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Guest Celebrity Blogger: Juhi Pande, Books & Berries.

Guest Celebrity Blogger: Juhi Pande, Books & Berries.

Malini Agarwal

I thought of writing about my favourite books of all time and then it hit me that I hadn’t read a book in one go in a long, long time. I used to be the sorts who would devour a book in 24 hours if I liked it enough. Reading was my superpower. So then what happened? I tried to back-track and figure out what my Kryptonite was. Here’s the story:

I broke my Blackberry yesterday and it wasn’t a conscious effort (I’m lying about this part).

Juhi Pande

See the thing is that no matter what I did to my phone, it would come to life after a certain point of time. I dropped it in the shower, it took 2 hours to re-surface. Dropped it in the sea – 5 hours. Lathered it in sunblock – 1.5 hours. Dropped it two floors down the elevator shaft – it came back to life instantly. It was like a demon badger that never wanted to let go. Which is a good thing. Goes to show what a tank the handset is. So then why did I want to take a shotgun to my phone? For the simple reason that I was grossly addicted to it. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t heating my phone over a lighter, liquefying it and then injecting it into my bloodstream, but well, it was coming to a point where I might as well have done that. I was glued to it, as many of us are and the reason I’m capable of writing this is because it’s been less than 24 hours and I’ve got the ‘holier than  thou’ thing going on right now.

Here’s a list of things I missed out on while I was staring at my phone these past two years.

Juhi Pande

: Reading books

: Watching a film in one go without telling 30 people about it and updating my status with the name of the film.

: Making eye contact with people I was talking to.

: Replying using words rather than ‘mmm hmmm’ *click click click*

: Acting normal if my phone battery died. Instead of having a massive anxiety attack.

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the drift.

So now that I’m a born again purist (of sorts), the first thing I’m going to attempt is reading the book I’ve been lugging along like dead weight for the past month. I’m certain that after twitching and palpitating for a day or two, I should be fine.

And since I said ‘book’ let me get back to why I started to write this article in the first place – book recommendations. Here is my top 5 of all time. (phew!)

1. The Ground Beneath Her Feet : Salman Rushdie.

Salman Rushdie

I wasn’t a Rushdie fan and I wasn’t planning on being one. But this book was given to me as a gift on my birthday. Took me a year to get around to it and when I did, I was glued. This is a tale that you would yearn to call your own. Rockstars, earthquakes, travel, Bombay, love, longing & many, many interwoven stories. Delectable to say the least.

2.            Survivor : Chuck Palahniuk

Chuck Palahniuk

For the uninitiated, Chuck Palahniuk wrote ‘Fight Club’. Bet that got your attention, eh? Fight Club is a little girl in a pink frock compared to Survivor. Palahniuk likes the idea of shock and awe when he writes a book and that’s because he likes the attention. ‘Survivor’ scares you in the nicest possible way. It’s more the psyche of the writer than the story itself that seeps through.

3.            Ramayana – Ashok K. Banker

Ramayana – Ashok K. Banker

Ashok Banker is George Lucas. Let me re-phrase that. Ashok Banker is another kind of awesome. He re-wrote The Ramayana in a six part series and each book surpasses the other. The age old tale has been written with such flair and is brilliantly visual in its reading. Rama, Sita, Lakshman, Raavan, Jatayu come to life with his words. This book is more 21st century than any other that I have read. Indian story telling bred with sci-fi and you have yourself a feast.

4.            1984 – George Orwell

1984 – George Orwell

if u lyk 2 ryt lyk dis den dis buk iz a mst read. I kid you not. George Orwell wrote this book in 1948 about a dystopian future and how life would be under a totalitarian regime. The people who run the government want for their people to have very limited knowledge and keep tweaking history and the news. They also have a language called NuSpeak, where words are shortened and synonyms completely removed from the dictionary. Isnt dat crzy? Y wud sum1 ryt abt sumthng so ridikulus?!!

With that I end my book recommendations for the month. Hope these help in keeping you entertained. If not, I will write down my address next time and you can come and throw a few rocks at my apartment.