Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar's Blog, page 20

Wordless Wednesday: Do You See What I See?

Spotted on the wall of our hotel hallway this week. Especially funny given the conservative nature of the Middle East and the Arabian Gulf in particular.   I would caption this series of two paintins: Hotel: 0. Artist: 1.   What caption would you give it?   Related articles Wordless Wednesday: An Unlikely Goddess Wordless [...]

What’s Your Favorite Gripe?

The weather in the world has been strange lately. Earthquakes in Iran, floods in Europe, and sandstorms in Qatar. Yes, sandstorms are strange even in the desert because they are a winter phenomena, not for summer time. For many people, this is the chief compliant about Qatar: the weather. It’s pleasant enough eight months of [...]

Wordless Wednesday: An Unlikely Goddess

This trailer is for the first book I ever tried to write. But it appears as my fourth published novel. What happens when My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets The Namesake?  You get a young South Asian girl, growing up in America, looking for love, while wanting to stand on her own two feet. This feminine discovery of [...]

Make Yours Count

Have you seen a grown woman break down recently? Sobbing tears and red eyes because someone hurt her feelings. Or had someone call you “bossy”, a word more familiar on the playground rather than the workplace? I’ve been in both scenarios the last several months. As the mother of a toddler, I realized what I [...]

Wordless Wednesday: The Four Month MakeOver

Or my new book covers that is. You wouldn’t believe how long a rebranding process takes. Four months in the making, you’re among the first to see the new look for my eBooks. Since this post is supposed to be “wordless” I’ll save you the back story on process. In the meantime, here’s two out [...]

Would You Defend Your Country Against Libel?

Ever since my husband upgraded me to an iPhone life has become more photographic. I left behind the pixelated world of the Blackberry camera to snap away at anything (clay rings on my toddler’s fingers) and any dish (yes, I do collages of meals), posting through the app Instagram on through to Facebook, Tumblr, or [...]

The Art of the Backhanded Compliment

When I was an undergraduate studying abroad in China, I observed the Asian value of deflecting compliments or modesty. You tell a friend you like her hair or that she’s good student and she would promptly find an inherent flaw in her personality to negate your compliment, least you find her arrogant or prideful. No [...]

I Prefer Girls

When I found out I was pregnant, my mind immediately began preparing for a girl. My sister has three girls; my cousins are a dozen or so girls with my brother and one other male thrown in, and so I never thought about the other 50%. The 50% that people all over Asia aspire to [...]

Wordless Wednesday: Love Wins

In July 2012 I published a book I had worked on for three years. Love Comes Later is the most expensive title on my list of eBooks, not to the customer but to me. Editors’ fees, a failed cover design, and proof reading time pushed the launch date again, then yet again. Imagine how thrilled [...]

Which Employee Would You Choose?

  “You’re bossy,” someone said to me in the cafeteria. I laughed because I had read Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s commentary related to the “Lean In” project. Women are bossy; men are thought to have leadership potential. Funny, but true, that even as adults we can’t invent new labels but revert to the ones we [...]