“Should we really go?”“Is it safe?”“Just yesterday, people got stuck in Lachung and had to be rescued!”“And vehicles have not even been allowed to go towards Yumthang.”“Maybe we should just cancel our Lachung-Yumthang plan and stay in Gangtok.” On the 10 January, NDTV reported that over 150 tourists were stuck in the Lachung Valley and […]
Jannat Point, Pench Tiger Reserve
It’s been over three weeks since the year started, and they have been incredible. I have much to write about–my heart and mind are full of stories. I wrote about bringing the new year in with the sight of a leopard at Pench Tiger Reserve, but anyone who loves the jungle knows that a “sighting” […]
The Forest Calls
It was New Year’s Day. We sat in the gypsy, shivering with cold and excitement. There were fewer people in the jungle probably because many had stayed up to bring the new year in, and could not wake up in time for a safari on the 1st of Jan. For us, the whole point of […]
Top Ten: Young Adult Books in 2018
There’s so much happening in the world of Young Adult books! Some people may classify a few of these books as MG rather than YA, but again, I put forth the usual disclaimer – associating an age with a reading level is impossible. Many of these books are crucial – they deal with ideas and […]
Top Ten: Middle-Grade Books in 2018
My list of favourite middle-grade books was the most difficult one to make! Until the second I hit ‘Publish’, I kept changing my mind about which books to include. I almost made this top fifteen – it is my blog after all, no one is dictating how many I should have here … But I restricted […]
Top Ten: Books for Young Readers in 2018
I know that ‘books for young readers’ is a very vague title, but these aren’t all chapter books, though the age-group for all the books on the list is similar. I also don’t read as many chapter books as I do other children’s books, but as I was making this list, I realised that I […]
Top Ten: Picture Books in 2018
It’s when I make lists like this that I realise how many books I read each year. It makes me deeply conscious of how privileged I am to be able to devote so much time each year to reading. Year after year, I read more books. More often than not, I don’t buy them – […]
Invisible People
How does one begin to write about a book as powerful as Invisible People? Stories of hope and courage – that’s what the cover promises, yet I did not expect to be moved as much as I was. I knew I would come across extraordinary stories because I have faith in the fact that there […]
Bhigwan 2018
It was 8 in the morning. We’d woken up at 4:45 and driven over a hundred kilometres to Bhigwan. We waited a long while for our boat, and as we waited, we looked at terns, gulls, storks and stilts around us. And then, eventually, we boarded a boat and made our way across the waters […]
Carthick’s Unfairy Tales
Have you ever thought of Cinderella from the point of view of the mouse? No, not one of the sweet singing mice in Disney’s version. Instead, from the point of view of a hapless mouse who becomes a steed for one night. What happens to the mouse after Cinderella gets her ‘happily ever after’? Does […]
Tilly and the Time Machine
Just thinking about Tilly and the Time Machine makes me chuckle, even though I finished reading it a couple of days ago. It’s been a while since I read such a lovely book written for seven-year-olds. Tilly’s father is a scientist who works for the government. Unfortunately, it seems as if his work is below […]
Unique Flavours
Wanderlust. I write about it so often. Yearning is lovely. But sometimes, the joy of travelling is not in the yearning; it’s in the humour. It’s in the crazy things that happen all the time, all around us. When I travel, I try to eat things that are typical to the place I’m visiting. It […]
Big Books at the Writers’ Club
Aren’t lit fests delightful? Last week, I was invited to St. Mary’s School’s first lit fest, and it was lovely. We walked into books like this one … And we had a panel discussion where we spoke about stories, poems, writing, dancing and music. We then visited classrooms and saw the work the children had […]
The Peculiars
Kieran is one of only two male Reception class teachers on the Isle of Wight.His days mainly consist of singing nursery rhymes, tying shoelaces, trying to locate who has had an ‘accident’ by sense of smell alone, and vast, endless mountains of paperwork. Author profile on Goodreads Aren’t you interested already? Writing good author bios […]
Our Own Voices
I just skimmed through yet another article about how, growing up, we associated ‘white people doing white things’ with ‘people doing people things‘. This is an idea that I have to confront all the time, for racism is everywhere. It has forms that we unwillingly perpetuate too. For instance, I have an Indian friend who […]
Paradise End
Especially when I’m struggling with my writing, I find myself wondering all kinds of things. What makes a good book? What keeps me reading? When do I roll my eyes at melodrama, and when do I have to swallow a gulp in my throat? Where are all these boundaries? Also, I’m a picky reader. I […]
History Mysteries: The Last Tiger
The Last Tiger broke my heart. The thylacine – what a wonderful, curious animal. A pouched dog with a wolf’s face. A dog with stripes. The Tasmanian tiger. At the Asian Festival of Children’s Content last month, I attended a talk by the history hunter, Mark Greenwood. It was a talk that filled me up. His […]
Boy 87
Boy 87 came frighteningly close to becoming too much for me as a reader. As I read on, there was one stage where I was filled with a sickening sense of dread. I remembered Chalkline, which I could not finish reading because it was so well told that the story was overwhelmingly traumatic for me – more […]
Reading, Writing, Dancing
Two weeks ago, I asked the children at my Writers’ Club whether they would like to make readers laugh or cry. Three girls said they wanted to make readers laugh. 12 said they wanted to make readers cry. When a few said they would like to do both, those who had already raised their hands […]
Bye, bye, Malaysia!
On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, Jonker Street in Melaka becomes a night market. There are hundreds of vendors, plus shops set up cats out on the street to sell stuff. It is so lively! And unlike in Kuala Lumpur’s Alor Street, we didn’t find white people asking for money to fund their travels around the […]