Summer Love

(This is not my picture. It has been sourced from another site.)

It might not have been such a hot sunny afternoon for me holed up in my air-conditioned office, but I yearn to take a summer break. Just like in my school-days. Ever since schools have been out, and mum at home, I trudge along to work whilst children are busy playing cricket 9 in the morning.

But today, as I was surfing through Pinterest, I came across this picture and it featured a lot of what my summer holidays constituted of. Books. This picture makes my heart ache. It makes me want to drop all my earthly responsibilities and transport myself in to the safe world of books, happy and secure, flooded in the warm sunlight reading Ruskin Bond or Agatha Christie near that open window. Cross-legged and armed with a cool drink, flipping the pages of a dusty book. I want my summer love back again.

Tell me you want to do it too.

A Jewel In Everyday Life

Ismat Chughtai. She had much to teach me. Especially her unapologetic manner of writing. Her stories are layered, beautifully. Not like the onion. But like the fluffy whorls of a flower, where the petals entwine one another. Women are the focal point in many of her stories.

But there are some that mirror many of my moments in life. Just as in the Invalid. But her Hell-bound, left me speechless and a bit teary-eyed too. As I managed to wade through the rich description of her brother, Azim, I slowly started to draw comparisons to mine. They did not have the same personality. Hell-no. But they both succumbed to TB in the month of August. For me, that’s enough.

And the way she points at those every, banal emotions that one does not even notice – astounding. There is much to her that I am yet to come across, discover and interpret. But I know that this is the start of a delicious journey of one of my favourite authors.