MellowDrama

A book that will tug at your heart because of the subject that forms its crux and the way with which it has been dealt with. A light read that is not hollow and the writing which is Oh-so-perfect! ********************************************************** 'It Ends With Us' is a beautiful love story between a man and a woman and also between a mother and her child. The story takes place in Boston and the city plays an integral part in the novel.  Maine girl, Lucy Bloom, has a passion for gardening and hates her wife beater of a father. She meets a hunk on the day her father is buried and she has almost run away from his funeral after delivering a disastrous eulogy. He has all the qualities of an Mills and Boons hero plus Ryle Kincaid is a neurosurgeon. But it is the two different things that they both want which squish the chance of them being together. So after the first very dazzling meeting on a rooftop, they both meet each other after some six months when Lucy ha

The story of a trained warrior, Sita, who also is the Princess-Prime Minister of Mithila and chosen to be the next Vishnu- the transformer- who opts to partner with another Vishnu candidate, Ram, by marrying him but is abducted before is able to put any plans into action. Review The world is going crazy reading and reviewing the books shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and I have just finished reading Amish' Sita- Warrior of Mithila. I had seen it being talked about on social media in the feminist circles but did not have much desire to read it. But the truth of the matter is that I did get down to it. I think the cover clinched it for me. So back to the Warrior (I like the omission of the word princess) Sita. The book Sita is as well know a fictionalised account of the leading lady of Valmiki's Ramayan. In this world of Amish's, there are no Gods or unknown powers. He has managed to humanise everyone. From the trio of Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh to Devi. He gives th

A book that will leave your palms sweaty, fill you with fear and rage but which will then, also soothe you down and offer some answers via the word of the warrior Guru, on whose life and legend this is based upon. Review A nine year old boy is brought the severed head of his father. Guru Gobind Rai ascended the throne after his father Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded on the orders of the Mughal king Aurangzeb. The tenth Sikh Guru transformed the land of Punjab and through his touch the common men of the villages of modern day Northern plains became lions, Singhs.   The book, The Sacred Sword , follows the life and legend of Guru Gobind Singh. This fictional account of Guru’s life takes us from Chandni Chowk in Delhi, where the beheading of his father took place, to Nanded, where the warrior Guru breathed his last. In between we witness how he transforms into a great leader training his people for a war that was thrust on him, a gallant fighter who was an ace marksman

Ah! what a lovely book it is. A Dog's Purpose is the story of a dog who keeps taking birth again and again and is unable to understand that even after being around a boy through his growing up years and after being a police dog who helped find and save lives, why is he born over and over again. What could be the purpose of his existence? While he grapples with the question, the dog, over a few lives learns various skills which help him actually realise his purpose. He goes through a range of emotions, meets nice people, is born in the home of an indifferent  Colnoel and bumps into some not-so-nice people. The book is written in first person and that makes it an all the more interesting read. His life isn't monotonous at all, especially as the police dog and the author communicates all this very well via the dog. He can do all the things that dogs are known to do but if you are not much of a dog person then this is an eye opener into how much the dogs as animals can perceiv

The book had been borrowed after I finished reading The Krishna Key. Something or the other kept coming up and I could not settle down with the book. But then I decided to take my life in my own hands and managed to wade through this massive book (441 pages plus some more, bibliography etc).  Now you might wonder why am I using this particular verb- wade. If you are anything like me and have a thing for pace or a mother of two with limited access to 'me time' which you spend on reading rather than getting your eyebrows shaped then that is what I suggest you do, if the book is on your to-read list. The book has interesting portions and some information that any history lover would love but other than the author makes you work hard for the money you have spent on it. The story follows two tracks; one in present day India, where a girl child Chandini, from a Kanpur slum is polished to become the PM of the country, by her mentor who had found (dug out literally) an inscription wit

This is the first book in the Vish Puri series and I unfortunately read it after I had read The Case of the Love Commandos. Had I read it before I would have been even more favourably inclined towards the author. To cut a long story short, this is a much more lovable book then the previous one and something gives me a feeling that all the other ones after this, as wel.. So without much ado, here is what I thought of the plot, characters and the writing in the book, "The Case of the Missing Servant". A servant goes amiss and the employer- an upright lawyer in Rajasthan- is charged with her murder. When our hero, 'the' Vish Puri of Most Private Investigators starts on the job, he has nothing to go on with. The lawyer's wife and others in the household can't help him beyond the missing servant's name. They did not know where she came from and of course where had she mysteriously disappeared to. The only thing he finds in the servant quarter that she occu

Umm.....The book makes for a light reading. If you are an Indian reading this book, chances are you will be supremely impressed by Mr. Hall's knowledge (or research) on Indian towns and how things work here. I may add here that he is a British journalist living now in India with his wife. That said, I found the book enjoyable to a great extent but also found some bits and parts quite irritating.  The most enjoyable things first. The caste of characters and their names. Consider these- Facecream, Flush and Tubelight. The plot is thick and quite absorbing. You do want to find out what is going on with the characters and do want to get to the bottom of things. The plot takes you from Khan Market in New Delhi to a pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi to the villages of UP. The author is very particular about the details of the gulleys and the lanes that he mentions in the story and I felt as if he might have visited each one of them standing there thinking about how to further the pl

I have been on sort of a reading spree. In the past one month alone I have managed to finish reading the Grey series, The Time Keeper, A Thousand Splendid Suns, After the Darkness, as well as a Mary Higgins Clark suspense thriller All Through The Night (Though I neither found it suspenseful nor thrilling.) I had started Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti (OLoAB) before all of these. I read about ten pages and thought it to be one of those books that I would not be able to read or even skim. After putting it down for a month I picked it up to lend it to someone who wants to read it and I thought I might as well take out my bookmark. As I was taking out the bookmark I read the page it was placed on and for a strange reason I was hooked to the book. This re-affirms my faith in the fact that it is neither too late nor too early, everything happens in its own right time- a point that echoes in Mitch Albom's The Time Keeper (I loved the book and found what creative writing is about, but that

There are those like me who sit and think of starting a writing project. Then there are those who go ahead with the plot, write and get that sweet sweet word on to their CVs- PUBLISHED. Arti Arlene Martyris belongs to this second category. She not only has two published books under her belt but one of these has been self published. Here is more from her on being published. Hi Arti! take us to the beginning of the beginnings. Hi! I  belong to Goa. Writing was a hobby until  my first story, 'Trauma' was published in an anthology by Writing  Knights Press, Ohio, USA, in 2012. Then a poem,  'Am I No More Human?' was published by Indian Ink, a bimonthly  magazine based in Kerala, India. Now my first romance novella 'Facebook  Pyar' has been published by Indireads Incorporated and Rabia of Chakia is  my first self-published romantic adventure novella. What is the storyline of  Rabia of Chakia? Like I mentioned earlier  Rabia of Chakia is a romantic

I feel strongly about a line from Thomas Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College. The poet writes ‘where Ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise’. In an idyllic setting I would associate this entire line with basking under the sun on a small hill top watching clouds float and sheep graze at a distance though in day to day life I often quote the half of it- ‘ignorance is bliss’. And I thought of this line very often while reading Moni Mohsin’s The Diary of a Social Butterfly (TDSB). Butterfly is a socialite and is blissfully ignorant about her own inanities. Moni Mohsin is a journalist who wrote a column by the same name in Pakistan’s Friday Times. This book is a selection of these very column entries. The 220 page book at Rs 199 is fully paisa vasool. The diary is set up in modern day Pakistan. It though records the social hits and misses of Butterfly, is a commentary, actually a satirical commentary, on the state of affairs in large. Butterfly has no clue about

In t h e year 1990 I was probably running down the tea gardens outside my house in gay abandon. In the year 1990 a 14 year old boy and his community were forced in to an exile which they have still not managed to come out of. ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots, The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits’ is a memoir written by Rahul Pandita, a Kashmiri Pandit and a journalist. The 256 pages of the book and the timeline at the end of the book tell a tale that many of us are familiar with but vaguely. In ‘us’ I refer to people who have known that Kashmir has faced problem (s), thanks to TV and the newspapers and that a certain Pandit community faced exodus years ago.   The memoirs are moving and it is not just in the way they have been written. The stories of brutality, atrocities on men, women and children, episodes and incidents that have been narrated are gut wrenching and heart pulling. There is kindness also but largely there is blood and hunger and loss. This sense of loss that t

I could only go to the Kolkata Book Fair that ended yesterday... well yesterday.  I had made promises to myself and the husband that I will just go and look. I believed in my promise earnestly whereas he gave me the all-knowing smile and the nod of head which when I later ruminated over was meant to convey 'yes, yes we will see'. Anyway, there I was at the book fair sans the husband and the child. I entered the grounds with the stroll of someone who was on no agenda and was free to turn back and go any moment. Instead (and I do not really know how it happened) I spent around four hours bought 12 books of various size, colour, shape and subject. I did not realise when that aimless stroll of mine gained purpose. Maybe it was the need to cover every possible hall and stall or maybe it was the intention of checking out all the offers of the last day. I got drawn in by the books would be an understatement. I should probably say I was under the spell. This does not mean I regr

It was a fine evening when a green package arrived at my door step. I was super excited as I tore it open and found a treasure inside. The treasure- the books – were sent by the Bangalore based publishers Pratham Books who were encouraging people to conduct a story telling programme on the World Literacy Day. And with just that much I became a Pratham Books’ Champions . The book reading was to be conducted on September 8 which fell on a Saturday. I had decided to conduct the story telling session at my house and had duly called up all the mommies around me, who I knew would be and should be excited by the prospect of a story session. Though the day had dawned bright and gay, by the time evening arrived, the rain gods seemed a wee bit unhappy. That, however, did not dampen the enthusiasm that had built inside the Sood household with the husband helping with shifting the furniture to make ample room for jumpy kids and Netra donning her brand new lehenga to essay the role of Sushee