Manali Manan Desai's Blog, page 25

September 20, 2021

Almost Damned by Christopher Leibig

A courtroom thriller with supernatural and biblical elements

View more on Manali Manan Desai's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 20, 2021 06:30

September 19, 2021

Desire by Anna C

Blurb (as on Amazon)

Orphaned heiress Chandni Upadhyay is running from the mother of all cliches – an evil stepmother and a forced marriage with her villainous nephew. Her cobbled together escape plan is limping along until she ends up in the wrong seat on the train.
American photographer Steve Paxton has many secret demons to fight but all he really wants, in that moment, is his window seat. One that is occupied by a very beautiful and very annoying young woman.
From unwilling travel partners to unexpected friends and finally, explosive lovers, Steve and Chandni are on the ride of a lifetime.
Steamy daydreams, weird co-passengers and shady hotels are just par for the course. Until the day Chandni’s past catches up with her and drags her back, kicking and screaming.
Will their temporary relationship stand up to scheming family, past grief and their own insecurities? Or will they finally accept that there was nothing ‘temporary’ about them at all?

Genre: Fiction/Romantic Comedy and Drama

Pages: 221

Format: Kindle eBook

Price: 125 INR/$2.99

My Ratings: 4.4/5

After losing her father, in a bid to escape the clutches of her stepmother and an enforced marriage, Chandni runs away from her palatial home. She meets the helpful but deliriously sexy Steve on the train she boards while escaping to Mumbai from Kolkata. As they undertake a journey of a lifetime together, a lot of twists, tragedies, and laughs await them. By the time they reach Mumbai, they mutually decide to part ways and promise to not stay in touch. Will they be able to keep that promise though?

Book cover taken from Amazon

What I liked about the book:
-> Though it’s a Bollywoodish story, it manages to break so many stereotypes.
-> While outwardly it seems that Steve is ‘knight in shining armor’ for Chandni, it is also the other way round because Chandni helps Steve face his demons and come to accept some hard-hitting truths.
-> Small-town India is brought to life quite vividly via the scenes aboard the Indian Railways, the sounds and sights of the railway stations, the types of people we come across while traveling, the nondescript hotels that have so much drama going on within and so much more.
-> The best part about the book is that though Steve helps Chandni, it is ultimately Chandni herself who fights her battle. I absolutely loved how the author breaks the sexist stereotype that a woman always needs a man to save her from the clutches of danger. Chandni comes into her own, gets her revenge and builds a successful life for herself. Her path to self-discovery and her victory is her own doing (albeit with a little help from Steve and Poorva)
-> Both the protagonists have their own past baggage and flaws and come out of it on their own, with some help from each other.
-> How Chandni undergoes the sexual violation and comes out of the trauma.
-> The story is told from the POVs of both the protagonists. This gives us a deeper insight into the characters and the story’s development.
-> The book is a laughter ride with many LOL moments, especially the chapters with Chandni’s POV.
-> The sizzling, goosebumps-inducing chemistry between Chandni and Steve.

What I did not like about the book:
-> The bits about the villainous stepmother and her henchman were a little predictable. I wish this stereotype was also done away with.

Quotable quotes:
-> Emotions aren’t a tap to turn on and off at will.
-> Watching the world go by as you sit on the steps of a moving train is something quite unique.
-> I don’t need to explain further. We both stand there in silence, looking outside the train. Strangely, it doesn’t feel awkward or anything. I feel at peace.
-> I’m running away because I don’t know who I am.
I’m every cliche in every literary fiction novel I’ve read.
I’m running away because that’s the only way I can find myself.
-> I wonder why she has to get married at all. But of course, it’s something I’ve learned not to ask since I came to India. Marriage is a touchy subject here. Even among those who don’t want anything to do with it.
-> When pain is shared, it lessens.
-> The gentlemanly thing would be to see her to the door. But we’ve already confirmed that I’m no gentleman.
-> Being around other people makes you less self-absorbed and more insightful.
-> You can’t argue with feelings and emotions. They just happen.
-> It’s nice to see that some things don’t change at all where matters of love are concerned.
-> It’s not the amount of time you spend with someone that decides how much they mean to you. It’s the way they make you feel. It’s how alive you feel in those moments. Sometimes it can be as little as an hour.

Buying details:

Author’s social media links:

Instagram Facebook

****

Thank you for reading. For more book reviews follow my Booksta account:

View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Bookish Witch (Manali Desai) (@bookish_witch88)

I’m taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s My Friend Alexa.

Note: This review is powered by the Blo gchatter review program

View more on Manali Manan Desai's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 19, 2021 06:00

September 18, 2021

Creativity & Ageing

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Sumit was in a fix. His big presentation was due tomorrow and he couldn’t get his mind to work on a particular point. He was contemplating on how best to come to a solution when his father dropped by his room. Hoping to get some insight and help, Sumit relented his plight to his father, and soon instead of a single mind, two minds set to work on a solution to a problem.

After an hour or so they had both still not found a way out when 5-year-old Simar walked in and asked, “What are you and grandpa looking so worried about, daddy?” Sumit smiled, and though he was sure Simar wouldn’t be able to help them in any way, told her,

“My princess, we are trying to come up with an idea for my new product.” Simar replied, “Oh! You mean that soap?”

When Sumit nodded she thought for a while and said,

“Maybe you should ask the people what they are looking for before coming up with an idea.”

Genius! Why didn’t I think of that!! Was Sumit’s first thought; then he was surprised to realize that his whole team, himself included hadn’t thought of running up a survey before going ahead with the planning. None of the ‘grown-ups’ had come up with that idea.

What was even more surprising was that his own father, despite his age and experience also had failed to help him out. He would never in his wildest imagination have thought that his 5-year-old would be the one to put his problems to rest!

But it seemed that Simar was able to come up with this because that’s what she and her friends did before deciding on what game to play, what food to eat, or even what to study. They asked everyone in the group for their choice and then whatever the majority of them chose was done without argument.

Simar was able to come up with this because that’s what she and her friends did before deciding on what game to play, what food to eat, or even what to study.

What most of us, adults, fail to realize is that a young mind’s creativity outstrips that of most imaginative and creative adult minds. Does our ability to come up with imaginative ideas become limited as we grow old? Probably, yes. So, are we saying that creativity, us, and age are correlated? Well, as studies suggest, yes!

So does our creativity decline as we age?

If we take Sumit’s incident as an example, we’ll realize that we too have come across similar situations where younger minds than ours have provided us with an idea which we couldn’t come up with!

A quote comes to mind here, You must unlearn what you have been programmed to believe since birth. That software no longer serves if you want to live in a world where all things are possible.

A simple explanation for Sumit’s failure and Simar’s success is that Sumit tried to come up with a solution thinking it to be too complex and in the process, missing a most obvious and simple way out. Simar’s mind, still young and untainted by other complexities of life, came up with a simple solution as she was still in the ‘learning’ stage which most of us ‘adults’ give up on because we think we know it all.

Yes, we do know more as we grow older. And till now Sumit thought of this as an advantage but this incident made him realize how wrong he was; because it led him to ignore evidence which contradicted what he (and all the consenting adults around him) already thought.

They had all become too set in their ways to think of any change and in the process ignoring or forgetting the obvious too.

When Sumit spoke about this to a friend, Akshay, who was incidentally a computer scientist, he provided a perfect and simple explanation. He smiled as if one of his experiments had just proved right and said, “Sumit, the explanation here has to do with a strain that exists between two kinds of thinking: what we computer scientists refer to as ‘exploration’ and ‘exploitation’.

He paused for a while and added,

“Let me give you an example, you, your team, and even your father, faced a new problem in the form of getting an idea for product launch and all of you thought of textbook ideas. That’s where most of us, adults, have our limitations, we try to find a solution or idea by exploiting the knowledge we have acquired about the world in our lifetime. Take someone like Simar, on the other, who is still young, people like her, and even adolescents, you know minds that are still taking shape or in our language are still ‘students’, what they do is ‘exploration’.

When Sumit asked the difference, Akshay further explained, “Hmm… so what they do is try something new — something leading to an unconventional idea, a not-so-obvious application or something creative acquired from the knowledge. Mind you, in your case, Simar found a solution which was pretty obvious but the ‘adults’ failed to notice it.”

Seeing the still confused look on Sumit’s face, Akshay went on saying, “It is not that you would not have ever thought of the idea yourself. But we adults think of such solutions not as a prime concern and possibility that will never work at times. Something my colleagues and I have noticed the younger people do more willingly.”

Sumit was considerably shaken realizing that his mind, with age, might not be able to think as creatively as it was capable of.

He voiced out his worry to Akshay who said, “Yes, that is bound to happen. But there is a simple solution to it. Remember the time between your childhood and your adolescence, when you were still learning.”

“This stage in the human life can be designed to bridge the gap between exploration and exploitation. These periods of our life are the times we get to explore before facing the realities of grown-up life. This is the time when we don’t care much about the functioning of the world, so to say, the happenings around. But we do like to explore and understand how the social world works. This may help the coming generation evolve in a better and brightest way possible, and could lead to marking the change in the world at large.”

It was clear to Sumit now what he had to do. He had to take every decision like a novice or like somebody who was still learning rather than sticking to thinking a way out from what he already knew.

He also decided not to see Simar helpless just like any other human child had been doing for so long. As an adult, he should not be investing so much time and effort into just teaching her, rather he should let her learn in her own way too and also learn a few things from her himself.

As Akshay had said, a bit of ‘exploration’ as well ‘exploitation’ was the way to maintain that creativity!

What we have learned and what we know,
Might not give a solution or help us grow;
It takes a bit of exploration, exploitation, and some unlearning,
To keep the creativity alive and the brain churning;
So keep the learning process on the go,
And don’t just rely on the notebook to be a pro.

Note: This story was previously published on The Naked Truth

****

If you enjoyed that, you might also like:

Anxiety & Me (A Short Story)

Thank you for reading.

How to contact me:Connect with me on LinkedInSubscribe to my YouTube channelFollow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter

I’m taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s My Friend Alexa.

View more on Manali Manan Desai's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on September 18, 2021 06:00

September 17, 2021