A one-of-a-kind event

This piece of information is so interesting, that I had to share with you all. Two books are to be launched in Sikkim soon. What's so special about it? Well, read on and you will know!...

Here's an excerpt from the launch announcement:

It gives us great pride to announce that our two Friends at Rachna are soon to do a worldwide release of their books here at our showroom. While this certainly is the first of its kind event in Sikkim, what will make it doubly extraordinarily special is the fact that two are a father-daughter team.

Dechen P Tenzing is a 9th grader and has been working on her comic book "Wolf's Fang" for a long time. This comic, stylised in the popular manga fashion, is undoubtedly going to be the first manga comic to come out of India. The layout and design for this comic is underway in the able hands of Sokpa Productions, a design studio in Gangtok. The venture is being published by Dechen's father P.G.Tenzing.

Mr Tenzing took voluntary retirement after serving in the Indian Administrative Services for 20 years and went on a 23,000 kilometer motorbike expedition all over India. His experiences and encounters are chronicled in the book "Don't Ask Any Old Bloke For Directions". This book, published by Penguin India, is going to have a worldwide release along with Dechen's "Wolf's Fang" at Rachna Books sometime in mid March.

The launch has been scheduled for 23rd March 2009. So if you happen to be in Gangtok around that time, be sure to be a part of it. You can read more about this event @ rachnabooks.com

Link: Coverage of the event in The Telegraph, India.

Life

When I first read about Google making available the millions of photographs published in the Life magazine over the years, I was quite excited.

Long years ago, our bookshop used to sell the magazine and I remember leafing through them when I was a kid. Later on, when I was in middle school, I too had caught the "autograph" bug. We all wanted to have the "coolest" autograph or memorabilia book where our friends could write nice things about the owner of the book. I wanted to decorate my auto book with collage of pics of good looking people. So, I turned to these magazines. Our bookshop had closed by then and we had plenty of books and mags at our disposal. I cringe now, thinking of how stupid I was to have cut up such rare mags for the sake of my silly book! Brother, if you are reading this, do you think we still have some of them left? Or did I trash them all??

Anyway, like I said, I was quite excited about the latest Google antics. I have been browsing through the beautiful rare pics. And today I came across this picture.

This picture is from a collection of pictures taken in an Air India flight in 1946. I didn't know Air India even existed in the '40s!! And check out the air hostess' uniform. Its so chic! I wonder when did they change their uniform to the printed saris? Of course, I then went to Wikipedia to quench my thirst for knowledge about Air India and was pleasantly surprised to know that the airline was in fact founded in 1932! Who could have guessed? But the Wikipedia article is incomplete - no mention about air hostesses' uniforms!

Find more interesting Life pictures here.

Chatter

I have always considered my childhood to be blessed. I had lovely dresses to wear, most of them stitched by my mom. She has a wonderful sense of style and was great with her hands. I remember us poring through "foreign" design magazines - me pointing at the prettiest and fluffiest of the dresses, and she trying to figure out if she can replicate them for me.

I had no complaints regarding food. Though like a typical kid, I used to hate most subjis, but provided I had my favorite Nepali tamatar ko achaar (tomato chutney) to dip my index finger and mix it with rice, I used to gobble up everything obediently. Due to tonsillitis, I was not allowed to have ice creams - had them only when we were out of town, like in Siliguri where the weather was warmer. Once, my doctor told me I can have ice-creams provided I heat them up first. I thought that was a great idea!! So what if it was a little bit warm! Silly me!

I had plenty of friends, both in school and home. Most of my "home friends" were my classmates - so I was one of the few lucky kids to have the same kid as my "home best friend" and my "school best friend". I had plenty of toys to share them with too. I feel extremely blessed that my earliest friends, right from the KGs are still in touch and we are still very close friends.

I used to get most of the toys that I wanted - maybe I knew when to limit my demands. Throughout my childhood, I only remember one incidence of me crying over some toy I wanted. We were in Nepal and I saw this toy sewing machine with which you can sew woolen threads over pictures of butterflies and flowers. I fell in love with it but my parents refused to get it for me. They tried to explain to me that it was expensive and how anyway at the Indian customs they would not allow us to take it back home and they will keep it for themselves. I cried and sulked the entire time we were at the mall.

But most of all I feel blessed because my childhood has been full of books. From the time I started to learn to read, I have been surrounded by books - starting right from the colorful nursery rhyme books with pop up cut outs. I remember as a kid I was always hungry for books. Apart from the books I used to get from the school library, I had also joined our local library. But that was not enough, so I used to get books from our bookstore too. At that time our bookstore was closed for business. I have always been a timid child, shy to go anywhere alone - not even to buy bread or milk from the nearby store. But to get those books, I used to gather up all my courage and hike for about half a mile, go to the store, unlock to big heavy locks, open a door panel and enter the room - the musty smell of damp books welcoming me. The books used to immerse me in world of fairies and goblins and robbers and secret passages - thanks mostly to Enid Blyton. From childish stories of Noddy to Famous Five and the Faraway Tree to more "matured" Malory Towers and Nancy Drew. From children classics like Tom Sawer and Moby Dick to Emma and Pride and Prejudice. I used to read them all. Book lovers themselves, by parents used to encourage me to read books. They had me and my brother subscribed to magazines like Wisdom, Reader's Digest and my all time favorite, Target. Target was a teen magazine published by the Times of India group. And then of course there was Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha comics. I don't think you can find many people of our age group who can imagine their childhood without these comic books. They were not only fun to read but each story had a moral.

Recently I came across the Amar Chitra Katha website which took me back to those good old days and hence the chatter. The website's pretty good though I wish they had some more on-line content to read apart from the story of the week.

While we are in the topic of books, there's another interesting website I'd like to share with you. WOWIO has hundreds of e-books which are free provided you read them on-line. You can find many of the favorite classics titles. Explore a bit and who knows, you might just discover some great new writers! Let me know if you come across a good read.

Minus 30

Folks,

Here's something on my hometown. CNN-IBN does this show called Minus 30 which focuses on the youth of India. Recently they went on a trip to the North East and this video below shows a slice of Gangtok. The piece on Gangtok starts at 56 secs on the video clock. Enjoy!

In case you cannot access the video, here's a direct URL for the same:

http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/43822/on-the-other-side-of-northeast.html

Book Tag

Its been a long long time since I have read books on a regular basis. I have always had this guilty feeling that I no longer read much. But the taggie thingie going on motivated me so much that I actually went to the library to get the books I have been wanting to read for a long time, 'The Da Vinci Code' and 'Life of Pi'. Unfortunately, all the copies of both the books were out. Hopefully I get them soon. If not, because of this book tag going around so much, I have come across many titles which has been added to my 'to read' list. Isn't this an awesome activity?

Total Number of Books I Own -
Four. Three of which I had brought with me from India and one is actually V's. Of course, back home in India, I have innumerable books which I collected since childhood. Books I received as prizes in school and as gifts. I don't remember buying any book in particular. I never had the need as we own a book shop. So, I always got to read many many books without the need to buy. Whichever book that I felt need to be in my collection, I simply 'took' it.

The Last Book I Bought -
Stranger Stories by Satyajit Ray and Modern Indian Short Stories. Both of these I had bought for the flight from India. I love reading short stories, be it the ones we had in our school syllabi, ones by O' Henry, Jeffrey Archer, W. Somerset Maugham or just a collection of stories by various authors. I love the twists in the Jeffrey Archer and S Maugham stories. Probably one of the reason why I enjoy reading stories written by my blog friends so much.

The Last Book I Read -
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. Well, this book needs no introduction. I found the research done and the pace of the book amazing and unputdownable. I enjoyed Deception Point too. After reading these, I am so looking forward to read The Da Vinci Code. I am going the reverse way - people normally read DVC first, then Angels and Demons and then Deception Point. My path was exactly reverse! :-)

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me -
As most of us feel, five is a very small number to list all the books the we love. I read only fiction, so as such I have no 'life changing' book that I am very close to. Books that mean a lot to me are the ones I grew up with. As with most of us, it started with Enid Blyton's books. The first books I remember to have read (apart from school books, nursery rhymes other 'learning' books) are the Noddy series. How I used to pester my dad to take me to our shop so that I could get the next 2 Noddy books (I was allowesd to take only 2 at a time).

From Enid Blyton's kiddo books I transitioned to more 'mature' Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators and then Nancy Drew. From then I moved on to Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and her dear Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot series and the Perry Mason series.

About then I also started reading classics like Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy etc. Its been so long ago that I read all these classics, I sometimes think of reading them all over again. During the early stages of reading classics, I remember being touched by the story of The Little Princess. I was so excited when, after a few years, I got to see a movie based on that story.

A few books that my dad suggested me to read were Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, To Sir With Love, Farewell to Arms and To Kill A Mocking Bird. I dont think I need to mention how beautiful each of these are.

The next set of books that I love are plays by Shakespeare. Of them all, I have read three in quite detail - The Merchant of Venice, Julius Ceasar and Twelfth Night or What You Will. I had these in my school curriculum from 8th till 12th std. Julius Ceasar was the toughest of all. But, having these books in my syllabus helped me get interested in reading his other works. Of course, I read the translated version of the rest of his plays. I didnt have the patience to read them in Shakespearen language!

I was planning to write about the books I love in five categories (Five is the number here, remember?), but even five categories are not enough. In this last category, I would like to mention the comics I love. Starting with Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha to Archies and my favourites till date The Adventures of Tintin and The Adventures of Asterix and Obelix. I also remember reading a few Photo Romance in my early teens :-). And how can I forget my favourite magazine of all times Target!

Five Books I Want to read (This is a section that Anks introduced which I feel is quite apt!) -
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Thanks to Ricky for reminding me of this book)
Lajja by Tasalima Nasarina (Thanks to Anks)
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (Thanks to Moonie)
Shame by Salman Rushdie

Tag Five people -
Well, this is an open invitation to all book lovers who haven't participated yet. People with no blog are welcome to post their tag as a comment to this post.