Magic Moments

  The Yogi Witch By Zorian Cross   Publisher - ‎   HarperCollins India (20 June 2023) Language - ‎   English Paperback -   352 pages Genre – Fantasy Buy At - Amazon   Book Blurb: GoodReads: Raised by a trio of witches, Jai Gill invites us on a journey of magic, mystery, and mayhem - all while teaching yoga during the day and slaying demons at night. As Jai begins the journey of not only embracing his magical legacy, but also making peace with his sexuality, his magical life is shattered when he falls in love with the boy next door; the man who's destined for a life steeped in evil. Love is, after all, a curse for all witches! Myths become real and the mundane becomes enchanting, as Jai and his witchy family remove the veil that separates reality and fantasy, all enjoying endless cups of lavender tea and sinfully delicious goodies that are magically removed of all guilt. Amazon: By day, Jai Gill teaches yoga, reads tarot and, like many young gay men, obsess

  A Strange and Sublime Address By Amit Chaudhuri   Book Blurb: From GoodReads: Sandeep is an only child living in a Bombay high-rise and in this book makes two long visits to his extended family in Calcutta. This novel tells the story of the atmosphere in the small house where they live. Chaudhuri writes precisely and carefully trying to capture in the rhythms of his prose the faded happiness of things, the strange, pure remembered moments. From Amazon: It features a Bengali boy who spends his school holidays at his uncle’s home in Calcutta. Heatwaves, thunderstorms, mealtimes, prayer-sessions, shopping expeditions and family visits create a shifting background to the shaping of people’s lives. Delicate, nuanced, full of exquisite detail, Strange and Sublime Address is a small masterpiece. The book also includes nine short stories about the city.   My Review: “Pieces of boal fish, cooked in turmeric, red chilli paste, onions and garlic, lay in red, fiery sauce in

Early this year I think I discovered The Storygraph – a website, quite a competitor of GoodReads, for logging books read, shelfing them, and jotting down private thoughts and reviews. It has this amazing feature of stats, that calculates not just books read, but rather pages finished, from books we somehow ‘Did Not Finish’. The data scientist in me loves these stats. Sharing a few here. I love fiction. So, most of my reads this year have been fiction. And I love print, but boresome household tasks demand audiobooks. So Storytel and Audible are my go-to apps for listening to audiobooks while morning walks, cooking in the kitchen, arranging things around the house or just lazing around on the couch. I am loving this chart for Genres. Quite an eclectic mix. Makes me so happy. The one thing that I wanted to do this year for my reading goals, was to read several new authors. I wish that feature was also there in The StoryGraph. I read for the first time this year Balli Kaur Jaswal , Arefa T

    Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal Publisher: HarperCollins India Price: 366 INR Pages: 344 Genre: Mystery Buy At: Amazon   About the Book: Hidden lives. Buried secrets... It's time to shine a spotlight on it all. Corazon, Angel and Donita have all come to Singapore to work for a living. The thing that unites them? Their labour must remain unseen. Then an explosive news story shatters Singapore's tranquility, and sends a chill down the spine of every domestic worker. Flordeliza Martinez, a Filipina maid, has been arrested for murdering her female employer. The three women don't know the accused well, but she could be any of them; every worker knows stories of women who were scapegoated for crimes they didn't commit. Shocked into action, Donita, Corazon and Angel must gather every ounce of bravery and gumption to piece together the mystery of what really happened on that fateful day. After all, no one knows the secrets of Singapore's families like

  I was driving through the heavy rains when nostalgia hit me. Mumbai rains, the marine drive, the Juhu beach and him. The past occupies your head in the most unexpected of times, and the memories tend to fill you with a longing for the days gone by. I was new in Mumbai then. Didn’t know a thing about surviving alone, managing finances, cooking, doing laundry or getting groceries. I thrived on street food, and office food courts. My roommate would urge me to learn cooking, some days pulling me off the bed to make the dough or roll the rotis. Thanks to her that I learnt many-a life skills during that phase, that are helping me even today. We would rush to the DMart after office hours for getting cheap groceries, use the local train to travel in the weekends and explore the city somehow tackling the heavy crowd. Colaba shopping, visit Bandra fort, Siddhi Vinayak darshan, Iskcon temple, Forum Mall, etc. But some weekends would be reserved for him. He would pick me up from my PG, and we

  Author : Areefa Tehsin Publisher: Harper Collins Price: 399 INR Pages: 327 Genre: Period Drama/ Historical Fiction/ Murder Mystery Buy At: Amazon About the Book: It is Makar Sankranti,1950, when sixteen-year-old Sanaz's body is discovered in her father Dada Bhai's house in Bohrawadi, Udaipur. A few of those in and around the house that day are the cruel zamindar Rao sahib of Singhgarh, the devout degenerate Hariharan, the young Bhil Nathu, visiting from a remote tribal village to inform Dada Bhai of a leopard kill, the attractive night soil worker Parijat, and the acerbic widow Sugra, who rolls a rosary and wishes for the jeevti dakkan -the living witch in the peepul tree-to be her secret ally. As the shadows grow long, it becomes clear that something sinister walks the halls of this grand old house. What unfolds is a genre-bending tale of suspense, intrigue and something so much darker. Review: The story is set in 1950s, in a newly independent India, al