Skip to main content

Suicide Notes and Rekha's biography

Finished reading Rekha: the untold story by Yasser Usman. She has apparently played a courtesan in over 30 films! So methinks her entire allusion to Amitabh Bacchan as the important 'him' in her life and her earlier insinuations of an affair with him were self- serving to her carefully built image, cemented by 'Silsila'. Affair or not, she has learnt to finally deny it to the press now and move on beyond her doomed marriage to Mukesh the businessman, for whose suicide she was blamed. Now she is the quintessential diva and more reams of newsprint should be devoted to how she has financially supported her rather large family of sisters with not much help from anyone else. Well-written biography.



Plot spoilers ahead: Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford. When I read the sample I didn't know what the book would be about except that it was about a teen who'd tried to kill himself, who had a good sense of humour about it and was admitted in the psych ward by his parents. He called his shrink 'cat poop' and the story was to be about 45 days of his stay in rehab. I read it though and found out that he had fallen in love with his best friend( a girl) 's boyfriend - meaning - he was gay. And was shunned by both of them for it. This led to him slitting his wrists. At the rehab center, he realises he is gay, and another girl he gets close to as a friend commits suicide. Although it was all written in a humorous voice, the subject matter was very serious and it's not everyone who can read this book and enjoy it. It came up on my reading suggestions on Google play because I'd bought '13 reasons why' which by the way, I'm yet to finish.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Book Review of 'Bitch Goddess for Dummies'

Recently, I attended a zoom session on chick lit by the Chennai Lockdown Literary Festival (CLLF). In the session, one of the speakers was Maya Sharma Sriram. I was so impressed with the way she conducted the session and answered the questions that I decided to pick up her chick lit novel, ‘Bitch Goddess for Dummies’ brought out by Rupa Publications in 2012. And I was not disappointed. I’m not sure if I was biased toward the book by the personality I had seen on zoom or not, but I quite enjoy chick lit and have read several chick lit novels in my thirties.   So the novel is about a 27-year-old woman Mira Iyer who decides to transform her personality from good girl to ‘bitch goddess’ to deal with the people in her life. Her mom who is constantly trying to fix her up with some eligible guy so that she can get married and Sanya, the real office bitch who is always cosying up to their bosses and vying for a promotion, are just two of the people in her life causing her angst. So it’s go...

Book Review of 'Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women'

I read ‘Resilience: Stories of Muslim Women’ by Shubha Menon recently.  The author, who belongs to one of my writing groups, requested a review of the book and also sent me a review copy. The foreword is by Syeda Hameed. Syeda Hameed established the Muslim Women’s Forum in 2001. The author, Shubha Menon, has documented the life of Muslim girls and women of Nizamuddin Basti in Delhi. She discusses the origin of the basti, how it became a magnet for displaced Muslims and goes on to outline “scenes from the medieval ages” in the basti. Sordid realities such as the practice of halala and mutah are discussed, which are used to terrorise women. The author shares the story of Farida, who has five sisters. By the time Farida was sixteen, she was a mother of two and abandoned.  She had been only accorded the status of a domestic servant. Her husband had cruelly divorced her saying “ Log teen bar talaq datein hain, mein tumhein hazaar baar talaq deta hoon.” After a few years, ...

Blogging with a Purpose - Theme Post

I’ve loved books since I was a child. I vaguely recall the 'Ladybird' series of books that I read as a child, but the first novel I remember reading was ‘The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage’ by Enid Blyton that my mom brought home for me to read from the library when I was in Class 4. I then finished the children’s books section in library after library in my neighbourhood. Reading has served me well since I now work as an editor. Reading was what filled my hours as a child and kept loneliness at bay. Reading is what helped me find myself at age 40 when I got back to the habit after several years of reading sporadically. I now average about 25 books a year that I track on Goodreads .  I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few authors online and offline. My cause for the Blogchatter #BloggingWithAPurpose campaign is "promoting authors." There is a popular joke in the publishing industry these days that there are more authors than readers. Authors a...