A Mirror- Tales of 2015

Shrug your shoulders and close the browser window right away if you are curious to read sad or happy TALES of my life's last year in this post. Read ahead, otherwise :)

Like every other year, 2015 was also bundled with ample of events, learning, peaks and valleys, success and failure, cheers and tears for me. I am listing down 12 of my take-aways, you may assume one per month. Although this does not have real examples or incidences stated along with, but trust me, every nook and cranny of this is entirely real to me.

1) Smile. Happiness is not a sin, sadness is not a virtue. Happiness comes at a cost and sadness comes for free. People in the world have enough problems to deal with. No one likes sad faces either. As my favorite quote from Dale Carnegie is- "It is so, it can't be otherwise." You do not own all the problems in the world.

2) Read as much as you can. Reading is to mind what exercise is to body. Reading a good book is like an entourage to another world that lies amidst the pages of the book. Fiction is a striking means to live all the characters that you couldn't have lived in this one life. I have detailed my thoughts on this in a post- Bibliobibuli yesterday.

3) Never get disheartened. When one door closes other opens, fall seven times stand up eight. You may not always get what you please, but keep going and wait for the magnum opus to come your way.

4) Music heals. Listen to your favorite music each day and soak yourself into the hymns and the lyrics of the symphony.

5) Exercise. You cannot take care of others if you do not take care of yourself. You cannot make others happy if you aren't happy. You cannot keep others healthy if you aren't in the pink of health. On the same verge, I strongly advocate that one must follow an exercise routine. Watch out the internet for various ways to stay fit- may it be an exercise regime, ergonomics at work, or certain foods to include in your regular diet.

6) Meditate. Spend some time in solitaire every day. Ponder over the day's activities. Meditation has powerful impact on the mind, body and soul as a respite from the stressful routines that we have.

7) Pray. Whatever religion you belong to, whatever be your ethnicity or faith, believe that there is someone who has a greater responsibility of you. And that One will always take care of you. Leave yourself in the God's hands and have faith that all that is happening to you is his will.

8) Accept what you cannot change. I know most people like me have the desire to procure the knowledge of what fate has in it's store for them. But let things happen as they are, go with the flow, for whatever has to happen will happen anyway. Do not attempt to fast forward life to see if your current situation or deeds are worth in the end.

9) Learn from other's mistakes. You do not live long enough to make all mistakes by yourself. Be a good observer, see people around you, talk to them, participate in discussions. You'll always get to learn something from someone or an incident. Be receptive.

10) Friend to all is a friend to none. Have some good buddies in your trunk of acquaintances. It's good to know many people and to be known by all, but keep a few aside whom you can confide in at anytime. The other day, I read a quote on twitter- "Dosto, hansne me to bahut saath nibhaaya tumne, aaj mera mann rone ka hai..." (Friends, you accompanied me well while I was merry, what if today I want to weep.)

11) When you are speaking, you are repeating what you already know. But when you are listening, you are learning something new. Hone your listening skills. Moreover, it is not always mandatory that you win every argument.

12) Use your anger wisely. It can do miracles. Anger impairs our judgement, and foresight. Get motivation from what makes you angry and drive it in the right direction.

I hope that 2016 dawns upon me and everyone in a happy, healthy and successful manner. Keep learning.

Happy New Year :)

I’m sharing my #TalesOf2015 with BlogAdda.

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Book Review: Scion Of Ikshvaku

This is a book from author of the Shiva Trilogy- Amish, and is the first in the Ram Chandra series. 

The cover of this book is appealing, and the plot is promising. The author's way of writing is one of its kind. He picks up godlike characters from Indian mythology, and portrays them as humans- the extra ordinary humans, and their society as rational, real and scientific. I have also read Shiva Trilogy by Amish, and it draws analogy to the way of living and philosophies from that series. I am awed at how beautifully he links the two series by giving a hint that Ram Chandra dreams of a civilization like Meluha, and on the other hand, Shiva Trilogy has various mentions of the way of living inspired by Ram Chandra. He has also connected well the Vayupurtas and Nagas here. 

The characterization is flawless, and the plot contemplates a different philosphy. To most of the people including me, Ramayan is not as interesting as Mahabharata. But Amish has imagined it well, and carved his version out of the epic. We live in the era of remixes, this holds true for Amish's books as well!

Special applause for the section on the gangrape case which drew analogy from the Nirbhaya case, and the punishment which was administered to the perpetrators, esp. the justice delivered to the juvenille. A book covering the contemporary world's vices, providing exemplary solutions, driving the readers' empathy perfectly, and wisely including that as a part of the age old epic like this deserves acclaim.

When we are speaking about Ramayan, it is ceremonial to talk about the prime characters- Sita and Ram. Ram's role is perfectly articulated- the legendary man, the law abiding member of the royal clan of Ikshvaku, jeweled with clarity of thoughts and a loyal, loving husband. Complementing him well, unlike other versions of Ramayan which showcase Sita as the abla-naari (the helpless lady), Amish portrays her as a strong, powerful warrior and a witty lady, who is the Prime Minister at her father's kingdom and later a perfect better half to her husband. 

The original legend shows Ram as the descendant of King Raghu (Raghukul), but this book tells us that it was Ikshvaku who founded the dynasty and hence, he's the Scion of Ikshvaku.

Moreover, Ravana the Demon becomes an exploiting business tycoon. Manthra, the poor maid in Ramayan becomes a powerful merchant. Vishwamitra, the sage, becomes a conspiring sarcastic leader of Malayaputra clan. The continued depiction of various demigods with special features as Naga is interesting. Jatayu becomes a Naga and so would anyone with any resemblance to other animals.

The first half of the book could have been shortened. But the second half was speedy, captivating and well articulated. Even after having read, heard, watched as multiple TV serials and movies through years, I could still discover a lot in this book, because it is believable. 

A few not-so-good things-

1) Roshni is an Urdu word. How could Indians name their daughter with an Urdu name dates back when there was no mark of a Muslim in their vicinity? Also, this character must be imaginary since best to my knowledge, Ram had no Rakhi sister.

2) The use of word Dada for elder brother looked quite perky when it comes to picturesque of Sanskrit speaking society. 

3) Although they do not take the name of Krishna but often mention about Dwarka and the Yadav clan having existed decades back, which is confusing, since it is believed that Ram existed prior to Krishna and that Krishna is the last incarnation of Vishnu as yet.

My expectations from the subsequent books in the series would be -

1) How the story unfolds whence Amish's Sita unleashes her power in front of the demon Raavan (and not the abla-naari awaiting and solely relying on her husband to rescue her)

2) How Amish's Ram Chandra shapes the Meluhan way of living for the "Immortals of Meluha", and I believe this will come when Ram rules the throne of Ayodhya, and in turn, the Sapt Sindhu.

My verdict- It's a simple yet refreshing read for the contemporary generation. I rate it 4 on 5.

This book is special for me because it came as a birthday gift and won me a chance to meet Amish via Flipkart editors (which, unfortunately I could not avail).

(PS: the reviews expressed here are based on my personal reading experience, and do not intend to defame, derate or 

degrade the sale or vice-versa for the book. I am not paid for writing the review.)

If you are an author and want your book to be reviewed, drop an email at bookreviews@mansiladha.com.

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Bibliobibuli

Initially, I used to force myself upon books in order to be able to become a better writer. A renowned journalist once told me that to write well, you need to read more and more. In one of the recent talks that I attended of Chetan Bhagat, he gave the same answer to my question on advice for aspiring writers. Another author, Preeti Shenoy replied to the same question to me over twitter, with the same answer.

Reading a good book is like an entourage to another world that lies amidst the pages of the book. With this newly developed addiction, I have turned voracious now. Reading is wonderful. Exemplary. Ecstatic. Pious.

I do not defer with the majority's views who say it is investment wastage of time on reading. Contradictory to this my instincts say paradise would be some kind of library. I have never grown so mature in my entire life as I did in the last few years since I started reading. Then I was literate, now I am educated. One humorous quote on the web stated- Every time you watch a reality show, a book commits suicide.

 Also, as Richard Peck quotes- I read because, one life is not enough. For the same reasons, I read to live all the characters from different periods, places, moods, professions, ethnicity, religions, virtues, lifestyles- all of this I can't live in this one life. While reading, I live in a different body, at a different place, with different people. The more I read, the more I learn and eventually, the more I grow.

To me, books are -

1) Teachers, companions, magicians, an unabridged universe, and nonchalantly- a means to escape from reality.
2) The most loyal friends of mine- they never ditch, they never abandon me, never lie, enrich my very being, and accept me as I am.

For every mortal who hasn't yet realized this, I playfully say, it's better to have your nose in a book than in someone else's business!

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Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

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Uncle, Aunty aur Audience- The "Dilwale"

My definition of Dilwale- Udti hui saree aur lambi si gaadi, or lambi si saree aur udti hui gaadi... 

Let me end this post with some key notes on the movie-

Two 50 somethings dancing, bouncing and romancing on the screen.  Salt on scars (jale par namak) is Varun Dhawan's overacting sprinkled with terrible dialogues like- ab meri bhi shaadi hogi, mera bhi honeymoon hoga. What laurels are you bringing to your father's name!?  Garnished by Kriti Sanon's blundered extra-innocence, all she had to do was to look beautiful.

Ghosshhhh! pardon me SRK and Kajol fans, but this movie crossed the limit of my tolerance. I would repent forever at the moment I decided to watch Dilwale, just because I couldn't get tickets of Bajirao's next n number of shows!

Hum sharif kya hue puri duniya hi badmaash ho gayi- Every fifth contact of mine on Whatsapp had set this as status for a week or so, which apparently happens to be SRK's dialogue spoken at an unrelated point of time in the movie. 

Grandeur of sets, expensive vehicles, overpaid but under-utilized foreign locations, gaudy attires, mediocre plot, nonsensical dialogues, idiotic comedy, a-little-more-than-average music, overacting by every actor, Goa-but-almost-no-beaches- were the only flaws in the movie. Rest of it was hilarious (if anything is left)!

It felt to me like one day those people met over coffee and decided- chalo ek movie banate hai (come on, let's make a movie), and they ended up in this overrated crap. Selling the tickets at high prices and earning huge amount of money is not so astonishing phenomenon. Eventually, they call it a grand success on box office. Dear Rohit Shetty, do you even know they just released a rotten movie on your name...? You must be in coma by now upon knowing how they spoiled your repo...

Someone go and tell the not-so-old Aunty and Uncle (you-know-who), that they have now aged enough to play the roles of Mom-Dad and must quit romancing on the melodious numbers like Gerua. Paying hundreds of bucks and not even gaining a penny's worth of entertainment turned me furious. I wish I could paste a print out of this post outside every box office in my city and rescue the innocent audience from the torture beforehand.

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Birthday Special- 2015

I've heard someone recite- "बचपन में लोग पूछते थे - बड़े हो कर क्या बनना है... जवाब अब मिला- फिर से बच्चा बनना है |"

It's almost the end of the day, to be specific- my birthDAY and by the time I hit "Publish", it would be 19th December. It was a fun filled day, mainly owing to ample of wishes that kept pouring in since 12 midnight! I am ecstatic to have such wonderful folks (family, friends, relatives and colleagues) around.

Is your mind buzzing to ask how old did I turn today? Amusingly, my answer is-"an year younger than you..." :) Jokes apart, age is just a number! To temporarily transform my two digit age into a single digit age and to rejuvenate the spirit of childhood in people around me I offered toffees to my colleagues at work. To my surprise, it was received well, and all enjoyed relishing the flavors of the simplest childhood memories.

Later in the day, I was gyrating my thoughts to that period of time when -

our biggest troubles were a broken pencil or a lost eraser,
the harshest punishment we could give to each other was a katti,
we were not supposed to be well-behaved, well-dressed or well-versed,
we were free of the social taboos,
discipline only implied finger-on-your-mouth in the classroom,
butterflies brought sparkle to our eyes,
between day and night was an eminent sunset,
we never had to remind ourselves to keep-the-child-in-us-alive,
messy hair and dirty feet were absolutely fine,
'Chinese whispers' was nothing more but a non-toxic game,
piggy bank was the treasure,
I-am-gonna-tell-your-mom was the scariest sentence,
when moon-followed-our-car...,
ours was a selfless- selfie-less image,
technology didn't take over...

...and the list shall keep flooding.

We didn't realize we were building a pile of memories while we were growing up, and that we are still doing that.

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Book Review: The Bestseller She Wrote

I received this book as a part of a Book Review Programme by Blogadda.

First things first! Who says that Indian authors don't write well. The standards of this book match to that of foreign authors. Ravi Subramanian- as his bio states on Goodreads, has been a banker and now a best selling author. For that matter, his stories revolve around the lives of bankers, including this one. This enhances my firm belief that a fiction can never be entirely a fiction, and is eventually real life plus some necessary exaggeration. Had the author been staying in a village, his fiction would have been based on poverty, sustenance, child marriage (a wild guess).

The thickness of the ~400 pages' novel initially scared me, but once I took a dive into it, I couldn't resist ecstasy of reading, credits to the wit of the author. This was an UNPUTDOWNABLE book (as in one of the dialogues!)

About the plot- Its a thriller wherein the protagonist Shreya is the apparent antagonist. Aditya Kapoor has authored several bestselling novels and also is a successful banker, an IIM Bengaluru passout. He leads a near perfect professional and personal life at 40 something, with a high rank banking job, a writing career and a loving wife and son. That's when Shreya steps in their lives as a fresh Management trainee from his alma mater. She is recruited by Aditya and his HR friend Sanjay for his bank. She is a psyco, cold blooded, muti-faceted, extremely attractive, obsessive girl, who is a voracious reader and aspires to become a bestselling author like Aditya, whom she uses to get her dream come true (my discreet biasness right from the first few chapters against her ). She goes to the extent of seducing him with her youth and leading him to an extra marital dalliance, showing no signs of guilt. Sanjay has an important role to play in the whole span of the story. Unfortunately, I can't disclose everything here, since that would be unfair. The rest of the story is about the romance, conspiracy, trust mistrust, lie truth, heartbreak, adultery, fame, suffering and the tables turning at the end of it all. All it lacked is background music!

Looking at the cons of the novel- It is very lengthy, with 392 pages from cover to cover. Shreya and Aditya's romance could have been cut short as per me.

Aspiring writers can relate well to the process of book writing, publishing and marketing covered throughout. The crux of the whole plot is skewed in the last 75 pages, every moment of reading which was breathtaking. Aditya's speech at the end stole the show. An alternate title could have been- "Victory of Good Over Evil", based on the obvious and inevitable happy ending.

The author has spun the story very well, accompanied by rich vocabulary. The cover page reads- SOON TO BE A MOTION PICTURE. I must say this book deserves to be a motion picture, however, it requires some more mirch masala (and cutting short the intimate scenes) in order to expand the audience base.

My verdict- Overall, I would rate it as 4 on 5 stars and recommend it for any of those who are interested in thrillers; have the capacity to read a thick book; are aspiring writers; have the wit to relish smart plots; some scenes on adultery don't bother them and who want to learn to understand the sour facet of the human race.

I am reviewing ‘The Bestseller She Wrote’ by Ravi Subramanian as a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

If you are an author and want your book to be reviewed, drop an email at bookreviews@mansiladha.com.

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Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
-Marc and Angel

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Book Review: 99 Thoughts on GANESHA

Upon reading the title, one may assume initially that it is perhaps a compilation of hymns or folklore on Ganesha. Well, not truly. Its far more than that.

The author- Devdutt Patnaik is a mythologist. He has written several other books on Hindu mythology focusing on the rational part of it, with a consolidation of all the relevant information.

Ganesha is who is one of the most celebrated and beloved gods pan India. About him, not much is known to people, except for stories revolving around how he came into existence, and that he is worshiped before doing anything afresh.

In this book, Devdutt Patnaik has penned down an account comprising Ganesha's creation, the rituals associated with him, the literature, symbols, festivals, history, stories, etc.- most of which was not unveiled in so simple manner yet (best to my knowledge). It contains a brief of each of them, leaving the rest to the reader's zeal of exploration.

Even after including such vast fountain on information, this book is a precise, concise and quick read. In general, the chapters not inter-related, can be read from anywhere. Every chapter has wonderful illustrations to provide a better insight into the respective section. Regarding the text- it contains simple vocabulary, meticulously articulated, suited to the contemporary generation who escape from reading huge epics or upanishads.

The best part is that it doesn't aim at cultivating superstition, but seems to based on the available documentation and author's interpretation.

My only apprehension is that, unlike fiction based novels, the reader might not be able to retain and recall all this by reading only once. I rate it 4 on 5 stars. For those who are looking for enlightenment on mythology and are curious about Ganesha, must read this book.

(PS: the reviews expressed here are based on my personal reading experience, and do not intend to defame, derate or degrade the sale or vice-versa for the book. I am not paid for writing the reviews.)

If you are an author and want your book to be reviewed, drop an email at bookreviews@mansiladha.com.

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Book Review: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

This is one good novel by Robin Sharma- the motivational speaker, first published in 1997. This is his first book, after which he has penned down various others in the same genre. He is also a keynote speaker at various seminars.

They say- "Motivation doesn't last daily. Well, neither does bathing, that's why we recommend it daily." This book is a dosage of motivation to fulfill your dreams and reaching your destiny.

I am sure I am too late in reading this book- one, because this was published when I was a kid; two, because I read other motivational fables prior to this. Owing to both the reasons, much of the wisdom covered here already occurred to me with other texts. Nevertheless, human brain requires frequent revision!

It comes along with preaching, principles and paradigms to be what you are destined to be; to attain your goals; awaken your soul; stay healthy, wealthy and content. I am proud that some of the paradigms are engraved in my mind now. My rating is 3.5!

A few minus points: I believe is that it isn't able to capture consistent attention, especially of a mischievous mind like mine. It doesn't captivate my senses, and I had to compel myself to keep reading. Reasons may be that the story wasn't woven as a definite fiction, but most of it was a conversation. The lessons kept pouring in as answers to Frequently Asked Questions, along with the typically designed terminologies and very little examples. I guess I kept comparing the content with that of others like How to Stop Worrying And Start Living, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, Eat That Frog, The Secret, which are also aimed towards self-improvement.

Nevertheless, the Odyssey is a good read for those who are looking for a life of purpose.

(PS: the reviews expressed here are based on my personal reading experience, and do not intend to defame, derate or degrade the sale or vice-versa for the book. I am not paid for writing the reviews.)

If you are an author and want your book to be reviewed, drop an email at bookreviews@mansiladha.com.

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