The Pakistani Bride – Bapsi Sidhwa

★★★★★

I had not read  Bapsi  Sidhwa’s work before. But as I was going through books in Crossword I saw the caption on  the book “A novel by the author of the book Ice-candy man”. I immediately picked it up.

It’s a good book with insights into the conservative lifestyle of tribal men in Pakistan. It’s the story of Zaitoon  who is adopted by Quasim and is brought up in the city. But on he fathers insistence she moves to the  mountains to a tribal lifestyle. The rest of the story is around how she is unable to survive the tough and hard  lifestyle of the tribes and decided to run away knowing that the punishment will be a death penalty if she is caught.

Emerald sweet shop- Free Ganesha

As every year, I was out to buy an idol of Ganesha from  the market.  Since I was crossing the telugu talli flyover I stopped at Emerald sweet shop as I remember seeing some  idols on display. To my pleasent surprise they were not selling idols, but were giving away eco-friendly clay idols for free. All you need to do is sign a agreement that you will save 2 buckets of water everyday.

I have been to the shop quite a few times and I know that the onwer is really good painter. He also is active with environmental friendly initiatives like using only paper bags or jute bags, a copper untensil to store water and copper glasses which are washed after every use and loads of posters about water harvesting. But this is actually practising what you preach.

Read the review about Emerald Sweet shop to get more views about the shop. If you pass by this shop on Lower tankbund road, do pay a visit to show your support.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

★★★★★

This is the best book I ever read. The book was written by MARK HADDON, writer of childern’s books.

The story is told through the eyes of 15 year old Christopher who is autistic math genius. He knows all prime numbers upto 7000 + and can do cubes of all these prime numbers in his mind. One night he discovers that his neighbours dog Wellington has been murdered and he sets out to find out who the culprit is. Upon the advice of his teacher he starts writing this murder mystery and during the course of his investigation he uncovers a secrets about his own family.

I simply loved so many thing that Cristhoper does which I could totally relate to, either because I have done it or have seen someone around me doing it.

1) Christopher loves maths because each problem has a definite solution and precisely the reason I love it. There has to be a solution to every problem and that should be the ideal solution.

2) Christopher has his good days and bad days depending on the color of the cars he sees everyday. Thats so true. Remember the red maruti van syndrome all of us went through.

3) Crishtopher needs to plan his schedule for each day and work according to the plan. I cannot work without a plan and if anything interrups my plan, I lose it completely.

4) Christopher needs to know what he is going to do on the weekend. I can totally undertsand, I mean you have to know what your plan is for the weekend right!

5) Christoher does not like vacations as they dont have a plan. I hate vacations where I dont have a plan to do something. Its not very productive otherwise you see.

6) Christopher loves murder mystery novels. We all do

7) Christopher really likes the The Hound of the Baskervilles. So do most of us.

Silent Rocks Exhibition

I put my Golconda painiting in my first exhibition of Silent Rocks – a series of Golconda paintings at the State Are Gallery.

Here is the close up:

RETIRED COLLEGE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

This is the blog I created for my dad for the Retired Govt College Lecturers.

http://rcta-ap.blogspot.com/

Pass it on anyone who is a retired lecturer from Osmania University and are dealing with post-retirement settlements.