its me!!

I like a girl. But I came to know through a common friend that the girl likes some other boy. A funny movie could have been made – a Romedy may be – had that boy liked some other girl and the sequence would have continued. I will confess in that situation my heartache would have been much lesser. Don’t you feel in shallower waters if people around you are in deeper ones? If you are surrounded by people going through similar or worse shit in life, life doesn’t feel that shitty. Alas, the boy is clearly wasn’t after some other female and sadly the two are dating. I have been through this situation for a little too many times for my liking. The first love of my life is married to a friend of mine who is tall, dark, handsome and rich – and bald now – thanks to my curse! The second love of my life flunked in college many times and then moved on to join some obscure college. Thanks to my curse again. The third love of my life is having a gala time with her boyfriend. She is leading a lif...

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...

I came across the concept of an Academic Holiday when I was skimming through  The Difficulty of being Good  by Gurcharan Das. In the prelude, he wrote about his plans to take up an  academic holiday  because he wanted to write on  Dharma , for which he had to read about Mahabharata thoroughly. He wrote how this idea of his was received with scepticism by his wife, who suggested to “go to the Turkish coast instead”. His mother had similar qualms, who suggested that he was suffering from  Vanaprastha melancholy  – whatever that means. I believe I related to his idea of an academic holiday in a much better way than both his relatives. In fact, he also wrote about his previous holidays when his wife and he went to their Alibaug beach house loaded with nothing but books, and spent days doing nothing but reading. This too seemed exciting, and little more achievable. I love traveling also. So every time I went for some trips with or without my frien...

I bought this book on an impulse. At a friend’s suggestion, I visited  Cha Bar , Oxford bookstore at Churchgate. There I found it, and just picked it up. I always wanted to read about Nathuram Godse. When I first saw this book, I felt that this was a propaganda to get the book sold. But then I thought to give it a try. Talking about the book: the author tried hard not to take sides but I feel inadvertently he did – sometimes he got towards Godse, and sometimes (more number of times) towards Gandhi. I believe this book is a wonderful lesson in history to all. It is a must-read for most of those who think that Nathuram Godse was a Hindu fanatic – a madman, and Gandhi a saint. There were striking similarities between the two. Both were born into devout Hindu families – just that Gandhi’s family was well-off unlike Godse’s. Both led austere and self-effacing lives. Godse was a step ahead of Gandhi – he remain celibate all through his life. Both wanted to help the downtrodden ...

I feel a book is great if it inspires and urges you to read more on the same topic due to the sheer grip it has on the mind while you read it. For me, “The Great Indian Novel” did exactly that. It motivated me to read not only about Mahabharata but also about Indian struggle for Independence. Shashi Tharoor did a wonderful job of mixing two of the most important epics from Indian history/mythology – Mahabharata and Indian Struggle for Independence. In the book, there is a close resemblance between different characters from Mahabharata and those from Indian freedom movement. Resemblance is so close that often you end up pronouncing the actual names rather than the ones given in the book! For instance, I often pronounced “Gangaji”, who is Bhishma from Mahabharata – as “Gandhiji”. Tharoor has made absolutely no efforts at hiding the identity of the characters. For example, Gangaji is Gandhiji (pretty obvious), Dhritarashtra is Nehru, Vidura is Vallabhai Patel, Pandu is Subash Chandr...