Magic Moments

Misha is ‘ garrulous, geeky, gawky and gainfully employed ’. She works at a small M.A.C store in a mall and is a makeup artist who does models but aspires to do brides some day. She is funny, humorously portrayed; her reasoning will make you laugh out loud. Her parents are modern brained and divorced. Life changes for good when she falls for Akshay, after the many wrong relationships. It seems kind of a fairy tale twist. But she has to be accepted by Didi to be a part of the Agarwal family. So she behaves to be everything that she is not – idealistic Bahu material, pure vegetarian, and sanskari . She spews out so many lies in the process that it will make you as a reader cringe with embarrassment and humiliation and end up rolling over the bed laughing your stomach out! Akshay is tall and handsome, heir to the Agarwal Jewellers. He is kind to Misha’s misdeeds and loves her to a fault. He is an orphan and regards his elder sister ‘Didi’ and her husband ‘Jeejoo’ as his third

When I was about nine, I practically saw my grandfather’s sister jump into the well. I called her Nanima . I was brushing my teeth, and just happened to go outside, when I saw her take the plunge. I ran to my father and told him, nobody believed me. Then they came with me to check, on repeated forcing and prodding, and saw her swimming inside the well. A swimmer cannot drown. I thought perhaps they knew she was good at swimming and therefore hadn’t paid heed to my words. They wouldn’t take her to a pond (we were in the city, there were no ponds in the city, those luxuries only existed in the village), therefore she had jumped into the well – to swim. Then the entire morning was spent in fishing her out of the well, with everyone crying ‘mad woman’ out loud. She was about eighty nine years old then, and wasn’t in the right state of her mind. She would quarrel like a child, throw tantrums and accuse all the family members of plotting to murder her. She had grown too sensitive

Book Blurb: If you have ever fallen victim to the system, been humiliated, felt helpless… this book is for you. Varun, a NRI software engineer, loves Alisha. Salman , CEO of Coffee Moments, loves Mahi. Raghav, a virtuous politician, loves Neha. Aditya, an altruist businessman, is married to Prachi. Destiny invites them to step out of their comfort zones and fight the devil that holds their country captive. Will they choose country over love, comfort and success? Will they enter the Chakravyuh, intricately laid down to ensure their destruction? Will they come out of it alive and win back our lost pride? Buckle up for a roller-coaster ride into the lives of these four young men who are out to change the system which could not be changed in the last 70 years of independence. A story fraught with romance and patriotism. Also pick this book if you are a patriot and do not believe that ‘is desh ka kuch nahin ho sakta.’ If you do, all the more reason to read it!

It is overwhelmingly sad that suicide seems the easiest option to end the humiliation and the sense of being a failure in life, while a helping hand seems so distant. We are losing so many beautiful and deep people every single minute. They might have just needed a tight embrace, a listening ear, and a caring shoulder to change their decision to end their lives. Someone to understand them, instead of mocking or thwarting their decision; to make them realize that the future is more than the pain they see, and death is not the peace or gratification they seek. The story of a suicide has explored the various reasons behind these hapless self-inflicted deaths. Someone is a jilted lover, someone a gay, someone needing a bit more attention to stopping feeling negligible, someone who feels fake or not successful enough, someone who confuses her worth with perfectionism - giving us a peek into their lives through small chapters, so we can understand them better and empathize with

I haven’t really seen suicide from close quarters. My mother has, though. Her first cousin from Grandma’s side had committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in his room two years back. His life was tough, yes, but nobody had ever guessed that he would take such a drastic step. He had seemed to be accepting his condition and his life. About five years ago, he was fatally injured in a motorbike accident. His brain had suffered a life threatening hit, and it was almost a miracle that he had survived. Everyone in his family had prayed non-stop for his life, throughout the period that he was in a coma. He had got back his senses after two days, but couldn’t talk- even when he managed to talk, he couldn’t hold a conversation. His brain couldn’t handle more than a few sentences coherently. He couldn’t process things told to him with rapid succession. His speech had become slurred, yet he didn’t realize till many months later. It was as if he talked with a half paralyzed

I can perhaps pick up vibes and aura of the people around me- as if I am a sponge. I just tend to know who thinks what about me. I just know who dislikes me, disgusts me, hates me, likes me, loves me, bears contempt for me, is jealous of me, is surprised/ intrigued/ annoyed or disappointed by me. I hate it. I hate this knowing. It makes me so uncomfortable. It is to my advantage, I know, but still, it is so uncomfortable and sad. Every time I get that look from my current teammate, I can sense his mocking dislike and absolute ignorance of me, even from the farthest end of the floor. It makes me question my own identity, my importance, and whether I am that negligible. This feeling of a fleeting moment enlarges inside my mind and results in an entire day of discomfort. I don’t know any way of detachment, other than ignoring it altogether, which is very difficult. A cry break does me good, but the chain of events repeat themselves again some other day. Maybe it’s because I