Sense & Nonsensibility

Dear Dreamers, I must admit, I’m a little bit of a binge reader. Once I find a theme or writer I like, I obsessively read anything similar that will come my way. It happened when I read ‘ I left Microsoft to Change the World’ and ended up finding Paul Farmer which led me to Tracy Kidder and I found Deogratias. Recently I came across Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘ Lowland’ leading all bestsellers list. Full disclosure, I thought I hated her writing since I disliked Inheritance of Loss ( turns out wrong author). So imagine my surprise when I find ‘ the Interpreter of Maladies ’ on a Saturday afternoon while browsing at a local bookstore café. Two coffees and three stories later I was a follower…. Unfortunately it would be a little while before I would get my hands on it, but I by then I found Unaccustomed earth and the Lowland. But more about these later. Jhumpa Lahiri is a league of her own. I have always thought that short stories are the hardest to write. You got to have a ...

Like I said in my last post, I just finished Mrityunjaya. But I’m talking about it again, because I don’t think I did a good enough job talking about it. I don’t think enough words exist to describe the man, the being and the enigma that was Karna, Shivaji Sawant comes close. Describing the factual events of his life are informative, but there is so much more to this character than just his life story? He is an inspiration and a way of life. He can show you the light in your moment of darkness. I know Im elevating him to a God like status, and maybe I just haven’t had a religious awakening yet, where I have found that kind of faith in an entity. I think what makes Karna special, is that inspite of being the son of the Sun God, he is still a human, a living being, his qualities are still achievable, still possible. They come from witin his self, his own character, his own doing. It makes me wonder, are the qualities that defined the man irrelevant today?  In a world wh...

1)  A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry 2) The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity by Amartya Sen 3) Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges, 4) What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell 5) And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini 6) The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee 7) The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor 8) English, August: An Indian Story by Upamanyu Chatterjee, Akhil Sharma 9) Difficult Daughters by Manju Kapur 10) Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell 11) David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell 12) Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer 13) Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues by Paul Farmer 14) Case Histories by Kate Atkinson 15) Yuganta: The End of an Epoch by Irawati Karve

Dear Dreamers, It was early last year that I came upon The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee. The surprising and succinct account of the Mahabharat from Draupadi’s perspective brought a new light to the told and retold story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Mahabharata for us was always at the crux of it that fight of good vs evil. The story of the 5 brothers who were born to Kunti as a boon and who claimed to be heirs of the prestigious Hastinapur. Mrityunjay is the Story of Karna. Karna, the illegimaite son of Kunti, an Archer equivalent to Arjun, The King of Anga, World Conqueror and  the unparalleled Hero of Charity ,. This story is of a sixth son, born to Kunti before the 5 Pandavas, when she decided to try to test the strength of her boon from Rishi Durvasa as a young princess. The son of the Sun God and born to an unwed princess, Karna is abandoned and found and raised by charioteers. Born with an impenetrable skin and flesh earrings and destined f...