MellowDrama

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

When I was growing up in a small town in Himachal Pradesh in the 80s, there were no fans and really not much electricity around. A power cut instead of being a threat to mental peace was a delightful exit into a world of fantasy and rhythm. Here is a peek into my childhood “Oh when I look back now That summer seemed to last forever And if I had the choice Ya - I'd always wanna be there Those were the best days of my life” When I see my 8 year old daughter with her nose deep down in an electric gadget I can’t do more than sigh. It is so difficult to persuade kids these days to step outside of the four walls giving up the comfort of an air conditioned room and the plush mattress under their derriere. Maybe it has been forever like that. Maybe even my parents had to face some sort of resistance when they would ask me to take my nose out of a book and go skip, hop and jump. Maybe and just maybe I am being paid back in kind!! Growing up in the 80s in a small town in Himachal

Imagine this scenario.  You are working on your laptop or in your kitchen on perfecting a recipe. You are a picture of concentration and focus. There is Zen like atmosphere around you. You are calmly forging ahead on your path. But then the very silence that was helping you work dedicatedly gives you shivers. You remember that for the last five minutes maybe seven, you haven’t heard your baby. Yes, you have also come out from Zen-o-sphere and remembered that you are a parent. If you actually have baby/ babies you will  know where I am getting, but for the uninitiated, let me tell you that no sound from an active, awake baby for more than a couple of minutes is a sure sign of trouble. In times like this, I think, mothers from all over the world are grateful to the fellow who invented the squeaky shoes. The ones that go chooon choooon and chooooon. These are the shoes that look so pretty and are lightweight but have real ammo- the sound, the alarm bell. Those shoes, my friend, ar

My daughter goes to learn Kathak. I wasn't very enthusiastic about the classes at the beginning. No, don't get me wrong. I am all for arts. I love dance and music myself and I always have wanted that my children should learn to do something amazing with their bodies and I think dance makes for a great starting point. Neither am I one of the few who would scoff at the cultural heritage of the country or someone who preferred the western ways more. I am a mother of two, aged 9 and 2 and when she announced she wanted to learn kathak, I just did not have it in me to take her for a weekly class, some 5 kms away from my house. My reluctance also arose from the fact that previous such endeavours (I started her on Bharatnatyam when she was 4/5). The weekly class had become a thorn in my side. She would not want to go to that class which was happening almost next door. She would cry and cry till the time I threw my hands in despair and gave up. It must have been some 8 classes spre

Amusing it is how a father is often concerned with how the child will make the ends meet while the mother has sleepless nights pondering whether the child will forever able to meet her eye in the mirror. There must be stories of role reversal. I wish I had the resources to say to my children, "Go on. Live. Don't follow the masses. See the world. Witness the miracles that exist in a day." Wo kaun se log hote hain who know what they want to make of their life. How do they know it? Where do they get the strength to do what the heart wishes for?

I am always in awe of any kind of music that I hear. To me music remains the magic paintbrush with which the child painted what he wished for. I have grown up listening to film music and very old English numbers which when I go to hunt online I don't find. I can't lay any sort of claim to classical music or instrumental music of great repute but I like to think that I do have discerning ear. But the post isn't about my musical ability or inclination. It is about what I felt today as I listened to some song being played on the TV as I was busy pushing some khichdi down my son's throat. I don't now remember whether it was a nice song or something terrible but I do remember feeling goosebumps. I realized that the seven notes were all that it took to create an array of emotions. Joy, love, horror, terror, fun, funny, childish, serious, beautiful, awful, fast paced, slow and delicious, and much much more. I also realised that the world over people have used these se

Exasperated mothers Trying mothers Mothers who have too much on their mind. Mothers who think cake counts as a meal. Mothers who worry too much. Mothers who fly away so that their kids might follow. Mothers who stay put so that that their kids might get a solid platform. Mothers who love without being ever seen or heard. Mothers who let their children know they are there and theirs. Mothers who feed. Mothers who eat. Mothers who bleed. Mothers who get readily cut up. Mothers who become fathers, storytellers, advisors and sounding boards. Mothers who never get asked for their preferences or opinions. Mothers who are teachers. Mothers who are learners. Mothers who mother and mothers who smother. Tired mothers. Fresh as  a daisy mothers Yummy mummies, sporty mummies Mummies with tummies Tummy filling mummies every girl who becomes a mother lives life on the edge of a sword always on the verge of forgetting who she is and yet not having that luxury of forgettin

What do you write when you want to write? When there are precious moments of solitude And no distractions When there is a story bubbling inside of you And the ending lures you into reading those of others When days have passed without having had a conversation Though there are plenty of subjects But there is a dearth of subjects that  matter What do you write when your memory fails And you can't recall exactly whether it was the month of June or July The 20th or the 22nd The tale of which you want to relate What do you write when you want to write About the burning desires And glorious goals Of which you have little knowledge left What do you write when there is stillness all around you But you yearn for some noise

Whenever people, especially us north Indians and those not from the IT industry, think of moving up in the work ladder and look at cities we might have to relocate you can be sure that it would either be Delhi or Mumbai. I could have even forgotten that there was a city named Kolkata. And while we were leading a comfortable life in the country's most planned city, the city of gardens aka Chandigarh, Calcutta made way in to our lives and today after four years I wonder if it would be wrong to say that all hell broke lose. So it happened and within fifteen days we went from living in the most planned city to probably the most chaotic city. Relocation is a real bummer. You are more alone than you could have bargained for, for many reasons. Initially when the stuff is in transit and there is no house to clean, co-ordinate and run, you are wowed but the wow soon turns in to a painful aoowwww. The spouse is busy, more busy than usual in getting acquainted with the work place and tak

There is no structure to the days. Was there one ever, I ask myself? I have never been the one for structure, a time table, a way of doing things. This has been a source of joy and distress at one and the same time.