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What has Happened!

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As of 26th May 2024, The day I started writing this post. My last post on this blog was published on July 23rd, 2020 when COVID-19 struck the world.  I was on a roll then, trying to make reading books, the best hobby of mine. Of course, I was at the beginning only though. But I was in a flow, as Cal Newport talks in his book "Deep Work". I achieved my goal of reading one book a month for a year. I was happy that I was able to achieve it.  Then, just like any human, I slacked off. Now I wonder, what happened to that girl?  Well, in February of 2021, I joined my first job ever. This was a big change in my life. I had to move away from my home to a very new world. It was all new, new place, new people, new home, new experience. This was the foundation of the adult I would become then. The person, who I am now. In this process, not complaining, I have lost the habit of reading. Again! I forgot about it. The first year of the job took me in all ways because this was a dream co...

Finally, Reading is My Hobby!

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Reading was my favorite hobby in childhood. So back then, I had read very few books like the weekly Champak books, Panchatantra stories, and some mythological series like Ramayana and Mahabharata. Also, some short stories too. Well, this seemed like a very small collection for me. Like, "that's it? Only these?" But yes! I couldn't read more books then. I was allowed to concentrate only on my studies and read my textbooks. Whenever I asked for fiction or a non-fiction book, I was just told to read my textbooks and that would be enough. That was difficult for me. Then the only thing I was able to do was to think, "I will read more books when I grew up". This was a belief of a nine-year-old me. It was silly of me how I thought that once I finish my education, i.e., when I complete reading all the textbooks as per the wishes of people near me, I could do a lot of reading. Oh! That was once me thinking I could be as free as to read so many books once I grew up. H...

Becoming by Michelle Obama

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Genre: Memoir "Becoming" is that book which I picked up on a whim. I didn't even know why I wanted to read it. Once I read a third of it and left it unread for about a month. Well! I picked it up again this June with a firm decision to complete it. And wow! I did it, now wondering why is that I left it like that then? It is a pretty awesome book! The book on one side feels like Michelle Obama's strive to strike the perfect balance in her life. And how successfully she achieved it. She was very clear in portraying her life. Michelle Obama expressed the timelines of her life so reasonably in the book. Clearly, her connection of the incidents from her earlier life to those later in life as lessons learnt shows how we learn from our own experiences. This is a kind of realization to me that how important are the experiences in one's life. I think this book is a perfect one to be read by an adult woman managing her job on one side and a family on the other side. Her exp...

Book Review: Inner Engineering by Sadhguru

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Genre: Self-Help  If to say in a line, an absolutely correct book for my ever lazy body to dive right into the practice of yoga.  Now look, I'm the one who's been in just a mere thought of incorporating yoga as a practice in my life for two years now. All this, without taking the next step of starting to practice actually. So, are you the one who's planned to practice yoga but stuck at the thought itself doing nothing? Not taking a step forward or procrastinating over it? If yes, you are the correct person to read the book. It helps you take that next step. I assure you because I am there. Sadhguru's simple language keeps the readers engaged. If you are the one who listens to his speeches often, you actually feel him reading to you through your glance at the words as you know his vocabulary. I say this from my own experience.  For those who don't know?   Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is a yogi, a mystic, and the founder of Isha Foundation, an all-volunteer organisation fo...