Here is why you should read

~Travel not to find yourself; but to remember who you've been all along.~ Travel is the most wonderful thing I have discovered and nurtured. The best memories on my travel are the moments that I always go back to fondly.  When I found the Katy Colins' series - The Lonely Hearts Travel Club, I did not think twice before acquiring them.  This is a 3-book series Destination Thailand, Destination India, Destination Chile, currently and I am hoping the author writes more. Her story telling is fresh and simple. Just what you need for a cloudy evening with a cup of tea. Destination Thailand - Georgia is a jilted bride. Her fiancé had called off the wedding. She is lost and broken and totally confused of what she needs to do in her life. All one needs in a travel story, is a bestie. Georgia's bestie - Marie coaxes Georgia to rethink and reorganize her life. Before long, Georgia takes off to Thailand and spends her vacation crying and thinking what really went wrong in her grand ...

  Painde lambe ne lakiran de Umr de hisaab muk gaye Totey labbe taqdiran de Kisse lambe ne lakiran de Long are the passages of borders One has lost count of age Gathering the pieces of fate Long are the stories of the partition… " As the date of independence came closer, freedom seemed to move further away ." These are some of the lines from this short book by Gulzar. His words are as poetic as his songs. I am sure the Hindi version would have been much better sounding...but the English translation is not bad either. Gulzar is said to have written and self translated this book because he wanted to come to terms with his memories of Partition. Gulzar is not a novelist but his words are touching. Throughout this book I remembered the movie Maachis and the song, Chappa chappa charkha chale... or even his throaty nazm: Subah subah ek khwab ki dastak par darwaza khola Dekha, sarhad ke us paar se kuch mehmaan aaye hain Aakhon se maanus the saare Chehre saare soone sunaye Paav dhoye...

  Amir Khusrau quoted: Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. If there is paradise on earth, It is here, it is here, it is here. With help from other reviews, here is a quick summary about this book. When this book suggestion came up on my general search... I added it to my immediate reading list. And who would not love reading about Kashmir?! Faiz and his family live in an ancient home in Srinagar. He is a papier mache artist and makes the most exquisite pencil boxes to be sold to tourists. When he is done with this day's work, he heads for prayers. In another timeline, there is Roohi. She often prays for a kind and loving man to come and whisk her off her feet. She does not want an ordinary life. She wants romance and the thrill of it. Fate somehow conspires for the paths of Faiz and Roohi to cross and they both fall in love - a love that promises a great future. But, in war torn Srinagar, there is political strife and constant fear. There is vio...

  This book spoke a lot about the society that once was in Mano Majra - a fictional village on the Indo-Pak border. The people have so long lived in harmony. But Partition has caused them to give up their homes and relationships reluctantly. There are accounts of how dead bodies were sent via trains that plied between India and Pakistan. And as revenge goes, it is an eye for an eye situation. The doom that is on people's faces are sad to read. Quite like our situation now, where every second household seems to have one person gone. You are helpless as you have no powers in your hands to change the way things are. The book, despite being well known in writing circles, did not impress me. I liked other Partition stories and movies. Earth, the movie, which is the adaptation of Bapsi Sidhwa's Ice Candy Man was a good story on Partition. So were other books - Gulzar's Two/Do or even the non-fiction book, On the Footprints of Partition by Anam Zakaria. Even the simple children...

  I spent many days just browsing through Scribd and Kindle and nothing really took my fancy. Every once in a while, me thinks, my mind falls into this dungeon where nothing goes into the head. So, after weeks and weeks of being in the doldrums, and this desperate search to get out of the reading slump, I chanced upon Sujata Massey. She has quite a few books to her credit and I usually like to read an author from the first book. I allow the author to sort of grow on me. There is something wonderful about Calcutta/Kolkata. I am not the quintessential bhodro mohila; I do not speak the typical bengali of the Bengalis. You know how a language can become colloquial when you are out of its birth zone. But, I do feel wonderful being the Bengali that I am. I have frequented Kolkata just a couple of times but that place draws me like no other. I don't know if it is the history or my reading of some Calcuttan things or the places of visit or food or middle class standard of living that real...

I highly recommend this for podcast and Audible listeners. 7 short chapters. How many times have we heard of marriages going down the drain? How many times have we heard of love turning into something demonic? How many times have we heard of a simple story turning into something unbelievable? Apartment 515 is all of that. Sports writer, Jeff Pearlman comes to hear things off the rumor mill about one of his neighbors being accused of a hideous crime. Intrigued and not believing totally in what others had to murmur about, he starts investigating the case and in a series of good narration, bits of interviews of the people involved, a story that is shocking, is revealed. This is a true crime podcast that took place in New York, in a wealthy neighborhood. It is sad to hear the story unravel itself. It is sad to hear that so many times women keep marriages working because they want to live up to the definition of wholesome families. Women want to feel "complete" and ensure they giv...

Get off the bus. Walk up to the supermarket ahead of you. Yes, it's inside the mall. Scan the QR code at entrance. Check temperature. Walk up straight. What did you want? Burrata. Blueberries. Milk. Walk up straight down. You will see the big refrigerator on the right. Yes. That's where the milk is. The dark blue bottle cover. On your left is a carousel of sorts. You will find Burrata there. Blueberries are there too. Make a loop. Hook up a few chain stitches. Yarn over the hook and pull a loop through the chain space you have made. Press the nozzle down for liquid soap to flow out on your wet utensil scrub. Rub it around your plate. Scrub a little over the hardened food traces. Yes. Rinse the plate. Let the water drip over the utensil rack. These are just few of the tasks that we do on a daily basis without even batting an eyelid. Thinking is a far more complicated process. Our bodies and mind is so conditioned to do certain tasks so mechanically, that we don't even need t...

  Unit xx-xx, Street by the Big Field Home overlooking the waters, Singapore 13 March, 2022 Dear Readers, Sorry for the hiatus and the silence. I have been pre-occupied lately. Tons of things running inside my head and finding no immediate solution. I don't exactly know what to say about the book that was recommended by a dear reader friend. I do love epistolary books. I love handwritten letters. I love the effort that goes behind writing letters. Finding the appropriate writing pad, the colour of the ink pen. The various thoughts that cross one's mind while writing the letter. [When I have many things to mention, I usually write down the points on a separate sheet, in case I forget to include them in the letter.] Let's get back to the book. So 84 is a sweet, sweet book. How well informed, well read and yet so simple, warm and loving. Helen Hanff, for the love of British Literature, who lived in New York started writing "I-want-this-book" letters to a used-book st...

  *Wiping the sweat off my brow* Phew! I am done! Finished this with difficulty and some cheating. Lil Shah aka Jason D was born American. His mother is Afghan and had come away to live in the US. Jason's father is long dead and his mother is always in fear that she will get sent back to Afghanistan if the authorities come to know of her existence in the US without proper documentation. And as life may have it, one day the cops do come to Jason's doorstep. The cops pick up Madar jaan at the laundromat where she works. Jason is watching this from afar and goes into hiding. He travels all the way from New Jersey to New York in search of a family friend, Auntie Seema. Only she could help work things out and have his mother released from the clutches of cops. On his way to New York, he has a minor accident and lands himself in hospital alongside a young girl called Max. Max has been admitted to the hospital to be operated upon as she has epilepsy. To cut a long and winded like a ja...

What a beautiful story! Why did it have to end so fast! Or did I just read so quickly because I could not stop from knowing what would happen next. Stories like The Pearl that broke it's shell or A Thousand Splendid suns and probably many more show us really sad states of affair for women. Subjugated to a Ife of beating, ill behaviour meted out by in laws and a baby making machine. Once you're done by the sadness of it all...turn your hearts and minds to The Stationery Shop by Marjan Kamali. Tender, heart warming and tugs at your heart like no other. It shows hope for young girls, to study and to make something worthwhile of their lives. Here was a family where Baba was bent upon sending his daughters to study abroad. He believed they could bring about a change in society. The very belief that his daughters were worthy of education and respect and love marriage in a conservative country, itself brings pride that such babas existed. Then there was maman - mothers who taught all ...

  Divorce is a cuss word. More so in Indian society. Parents of couples are eternally upset if some such thing were to happen. And truly so. You can't underestimate how traumatic divorce is for the children - Isla Fisher. Divorce is a journey that the children involved do not ask to take. They are forced along for a ride where the results are dictated by the road their parents decide to travel - Diane Greene I have long believed that what most affects a child is not the divorce, per se, but how it is handled. - Anon Four adults. Two children. People in the background collateral damage or otherwise. Custody by Manju Kapur was hard hitting and sensitive. Raman and Shagun are everyday couples we see or know. They have been married for quite a few years. They have two children, Arjun and Roohi. Raman is the go getter. The workaholic. The one who works for the betterment of the family. Shagun, young and slightly bored of "normal" life. Raman is working very hard to gain his bo...

  This review is for people who love sewing and embroidery. Sashiko is a beautiful form of the running or hem stitch. It is slightly different because there are certain sewing rules - you don't end a stitch and begin it at the same point. You will find a slight gap and this overall brings beauty in the picture that you are embroidering. Sashiko is a Japanese art form and like any art form, there may have been exchange of ideas via the trade route. So sashiko was used to basically stitch up patches and tears with additional fabric. You could carry out sashiko even on quilts, making it sturdy. Sashiko designs are mostly geometric. They can be applied on to any fabric. Ideally, you would use thin white thread on indigo or blue fabric to bring about the stitches using a long needle to give uniform stitches across a line. I am a big fan of buying craft books and have quite a few Crochet books back home. So when I started sashiko, I was quite put in my place by my craft teacher - my gran...

  One of Steel's best work. Omg! It kept my heart beating fast... palpitations even. The book starts with a family of four - a loving couple and their two daughters, Rose and Zoe. In a sad turn of events, one child dies due to some rare cancer. The other is left to fend for herself. That itself should have been the warning bell. Can we blame a parent to mourn continuously and forget life at hand? Can we blame a parent for losing a child? Obviously not. That pain is inconsolable and unimaginable. Fast forward to Zoe grown up and in Danielle Steel style - she was pretty, amazingly competent at work, a great career woman, finds a fantastic partner, has an enviable life so to speak. But something goes wrong when she has her daughter. Is it wrong to be over concerned about our children and their upbringing? Do we not fuss over their sleeping and playing and eating habits? Do we not panic when things go wrong? Can someone wrong you for loving your child? But how much is too much? When do...