Mahabharata retold thankfully!

With nothing to do for 3 weeks at home, I had to kill time when the star plus serials were not on! So ordered a bunch of books from Flipkart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my first books was during summer holidays in school. I would visit my village which had a huge library and  we would rent books every alternate day.  Thankfully we have a huge house with the biggest courtyard I can think of with marigold flowers and the back yard filled with banana trees. We would spend all our time with the smell of wet red mud.

Since we had 3-4 families living there, we were a bunch of kids and I clearly remember Bharathy aunty. She was a lecturer and she was the one who would read out those huge books which would not fit into our hands. And thus came Ramayan and Mahabharat and we would read it every summer till I decided that I dont like it nor agree with most of it. I was always confused about how Mahabharata was a story of warriors. Secretly I would think why no one really stood up to anything or I was too young to understand. Every sunday we would watch it on TV on Doorsarshan and this would reinforce my thoughts about each character except of course Karna.

I am glad Chitra Banerjee wrote ‘The palace of Illusions’. I picked up this book after my flatmate recommended it to me. It really captures some of the plain feelings to the situations instead of the complicated web of hierarchy to fulfill the destined war to end an era. Even though its not the entire story and only glimpses from Draupadi’s view, it puts my confusion to rest. All in all, what were the five brothers thinking!!!

Would throughly recommend it if you are not emotionally attached to the epic called Mahabharath.

Vegetarianism in Dublin, Ireland

This was my second trip to Dublin and I was dreading what I would eat. This is the most painful part of my travel.  So I sincerely carried my Maggi packets from India But to my surprise I found some good places where you can find veg food. So here you go

1. Paulies pizza: Awesome hand made pizza that just melts in your mouth. There is only one veg option on menu but you can always ask for one without the meat.

2.ely Gastro Pub:  They have a vegetarian dish on menu and if you request they will also make stir fried veggies. This is the only place where you can have fries as they don’t fry them in the same oil as chicken.  Very understanding staff if you are a vegetarian.

3. Gasworks pub: They have a soup of the day. Its filling by itself. They have the Mediterranean veggies, nachos and tacos. Ask for them if not on menu. But finding veg food here is dependent on your luck.  You may not want to have fries. They are fried in same oil as chicken.

4. Cafe En Seine: Would die for their hummus and Pita bread even though its just a bar snack. They come with Olives. Period!

5. Saba : Thai and Vietnamese food. Really delicious. Decent variety of vegetarian options.

6. Khan’s Balti House: Saviour for ordering Indian food. I cant survive for long without it. Just order regular steamed rice and dal if you are home sick.

7. Bombay Pantry:  Just order in the food if you want to throw a Indian party. The portions are generous.

8. Thai Orchid:  OMG authentic Thai food. Have the Thai red curry and rice.

Loved Loved Loved my Dublin trip and food had a huge hand to play unlike the last time where I went hungry for a week!

24 hrs of agony

I reached Dublin and its actually sunny (keeping my fingers crossed)

Well as my luck would have it, I realized that I did not have the right phone charger and the internet in my apartment was not working! it was not like any earth shattering events were scheduled for which I needed the phone or even Internet but just the thought of not having them handy was traumatizing, restless, frustrating… for no reason

So is my way of life – check every mail with a  TAT of 5 mins!!! Sigh

‎6 Degrees of Bibliophilia

Apparently BBC  believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Saw it on FB.  I am glad I read all of Jane Austen’s on the list I know that I have a whole lot of these from the sunday market in my rack. So maybe I should find more time.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials –  Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Inferno – Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (English)

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespear

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

 

Are people allowed to hire kids?

Is it just me or all you people in Hyderabad are also seeing an increasing number of  under-aged girls hired as house help. I just see them everywhere in malls, hotels and even cinema halls.

One of my worse experiences so far was at a hotel where a family came with a young girl (definitely below 14) who was taking care of an infant. It was clearly visible that she was hired as a help. The family was happily clearly enjoying their dinner when the girl was made to stand near the door carrying the infant. She was strictly facing the doors and not the tables. I could not believe that the employers did not offer her food or even a seat. Sick minded fair skinned morons. (Well they looked like one) We had to request the hostess at the reception to give her a chair which she did with a smile.

Then at the movie theater yesterday, I saw two girls again helping a family and clearly they also looked like hired help. Atleast they had took these kids to the movie.  And I went to someone’s place who had their shop within the house. There also I saw a girl helping them out in getting the stock out and the owner would not even move to pick a pencil. I was so ashamed that I did not have the heart to buy anything.

I maybe wrong and these people may be sponsoring their education or sending them to school as well. All of them were fairly young like school going kids. But they should definitely learn how to treat them.

They are not your personal slaves and it really takes character to treat someone as equal. These people definitely seem to be lacking one.