The Whimsy Bookworm: A Book Blog from India

  Book: Now You See Us Author: Balli Kaur Jaswal  Pages: 320  Read on: Kindle Read in: 4 hours  Plot Summary:  Corazon, Donita, and Angel are Filipina domestic workers—part of the wave of women sent to Singapore to be cleaners, maids, and caregivers. Corazon:  A veteran domestic worker, Cora had retired back to the Philippines for good, but she has returned to Singapore under mysterious circumstances. Now she’s keeping a secret from her wealthy employer, who is planning an extravagant wedding for her socialite daughter. Donita:  Barely out of her teens, this is Donita’s first time in Singapore, and she’s had the bad luck to be hired by the notoriously fussy Mrs. Fann. Brazen and exuberant, Donita’s thrown herself into a love affair with an Indian migrant worker. Angel:  Working as an in-home caregiver for an elderly employer, Angel is feeling blue after a recent breakup with the woman she loves. She’s alarmed when her employer’s son suddenly ...

  Book: Seeking Fortune Elsewhere Author: Sindya Bhanoo Pages: 241 Read on: Kindle  Read in: 2.5 hours  Plot Summary:  Traveling from Pittsburgh to Eastern Washington to Tamil Nadu, these stories about dislocation and dissonance see immigrants and their families confront the costs of leaving and staying, identifying sublime symmetries in lives growing apart. In “Malliga Homes,” selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize, a widow in a retirement community glimpses her future while waiting for her daughter to visit from America. In "No. 16 Model House Road," a woman long subordinate to her husband makes a choice of her own after she inherits a house. In "Nature Exchange," a mother grieving in the wake of a school shooting finds an unusual obsession. In "A Life in America," a professor finds himself accused of having exploited his graduate students.   Sindya Bhanoo’s haunting stories show us how immigrants’ paths, and the paths of those they l...

  Book: In The Language of Remembering.  Author: Aanchal Malhotra  Publisher: Harper Collins India Pages: 756  How Long it Took Me To Read: 8 days  Plot Summary:   Oral historian Aanchal Malhotra's first book,  Remnants of a Separation , was published in 2017 to mark the seventieth anniversary of India's Partition. It told a human history of the monumental event by exhuming the stories lying latent in ordinary objects that survivors had carried with them across the newly made border. It was acclaimed for the freshness of its approach to a decades-old, much-written-about subject. But more significantly, it inspired conversations within families: between the generation that had witnessed Partition and those who had only inherited its memories. In the Language of Remembering , as a natural progression, explores that very notion as it reveals how Partition is not yet an event of the past and its legacy is threaded into the daily lives of subsequent ge...

  Book: Taxi Wallah and Other Stories  Author: Numair Atif Chowdhury  Publisher: Harper Collins  Pages: 111  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 hours  Plot Summary:   In Taxi Wallah and Other Stories, we encounter more of Choudhury's limitless imagination and deep empathy as he captures the many Bangladeshes that make up the nation. The stories in this collection are bound by their protagonists - outsiders looking in - whether it is the taxi wallah of the title story who ferries tourists to upmarket hotels in Gulshan, the chokra for whom the streets of Dhaka are both sustenance and threat, Rabia the maid who feels compelled to call even the youngest of her employer's children 'Apa', or the brick breaker who finds his life draining away as he hammers rubble at construction sites... Fuelled by Choudhury's trademark linguistic verve and energy, Taxi Wallah and Other Stories is a searing yet tender portrait of a country that is frac...

  Book: China Room  Author: Sunjeev Sahota  Pages: 256 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~2.5 hours  Plot Summary:  Mehar, a young bride in rural 1929 Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. She and her sisters-in-law, married to three brothers in a single ceremony, spend their days at work in the family's china room, sequestered from contact with the men. When Mehar develops a theory as to which of them is hers, a passion is ignited that will put more than one life at risk.   Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who in 1999 travels from England to the now-deserted farm, its china room locked and barred. In enforced flight from the traumas of his adolescence - his experiences of addiction, racism, and estrangement from the culture of his birth - he spends a summer in painful contemplation and recovery, finally gathering the strength to return home. Things I Liked:  1. A historical literary fiction set in rural Punj...

  Book: Dying Day  Author: Vaseem Khan  Pages:  437 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4.5 hours  Plot Summary:  A priceless manuscript. A missing scholar. A trail of riddles. For over a century, one of the world's great treasures, a six-hundred-year-old copy of Dante's  The Divine Comedy , has been safely housed at Bombay's Asiatic Society. But when it vanishes, together with the man charged with its care, British scholar and war hero, John Healy, the case lands on Inspector Persis Wadia's desk.  Uncovering a series of complex riddles written in verse, Persis - together with English forensic scientist Archie Blackfinch - is soon on the trail. But then they discover the first body.   As the death toll mounts it becomes evident that someone else is also pursuing this priceless artefact and will stop at nothing to possess it . . . Harking back to an era of darkness, this second thriller in the  Malabar House  series pits Persis, onc...

  Hello August!  I am so happy you are here!  August used to be a pretty ordinary month in my corner of the world. Apart Independence Day, it held no real importance in my life.  Till 2013!  When I decided to celebrate Independence Day allllll month instead of just on the 15th.  I started my annual Indian Books in August and have never looked back.  I also include some subcontinental reads, because this month holds a lot of value for all of us. So I try to include some reads from Pakistan and Bangladesh. It is one of my favourite reading months of the whole year and I read books I am anyways drawn to the most.  I am so happy to kickstart my reading this month!  I have a tentative TBR for this month. Something I've been brewing for the last few months. Keeping books aside to read this month.   I am tres tres excited.  Here's my TBR for this years Indian Books in August:  1. Home and The World by Tagore (or some of his short...

  Book: The Secret Keeper of Jaipur  Author: Alka Joshi  Pages: 309 Read on: Kindle  Read in: ~4 hours  Plot Summary:  In  New York Times  bestselling author Alka Joshi’s intriguing new novel, henna artist Lakshmi arranges for her protégé, Malik, to intern at the Jaipur Palace in this tale rich in character, atmosphere, and lavish storytelling. It’s the spring of 1969, and Lakshmi, now married to Dr. Jay Kumar, directs the Healing Garden in Shimla. Malik has finished his private school education. At twenty, he has just met a young woman named Nimmi when he leaves to apprentice at the Facilities Office of the Jaipur Royal Palace. Their latest project: a state-of-the-art cinema. Malik soon finds that not much has changed as he navigates the Pink City of his childhood. Power and money still move seamlessly among the wealthy class, and favors flow from Jaipur’s Royal Palace, but only if certain secrets remain buried. When the cinema’s b...

  Book: The Family Tree  Author: Sairish Hussain  Pages: 528  Publisher: Harper Collins  Read On: Kindle  How Long it Took Me To Read: A Week (with several breaks)  Plot Summary:   Your roots can always lead you home… Amjad cradles his baby daughter in the middle of the night. He has no time to mourn his wife’s death. Saahil and zahra, his two small children, are relying on him. Amjad vows to love and protect them always. Years later, saahil and his best friend, Ehsan, have finished University and are celebrating with friends. But when the night turns dangerous, its devastating effects will ripple through the years to come. Zahra’s world is alight with politics and activism. But she is now her father only source of comfort, and worries she’ll never have time for her own aspirations. Life has taken her small family in different directions – will they ever find their way back to each other?  The family tree is the moving story of a British Mu...

Hey, hey! It's another weekend! Happy Janmasthami, if you celebrate it! We had a nice little celebration at home with prayers and mithai ( sweets) ! My sister and I have picked out our weekend reads and here's what they are.... I am reading The Body Myth by Rheea Mukherjee.  Plot Summary:  Mira is a teacher living in the heart of Suryam, the only place in the world the fickle Rasagura fruit grows. Mira lives alone, and with only the French existentialists as companions, until the day she witnesses a beautiful woman having a seizure in the park. Mira runs to help her but is cautious, for she could have sworn the woman looked around to see if anyone was watching right before the seizure began. Mira is quickly drawn into the lives of this mysterious woman Sara, who suffers a myriad of unexplained illnesses, and her kind, intensely supportive husband Rahil, striking up intimate, volatile and fragile friendships with each of them that quickly become something more. ...

Book: The Far Field Author: Madhuri Vijay Publisher: Harper Collins Pages: 432 Read On: Paperback Edition How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days Plot Summary :  In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love. General Thoughts: I was very kindly sent this...

Book: Gun Island Author: Amitav Ghosh Pages: 288 Publisher: Penguin Random House How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days Read On: Hardback edition pictured here Plot Summary:  Bundook . Gun. A common word, but one which turns Deen Datta's world upside down. A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen's eyes to the realities of growing up in today's world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about ...