Despite all my attempts not to buy any­more books, I landed up with five more. This time the book shop came to the office cam­pus. With dis­counts. Now how can any­one resist a good bar­gain? Picked up After­wards (Jaishree Misra), River Dog: A Jour­ney Down the Brahma­pu­tra (Mark Shand), Yadav: A Road­side Love Story (Jill Lowe), 52 Week­end Breaks from Ban­ga­lore and a city road map.

I recently fin­ished Ancient Promises by Jaishree Misra and loved the book. She writes evoca­tively about falling in love when she is sev­en­teen, get­ting into an arranged mar­riage at 18, reunit­ing with her first love many years later, sep­a­rated from her men­tally chal­lenged daugh­ter for a year, going off to Eng­land to study and then com­ing back to India. The novel is set in Delhi, Ker­ala and then Eng­land and is auto-biographical in nature. While read­ing it I got the feel­ing that the writer had gone through the expe­ri­ences her­self and only read after­wards that most of the inci­dents had hap­pened in her life. If you hap­pen to come across the book, it’s worth a read.

Another book I fin­ished is Dave Barry Does Japan. Writ­ten in his truly inim­itable style. It’s pretty howlar­i­ous. Pro­vided me good com­pany on the way to work. His take on their cul­ture, food, soci­ety, cities will keep you in splits. Not a book if you’re look­ing for a seri­ous insight into Japan­ese cul­ture, as Barry him­self admits!