The girl child

In the recent years, there has been a hue and cry about respecting and protecting women. There were numerous articles, photos, tweets, videos, and facebook posts all over the country. Men and women expressed several opinions, got involved in various controversies, abused others, got abused by others, some were publicly shamed and some shamed them all! All the while I wondered, had it not been for the social media, would 90 percent of these people have even thought about that rape, or this child abuse after they folded the newspaper. I still don't know. What I do know, is that sitting on a comfortable couch and writing about it or exhibiting outrage and anguish, much like what I am doing right now is never going to help.

Book review - Scion of Ikshvaku

Scion of Ikshvaku is the first book of Ram Chandra Series written by Amish Tripathi, an Author from India.

I got my kindle edition on amazon.com
Hardcover and paperback are available in India on amazon.in
Amazon did not sponsor this review.

In 376 pages, Amish carries his readers on a journey of adventure, romance and morals. All characters and their relationships in the book are taken from the Indian Epic Ramayana. The book, so far as the story progresses, meticulously covers all known characters from Ramayana giving them a unique personality, style and nature. Amish has been careful not to replicate the Epic but write his own story. This makes it intriguing and exiting to look at our favourite childhood heroes in a different yet delightful light. The imagination and care that went into this work of fiction is exemplary.

Book review – Anna Karenina

I finished reading the book day before yesterday and yesterday, I had nothing to read! It takes a little getting-used-to to appreciate the language and style but once you get the hang of it, you cannot put it down.

Swimming

You know how they say you never forget how to swim no matter how long you haven’t been swimming. It is not true. You forget quite a lot of stuff. The good news though is that if you make the effort and have confidence, it comes back to you. Better news is that you get better at it than you were before. A bit of background will help here. I learned swimming eight years ago and swam continuously for 4 months. I only spent 5 days listening to my teacher (who was great by the way!) and practicing the breathing technique and hand and leg movements and then, that is all I did those 4 months.