She Blogs About This and That!

  30th Jan 2021 was apparently the 52nd anniversary of The Beatles’ legendary rooftop concert that marked the end of an era. It was the unintended last public performance of the 4 of them together which lasted only for a short 42 minutes. For anyone that wasn’t ready to bid goodbye to the band’s live concerts, one can imagine the kind of pain the news brought.  The subsequent disbanding after “Abbey Road” definitely led to some significant developments. Lennon became the poster boy of peace while participating in the ‘Nam protests (despite abandoning Cynthia and Julianne Lennon in a heartbeat) & created music while also converting into a full-time hippie for Plastic Ono Band (calling themselves plastic? Yikes! Too honest). Yoko surely added a touch of horror into his life and his music. Check out the lyrics on this one -  Paul also started creating his own brand of music along with his then wife Linda while enjoying their domestic bliss (Paul and Linda forever!) and p...

  I hate to admit it, but my thoughts about pandemic situation enriching our creative lives have changed now after being in isolation mode for almost a year 🙊. Y’all know that Google Photos has this notification feature for showing your photos “same day x year/s ago”, right? So it’s been throwing these travel pics on my face which has me feeling seriously sad about not having hopped on a flight for what seems like ages. So to assuage the desire, I have started revisiting the songs that had been my favourites on my travels.   I have a few songs that are deeply connected to some of my travels. They are mostly on my business trips understandably so because if you are on personal trips, your evil twin wants to constantly talk and hence no earphones time! Well anyways. Without further ado , here they are –  1. Stereo Hearts – Gym Class Heroes ft Adam Levine – I remember wearing my 500 rupees fake Dr.Dre’s during one of my walks from the hotel to my workplace in London....

(Pre-scriptum - Not publishing any pictures lest it should look like one of those spammy sites - Imagine a girl with stretched arms in a sunflower field or a woman musing in the backdrop of a forest, I feel like that now).  When we were hit with the news of Covid, we all figured it was something short- lived. We continued life as usual, we thought we knew a global pharma company would come up with a cure. We figured there was something happening in the background to combat and cure this so none of us ever prepared ourselves to what was about to happen! I am surprised like the rest of you that we acclimated ourselves to the Lockdown and its consequences. We stopped shopping, we stopped meeting friends, the customary TGIFs, the coffee dates, we adopted to social distancing, things we thought were necessary or important are no longer our priorities. Who would have thought there would be a drastic change in the way we lived and interacted? And more so who would have thought we would be...

I have been reading a lot of non-fiction books lately ranging from Biographies to Self-help. I recently hit a plateau however and had a fervent urge to go back to fiction again, and I figured, what better than The God of Small Things to kick-start the genre again. The first two times I'd read the story, they were in shattered-battered copies from libraries. This time, I finally decided to own a copy because I want to start a tradition of reading it once every decade of my life. I was searching for it at a local bookstore, where the books were arranged by the first alphabet of the Author's names. I did locate The God of Small Things easily and I noticed that by its side, lied a glaringly colorful hard-bound book. At first glance, I read the author name as Arundhati Roy so I immediately picked it up to know more. I searched for it on Goodreads wondering why I hadnt heard of " All the lives we never lived " by Arundhati Roy and as I read, I realized it was by a diffe...

When Netflix’s recommendation displayed the docu-series “Wild,Wild Country”, I was uninterested. One of my friends had enlightened me about Osho Rajneesh’s teachings when we were still teenagers. The bits and pieces of the cult, she had gathered from one of the neighbour uncles, who at the time I think had no filter as to what to be shared with teenagers and what not, didn’t sound sound to me. According to her information, Osho was a spiritual guru who encouraged people to find happiness via physical means! At the time, I wasn’t sure she even knew what she was talking about! But anyways, that was the picture I had in mind of Osho. As a grown up, I am no longer a prude but the image of Osho hadn’t changed until recently. I started watching the series because it had tons of hippie culture shades. I have been fascinated with hippies and their liberated way of living ever since I watched Woodstock documentary. So, the summary as was on Netflix, got me a bit curious and so I start...

This year, I have taken up a challenge on Goodreads to atleast read 40 books. I am at 29/40 now. My 27 th book in the “Read” list was Hillary Clinton’s “ What Happened ”. Coming from one of the most misunderstood women in the history of American politics, it was heart wrenching to read what Hilary went through after the colossal loss. How can using a personal email id mask all the good stuff she had done over the years, how can people conveniently forget how hard she had worked along with Obama to keep the Big brother safe, how can they chose a self-confessing “pussy-grabber” over a person who had education and experience to lead a country that every other country looks up to, how can they sideline this woman’s body of work and entrust the entire political responsibility to a man whose only promise to make America great again was building a big wall? That memoir got a lot of emotion out of me and I chose to go back to reading some graphic novels so I could at least complete the read...

I think it was the summer of 2006 that I first read a book that made me realize there is more to a book than just a nice story. I went through the rite of passage in reading cycle by starting the habit with books written  by Sydney Sheldon & John Grisham. One fine day, in the college library, a book with a badly torn jacket caught my eye. The cover had a small pink flower in a pond covered with what look like lotus leaves. It was such a simple picture and yet I was so drawn to it. There was something about this book. I had to explore. And boy ! did I make the best decision. 1. The God of Small Things     Yes, the cover with murky, green leaves & pink flower was The God of Small Things. I don't think I have read another book this beautiful. The way Arundhati Roy describes the intricacies and nuances of her characters, the way she writes about Ammu's love for Velutha, the way she writes about Rahel & Estha's strange relationship, Baby Kochamma...