Caught in a Moment of Magic
Something quite magical happened to me today. I was sitting on a bench in the neighborhood park, reading a few verses from Gitanjali amongst the birds and the wind and the trees, when a feeling of utter calm washed over me. I might have dissociated again but I felt so at ease with everything around… Continue Reading →
My reading journey
Unlike most people, reading isn’t something that was passed down to me by my parents or grandparents. It’s something I inculcated myself. I wasn’t the kid who went to the school library, nor did I have books at home. But I remember wanting to read because I felt drawn to books. I never went to… Continue Reading →
Orlando by Virginia Woolf – Review
It’s been about a month since I finished Orlando by Virginia Woolf and I still can’t bring myself to structure my thoughts on it in some semblance of a review. How can I explain my experience with this book that broke me down and then scattered me across three centuries of nerve-wracking excitement? It’s been… Continue Reading →
Plath’s Fig Tree – Literary Symbolism and Life
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked…I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which… Continue Reading →
The Liberation of Sita by Volga – Review
It was one of those super rare occasions when my sister feels like reading. She had just finished watching Mahabharata and she was curious to know the tale of Krishna’s death and the beginning of Kalyug. Having already given away my copy of Dharamvir Bharati’s ‘Andha Yug’, I suggested the next best thing, The Palace… Continue Reading →
Black Holes by Charles Burns – Review
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love creepy, gory stuff. I had this lil phase last year when I only read horror mangas and graphic novels. Ito Junji is the most memorable artist from that binge-reading phase. After him comes Charles Burns with his ‘Black Holes’.*giggles perversely* It has all the nostalgia of… Continue Reading →
Pride Month 2020 – Love Beyond the Binary
This is my second time celebrating pride month as an openly queer woman. Until 2019, I was still figuring out who I am. I underwent life-changing experiences. I fought to survive and then rose from the ashes of my ruin, promising myself that I will live life on my own terms now. Accepting my sexuality… Continue Reading →
Exploring Classics – Reading Woolf
When I first began reading, the prose hardly mattered to me. Good plot, characterization, dialogues, and world building was all a book required to hold my attention. I hated classics because I found the prose too difficult and hence thought them pretentious. But during the second year of my course, I started craving the works… Continue Reading →
Mistakes Were Made (But not by me) by Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson – Review
‘Mistakes Were Made (But not by me)’ is a guidebook to understanding why people don’t accept their mistakes and keep trying to justify everything they do. The simple answer is that they are lying to themselves through ‘self-justification’ which is much more powerful than an explicit lie because people often come to believe their own… Continue Reading →
Craving Colours – A Bipolar Journal
After I recovered from my worst depressive episode in 2018, right about the time I had started treatment, I began craving colours. I covered myself with bright colours, colours that might seem childish. I’ve lost a large part of my childhood fighting grays and black. So when I healed, I decided I’d wear colours that… Continue Reading →
Reclaiming Space to Bloom – Growing Gardens in Your Mind
She said “you’ll stop giving them so much space in your head and instead grow yourself a little garden within that space. Bloom. You stupid.” Reading that, I had a sense of euphoria. I have been wasting unnecessary space on unnecessary people for a long time. I have let their toxicity poison my mind and… Continue Reading →
The Art of Preserving Life – Pressed Flowers
Preserving a flower is something I recently discovered and I realised how therapeutic it is to freeze something mortal in time. To prevent its decay in a shape not perfectly perfect but nonetheless beautiful. To hold this fragile little thing in your hands and marvel at its endurance despite the suffocating pressure..It has transformed from… Continue Reading →
Living with Bipolar Disorder – A Bipolar Journal
Bipolar disorder. Two little words that I’ve struggled with all my life. In my teenage years I was mean, volatile, jealous, depressed, suicidal, immature. I was socially inept and I had a tumultuous relationship with people. I would always end up picking fights and being cruel to friends. I had a difficult childhood but that… Continue Reading →
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov – Review
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta.” The first few sentences of Vladimir Nabokov’s ‘Lolita’ have been seared into my memory like a brand of shame. I feel revolted and utterly ashamed because of this book. There is no denying the genius of Nabokov. He made me feel… Continue Reading →
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf – Review
Fleshing out mortal reality in all its dimensions is a difficult feat to achieve but Woolf makes it seem so easy. Her stream of consciousness prose weaves in and out of her characters, using the outer experience to communicate the inner experience and vice-versa. Her characters are nodes in a web that forms the microcosm,… Continue Reading →
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol – Review
‘Dead Souls’ by Nikolai Gogol has been hailed as one of the finest works of Russian literature by critics for decades. Reading the introduction, I had this notion of reading something that might fundamentally change or influence me as it did Ashoke from Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Namesake’. Perhaps I would be so touched that I… Continue Reading →
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck – Review
Cannery Row is unlike any other Steinbeck that I’ve ever read. It has its moments of horror and despondency but it holds onto a sense of hope and optimism. The inhabitants of Cannery Row are all distinguished in their conditions and their individual tragedies but together they make a cohesive whole. The are an odd… Continue Reading →
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov – Review
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov has been deemed one of the best works of Russian literature and by good reason. The book exposes the decay of Stalin’s soviet society where avarice abounds, a society which is easily broken and its people distorted. The novel seamlessly weaves together multiple storylines with two different historical… Continue Reading →
Time Crawlers by Varun Sayal – Book Review
Title: Time Crawlers Genre: Sci-fi Author: Varun Sayal My Rating: 4/5 Buy it here My thoughts:- Time Crawlers by Varun Sayal is a collection of six short stories set in parallel universes. The first story ‘Nark-astra, The Hell Weapon’ didn’t really hold my interest because its plot was too simple and straight-forward for my liking…. Continue Reading →
The Drugged Heart by Varsha Keerthana – Review
Title: The Drugged Heart Author: Varsha Keerthna My rating: ⭐⭐⭐/5 Buy it here Blurb:- The Drugged Heart is a collection of poems that speak about passionate love and the immense pain that comes along with it. It is about the adventures of the heart when it encounters love, passion, betrayal, pain and its efforts to… Continue Reading →
Why I Scream In Verse: At the World by Isha Snehal – Book Review
Title: Why I scream In Verse: At the World Author: Isha Snehal Publisher: Notion Press My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Buy it here Blurb:- Why I Scream in Verse is a series of poems for the woman, for the society, for the self. It questions the norms and pushes the realities on the face, using sarcasm and… Continue Reading →
Strangers With Known Faces by Gautam Dutta – Book Review
Title: Strangers With Known Faces Author: Gautam Dutta My Rating: 3/5 Buy it here Blurb:- Rajat, Meenakshi, Sadaaf, Amol, and Shanaya are five University students with nothing in common- who should never have met in the first place. They meet after winning a lucky draw- the prize of which was to take part in… Continue Reading →
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman – Book review
Title: Norse Mythology Author: Neil Gaiman My Rating: 4.5/5 Buy it here My Thoughts:- “Before the beginning there was nothing – no earth, no heavens, no stars, no sky: only the mist world, formless and shapeless, and the fire world, always burning.” Norse mythology by Neil Gaiman is a collection of short stories from Norse… Continue Reading →
Seductive Affair by Rishabh Puri – Review
Title: Seductive Affair Author: Rishabh Puri My Rating: 2/5 Buy it here Blurb:- Prisha Khatri is a regular college graduate, focused on her career, desperate to finally move out of her parents’ house and freshly dumped by her successful fiancé. When she lands a job at a prestigious media house, she’s glad to have something… Continue Reading →
