couldn't wait to know what happens next.

A story dealing with parallel lives, not one minute was when I felt the story was stagnant. Kashua is a brilliant story teller and human mind, behaviour and reactions have been very articulately spun in this story.

Palestinian Israeli novelist Kashua had written Exposed in Hebrew, which was later translated to English. A plot about two individuals, with two individual stories, which in the end, cross path and become one story. It's difficult to talk about the plot as such, because, it cannot be summarized in one or two lines. The experience of reading this book, was thrilling. Though the climax isn't very strong, it does hold the plot together.

Rating: ****/5

[This review is for Random House India. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Book Review: MBA Is Not About Money, Blazer, Arrogance by Krishna Kranthi

On the jacket:

Like many, Revant has dreamt of getting that fancy and highly regarded MBA degree. After working hard, finally he gets an admission to one of the top Indian B-schools. His excitement is short lived as the overwhelming pressure and the vague defin­itions of management boggle him down. He gets frustrated with the people around him who see MBA as a purpose of earning higher salary and getting superior designations and indulging in unneeded arrogance. He thinks this is not what he wanted to learn out of his MBA. 

But then, something changes and Revant experiences the true purpose of pursuing an MBA. 

An inside story of MBA graduates, the book helps one realize that real purpose of a MBA degree is not confined to money, blazer, arrogance but it is more than that.

Review:

A well-written book, though the language needs some polishing, MBA Is Not About Money, Blazer, Arrogance is exactly what the title suggests. What seems like the authors own memoir from his own days of doing MBA at an institute in Pune, or inspired from it - the book is what we can refer to as a handbook for MBA aspirants to prepare them for the life ahead. The fun, the hard work, the changes in life and attitude and finally grabbing the jobs of their choices - this book takes the reader through all the stages. 

Often we wonder what is it so important to have an MBA? Also, does one really need it? Though who are doing well in their careers without an MBA will obviously scout for the latter, but we cannot deny that having one (degree) does give a huge lift to the career graph at the very beginning. 

The story also deals with the protagonists (and his friends') ordeals and successes in personal lives. All in a ll a good read, though the language could have done with a bit of a polish.

Rating: ***/5

Tweet

Book Review: Journey to Ithaca by Anita Desai

On the jacket:

Matteo and Sophie join the 1970s flight of young Europeans to India. Matteo - Italian, raised in the luscious countryside around Lake Como, restless since childhood - has been introduced by a tutor to Hermann Hesse's The Journey to the East, and it opens in him a desperate longing. Sophie - German, practical, worldly - is willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. In India, together they visit swamis, gurus, ashrams - always searching. Matteo is seeking spiritual enlightenment, but for Sophie fulfillment lies in earthly love. And when they meet a holy woman known as the Mother, the differences between them seem to explode. When we learn the Mother's story, we see it as an earlier version of their own - the story of a young girl growing up in Cairo and finding her way East by joining a troupe of Indian dancers she has met in Europe. Her journey, a young woman's daring progress through Paris and Venice and New York, until she finds her moment of transcendence in India, comments on, and gives added breadth to, the young couple's quest.

Review:

Anita Desai is a master story-teller. Journey to Ithaca is people's journey to attain contentment, written in a very detailed format. Three people are on the journey and the book is a description of their travels to different parts of the world. 

Emotions and people, their reactions to actions are beautifully depicted. Matteo comes to India to get away from everything. Sophie follows suit only because she loves Matteo. While Sophie and Matteo live in India, the conditions they live in deteriorates and Matteo keeps drifting apart from her and closer to 'mother'. Sophie is convinced 'mother is a fraud and to prove it she travels across the world from Europe to US, to finally return to India but instead of the truth, she is armed with more complexities. She keeps travelling. Her reasons have changed. The people in her life have changed, moved away or are no more. But she keeps travelling...

Rating: ***/5

[This review is for Random House India. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Book Review: In the Body of the World: A Memoir by Eve Ensler

On the jacket: 

From the best-selling author of The Vagina Monologues and one of Newsweek’s 150 Women Who Changed the World, a visionary memoir of separation and connection—to the body, the self, and the world

Playwright, author, and activist Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the female body—how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent much of her life disassociated from her own body—a disconnection brought on by her father’s sexual abuse and her mother’s remoteness. “Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the Earth,” she writes, “I could not feel or know their pain.”

But Ensler is shocked out of her distance. While working in the Congo, she is shattered to encounter the horrific rape and violence inflicted on the women there. Soon after, she is diagnosed with uterine cancer, and through months of harrowing treatment, she is forced to become first and foremost a body—pricked, punctured, cut, scanned. It is then that all distance is erased. As she connects her own illness to the devastation of the earth, her life force to the resilience of humanity, she is finally, fully—and gratefully—joined to the body of the world.

Unflinching, generous, and inspiring, Ensler calls on us all to embody our connection to and responsibility for the world.

Review:

Reading this memoir was difficult. Emotionally and for the mind. But what comes throw the pages of this book, is Ensler, who is surely a warrior and a survivor. Abused by her father, Ensler grew up to spend years of her life as an activist for women who have undergone physical violence. On top of this, she get diagnosed of cancer. 

This book made me cry; there are descriptions which we, the little-more-fortunate can never even build up in our imaginations. In the book you see a woman, so broken, that even if she gave up, it would have been okay. But she didn't. Cancer is difficult to read about. Added to it, the abuses committed against women's bodies. Parts made my heart grieve. Ensler has a scary story to tell, but I say you read it. It's honest and in your face. It will make your heart cry, but the book doesn't present itself as anything less than strong. 

A must, must read.

Rating: ****/5

[This review is for Random House India. The opinions are strictly my own and not been written under any obligation.]

Tweet

Do brands own you?

Yes, we all like to dress well. While some of us lean towards what is smart and comfortable, some others are particular that these smart clothing need to be branded. Which one are you? And while we are at it, and you surely do love brands – so why not be a mystery shopper with RedQuanta!

Ever wondered what brand conscious is? Is it blindly following a brand because it is raved about all over the world or buying a brand because you understand what their products are about? A fresh example that comes to my mind is; how we buy phones. A lot of us buy phones based on fads. Apple is considered more hyped while android phones are cheaper. I know Apple fanboys of two types: one who buy it because they can and the other who buy it because they like the product, the after sales service and the comfort of using Apple products. Ironically, both kinds are brand conscious in their own worlds.

A friend buys Body Shop products because they are organic and that matters to her. A relative does the same because they make her dresser look posh, when her friends visit. Ever wondered why are we so greedy to own nothing but the best?

When our conversations are peppered with Gucci, LV, Hermes, Cavalli etc, it feels good. Why? Because these brands symbolise money. But do we need them? Do we appreciate them? Do we understand what they are all about? A Mango top can cost me 4K while the same design will cost half in one of the Bandra boutiques. But! It’s not the same thing!

So, am I really brand conscious? Do I own my brands or do the brands own me?

[This blogpost is in association with RedQuanta. You can also check their blog here.]

Tweet

Ten things they don’t sell.

We work out asses off all our lives – to make money. And believe that this money will make our life better. No doubt it does, but does it make it perfect? Isn’t it true that the best things in life cannot be bought? You don’t believe? Let me point a few such things to you:

Peace of Mind: You have millions in the bank. Your company has branches worldwide. But it's likely you are always worried about the stock rates and the market value of these offices. Where is the peace of mind? Weren't you more at peace when poorer?

Confidence: You have a walk in closet with the world's best designer clothes and accessories. But you don't know how to pair them. And finally when you do learn to, you walk out with a stopped shoulder. Why? Because you lack confidence. You can learn to walk upright, but can you buy and make up for that lack of confidence?

Time: Remember the story where a little boy offers to pay his father the same amount of money that he earns in an hours, just so the man can spend it with his son? You have all the money you desire, but no time to spend it on yourself, no time to sit and talk to your nearest ones.

Health: Money can ensure good medical services and care. Money can ensure hugh insurance premium being payed for. But there is only so much that medical science can do to ensure your good health. What after that? How do you ensure good health when there is nothing left to buy, but pray?

Sound Sleep: You are up all night worrying about your work and your meetings. Will the same money help you sleep soundly, every night. More often than not, it doesn't.

Wisdom: We can buy all the books in the world and get educated at the best institutions, but widom comes from within. It graces the poor as much as the rich. You are either wise, or you are not...you cannot buy it.

Talent: Money can help us better and polish our talents, but it cannot be bought if it's not within us. You cannot create a talent with money. Again, it's either in you or it's not.

Immortality: Earn millions, build a cushy home and have the best facilities around you. But, you'l leave it all and die one day. Alone. The money left behind can never buy you immortality.

Family and friends: These are the relations we take very lightly and for granted. But can we buy them? No, a mother or a best friend who care for you as they would if they were own, can never be bought.

Home: We can invest in multiple real estates and feel good about our acquisitions. But those are houses. Not homes. We can build a home with people, emotions, feelings etc. With money, we can just acquire the structures and decorate them.

Don’t let me upset you with all this! Be a mystery shopper with RedQuanta, get paid to shop and review! How cool is that!

[This blogpost is in association with RedQuanta. You can also check their blog here.]

Tweet