Regaining the Reading Habit through Kindle Unlimited

At the very first glance and search through the Kindle Unlimited collection in amazon.in, it feels disappointing. But I discovered, through various online lists and some filtering, there are many interesting titles worth a read. I would now for the next few months be regularly reviewing some of these titles that I discover on the platform. (Hopefully!) The following are a few short mythological binge reads I devoured in a day. Each is around 30-50 pages, which you can easily complete reading in a single sitting. So, fret not, your investment in this platform would be worth it.

1. Bhoomija 

After reading Anand Neelakanthan's prequel to Baahubali, 'The Rise of Sivagami', I was a fan of his storytelling and narration. I had interacted with him in 2017 Blogchatter Writing Festival over the Twitter prime time chat, and I remember receiving this book then through the event. As bloggers and aspiring fiction writers, we have a lot to learn from his works. So, I browsed a few books of his through Kindle store and found a few short ones listed in Kindle Unlimited.

Bhoomija is a beautiful narrative of the sequence of events that led to the writing of Ramayana, the epic tale. It is a tale of two birds in love, and a hunter and Sage Valmiki. What inspired Sage Valmiki to pen down this story of maryada purushottam Ram, who was righteous through and through; Sita, the one who was born of the earth, embodiment of love and compassion; of the exile from their kingdom; of Ravana, the all knowledgeable brahmin with a fault, and the war and what followed thereafter. Bhoomija is a very short and quick read, emotional and all questioning fate and destiny as the lines between what is right and wrong blur.

2. Shanta

I loved this story a lot. It is a lesser known tale from the Ramayana. Rama's elder sister who was given away in adoption at the mature age of sixteen by King Dasaratha, her father, in a hope to appease the gods to beget a son as advised by Sage Vasishtha. It's an emotional narrative of a young girl growing up unwanted, unloved by her own mother and father who spent most of their waking hours in prayers for the want of a son. While the Queen Kaikei loved her to bits and trained her to take over the kingdom in future, an idea unfathomable my the majority of the palace. The story tells of Shanta's sacrifices, a quest that she undertakes to charm and win over a young Sage in exile for the betterment of her adopted kingdom, and her life henceforth. 

3. Meenakshi

All this time I had been under the impression that Mahabharata is so much a collection of several tales, each character having its due importance in the epic. I was so unaware of the many characters in Ramayana, the supposedly supporting characters who have a story of their own. I need to read a few more retellings of Ramayana.

Meenakshi is the princess of Lanka, Ravana's sister, otherwise known as Soorpanakha, the one character who is rather misunderstood, unkindly enough by the retellings of the epic. The one who had her nose cut by Lakshmana, to stop her advances. It is controversial. This short story is a well thought out, well imagined and executed conversation between Sita and Meenakshi as Sita is escorted by Lakshmana to the forest, as Rama decided to abandon her as the King of Ayodhya. It's their conversations how men wronged them in so many ways. Quite an engaging read.

4. Rama's Secret

This is a non-fiction, a well researched piece on Vishu's avataras and Rama. The book is a short read, with painting clicks from down South- Kerala, Mysore and Karnataka. I had assumed it to be a fictional piece while reading, but it turned out to be non-fiction. Enjoyable nevertheless.

For by TBR I now have the Shiva Trilogy and Ramayana retellings by Amish Tripathi, and a translation of Kannaki's Anket, a Tamil epic. All mythological things. :P