Posts from the relationships category.
काही दिवसांपूर्वी एका पुस्तकाचं नाव वाचलं.गुज अंतरी.मनातलं काहीतरी.नाव वाचून पहिला विचार आला, आपण सगळेच काही ना काही मनात ठेवतो.काही गोष्टी सांगतो.काही अर्धवट सांगतो.आणि काही कुणालाच सांगत नाही.पण बाईच्या बाबतीत हा न सांगितलेला भाग थोडा मोठा असतो का?Ruchita Sahil यांचा Antariche Guj वाचताना हा प्रश्न पुन्हा पुन्हा समोर येत राहिला.आपल्याला आपल्या घरातल्या बायका माहीत असतात.आई काय करते हे माहीत असतं...
Echoes of Deception: When Every Secret Looks Like a MotiveA murder mystery becomes difficult when the suspect list is small.It becomes much more interesting when almost everyone has a reason to lie.That is what caught my attention in Dinesh Arya's Echoes of Deception.Helen Rodrigues, a controversial corporate executive, is found dead at a company retreat. Senior Inspector Pratap Rao Singh takes ov...
There is a particular kind of “yes” that does not come from generosity.It comes from fear.Fear of disappointing someone.Fear of being called selfish.Fear of becoming less important.Fear that if you stop being available, someone might stop needing you.That thought kept returning to me while reading Aurora S.’s First You, Then the Rest.The title sounds straightforward: put yourself first.But real li...
There is a particular kind of love that looks beautiful from a distance.Someone waits.Someone remembers.Someone notices everything.Someone keeps showing up.And because they ask for nothing, we assume their love must be deeper.The Unsaid made me question that assumption.Kartikeya Dhar places Kabir Sharma in Shimla in 2003, a schoolboy with an unusual ability to notice what others miss. He sees unha...
We call someone a stranger when we know nothing about them.But perhaps the more accurate definition is this:A stranger is someone whose story we haven’t heard yet.Jay Divyam’s None of Us Are Strangers begins with a little girl, an absent mother and a man who never intended to become responsible for either of them.Veer Mehra is at a Mumbai party when a woman asks him to look after her daughter, Aar...
What if having it all is not about getting everything?What does it actually mean to have it all?More money? A successful career? A happy family? Good health? Inner peace? Meaningful relationships? Freedom from regret?We tend to imagine these things as items on a checklist. The more boxes we tick, the closer we are to a great life.Gaur Gopal Das’s You Can Have It All made me question that definitio...
There are some books you finish.And there are some books you escape from.Not Without My Daughter belongs to the second category.Because while reading Betty Mahmoody’s account, I kept thinking about one frightening question:What happens when the person you trusted most becomes the person you have to protect your child from?Betty travels from America to Iran with her Iranian-American husband, Moody,...
There is a particular kind of guilt that doesn’t arrive with an accusation.It arrives disguised as concern.“Are you eating too much?”“You should lose some weight.”“You’re getting too ambitious.”“Don’t you think you should spend more time with the family?”“Why are you so sensitive?”And because the person saying it is often an aunt, a parent, a colleague, a friend — or simply someone who believes th...
There is something almost irresistible about a young person who refuses to give up on a dream everyone else considers unrealistic.Especially when that dream involves Bollywood.Because Bollywood has spent decades teaching us to believe that somewhere between struggle and success, there will be a turning point. A phone call. An audition. A lucky break. A stranger who notices us. A game show with a l...
There are conversations we avoid because we don’t know what to say.And then there are conversations we avoid because we know exactly what we want to say.The second kind is often harder.We rehearse the words in our heads. We imagine how the other person might react. We worry about sounding rude, confrontational, insensitive, or simply being misunderstood.So we wait.Tomorrow becomes next week.Next w...
