All the Audiobooks I listened through the Covid era

So its been 1 year and I have a little one over 2 months of age, which explains my hiatus on this blog. Without much ado I want to take time and review as much as I can before LO wakes up for his next feed.

Mrs. Everything- Amazing novel by Jennifer Weiner on 2 sisters from a Jewish American family in a post world war scenario with a good dose of feminism.

Camino Winds: A typical whodunnit novel by John Grisham set in Camino Islands. The island is filled with authors of mystery novels and nowvwith a dead author. A nice holiday read.

We have always been here: This is an amazing novel by a Pakistani Canadian author about her journey as a refugee from Pakistan to Canada. It gives a glimpse of Pakistani society and especially on the life of Ahmadis. It narrates rhe story of the author and how they immigrate  and adapt to the Canadian society. It also talks about lesbian relationships.

Motherhood: I admit this was a weird pick. But all new mothers will be able to relate to this with their journey of transition from womanhood to motherhood.

The newborn handbook: This book is written by a pediatrician on what to expect from the first three months of an infant. A good reference book for all new moms like me.

The romance reader’s guide to life: This book is set in America in the 1950s when women were still struggling for their rights to earn a livelihood in the post war setting. The author is obsessed with a romance novel and the novel is narrated alongwith her life experiences. Another good read. Similar to Mrs. everything this talks about the rise of feminism in America from 1950 till date.

So these books kept me busy throught my pregnancy and postpartum life ( somehow managed to listen to a couple of audiobooks) 

Never have i ever! review

Finally a show to be proud of! And relive the Tam Bram experience.

I can soooo relate to this show. Especially the mom part :)

 Things i could relate to right off the bat were:

1. Devi's mom making her wear a Tshirt underneath the outfit while performing

2. Devi's mom trying to sneak while she was speaking to crush

3. Devi having a troubled relationship with her mom

4. Cliched uncle trying to to be an MCP and advise how women need to be 

5. Kamala having a secret boyfriend

Things that surprised me about the show, which were rather bold were:

1. Almost no white guys
2. No school jock and cheerleaders which are usually while
3. Asian girl who wants to be an actor
4. Asian guys as boyfriends rather than white guys
5. Black Therapist
6. Black principal
7. The only white guy is a jew

Everyone who you would assume would be white in California is not...Its pretty much rewriting whiteness from the non-white point of view.

In all, I love the show and kudos to the Maitreyi making Tamil Canadian girls proud!

Global gypsy

Growing up in Mumbai was an interesting experience. I loved it when i was in Dahisar and hated it when i was in Thane. But i did enjoy growing up there and thus hindi became my first language. I have a love hate relationship with Marathi but i am a little bit of Mumbaikar.

Chennai was a culture shock at first but it made me write a beautiful blog. I found tamil people narrow minded too but did meet some nice people. At the end, I know that this is not the city I wanted to live in. So much so that I started listening to hindi songs and I couldn't take too much of Tamil anymore. I became aware of my North Indianness for the first time and was even thankful that I never grew up here.

Bangalore is a beautiful city and I finally felt myself there. It has a good mix of north Indian-ness and south Indian-ness. I did meet some stupid people like bus conductors and rickshaw drivers. But overall this is a good city with some nice people.

Toronto was a different type of culture shock where I saw women enjoying themselves. Its a female paradise. And I wanted to be part of it. But I keep getting lost in my identity crisis here every now and then. I have to redefine myself every now and then to ensure that I don't get lost. I do feel alone here sometimes but life still goes on.

Audiobooks I read recently

So below are few books i kept myself with since January:

Pachinko
A book about a Korean family that moved to Japan during world war era. I loved the description of Korean culture in the book . I also learnt more on how asian cultures are all about honour and self respect. And of course the love towards white rice ;)

Little fires everywhere
This is a weird book and I am still trying to wrap my head around it. The protagonist does not fit in the persona of an African American woman. They are not known for being discreet :) for the right reasons. I feel its a Asian story replicated into an African American one. The description of the white family is absolutely true. I liked the story and I could relate to the part of being a mother and yearning for motherhood :)

Anne of Green Gables
This is a beautiful story of an orphan girl who grew up in PEI. I listened to the book and watched the netflix series too and loved both. My interest is this book began when i visited PEI. To this day i don't know how i missed this amazing story when i grew up.

The Shape of family
This is a story of an Indian american family that reels under the tragic death of their younger kid. The elder sister feels guilty of not being to save her younger brother and goes through a journey of forgiving herself. Beautifully narrated.

Next year in Havana
This is a story of a Cuban American woman who goes back to Cuba to learn more about her grandmother's life and end up falling for family friend's grandson. Again beautifully narrated. I found the narrative was very sombre, introspective and passionate in a very different way.

Tamil versus Hindi

Now this subject is extremely close to my heart and  i resisted until  now was because i wanted to resist posting anything political with my blog. But i realized that i am a political being with some strong opinions. So the blog theme had to change.
Now even though i am a Tamil, my hindi is more fluent than my tamil because i grew up in Mumbai. But Tamil is close to my heart even though my tamil is quite rusty. It makes me a part of an ancient civilization that i am proud of.
Whereas Hindi is just about 200 years old, when urdu started being written in devanagari script. Nevertheless, It has helped me connect to numerous individuals while i was in Mumbai.

The reason Tamil people like me have issues with this is because of the cultural domination aspect and its wrong. We have seen it happen in the UK where Scottish and Irish have been reduced to mere accents inspite of these being languages at one time. Also in Pakistan where Urdu has decided to eradicate the regional languages like Sindhi and Punjabi. Its unfortunate that we feel the need to adopt one language to prove that we are one nation. And even if that is the case, the language that truly brought Indians together is English. And adopting English has made much more competitive than China, for example.
So the more Hindi is imposed the more fightback it will receive. The usual suspect were always Tamils but this time we say Kannadigas, Odiyas and Bengalis join the brigade and it will only increase in future.

If north indians want south indians to learn hindi, then they should also in turn learn a south indian language of their choice. Fair enough?

Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh - review

Now I must say that this review is about the movies Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh but its more about Vijay Devarakonda and Shahid Kapoor :))))
So both the movies show a hot dude who is an Alpha male, who chose his girl, and took her to his den... And the girl, lucky her, she enjoys the ride, and the perks of being with him. And the story continues with its twists and turns.

Now my feminist review on the story:
I loved VD as the Alpha male hot dude :). Shahid was also close, but VD is VD.... , there is no Arjun Reddy without VD. What i liked about the character was:
Him wanting to take care of Preeti and his dedication towards her
His simplicity in choosing an average looking girl and being honest to her
Him wanting to take care of Preeti during her PMS time... Thats cute
Him going to the operation theatre half awake and still ending up saving someone's life

His relationship with his brother and his grandma

His best friend being there for him through tough times.

What I did not like was:
The average looking girl had to be dumb with barely a couple of dialogs... I get the fact that guys prefer girls who don't talk a lot. But that doesn't happen in reality. Girls talk.. its in their DNA to talk. So I absolutely didn't get this part.
Him not falling for Jia Sharma. Jia was an absolutely nicely played character in the movie. She is successful and famous and yet falls for him. And she takes care of him like he did to Preeti. But Arjun Reddy doesn't like being taken care of... what a pity.
Arjun Reddy talking about fat girls being a good combo for Preeti... Dude Preeti aka Shalini is also fat...

Comparing the Telugu and Hindi cast:
Again VD is VD, but Shahid come close. This is a good break for Shahid after a dry patch
Kiara is incomparably better than Shalini.
Kanchana did a great job as grandma, but the hindi version was .... below average
Both the Jias were good.
The elder brothers did a good job in both movies
Shiva's character was amazingly good in Telugu but very stupidly done in hindi. That guy in Hindi version was so uncomfortable when delivering the PMS dialog. Pathetic.

All said and done Kabir Singh was still a bit hit in the North, even with all the shortcomings. Whereas Arjun Reddy was flawless. An eye pleaser for a feminist like me ;).

Ohh Baby - movie review

I must confess that I am not a fan of Samantha, well atleast until I watched this movie. Ohh Baby is about a old lady, Savithri, who turns into a young girl so that she could fulfill her dreams of being a singer. So Savithri (Lakshmi) turns into Swathi (Samantha) overnight and the movie is about her adventures.

I loved Samantha’s bubbliness  while maintaining Savithri’s nature. The scenes that i loved in the movie was when she misunderstood that her grandson was going to propose her :)). And the scene where she meets her mother-in-law as the young Swathi :)). Samantha’s character was played beautifully when she confesses that she wants to be young forever and at the same time she ferociously defends Chanti, when attacked by two young guys in a pub.

I liked the message sent by this movie that old people have a life so understand them. At the same time when Savithri becomes young she learns the art of advising without hurting other people’s  feelings.

Her scenes with Naga Shourya were absolutely romantic and hilarious at the same time. In the end, she did a fantastic job imitating Lakshmi. This movie is worth watching again! :)