SlishaCrazy

In 2018, I signed up to one of those reading challenges to complete 50 books. If I could have done it in any year, it would have been 2018 given the significant amount of free time I had. Somehow I didn't even get through five books. Instead I worked on an adult colouring book and some origami, and also tried to learn python. Come 2019, I decided I should at least try. Also, I took a friend's advice on audiobooks and realised my library had a huge collection. So may be this year, I can read half that number. June update: I have read 19 books in the first half of the year. If I keep that up, I might actually end up reading more than 50 this year. But we all know that's unlikely. Yet, I felt I need to publish now, lest the post is too long. Here is me documenting it - the first half of the year: 1. Origin by Dan Brown (Jan): I wanted to start 2019 with some light reading. But this is beyond light, pointless. This book wasn't expected to be spectacular in t...

Over the last few years, I have struggled to write, and to keep up my blog. I kept blaming how life took over and that I find no time for myself. And then I had a few weeks to myself and I most certainly had a lot of time on my hands and yet I chose to do origami than write. That is when I realised, it was because I had forgotten the joy of writing. I saw a snapshot of a publication of someone I know, who like me fancied oneself as a writer. That snapshot seemed to be snippet of terrible writing, in my opinion, and it felt like it was a reflection of my own view of myself where I am probably propped up by a select few creating an echo-bubble that praised my writing, but in reality, I am probably a terrible writer. (Update: I feel I should explain a little here. That piece of writing from someone I know isn't objectively terrible. It's obviously good enough to be published. But the style is very different from what that writer projected it to be, which has been endorsed by a ...

Yes, feminism is in vogue. It's the talk of the town and the hottest topic these days. That's a good thing of course. The more you talk about it, the more awareness you raise and the more people strive for women empowerment. A women's magazine would generally cater to women, but all women are not alike and hence, they tend to concentrate on the most reachable section of the population. While I have no doubt that all kinds of women read all likes of magazines and watch all kinds of TV shows, I'm going to make some generalisations which I'm sure many of you would scream and shout saying I'm stereotyping. Well guess what, stereotypes exist because statistics say so and as long as I'm not stereotyping a single person, I think I'm alright. I digress. Women's magazines, I don't think have many working women as their readers. Working women may read them, but not fully or not with the same vigour as stay at home women or young teenagers do, only becau...

It's hard to say what defines me. Passions define people. I love to read.  It's almost like travel, I keep going into different worlds with the help of different books. I love to write. Although I haven't written as much as I would like to due to lack of time, I'm so engrossed in it when I write that I get hyper when I'm interrupted. I love travel. To see new places, understand the culture, learn a few words in their language, and then write about it. I love to sing, all the time. As I grew up I've learnt to sing in my head but I'm happier singing aloud at the top of my voice. I love acting, especially monoacting. I loved math when I was growing up and in engineering I realised I don't love math enough to love all the hypothetical math, but I continue to love it in its simplicity and use that at work everyday. I love the internet. This may be a slightly odd thing to say but I love to search for things and read up on them. Once I get into Wikipedia look...

'And' is such an interesting word. At a people management course, I was once asked to replace 'but' with 'and', and suddenly things that you disagreed with became things that you could potentially agree with if improvised upon. Now Gillette is asking us to replace 'or' with 'and', and you no longer need to compromise. This post is a part of  #UseYourAnd  activity at  BlogAdda  in association with  Gillette Venus . When I decided to write about my journey from OR to AND, I thought about it and I couldn't come up with a story. And then I realised that, I had shut my ears to anyone who told me that OR was an option. It wasn't. I had been taking the route of an AND since I was a child. Schooling defines who you become. I absolutely love my schooling and my school friends. It is the place where I grew up and learnt to have confidence in me, to speak in front of people, to lead people. I owe my school a lot. But it was not always the...

I happened upon an event this Saturday and it turned out to be a great one! BlogAdda has some passes to Sheroes in Your City events across the country for members. I registered for the event in Hyderabad at Radisson last Saturday. And to be honest, I wanted to go just because I had not been to a conference as such. I am not an entrepreneur and didn't really consider it an option for myself. But the event was thoroughly inspiring for me! So I can only imagine how anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit would have felt! For all those of you interested, there are some more coming up, check here . (I only have one picture and the light is bad but here it is anyway) To begin with we had TiE Hyderabad president (one of the sponsors of the event), Murali Bukkapatnam who spoke on entrepreneurship and why people choose it. A very informative and inspiring speech, he quoted Tagore on freedom, a few Sankrit slokas on women empowerment and even a song by an African woman that asks for n...

The possibilities: I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with  Akshaya Patra   and   BlogAdda . Across India you hear a similar theme in every class of people (except the rich): I work hard to provide a good education for my children so they gave a better life. A better life is what we all want for our next generation. And a better life they get, through education.  Now imagine a classroom full of children eager and willing to learn giving that extra something to make that extra distance. Now imagine this classroom full of children dull and bored and cannot hear a word you say because they are hungry. Now imagine this classroom full of students half empty because they prefer cleaning cars and serving tea for some food. Now imagine the entire class empty and the kids working here and there earning a few rupees, falling into crime, a generation lost! Why would the children clean cars if it didn't give them a means for satisfying their hunger? It's not like they ...

The possibilities: I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with  Akshaya Patra   and   BlogAdda . In ancient India, the gurukula system of education was the most prominent. Most people associate gurukula system with a residential education system and we do have a few now. At school level they are considered expensive because you need to pay for food and boarding as well. But the other thing about a gurukula was that it was a self-sustained unit. It taught children not just science and arts but basic survival skills, including cutting fire wood, cooking food and sharing with everyone. The self-sufficiency comes from their own work. Each student shares responsibility to grow grains, vegetables and to cook and clean. The gurukula makes its owns pots and pans out of clay and they work and live together. I do understand that it is difficult to transfer all those operational features from a forested area abundant with natural resources into today's urban land. But some of it c...

A couple of days ago in the morning news I picked up that Facebook (and soon Apple) provide a core benefit that allows you to freeze your eggs for free. I think the article was called freeze your eggs free your career, or something catchy like that. Of course, there was some outrage around this. My Facebook feed is full of outrage and re-sharing of this news. Well at least some good news that we now know Facebook is not reading our posts then.  Now my knowledge is only as good as what's reported and we all know news is always sensationalised. Any how here is what I think:  The issue is that it's a core benefit. If you have a core benefit it implies that it's something you need for a comfortable life. For example, medical cover is needed for you in case you fall sick and you of course want to get better. On the other hand, it's in your company's best interests  to make sure you get better soon and get back to work. But at the same time, you are not expected t...

I'm disappointed with myself for not having read this before and I believe I should have read it at school. It should be part of school syllabus or at least flagged and encouraged at school to young teens and preteens. It is across Europe and even in India, it was in school curriculum for my mother. I wonder what happened in my case. Anyhow I began reading it upon my return from Berlin. While I'm in no way qualified to review this book, neither it's contents nor its author, I can talk about how it made me feel. Like a million others, for all these decades, at the end of it, I wanted to hug myself and cry. That was the effect mostly of the epilogue rather than her diary. The epilogue tells you that this energetic optimistic opinionated teenager that you spent days with, discussing her innermost thoughts including her plans for the future, had had that future snatched from her and from you. You, Kitty, lost your dearest friend. She is smart, funny, intelligent a...

A friend of mine tagged on facebook with one of those list of books tags. I really loved it and I want to remember my list and jot it down. Where better but on my blog, with links to my book reviews though only the second half.  The list of books or series that changed/impacted me (chronological order) . 1. Claudine at St Clare's . The first novel I ever read, at the age of nine. I received this as a prize for coming second in class. I only read it because I was curious why people would read so much. And God knows I never stopped. 2. Famous Five, The Three Investigators, and the evergreen 18, Nancy Drew. My wanna-be detective phase. My friend and I would pretend we were the two investigators. We created mysteries in our imagination and solved them. 3. Brain by Robin Cook.It was a fascinating idea. Sphere beats it, but Brain was first. 4. If Tomorrow Comes by Sydney Sheldon. And I still love Tracy Whitney. And it was the first time I read a book with a feisty female lead. 5. A...

Is filled with history, overflowing in every step and yet very modern, for all the older architecture was destroyed in the two wars. K had been to Berlin many a times and it is one of his favourite cities so he insisted we visit it soon. And soon we did. I'm struggling to write this post not knowing how to word it. I'm overwhelmed by the history and the struggle that the city went through time and again, and yet how it never portrays itself as victim but takes responsibility for the atrocities during WWII. Berlin is the embodiment of the consequences of war. It remembers everything. It even remembers Warsaw, the city that was completely destroyed by war. Cold War The first thing we did when we landed in Berlin was to head to the East Side Gallery . The Berlin Wall, my readers would recollect from history, was put up in 1961 to keep East Germans from escaping out of the communist reign into the little part of West Germany that was under the collaborated reign of the...

What I started out as a review for the book Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry became a comparative study on stories included in the English text books in school, say class 5. Such a long journey indeed! We had three, Main-course, Workbook and Reader. Later we called them Textbook, Workbook and Non-detail. As I started reading the book, I thought this and other short stories and novels by Rohinton Mistry and Amitav Ghosh should be included in English readers or non-detail. This book particularly, even teaches you a few words like it should. I guess I thought that because the author wanted me to, being suggestive with his tiny bits of mockery of the English reader that we normally use when little Roshan starts thinking of the objects from an English lifestyle that she learnt in her convent school. It reminded me of my earliest memory of such an experience. Banana split. That's what a 12 year old girl wanted when her mother meets a man who tries to sell her an umbrella in T...

(It isn't about the book. I haven't read it. I am sorry to those who were chaperoned here by Google for the book) Indians love to argue. Whether we are young or old, happy or sad, illiterate or educated, we all love to argue and we have seen people arguing all our life. Occasionally some of us grow up to become pacifiers, mostly because at some point it can get boring or pointless and somebody would like it stopped. But most of us don't. We end up arguing all the time and loving it. It is admirable that in a country with many different hues, arguments are encouraged and stand as proof for the freedom of speech. Most arguments are healthy. Because we all love it so much we need to have one once in a while and it's not too often that they lead to any repercussions. And well some are not. But even a healthy argument can go sour if it lasts too long in our heads. Media in the recent past, has become very 'responsible' and it tries to tell you everything that ha...

It had been a while since I blogged. I had many drafts in the making (6 to be precise, so you can expect more soon). But I was lacking that little nudge. You know, the usual reasons: busy work life, busier personal life (for the first time probably), cold weather, holiday season, and most importantly procrastination. Then I got this email the other day  that our dear old Slisha Crazy had been shortlisted for BlogAdda Awards under the category of Creative Writing. Honestly I'm flattered. It's no big deal. And I probably stood a better chance, if it had been 3 years ago when I was contributing to the blog on a daily basis; when you write 10  posts in a week, something is bound to be good. But nevertheless, I'm really excited about this.  There is 80%weight to the content and 20%weight to the social media aspect of it where I publicise the shortlist and try to get likes and tweets for it. As I said I haven't been giving enough time to it to produce creative conten...

Recently I noticed this picture doing the rounds on Facebook. I must say I was surprised. I assumed it was hoax. I tried to look up the Parliament archives. But before that I saw a lot of articles about this issue. It's an old forward, very very old. Obviously given it is claimed to be some 1835 archive. The forward is clearly fake. For the following reasons given by many people (who claim this is purely faked by Hindu Nationalists): 1. Lord Macaulay was in India on this date and stayed in India a few years staring 1834, that includes 2nd Feb 1835 so he could not have addressed the British Parliament. 2. Lord Macaulay would not have been addressed as Lord then because he was not a lord yet. 3. And most importantly, that this was not his exact quotation. and many more reasons I do not want to give benefit to, but basically surrounding other fringe points as above. Also many claim that it could have possibly been mis-linked to a report he produced called the "mi...

Lots of blogs have written about this and everyone seems to have two cents to spare. So here I go, two pennies. If the pen is mightier than the sword, and two pens are war, there is bound to be blotches all over. To put things in perspective. The Times of India came up with campaign directly hitting at The Hindu Wake up to the Times of India: And as a reply to that The Hindu came up with an ad campaign and lots of mudslinging. Stay ahead of the Times: To which yet again Times of India replied with the following print ad. The funny thing is that all the ads are telling you the same thing. The Times of India wants to position itself as a very fun newspaper with all its interesting news bites and attracts the young to stay young. The Hindu wants to position itself as a very serious newspaper that encourages the young to stay informed about current affairs. Living in the south, even as a schoolgirl I knew The Hindu's perspective was seriou...