There is nothing more satisfying than reading a book while sipping a hot cup of tea.
My Life My Rules: Stories of 18 Unconventional Careers by Sonia Golani My first read of the year 2020, the book charts the career of 18 individuals who shrugged off conventional wisdom by leaving highly-paid jobs and taking on something their heart desired: becoming a rock star, a food critic, a cricket commentator, a DJ, … Continue reading Three Non-Fictional Reads
aapbeeti: Kale Pani ki Karawas Kahani by Bhai ParmanandMy rating: 3 of 5 stars The writer was a Professor of Modern European History at National College, Lahore and thus was a teacher of Bhagat Singh and Sukhdev. This was his memoir of his days in captivity at the Andamans. The book was proscribed by the … Continue reading Review: aapbeeti: Kale Pani ki Karawas Kahani
Bandi Jeewan by Sachindra Nath SanyalMy rating: 4 of 5 stars The book which according to a British secret report sent "more young men to the jails and gallows than any other book" is a first-hand account of the revolutionary movement in India during the second and third decades of the twentieth century. Sachindranath Sanyal, … Continue reading A Revolutionary’s Life: Bandi Jeewan
The great events of world history are at bottom profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis the essential thing is the life of the individual. This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole hist. of the world ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these … Continue reading Reaction to Reading: FROM A CLEAR BLUE SKY: SURVIVING THE MOUNTBATTEN BOMB by TIMOTHY KNATCHBULL
Though it is one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, I have little idea about the war in Vietnam. What I know are the broadest of details: Vietnam (then called IndoChina) was a French colony. Sometime in the mid-twentieth century, the Vietnamese people under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh rose against their … Continue reading Lest We Forget: The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
It's that time of the year again. A day when I salute all those who laid their lives so that we could be born in a free country. This year too I am paying a homage to all those heroes by reviewing the books recently read on the revolutionary struggle for India's independence.JAB JYOTI JAGI … Continue reading 23rd March: A Remembrance in Books
Recently, I completed two books related to India (and England).The first one, Prison and Chocolate Cake, is a memoir by Nayantara Sahgal, chronicling her young days growing up during the Raj. As niece of independent India's first prime minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and daughter of India's first ambassador to the U.N., Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Nayantara … Continue reading Short Reviews: Prison and Chocolate Cake, and Forty Years of Test Cricket: India-England
Convents, monasteries, dargahs, mathhs, are places separated from the world. The deceit and falsehood that is so abundant in the outside world, one thinks, will never be able to penetrate those hallowed walls. Unfortunately, it does not happen. Greed, lust, corruption, everything seeps in; the only thing is that there is a veil of secrecy … Continue reading Review: Amen: The Autobiography of a Nun by Sister Jesme
James Edward Pirkey Jr. died on May 13, 1997. He was thirty-six years old, had never married and had no children. He had placed a gun to his head, and reached for the next level, the place where he hoped to meet the precious spirits already departed. This is the story of his life, of … Continue reading Entry Denied: Deb Simpson’s Closing the Gate
Ammi: letter to a democratic mother ‘…in the twentieth centurygrief lasts at most a year.’I have used this quote from the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet as a prelude to a small tale before I go on to the War in iraq. The reason I chose to use this quote is because I wonder how long … Continue reading Saeed Akhtar Mirza’s Ammi
a hot cup of pleasure 