Sense & Nonsensibility

 Hi Guys and Girls,  I know I have been missing for a while. ok....for a loooong while. How have you been doing for the past couple of years? How has life treated you? How has covid treated you? Are you going stir crazy ? Or are you enjoying this new pace of life? Since we last spoke, my life changed a little bit. I met the man I was meant to marry. We spent a few crazy years flying back and forth across 3000 miles. We found the Golden State beckoning to us, and both of us moved here. and after 10 glorious years in Boston I moved to California to build a new life. Now in a new state, with a new life and yet to make new friends, I found myself missing some chunks of my Boston life. Mostly my friends, but also writing. While I never stopped reading books, I most definitely stopped writing.. And here, today, I start again. Welcome back! And Thank you for Staying :) Love ~S

The kid stares at me, staring at my hair and my dress, and then his face changes. He spots a ball in the distance, behind me, and stretches out his arm to touch it. I squirrrmmm, his greasy fingers straight out of a Lays bag are coming for me. “Ohhhhhh no!!!!! Where is the damn security guard when you need him? Shouldn’t he be here? Isn’t it his job to protect me? And the several of us French women, so old? It’s not like we can protect ourselves, we are left permanently at the disposal of these galleries now.” The loud beep goes off, the laser sensor activated by somebody coming too close to me. I heave a sigh of relief, it is slow and nobody can really see me gently blow out the breath I didn’t even know I was holding! Heavens! Can you imagine, it’s only Wednesday yet, although it feels more like a Saturday. It always gets crowded here on Wednesdays when it’s free entry to all. People rush in to get their bit of culture in, without having to spend the $25 it usually costs to enter...

You can’t hear it right now, but I can. The pattering of the rain drops outside my window. First time since I have moved to my new place-  a rainy day- warm and welcoming- trying to entice me into stepping onto the fire-escape outside my window and feel the drops on my skin. Few other things can take you to another time-.. Like a time capsule it can take to a cold rainy day in New York. It’s a November day in New York- chilly and dark. As I strap into my boots and warm jacket, I pray that the wind and rain don’t ruin our weekend here. I am a visitor to this city and am hoping that the weather would be more forgiving than in Boston. It is not. But we are here for the weekend- so we’ll make the most of it- we head out into the rain- the gray sky an evil promise of unrelenting rain throughout the day. As we duck in and out of the subway, navigating umbrellas and gloving and ungloving hands, we alter our itinerary to be indoors most of the day and somewhere the grayness is forgot...

The second part of this extended vacation was one angle of America’s Music Triangle. As you enter NOLA, you have just entered one of the last places in this country where you can have an authentic experience, where you can dip your soul in the unique stew of people, geography, history and weather that buubles out its pot and brings us music – the cultural currency if the South. Jazz, blues, country, rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass- akk the distinctly American music that’s been sent to every corner of the world, seasoned with new ingrdients- they were all born in the triangle. If you listen, you can hear Cajun melodies, Afican rhythms, a Latin beat and Saxons. Whatever the form, its all cooked in the southern heat and humidity informed by the lessons of survival- hurricanes, poverty and pride- always moving like the Mississippi. It was here that the great musical giants of American history rose. All the neon signs of the music clubs lining Frenchmen street making you think-  what ma...

Dear dreamers ! Its been so long since we chatted! I know this happens every year, that I start on a good blogging score for the first half of the year, then fall off the wagon. Lets hope this year, I sign off in time and start the next year with some great blogs! This year we put travelling high on the list of priorities and saw places and cultures I had never seen before. Between London in May ( I have talked about this endlessly), San Diego/ San Fran in September ( I’ll talk about this later), Chicago in November and New Orleans in December, This thanksgiving I headed over to Chicago to see a city that’s been on my bucket list for 7 years. Sudha, my partner in crime for most of my travel adventures met me there. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t expect a major city like Chicago to be so shut down on thanksgiving day. I got there in the middle of a chilly, rainy day prepared with my best gear to brave the windy city and found the one Indian restaurant that was actually o...

Hadley Richardson is a 28 year old living a quiet slow existence tills she meets the Ernest Hemingway, a 21 year old, charismatic, tortured, up and coming writer. What starts of as a vacation romance, ends up with the two getting married and whisking to Paris to spend their early years. Paula McLain is an adept writer who gives voice to Hadley as a charming yet quiet girl who is in awe of the fact that Ernest loves her back. The Paris Wife is the journey of Hadley – and Ernest- from their early years of Jazz age Paris to the crisis of faith that their marriage faces. I picked up this book at an airport because when I was running out of the door on my absolute last minute flight to my cousin’s wedding and I forgot to pack a book. And I never board a flight without one- so I come across the Paris Wife at the airport book shop and amidst the ‘ How to be successful in 15 minutes’ and ‘ Twilight-ish’ streak of books,  I’m instantly attracted to the Paris wife because it promises...

Dear Dreamers,  If you know me, and I reckon you do by now, you know that-  I like brick buildings, I love stone buildings.  I like cobbled streets, I love cobbled alleys.  I like coffee, I love a café on a cobbled street by a stone building across an alley ending in a whitewashed building with a metal balcony railing. So imagine my surprise when I saw this. And then this... Really its quite unfair that one place gets all of this. This may very well be the architectural equivalent of  Aishwarya Rai or Miranda Kerr . I know nature and mountains makes some of you feel like this. …(now you get it). But the joy of walking around and touching these sights and all secrets and history they hold, makes me positively gleeful.  What Jane Austen heroine had pulled up in a horse drawn carriage here? What WWII spy had used this telephone booth to deliver a coded message? What part of Churchill’s formidable life had passed through here? A...

The bag sits in the corner untouched. It’s been a week since I have been back, but I refuse to unpack. I want the vacation to go on for ever Lovelies , I may have found my favorite city..well  yet anyway.  Day 1: I take the red eye to LHR and land early morning, its raining, but I have the pre booked Heathrow Express tickets ( the joys of travelling with planners), that take me to Paddington. I get in with my fellow red eye passengers- its 7 in the morning, a few people are bleary eyed while a few a prim and polished ready to strut into Paddington and take on the world. As the train pulls out of Heathrow train station, I see a few grey buildings close to the train lines, the area mostly bare. My mind immediately goes back to the fact that if this was Mumbai or New York you would never find an empty space this close to the train station still within city limits, and then, just like that I spot a distant spire. And within a moment the church comes into view with a green co...

I accept it.. I have been a little slow on the uptake of Indian authors. Once I fell in love with the league of authors like Chitra Divakaruni ( Sister of my heart), Jhumpa Lahiri (  Interpreter  of maladies) there was no turning back. But they were stories of Indian authors brought up and living in the States, their stories marking the juxtaposition of lives as sweaty, colourful ( see how I spell that with a ‘ u’?), small town/ middle class India to the wide roads, white picket fence American houses, giving a voice to a generation of Indian men and women that migrated to the US for extended education and by marriage. Then came the books by Suketu Mehta ( Maximum City), Salman Rushdie ( Midnight’s children)** based wholly in India ……..books that spoke of an country as experienced by someone who has the same well of memories and experiences as all Indians.  Of course this isn’t brand new, Britishers, Americans have been writing about India for the longest ti...

I started Maximum city with a strange feeling of excitement and trepidation. I have lived away for 6 years, and every year that I come back, I travel by rickshaws and cars ( not usually trains), since time is short and most of the people I know live in the suburbs, I almost never going up to the town I knew as my own. So now, with book about the rediscovery of Mumbai in hand and an extended vacation to boot, I decide I will explore Mumbai, a s a tourist in my own city. Maximum city is the autobiographical story of Suketu Mehta’s rediscovery of the city he lived 15 years ago. The book released in 2004, so everything new is 10 years old. But the changes in the beating megapolis that took place in those 10 years. I lived in India in the 10 years , but I was too young, leading a life that was sheltered and protected from the life that is described in MC. However I’ll say this though, after a chapter on Power shifts between Shiv Sena and Mumbai and Mumbai Police and encounter special...

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens   Sings Andy, my 6 year old precocious niece as she sits on my lap on our way to Lonavala, my mom, sister and me spread out in the backseat of the Innova, filled with gossip and giggles. Post Sion, Andy is getting angsty and to keep her entertained we prod her to sing Raindrops and roses, her favorite song at the moment. My mom and sister sing along in full crescendo, my mom absolutely at home in her convent educated nun voice and my sister in her always wear two plaids, super strict girls school background know the words of this Sound of music classic at the tip of their tongues. I, on the other hand, went to a co-ed school in Parle and they played tukaram’s abhang during school, and so Sound of music was never taught in my school and I never ended up watching it at home. So though I know the songs of this classic, I definitely don’t know the words by heart. When the dog bites, when ...

2014 was an interesting years full of ups and downs for me. With 4 weddings, a trip to Puerto Rico and the icing on the cake, a trip to Boston by my parents and best friend as well as meeting  the new love of my life, my tiny new Ela, 2014 was truly filled with new life lessons and  experiences that I will carry through my life. And in order to make sure that 2015 was not going to be left behind, I kick started this year in a truly festive form, by travelling to Ratnagiri for my best friend’s destination beach cum hometown wedding. If you have ever been to the Konkan strip that embraces the western part of Maharashtra, typically driving to Goa from Mumbai, these lush green ghats are as nerve wracking as they are mesmerizing. Driving down these ghats, is one of the most scenic routes to take to Goa from Mumbai. But personally I’m a train girl, I love travelling by trains ( I can sleep without feeling guilty). And so when the opportunity to go down that road again ( I mean...

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...