#TSBC – My Favourite Things

Meeting “Eskay”

Posted on March 11, 2013May 12, 2015 by sudhagee

It all started with a DM (Direct Message on Twitter) from Gitanjali Sriram that I received about a month back. Actually, there were 3 of them.

Hey! My dad published a book last yr ‘Indira Gandhi: The Final Chapter’ which chronicles her story from the Emergency to her assassination

The story is told thru the political cartoons he was doing for the Indian Express during those year. It’s a fab book.

Would you like a few signed copies to give away during one of the TSBC sessions?

(Note: #TSBC or The Sunday Book Club is a book chat on twitter. For more details please click here.)

Ahem… Would I like a few signed copies…? 😉 Once I had conferred with Raghav and Rahul, my #TSBC co-founders, I sent a DM to Gitanjali accepting her offer. She, in turn, sent me the email address of Suraj ‘Eskay’ Sriram, her father and author of the book giveaway, to work out the formalities involved. And a few emails later we were set.

I am embarrassed to admit now that, at that time, I had not heard of the book or the author. A quick online search revealed that Indira Gandhi: The Final Chapter (Niyogi Books, 2011, pp.176) was a glimpse of the Indian political and social scene through Eskay’s cartoons and illustrations, during the last few years of Indira Gandhi’s political regime. I also asked my older brothers and Amma if they had heard of Eskay. To which I received an immediate “Of course !” followed by a “Why do you ask?” When I gave them the background details, I was told by all of them that I don’t read enough ! 😦

But I digress from the main topic of this post: Meeting “Eskay”, which happened last Saturday in Pune. And what a meeting it was !

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Lonely places, lyrical prose

Posted on January 14, 2013February 11, 2013 by sudhagee

The Guest Post Series on “My Favourite Things” has contributions by those sharing my interests in travel, books, photography, music, and on issues that I am passionate about. Though the guest posts are not always by fellow bloggers, the guest authors are always those who have interesting experiences to share.

Today’s guest author is Zephyr of The Cyber Nag, who writes about “social issues, family and kids” with dollops of humour, gentle sarcasm, and subtle nagging for our conscience without sounding patronising or condescending. In my opinion, her writing can only be classified in one category, “Excellent”. In today’s post, Zephyr moves away from the topics that she usually writes on and talks about Pico Iyer’s Falling of the Map and how, in spite of not being a fan of this genre, slowly fell in love with this book.

I heard about Pico Iyer and his highly acclaimed Video nights in Kathmandu, about a quarter century ago. But somehow, the title didn’t appeal to me. Don’t ask me why. And so Iyer remained a quaint name in the far recesses of my mind for some years.

Then came his Falling off the map ( first published in the US by Alfred Knopf in 1993). This one sounded intriguing. My fertile imagination made me visuaIise the countries mentioned in the book jostling for space to stay on the map, but kept being pushed out by the other and better known countries. Sometimes these countries fought with the lonely ones, making them sadder and lonelier! But the book remained right there – in my imagination because back then I couldn’t afford to buy new books and most of my purchases were restricted to second-hand bookshops. Alas, for Falling… to come to that sales outlet, I would have to wait a long, long while.

Besides, travel books as a genre, did not hold much appeal for me. I liked James Michener’s Hawaii, but it was more a historical novel than a travel book. Till one day I picked up a small volume of Lost Continent by Bill Bryson. It was such a delightful read and made me laugh so much that I got hooked – not to travel books, but to Bryson. And Pico Iyer remained a distant name, just like the countries he had written about in that book.

It took a session of #TSBC on travel books to remind me of that long forgotten name and his book and I promptly bought Falling off the Map (2004, Penguin Books India, pp.190, Price: 250/-) from Flipkart.

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The Sunday Book Club

Posted on September 16, 2012September 30, 2012 by sudhagee

Do you like Sundays? I do. In fact, I love Sundays as I can laze around, have a traditional South Indian lunch, chat with friends and family over the phone, read books or surf for books to beg, borrow or ~~steal~~ buy. It is generally a day for relaxing and recharging for the week to come.

Starting 30th September 2012, my Sundays are going to change, and I am very excited and happy and nervous about this. You see, I have agreed to be part of a new venture, and that too as a co-founder, no less ! Co-founder of The Sunday Book Club. Raghav (@raghavmodi), the founder of the very successful Movie Talk on Sunday (#MTOS), contacted Rahul (@meetneo) and me about 10 days back. And after a flurry of emails, DMs, and tweets, we found ourselves co-founders of The Sunday Book Club (#TSBC). 🙂

The Sunday Book Club on Twitter (#TSBC) is an initiative to get the Twitter Community together at a particular time and day each week to discuss various book-related topics. The aim of the whole exercise, besides having fun, is to find like-minded individuals who share the same passion for books as you do and in the process discover different books, authors, and genres that the bookworm in you might fancy.

In other words, it is the perfect opportunity for you to know about new books, interesting facts, and even participate in competitions and interact with special guests. The #TSBC events will take place from 15:00-16:00 Indian Standard Time every Sunday beginning 30th September. For more details on #TSBC, please visit my page on The Sunday Book Club.