I’m so glad that my first book review of the year is a book by an Indian author, who I had the luck to meet in person and get my copy of book signed by! Getting a signed copy is every reader’s dream come true I think 😊
You can read a bit more about the book on the links below, and buy a copy if you’re interested too 😊 I think it is available to ship in UK and India but give it a try anyway.
Goodreads: Beyond my Blinkers
Amazon: Beyond my Blinkers
The author Subir Adhicary, has been writing humour columns on day to day lives since a while now. His columns and anecdotes are based on the impact of changing economy and politics on the life of the common man in India. He also has his own blog, and it was through the encouragement of his readers that he decided to collate some of the best posts he has written and put them together in a book.
This book is specific to India and the Indian idiosyncrasies, politics, and economy. It covers the author’s experiences since his college days to his present retirement age. And it spans a few cities in the North and East of India. The author ends each amusing experience with a sort of life lesson that one can take away.
The chapters are short and funny and quite engaging. Some chapters even have an illustration drawn by the author himself- something like a cartoon strip you would see in a newspaper on current affairs that would make you laugh.
If you are an Indian, I can gurauntee that most of the chapters will make you smile and some even laugh out loud (much to the chagrin of some colleagues who were on important telephonic meetings when I decided to laugh out loud reading something.. it was my break time! Hahah) It also amazed me to read how relevant the subjects that the author touched upon still are, and how, although we have progressed in many sectors as a country – the best being the change of laws with respect to legalising LGBTQ relationships, we have stayed stagnant or moved back in time with respect to many others- such as the quality of real estate planning or education sector.
But I was drooling at all the mention of the chai, pakoras and Lucknowi food description by the author! Now I really want to visit Lucknow and try out the Oudh cuisine .. yummm!
And if you are not an Indian, but are interested to know about the Indian-way, then this is a really good book to pick up. If you can ignore the grammar (which the author himself clarified right at the beginning, how humble, that his intent is not to publish a grammatically correct book, but a book that will make his readers smile) , then this is a short and fun read on our people, how we like to save money and splurge money, how we keep things clean, and how we get work done aka Jugaad 😉
The author also mentioned that he will be coming up with a follow up on more Indian idiosyncrasies with his next book too! Awesome!
I do have to mention that if you are not completely aware of Hindi, then a few sentences haven’t been translated to their English meaning in some of the chapters, so you might need to ask your Indian friend to help you translate those😉
This is a book you can finish in a day, and is probably in the same league as the Twinkle Khanna books with an influence of Ruskin Bond’s writing style- simple, humourous and witty. Glad to start off my reading this year with this book 📚 😊
Starry Eyed Enigma 