Your grass is greener than of Brangelina , Hrithssane, Deppamber

Tags

beauty, betrayal, Brangelina, celebrity, fame, introspection, joy & peace, know your value, love & heartbreak, marriage & divorce, values

Rejoice. Count your blessings. Discover paradise.

The avalanche of celebrity breakups is a boon in disguise for us. Of course, it’s ghoulish to prey upon celebrity divorces. It’s perverse to spit into their crystal palace – or pee into their goldfish bowl.  It’s demoniac to relish their ugly skeletons. It’s voyeuristic,  it’s parasitic. It’s –

– cathartic. Liberating. Introspective. Epiphanic.

You see that millionaire Adonis with the killer dance moves & a billion drooling fans? Well, his wife is all smiles as she celebrates escape from his gilded cage.

See that gal whose taut globes are the envy of the globe; who has fame & wealth firmly scissored between her equally taut calves? Well, her husband is straining at the leash & frothing at the mouth.

Book review: Silent realities by Ranjan Kaul

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book review, ranjan kaul, realism and magic, short stories, twists and turns

A cluster of 10 stories tilting between the real and unreal, with myriad characters in an ever changing multilayered society. The range captures the frailties, moods and impulses of human behavior.

That’s what the gist of the blurb says. I agree in part.

4 stories impressed me, namely Lallan, The Slap, The Nest and Touch. These should’ve been placed at the beginning of the collection to hook the readers, instead of inserting them midways and towards the end.

Lallan & The Nest have a parallel between the human-animal world that explores human psyche well and throws up believable, relatable characters. Slap & Touch have a mellow tone and an unhurried pace

Book review: 03:02 by Mainak Dhar

Tags

book review, civilians as soldiers, Daesh attack, IIT Powai, military, reliance on technology, social isolation, Tales Pensieve, teamwork

Twitter review: When Indian civilian Davids take on a Goliath Daesh …

Story & setting: Aadi is poised pretty on the corporate ladder, when his world gets nuked into darkness by a terrorist attack. Out of a desperate survival instinct, he & his community carve out a collective defense system, which soon snowballs into an aggressive counterattack upon the insurgents.

Aadi gets to re-live his long cherished dream to join the military instead of the corporate world. The crisis allows him to flex muscles, engage in mental games with the enemy as also delegate jobs to unlikely & untrained candidates including security guard, maid, autodriver, gardener etc. In the process, he rediscovers a soldier-leader within himself who relishes and thrives on the leadership