'Criti....que not Criti....cize'

The Feast of Roses by Indu Sundaresan My rating: 5 of 5 stars 'Arjumand did not know that Khurram would build the Taj Mahal in her memory. Or that the Taj would come to symbolize this land her grandfather had adopted as his own. Or that as much as she had envied that feast of roses Emperor Jahangir had laid out for her aunt, posterity would remember her , Empress for four short years, two, three, even five hundred years from now.' The above lines say so much about 'The Feast of Roses' that couldn't have been described better. It is the tale of the twentieth wife of Jehangir, the Moghul king of India. It traces her journey from her wedding, her turmoils, her various strengths to her minor faults that were only humane and unavoidable under the circumstances she was in. The Feast of Roses is the second installment of the Taj Mahal Trilogy , second to The Twentieth Wife and followed by The Shadow Princess. This was after long that I read a masterp...

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” ― Cormac McCarthy , No Country for Old Men Luck is a term that is often misconceived. Often as we venture out on this journey of life, we get to know that luck is indeed a very debatable term. Good luck, bad luck and ‘I-don’t-know-why- luck -doesn’t-favour-me’ luck, it’s all a part and parcel of life. Just like we all have our good and bad hair days, we encounter those moments when we start appreciating what is often called sheer luck. Maarten De Jonge, a cyclist, evaded death on both of the flights after booking tickets for MH370 and MH17. His last minute change in plan has kept him alive to tell the story today. How else can this man’s life story be interpreted as? Death was a silent spectator, trying to encompass him in its grip but here he was, thanking his stars for being in his favour. Call it God’s magic wand (if someone or something like that exists) or call it just a co-incidence, life can th...

Trust: Pandora's Box by Cristiane Serruya My rating: 4 of 5 stars 'The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.' This line refuses to leave my mind. the last page has been turned and the tear drops have been shed. I sit thinking about the joy and sorrow of the very lives led by the characters of the book. Suddenly there was a void. Sophia, Alistair, Gabriela, Nathalie, Ethan... it felt as if I was going to leave them all in the confines of the book. That's when I remembered Cristiane Serruya's words-"It was as if when I finished their stories I had set them free. They are not mine anymore, they belong to the world and I can still be with them whenever I want." Read more about the interview here .  The demons from within each one of them were finally released, but at what cost? Love, as they say it, is all-sacrificing and all-consuming. Or is it? Love can be an obsession that can endanger one's life. Heat, passion a...

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards My rating: 4 of 5 stars Pictures are all that we have of fleeting seconds that are captured for a long, long time yet a photograph is not enough... It is life that is even more beautiful- life in motion ! An amazingly written story with precisely clear detailing, the author stunned me with her deftness with the use of words. The 'Memory Keeper's' Daughter is but an apt title because the entire story revels in the beauty of photographs- painstakingly captured and then developed in a dark room by a man who found peace in that very room alone. Or was it that in that room alone did he find the remnants of a moment that occurred in the past? He so wanted to capture a bigger moment, perhaps to make amends or maybe just to overwrite the tale his destiny seemed to have had written. The 'Memory Keeper' could unfortunately not click pictures of the most priced possession. The melancholy that refuses to leave...

Wow! The tickets were finally booked and this time it was not to Kerala (my native-place) first. Phew! This would be an adventure of sorts. So my blackmailing had worked. Or so I can say. Did you ask me the trick? Well, I just told that if we were going to board the same train to see the same coconut trees then I would rather bear the Mumbai heat (it's another story that I love to enjoy the sight of the coconut trees and the gold mannequins- the latter was a bit over-the-top but nevertheless almost true!).Take a look at the 'mangalsutras' of Keralite women and you would know what I mean when I say GOLD. So I was busy asking anyone and everyone who had been to Chennai about the weather, places to visit, specialties and the like. The one common thing that I got to hear was - "Are you crazy? Why would any sane person go to Chennai in May, out of all months?" I said, "The tickets have already been booked and we have no intention of cancelling it. Moreover I...

He did engineering but is working in an MNC doing Management. She studied Physics and now she is earning through her artworks. He was supposed to be this generation's Einstein, wonder what he is doing there drawing graffiti! Sounds too familiar, isn't it?  Switching careers seems to be on the rise now. Or was it like this, always? I think about it and I realize that maybe I was too young to understand why an uncle who had specialized in dissecting cadavers had started a Motor Driving School ( is dissecting cadavers and the machine equivalent?) - question from a long while ago that stayed with me. The reasons unfurled bit by bit for me. An experience it was- for sure!  All I wish for is freedom for every individual to choose what he/she wants to do in life and what to make of it. To make or break it should entirely be the individual's choice. Trust me, it isn't so easy, especially in a country like India, where the sons and daughters never really grow up ...

It's a narrow road that separates myself from the school where I spent a major part of my life for eight years. 8 years? Four years ago, I had said my goodbyes to the very trees, the building, the teachers, the laboratories (that was more of a phew-I-don't-have-to-see-you-again' goodbye when it came to the labs). We shifted our house about two weeks ago. I had texted one of my school friends to tell that now I wake up to the view of our dear school. Pat came her message- 'Hey Girl! This is destiny. When you were in school, you came by school bus. You landed up infront of school during your Masters.Woah!' It felt alright. My grandma nudged me when I stood at the balcony this evening asking me, "When did you join this school?" "When I passed to standard fourth." "8 years? That's a pretty long time!" "Whatever!" (That's not an arrogant, ugly dialogue but a result of it being repeated in ...