Monday, March 27, 2006

The Village Bride Of Beverly Hills - Kavita Daswani

After reading this one, I am definitely going to read some others by Kavita Daswani. The story focuses on newly married Priya Sohni who has just left India and moved to Los Angeles with her husband. She is surprisingly asked to get a job when she does not give any news of a baby coming along in a cpl of months. This opens her up to the world around her and exposes her to what she can do and become. It is sad though that she has to keep her new found confidence and talents to herself and cannot share her day-to-day happiness or sorrows or pressures with any member of the family. She deligently continues to please her in-laws and husband post work and looks forward to the next work day because that is where she is appreciated and understood. This is so unlike most of us where we rush home to our loved ones even if we enjoy our work and work environtment.She befriends her cousin who is married to an American and realises that she does not want to continue living such a dissatifying life with a husband who can never stand up to his parents for her or care for her happiness. Kudos to her for returning to her parents instead of continuing the pathetic sham of a life that she leads. I was also extremely happy to read about her supportive family and the way they take her back with open arms. After all that is what family is for. (I can imagine Sweety pulling her hair for this remark of mine). What I couldn't digest though was her husband's overnight change of character. It was a little hard to believe that he would make such drastic changes so soon especially given his backbone-less behaviour before she left. But all is well that ends well! So Priya and Sanjay reunite and live happily ever after. This book has also enthused me to read other similar books by authors from a similar background. Another author I would like to try is Amulya Malladi. I have heard good things about her books "song of the cockoo bird" and "serving crazy with curry". Not surprisingly I am drawn to books which involve food. I read "Cooking for Mr. Right" which was a fun book and then was "Dress Rehersal" which made me run to the bakery and binge on cake. So be prepared for more reviews of such books coming up......

Books I read

Starting this blog seems like a good idea for me to keep track of the books I read and share the feelings I underwent while reading them. I mostly read fiction - mystery, thrillers, romance, medical. I have been through phases which got me stuck to one kind for a while. For example, there was the Mills & Boons phase when I was a teenager; the Robin Cook phase when I was trying to live the thrill of being in a medical profession while being stuck in an engineering course; the John-Grisham phase when I would imagine myself abandoning everything I was doing and taking up law; the Danielle Steel phase when i would curl up in bed with my shawl for a good tearful few hours; the Mary Higgins Clark phase where I wanted to read them all before Sweety did; more recently the Dan Brown phase where I was impressed with the Da Vinci Code and dug up every one of his books and read them. There have always been the Harry Potters and romantic novels to fill up the blanks. These days I have been picking up every book that looks remotely interesting from the discount store below my work place. Some of them have been interesting while some others have become home to my pet termites. Anyways watch out for the ones that I write about from now on and feel free to share with me any thoughts that you might have about them.

A special thank you to my beloved dad who used to accompany me to the Sunday book market at Abids and buy me all the books that I could read including Archies comies which I looooooove. He has always encouraged us to read a lot and would never hesitate to buy a book that I asked for. Kudos to him for the voracious readers that we have become. Love you papa!