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Showing posts from May, 2011

Book review: Immortals of Meluha - Amish Tripathi

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This book was plain brilliance. A beautiful combination of fact and fiction. A low bow for Amish. The way the book is written is just too good. We all loved Dan Brown just because he was able to mix truth and fiction in the right proportions. Amish has the same talent. His imagination of what could have happened is so vivid and drawing. I was hooked to the book. The story starts where Shiva  is a tribal leader in Tibet. His tribe is constantly in war with neighboring tribe. The kingdom of Meluha sends a proposition to Shiva. They are ready to accept Shiva and his tribe into their well planned dynasty. This seemed as a good deal for Shiva. So he along with his people went to Meluha. Meluhans were Suryavanshis and there opponents were Chandravanshis. The Nagas were group of people who were deformed yet strong. They have evil intentions. They were astounded by the planning and perfection of the city. Even the bricks were made to size. There was uniformity in way of construction

Haunted surely haunted me

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I hope that no one saw that terrible hindi movie Haunted. I first thought that I must not write about it. But couldn't resist it. The basic plot is that a piano teacher is i love with his student. Tries to attain her but at the end he gets killed by her. He haunts her as a ghost. She commits suicide to liberate herself from him but he traps even her soul. The whole idea seems so gross. A hero from todays time goes back to the past to fix the problem. There were so many glitches in the story. First the story was painfully long. They must have stopped it with them reaching the mosque. It got annoying after a point. I was more irritated than scared. The movie was on 3D but the effects were bad. Some scenes were scary and gave me the chills. Others were little annoying. The movie would have been better without 3D. I got up towards the end and walked away. The movie was like mental torture. I hope that I learnt my lesson hard. No more ghost movies. I just don't want to clog my

Love song for Osho

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This was a book which was in some was very special. I would not say that this book rendered my life and was ground shaking but it gave me a glimpse of what life is for a sanyasin. I used to have a crazy idea that I can become a saint(when i was young not now though). I was amazed when I used to hear about austerity that the Indian monks upheld to become one with God. My idea about God has been very dynamic. I my young age I used to think that God did not exist. But then slowly I became a run in the mill devotee. As I grew up I got exposed to books and discourses by many enlightened people. I got to know that there are many ways to reach God. He's within us. All we have to do is connect with the divine in us. This book gave me a glimpse of how a life a sanyasin  would be. "Ma Devika Anand" wrote this book very modestly. I wonder how a woman from England ends up in India and forever in love with Osho. I have read books by him. I wish he lived longer so that I could have

Eat, Pray, Love!

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I have no words to express how much I loved this book. I is just beautiful. I had fallen in love with the idea of living in Rome for at least a few months when I was a teenager. Recently I am into reading a lot of spiritual books in hope that I become as still as the mountains and as clear as rain water. Here Elizabeth(the writer) narrates her life story. How she had a bad divorce and hence to recuperate she travels to 3 most beautiful countries in the world: Italy, India and Indonesia. I don't know if it is just coincidence but all the 3 countries have I in it. She chooses to live 4 months in each country. I love the way that the book has been split up into 108 chapters. The prelude is called as 109th bead(very very nice). She mentions the importance of the chanting beads. Why they have 108 beads. Rosary came from the Indian monks. The last bead is used to denote the end of 108 beads. She gave each country 36 beads adding up to 108. I am so much in love with the book and the

Stereotypes

There are few words I hate so much, one such a word is "Stereotypes". Its fine to generalize and make assumptions on things and working methodologies but not about people. Its tough being a girl in India. The society forces so many rules on people. If we want to maintain a good image then we better follow the herd. This is such an emotional stress. Our heart desires for one thing and longs for it but the society calls it wrong. Mind you none of those desires might be legal but out of the society norms. The following are the top in the list of stereotypes that annoy me the most. I know that most people share that same emotions with me. So lets start :) Most people in Tamil Nadu think that Engineering is a must have degree. Throw a stone at some one and he/she is most probable an engineer. Other courses have taken a back seat and is looked down upon,  sparing medicine. This is a myth. Engineering is not for all. Most people as crazy enough to pay upto 10-15 lakhs as donation

Beware of Robin Cook

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I am a very vivid dreamer. I sleep about 6 to 8 hours a day and have dreams that are crystal clear when I get up. That is good and bad. Good because I get to laugh at my minds imagination which at times defy logic. Bad because it hurts me emotionally at times. Then there are dreams and places which show up too often. I have often wondered if its only me or most people suffer like me. I read up on some articles and found out that, most people do not remember their dreams and there are a few like me who do remember most of it. This is no boring post about why dreams come and so on. It is a post about 2 of my most funniest dreams. Considering the people, place and plot of the dream. Here begins your journey into my dream space. There are 2 stories. One really old I have put them up in the best way I can. So, here it goes: Dream 1: This is a dream that get quite too often. This is kind of weird. There is this tortuous road with greenery on both sides. I am in a car with my family. W

Driftwood Summer

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There are books which I can connect to and other that I can breath. Well,  Driftwood Summer belongs to the latter. It is a beautiful tale of how at times we try to run away from our mistakes to make them disappear, while all it needed was courage to accept the mistake to make it vanish. All of us have dark unsaid secrets and have done things in the past which haunt us till date. This book helped me understand that only way to overcome a heart ache or a mistake is to face it upfront. I liked the way that the chapters were named after that two lead characters: Maisy and Riley. It brought in two perspectives of the same story. I have a younger sister and I know the relationship that exists between sisters. There is lots of love, also ego and pride. At times there happens to be battles too. Here the two sisters fall for the same guy Mack. He happened to be Riley's(First child) best friend who used to come to Driftwood over the summer. Maisy(Middle child) being miss beautiful stole