Magic Moments

Wikicommons Water is an important resource that is largely neglected in our country. This is due to various reasons. On one hand, there are people who openly waste water without thinking twice while a large section of our population is struggling to find pure drinking water. This divide makes one wonder whether RO purifiers can make the list of necessities in a citizen’s life or not. The concept of these kinds of purifiers is still new at large for the Indian audience. While the traditional methods of water filtration have been used since ages in Indian homes, the thought of choosing an RO water purifier is largely native. More so in the cities but slowly and steadily people are realizing the importance and benefits that an ROpurifier provides in terms of good health. These devices are majorly classified on the levels of purification and storage tank capacity. The levels of purification translate into the extent of purification of the impure tap water, which the...

a gathering of friends is a collection of 21 short stories. The twenty-one stories in the book are the greatest pieces of fiction written by Ruskin Bond. Chosen by the author himself, from a body of work built over fifty years (starting with his award winning first novel, ‘The Room on the Roof’, and ending with ‘Tales of Fosterganj’), this collection includes well-known masterpieces like ‘The Night Train at Deoli’, ‘The Woman on Platform 8’, ‘Rusty Plays Holi’, ‘Angry River’, ‘The Blue Umbrella’, ‘The Eyes Have It’, ‘Most Beautiful’, ‘Panther’s Moon’, as well as newer stories like ‘An Evening at the Savoy with H.H’ and ‘Dinner with Foster’. Taken together, the stories in A Gathering of Friends show why Ruskin Bond has long been regarded as one of the pillars of Indian Literature. Timeless tales Ruskin Bond's stories have the essence of the hills, the trains through the deodars, uninhibited exploration of childhood and other vagaries of life. They have suc...

In my early years of schooling, I lived with my grandparents. My father was posted in a quaint little hilly village famous for mining, which had no schools in the vicinity. His was a transferable job, and in those days he used to get calls for a transfer every few months, which made it difficult to have me in tow. It was during these years, that I grew addicted to stories. Grandma would spin a new story for every occasion- while getting me ready for school, making me eat balls of rice and veggies, and making me sleep. And Grandpa would fill in during the rest of the times, after coming from the office. He would open his ‘ gapa pudia ’ (a pocketful of stories) while Grandma was busy kneading the dough, cooking or doing other household chores. I slowly and steadily grew familiar with Panchatantra, Jataka Tales, and the folktales of Odisha. After about three years I shifted in with my parents, as my father was transferred to a town with a good convent school in it. My par...

Memoirs are trending these days. They are the talk of the town. People are raving about them, readers and non-readers alike. Celebrities are opening up about their long-held secrets, private lives and struggle stories through their memoirs. And fans are able to get an exclusive access to their minds and tap on to the emotions that make them the person that they are. The story of their lives offers motivation and inspiration to anyone in need of it. Memoirs have become one of the most popular and sought-after genres today. I had picked up the Kindle version of ‘An Unsuitable Boy’ by Karan Johar , sometime last year. It is a bare-it-all, an intensely emotional piece of work, with one key ingredient that Johar does the best, that is great storytelling . I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It’s a good book for those who like his work, his films and like reading about the Bollywood. It’s not a work of great art or literature for that matter, so don’t pick this up if you are lo...

When I watched the trailer of ‘The Handmaiden’, I had a picture of who is innocent, who is being tricked and the suspicious hints in the storyline. But what I found in the first half of the movie, was totally different from the impression that the trailer had had. A Korean girl from a con artists’ household travels to a rich Japanese home to play Miss Hideko’s personal maid, Tamako, with the mission of making her fall for The Count- another acquaintance who wants to get her inheritance for himself by marrying her. Things go out of the plan when Tamako feels for her missus- pity, love and remorse for the innocent being that she was and wants to prevent The Count from taking advantage of her and hurting her in the process of acquiring her treasures. Tamako herself is in dilemma, as she wants riches to fulfill her own dreams, but wants Hideko to be safe from their ploy. Lady Hideko is delicately beautiful. She was raised as a virtual prisoner by her uncle, the book collec...

After a day of fun or annoyance or dejection or just mere boredom, writing is the only getaway for a girl who has an abundance of thoughts and feelings, too overwhelming to keep them in and too personal to say them aloud. To such a girl, not being able to write is a nightmare and not wanting to write, a living hell. And in the midst of it all, the medium of writing is a dilemma difficult to overcome. While I find the idea of writing on a blank sheet of paper with a fluid pen, regal and tempting, there is a comfort in the keyboard of my laptop or the keypad of my smart phone. Though the sight of a person bent over a paper, holding a pen in his hand, engrossed in deep thoughts evokes a certain charm and fascination, when I sit down to try and create a masterpiece, I become aware of the triviality of the words I write, the sentences I present and the ideas they portray. When I do resolve to write a good readable piece in my diary, I end up with only a page full of cuts and scrat...

The Need Of a Language The human society communicates through a language specific to that region, state or community. The language we speak is as much a part of our identity as our name is. What would we have done without a medium to communicate? The world would have been a chaos resulting from miscommunication. All thanks to those who created languages- the ones to assigned meaning to sounds and symbols, formed words and created grammar. We owe them our entire vocabulary. But still, there’s havoc here and there. Spoken words aren’t enough. What are we missing? The Language Of Animals Have you ever studied the animals, the birds, the butterflies? What is the language that they communicate in? It’s incomprehensible, right? Just a few gestures and sounds- wagging the tail or fluttering of the feathers along with a bit of coo-ing and moo-ing and the message is understood. It is indeed amazing how they understand one another’s fear, grief, pain, happiness, excitement, ...