Anuradha Sridharan

It has been a while since I read fiction. I love fiction novels which have a light-hearted but gripping story plot with funny and witty one-liners. And it makes it even better when there is a female protagonist with a regular girl-next-door image. Yashodhara Lal's new book "There's something about you" scores on all these parameters. I haven't read her earlier books, so I'm not sure about her writing style. Though the book is marketed as "the romance novel of the year", I would categorize it as a novel based on relationships - relationships with parents, with friends, with colleagues, with others in the society and most importantly, with oneself. The story plot deals with every such relationships, the complexities, the told and the un-told feelings. At a few places, it makes you want to pause and think about your own relationships in contrast with the protagonist Trish's relationships. Trish is a bundle of different characters etched together -...

It's really heartening to see technology companies taking the steps to support working mothers by extending the maternity leave upto 6 months. Kudos to Flipkart for thinking beyond these 6 months by supporting flexible working hours and supporting a year off without salary. But there's also much more that can be done to enable mothers to return to workplace with a confident, happy and motivated mindset. Especially for mothers who do not have a family support system in place. What happens to the mothers(and their infants) after 6 months? They would need to look for safe and secure day care options. Multiple factors have to be considered in order to narrow down this decision - the location, the care-takers, security, hygiene, food, number of children, child:care-taker ratio, timings etc. It's extremely challenging to find a daycare that matches all the criteria that works best for the parents. Given the traffic situation, mothers have to spend an extra hour or two in managi...

steel plates and glass bottles cloth bags cottony crisp tender greens and herbs plucked from the window sill fresh hot breakfast from the kitchen prepared with care and love a walk to the vegetable shop fresh veggies in a jute bag conversations with real people face-to-face in no hurry the clock takes its own sweet time to cross the hours and days lifestyle simple unhurried moments to pause and reflect neighborhood well known and in perfect harmony sharing and interacting caring and giving every living being our closely knit family respect and love natural state of mind Ruminating on the simple and beautiful lifestyle of 80s. Wishing this makes a comeback in general while I take conscious steps towards such a lifestyle for myself and my family.