Twenty- five Seven

Personally speaking

Recent Posts

  • The Hunt for Kohinoor – Finding hidden treasure

    The first time I ever came across the word crepuscular was in a vocabulary list way back in school in the days when school children had to know such grand words. This was the first time ever that I’ve come across this word in a book and that too in a book about thoroughly modern times  written by a thoroughly modern author. This was just one of the delightful discoveries of this book – the others being that this book was a wonderful read from start to finish.

    Looking at the cover of the book which consists of a man coming in the range of a gun sight, it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that the hero of the book is really Mehrunisa Khosa a young art historian, “five foot nine, with straight black hair, grey green eyes and a marmoreal complexion” working as a consultant with the Archeological Survey of India. What started out as an ordinary day in her life becomes stranger by the minute as Raghav, Mehrunisa’s friend based in Kashmir invites her to visit Srinagar to confirm if a newly excavated pond was really a pond from the Mughal era.

    Sensing this to be a flimsy excuse to pull her out of Delhi, Mehrunisa is hesitant but when she is told that there is a plane waiting for her, there is just no way she can refuse. Her hunch proves to be correct and she finds herself in a situation which she just cannot refuse for what is at stake is the security of the nation . Mehrunisa must find and discover the secret of the Kohinoor.  Within hours, Delhi becomes a distant dream as Raghav and Mehrunisa find themselves in Pakistan and unbeknown to her, the start of an unimaginable adventure that takes her from Kashmir to Bora Bora.

    Set against the backdrop of the Taliban and the Afghan war, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar spins a great yarn in a page turner that is believable with its eye to detail and meticulous research. Babur Khan, RP Singh, Jag Mishra and Harry  the Snow Leopard  are just some of the characters we meet in her quest for the Kohinoor.

    “The Hunt for Kohinoor” actually is a story that lasts barely 96 hours but one which traverses many cultures and many eras, taking us from elegant drawing rooms, to  harsh mountainous terrain,government offices, historic forts and everyday regular Sufi mosques.

    Mehrunisa is no ordinary girl, she is modern and yet a traditionalist with a passion for things both simple and sophisticated and of course she is the heroine of this story. So does Mehrunissa succeed in her mission impossible? What is the security risk?  Read this unputdownable novel to find out.

    As for me, I’m waiting for Mehrunisa’s next adventure!

    Verdict : Perfect for a train journey, or a poolside read.

  • Blogadda Event : India’s first ever blogging conference and awards.

    Yesterday morning I woke up with the realisation that it was the Blogadda event at the other end of town and that I had to hot foot it if I wanted to make it on time. I was running a bit late and had to control myself from pressing the accelerator too hard as I didn’t want to make it to the venue in an ambulance but in one piece in my own car.

    As usual Google maps are different from reality and despite my own navigation skills I managed to whizz past the Metro Station below the flyover which I was not supposed to take. Luckily even though I managed to reach Goregaon, it was only a five minute overshoot and I could take the U turn back to the road I was supposed to be on.
    The Courtyard Marriott was on the main road (once agin proving the Google map wildly inaccurate) and I madeit to the venue with two minutes to spare – not bad considering that  I started out at 8.15. But then this was Sunday and most of Mumbai was still fast asleep.
    The power of the word

    After Ashwin Mushran who was the MC gamely introduced himself as the”extra from Bollywood” he welcomed on stage the first speaker of the conference  well known author and banker Ravi Subramaniam who told us how a critic’s dissing of his book as a steaming pile of manure  which incidentally proved to to be a popular epithet in the day’s proceedings didn’t affect him but that it could have destroyed the confidence of a lesser author. Thus it was up to us Bloggers to judiciously critique books mindful of the sensitivities of authors because words do have an exceptional reach and power which we may not be completely aware of. He gave us the following tips 
    Be positive
    Be a blogger and not a journalist 
    Be unbiased and not commercial
    Why the why on the tree

    The next speaker popular blogger Anil P who has a photo blog showed us how effective photo blogs can be. Unfortunately his PPT had some technical glitches which detracted from an interesting a subtly humorous take on photo blogging. It was a why carved onto a 
    Stories make their own reality 

    Kavi Arasu’s  equally engaging and humorous PPT on his blogging journey showed us how to weave a story because every object and every person has a story. Unfortunately it is our deep desire to make a perfect and profound story that detracts from a good post. We should let the story flow rather thn concentrate on making it perfect.
    There was a much needed tea break after this but after the forenoon session the audience was looking forward to the other sessions . Sadly the forenoon session which dealt with branding and blogging was slightly heavy and technical and need I say even boring. Laxmipathi Bhat my be a giant in his field but sadly his talk went completely over my head. Manu Prasad’s presentation was less dry and more meaningful but it was Anaagh Desai’s PPT on influencers which had the whole audience realise that one shouldn’t take oneself too seriously and one should ask oneself why one is blogging.
    The post lunch session had an interesting Q &A session without hours Kiran Manral and Ravi Subramaniam who made it quite clear that bloggers and  writers had different skill sets and that good bloggers did not necessarily make good writers. This was quite a dampening revelation for at least 50% of the audience that harboured ambitions of becoming writers one day. They both spoke at length on e publishing , book writing and how one should write for the love of writing and not with the hope of making it a sustainable career.
    The rest of the afternoon went pretty much downhill as the only interesting speaker was Shekhar Kapoor who said that Social media had sucked out the inertia from society.
    The two successful bloggers who shared their stories Anil Agarwal and Anuradha  Goyal had interesting and probably more useful stories to share but coming as they did at the fag end of the session couldn’t engage the audience which had by now become restless and looking forward to the tea break and subsequent workshops on food blogging and video blogging

    Unfortunately  by this time I had reached the end of my patience and decided to call it a day so I walked out and didn’t stay for the workshops.

    Tigris event was a very well organised event and even though it didn’t run as per schedule was well worth the effort of making the trek from town. I was a bit disappointed though that it was not mo interactive and didn’t address technical issues of blogging especially the ones which I am facing.
    However, I was thrilled to bits to be ale to attend such a function. I came away with many more tips on how to take my blog to the next level and hope that one day I too will become a successful blogger.

    Thank  you Blogadda for this wonderful opportunity!  I’m sure I’m not alone when I say we look  forward to many such events

  • April’s Fool in February

    Yesterday I was on my way to a meeting at Foreshore Road, Colaba , when I found myself stuck in the most awful traffic snarl. Funnily enough the other side of the road leading to Marine Drive was empty which meant that there was some hold up in front of the Mantralaya and because this is a no honking zone and there were menacing looking policemen with ineffective looking  lathis standing on the road, the cars lined up were actually patiently waiting their turn to go one at a time.

    For a while I actually fell asleep and when I woke up twenty minutes later to find we hadn’t budged an inch I asked the driver what the matter was. When he rolled down the window and asked a perched policeman what the reason was, he was given the official reply ” we don’t know”. A while later I found myself alongside a lalbatti car so I put down the window and signalled to the driver to put down his even though he was a cop in uniform and the passenger in the back seat looked important enough to have a security detail sitting in the front seat. The cop told me it was a morcha. 
    Morchas now seem to be a thing of the past and the word brought back memories of sit ins in front of the  University peopled with jholi carrying, kolhapuri wearing, scruffy bearded or kohl lined activists agitating for something or the other. Or there were peasants in white caps or turbans, women in colourful saris marching down the streets of Mumbai with placards and party flags demanding something or the other. While their concerns and grievances were genuine, so was the inconvenience they caused: exams were not held on time, trains were delayed and generally many people were more vexed end annoyed rather than sympathetic to the agitators’ cause.
    However, the crowds in front of me seemed neither students nor peasants but just a rag tag bunch of people literally standing over one another, some of them waving papers in the air. As we came to the end of the road, we found out that someone had put out a rumour that the Government was offering houses at  only Rs . 54,000/- to those who applied for them at the Chief Minister’s Office, hence the crowds because as usual the T&C that applied were : first come, first served. So here were all those who had come first with their applications duly filled in triplicate and others who were clamouring for the “writers” to fill in their applications which were the papers being waved in the air.
    With housing in Mumbai being a scarce commodity , high end homes being sold at starting rates upwards of Rs.100000/ Sq.ft and  affordable homes being out of reach of the common man, this offer seemed too good to pass up even if it was a rumour. And it seems that not only were there hundreds of hopefuls who bit this bait, but several people from the Mantralaya who abandoned their desks  to join in the lines that led to the CM’s office. 
    Obviously this  year’s April Fool came two months too early!
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started