its me!!

There is a tea stall close to my house. He sells tea, samosas and vada pao. I should add, he sells amazing tea, and at a cost that is Re. 1 lesser than other tea sellers across Mumbai. I usually drink two cuttings. Cutting is a kind of unit. The small glass has a mark near its neck. Tea is filled upto that mark – and is called cutting. It’s not more than 3-4 sips. There is a shop next to the tea stall. In the morning, it remains closed. So it’s stairs becomes my sofa. I take the cutting, and rest my back on the shutter of the closed shop. It is strangely relaxing. I see people rushing all around. I guess that’s what gives me peace for those few minutes – that they are rushing, and I am not. Probably, that is the reason why I drink two cuttings: it lets me have peace for extra few minutes. There was a small broken wall opposite the tea stall. The morning sun would warm that area with its rays. Couple of days, I took the cutting and sat there, in the sun. Even though Mumbai win...

I was bang on the mark – a book a week – till my 17th book, which got completed in May. Then things went haywire, and the next few months went without reading. Am happy that the love for the books resurfaced and I started reading again. I read three books in about the same number of weeks, but am writing the review for this one first. I emotionally blackmailed my parents to gift me two books on Diwali: Playing it my way, and How to be interesting. Both the books cost more than 600/-, hence the blackmail . Well, quite a bit of hoopla was created around this book, and being Sachin Tendulkar’s autobiography, it deserved so. (Yes, I am going to be biased towards him for my whole life!) Boria Majumdar, a Rhode Scholar, co-authored the book. That he was a Bong, I assumed that the written content will be of top class. I was to get disappointed at many places throughout the book. On the contrary, the program that was hosted by Harsha Bhogle on the launch of the book was far more intere...

In the past few months, I haven’t read one book which is not either heavy or full of serious knowledge. I was a little tired of both of them, and that was a perfect timing for a Ruskin Bond! My state of mind at that time must have been identical to that of Bond’s when he wrote the following words: I had no ambitions to be a great writer, or even a famous one, or even a rich one. All I wanted to do was write. And I wanted a few readers and the occasional cheque so that I could carry on living my dream. Refreshing, isn’t it? I wanted a light, soft book. And Ruskin Bond provided exactly that. Its sad to admit but this book turned out to be rather disappointing. The book is divided in four sections: A childhood in the shade of  Lichi  tree : Here Ruskin Bond shares stories of his childhood, how he was separated from his father for studies, and how he loved walking with his father on the Dehra roads. I loved their connection. One story that stayed with me was...