ELIXIR - A dream run!

Last year around this time, a very strange thing had happened to me which picked me up from where I was and put me on another zone altogether. 

As you may know, throughout 2016 we were invited for quite a few festivals as well as privately arranged screenings of ELIXIR across the country, after we were back from the Cannes and the film won a few big international and national awards. It was at the end of one such screenings, that it had happened. As we stood there in the auditorium after the film got over for audience QnA, customarily answering and thanking them for coming, a gentleman came forward, shook my hand, handed me a visiting card, and said if I'd like to write ELIXIR as a novel. "Would you like to bring out a novel?" Was it a practical joke of some sort? I wasn't sure as yet. "But i don't even have a manuscript!"  I was perplexed. "But this story belongs to a book." This man said. Turns out that he was the founder of a publishing house himself!

I signed the book contract last year around this time. I started the manuscript, the first word, the first line, pinching myself all the way through it. And here, now, well...

This is the book cover art. Do let me know what you think... Please? 

The book has hit the market next week, and is now available on Amazon and across bookstores in India.

Amazon link – http://amzn.in/an4Cofk

It will go on to have a multi-city launch. It was first launched at the Valley of Words International Literature and Arts at Dehradun by Anita Agnohotri.

The launch event for Delhi NCR is in Gurgaon on 2nd December (Saturday) evening, at National Media Center auditorium.

This will be followed by  other cities like Kolkata and Bangalore, in January and onwards. If you are in Delhi NCR, please  block your calendar. For I wrote it with all my heart and head, and now I need all the love and luck...

A warrior who never killed a fly!

White locks of hair pulled into a tiny bun, often covered with a pallu that is but a vague white extension of the once white but now faded 5 metres stretch of cotton, perhaps with a hole here and there over its entire stretch but carefully tugged inside to not be spotted – that is how Dida has looked ever since I can remember. Dida - the common grandmother – in our small but complete world of the neighbourhood, the place we were born and grown up at.

Book Journey: Revelations of an Imperfect Life (Sankhya Samhita)

Now! How easy is it to wallow in self-pity, to etch your victim story when life’s handed you a handful of lemons? It is a temptation, yes, most indeed. Common. And instinctive. To tell your stories, your way. In which you are the hero in it, and you the means and the end. And if you have been unhappy, that was their doing. There they were, doing things to you to make you feel that way. They owed you light and sunshine, did they not?

In several of the social forums while discussing issues around emotional abuse and midlife depression, I have often stopped midway and wondered about a question that raised its head above the righteous proclamations floating in the air. I have often asked: is it really a one-way traffic, this unhappiness? This prey and predator relationship - who does it begin with, and how does it snowball? How can we tell a case of incompatibility from a case of suffering, and a case of suffering from a case of abuse? Why do we stereo typecast so much, well knowing inside our hearts that, that quite is not the whole truth, that there is another side to every story?

Fitness Choices

(This is a commercial post for "NESTLÉ a+ Slim")

A true blue Bong, “fitness” is not a word that could keep me away from the restaurant menu card or the glass showcase at the sweetmeat shop. Fitness could not contest fun and flavor. At least, for a long time. In a short term. We were younger and stronger. Fearless. Myopic.

I wish we could stay that way, always. Could not, but.

After a certain number of candles on your birthday cake, after a certain number of yet another person in friends and family struggling with high diabetes, cardiac emergencies, and worse, the ‘bad news’, it was time for reality check. It was then that it came afloat in front of eyes. That, it is not just about the common suspects – roadside fries or dollops of ghee. It is more inconspicuous than that. It is the “hidden fat” in more everyday food, the usual non-suspects, that make up for a large part of it.

Watch out is what I have started to tell myself, more recently. Watch out, we must. Because without a fit body, the machine simply will not run!

Book Review: Kissing The Demon (Amrita Kumar)

Kissing the demon was one book for which, when asked to review, I did not have a single moment of dilemma. The very fact that an author has authored something, a handbook of sorts, for the benefit of others to use and follow, was enough reason to leap and grab it. And if not enough, the brief bio of the author establishes beyond a speck of doubt her eligibility to do so, clear and confident. So frankly, it was not a book to be reviewed. It was one to be learned from. 

The subject matter contained in the different areas of writing carry a distinct tone of knowledge, wisdom as well as humour. Quotations, motivations and analogies from all over of the broad vastness of English literature, complemented with insights and suggestions from real life experiential collections… the "voice" grows not just in strength but also by warmth. It is conversational, almost, how it shows what works, what doesn't, and what can, should, must be looked at. Wit is aplenty, plus the confidence of self-depreciation in stories, examples, ideas.

Pursuits and Conflicts!

Personally, I've mostly shirked off when it ever came to discussing Mindfulness, Meditation and the higher order of things, even though I have spent a good part of my last two years embarking on the journey along these paths. While we easily talk about mental illness, we are wobbly when it comes to talking of mental wellness. The field of Positive Psychology, as much as I have explored, hands out more tools and techniques than awareness and insights.

Twin Flames!!

Really...

let’s talk about unabashed, unapologetic romantic love.

Shall we?



“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” used to be my 101 of love for a long time. Catherine had said this about Heathcliff, in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. It was part of our course, and we were sold on it. Every girl from the classroom. We had assumed our life’s purpose to be a simple one, around that age and time. We needed to find our own Heathcliffs!

Book Journey - Broken Open (Elizabeth Lesser)

This was first published at Writersmelon

Spirituality sounds like a big word, especially when you are twenty-three, and haven’t had any real crisis in your world so far. That was when I had first come across this book. The name on the cover read – Broken Open. And then there was a line below it, which read – "How Difficult Times Can Help US Grow."  I was yet to know what that may mean. And yet, I had turned over its pages.