Ri is not just the story of Eastern India; it’s a story that rings true in every part of the world. In the entire human history of 3400 years there has been peace only for 268 of them or lets say 8 percent of recorded history. And who suffer the most? The civilians of course! They are brushed aside as collateral damage. They are shot, bombed, raped, starved and driven from their homes.

The statistics of common man suffering in the war-ridden countries are more than scary. Be it the two great wars, or the genocide in Bosnia, the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, terrorism in the name of religion from Afghanistan and Pakistan or the annihilation of population in Syria and Libya, it’s the common man that has faced the worst of circumstances, yet, ironically, the wars are apparently fought to usher in a better life for these very people.

We don’t have to go all around the world to see how human beings lose their family members and are torn to grief, we can just look around in our own country. Strife in the name of religion, administration, marginalization, ideology has become rampant and Ri very vividly brings out the dilemma and the helplessness of our times.

The story revolves around two characters. The hero Kyndia and the so called anti-hero Manbha . While, Kyndia has sworn to bring end to terrorism, Manbha has resolved to make India pay for marginalizing the North Eastern States. One wants to stop blood shed and senseless killing of inncent men, women and children and the other wants the men in power to finally look at his brethern and acknowledge them as human beings. Both men are bound by their ideologies and a sense of duty but their methods are different. One stays in the system to make lives easier and the other is wanted by the system for making trouble. One is the protector of the masses the other, the liberator of the masses, ushering in freedom.

The story gives us an insight to the everyday struggles of the people in these terror-ravaged states of North East. The uncertainty of life and the fear in which people live is a set back to the entire community not just in terms of education and business but a shadow of despair and gloom has shrouded them and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

The author ends the book in a positive note that provides for some kind of hope to the reader that perhaps not all is lost. Nevertheless reality most often t not that kind and the plight of the common man remains interminable.

Paulami Dutta Gupta weaves a story of desperation and hope in a simple moving narrative. It is at once lucid as it is expressive and makes the reader crave for more. What impressed me most is the little detail about Meghalaya that the author has penned at the beginning of the book – a beautiful state with nature at its best yet so consumed with violence. She has kept the narrative short, unpretentious and to the point which accentuates the impasse that makes for a poignant storyline .

  

 Ri – Homeland of Uncertainty

by 

Paulami Duttagupta 

 

 Born in Shillong, many moons ago, with schooling at Loreto Convent, and an English Honors from St. Edmunds College, Paulami Duttagupta started her career with All India Radio Shillong. She had written and also given her voice to a few shows there. Later she came down to Kolkata and got a post graduate degree in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. She had also taken up a fancy to learning Spanish, but today confesses that she has forgotten most of it.

                  

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Some extra Info on the book 

This book is an adaptation from a movie. Why? The author will answer that in one of our blogs which we will post soon. Stay tuned !!!

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God is a Gamer 

by 

Ravi Subramanium 

The Blurb

Aditya runs a gaming company that is struggling to break even. A banker slips off a highrise building, plunging to her death. The finance minister has made some promises that he is finding hard to keep. The LTTE has unleashed terror in America that sends the FBI on a wild goose chase, bringing them to Mumbai.

Enter Varun, parttime drug dealer and fulltime genius. He turns around the gaming company before disaster strikes. Meanwhile, the investigators plunge headlong into

the shady world of bitcoins and the Dark Net, websites that only exist for illegal transactions—drugs, sex and money. God Is a Gamer culminates in a stunning climax where money means nothing, assassination is taught by the ancient Greeks, and nothing is as it seems.

Buy @

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Meet the Author

Described as the ‘John Grisham of banking’, by the Wall Street Journal, Ravi Subramanian, an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, is the author of five bestselling commercial novels—If God was a Banker (2007), Devil in Pinstripes (2009), The Incredible Banker (2011), The Bankster (2012) and Bankerupt (2013)—based on financial crime. His latest book God is a Gamer, releases on September 12th.

Having been a banker himself, he has a unique insight into the industry he writes about and a flair for spinning intricate plots that keep readers on the edge of their seats

His debut novel, If God was a Banker, won the 2008 Golden Quill Readers’ Choice Award and, more recently, The Incredible Banker won the 2011 Economist-Crossword Book Award in the ‘Popular’ category. He won the Crossword book award for The BANKSTER in 2012.

Ravi lives in Mumbai with his Biotechnologist turned banker wife, Dharini and his fourteen year old daughter Anusha.

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Sundari Venkatraman has done it again – Runaway Bridegroom is another easy moving, and entertaining romance. Amidst all the love blooming, she has brought to the fore a very real social issue. It is disquieting to know that even at this day and age, rituals such as these exist.

The story about Veerendra and Chanda begins with a shocker. A cruel reality hits the reader, in quite a different way, as it does to the Maheshwari family. While they are reeling under the revelation that their daughter’s husband has escaped, the reader’s are bewildered that a solemn ceremony that brings two matured adult hearts together could even take place when it was time to live in carefree wonderment.

Soon after the incident, Chanda’s father moves the family to Jaipur to start their lives once again. Moving on, the Maheshwaris do well for themselves, the business flourishes and the children get good education. Chanda moves to Delhi for her management studies. It is during one of the guest lectures that she gets eye locked with Ranveer for a split second and feels her pulse racing. All this while when all her other friends were living their lives, footloose and fancyfree, Chanda kept herself away from all of it. Despite the long years, her education and change of place, Chanda could not forget her past.

To Sundari’s credit, she compliments the light reading by weaving in how our psyche works when there has been a dark even in the past thus accentuating the enormity of the matter. While the other students can go about living their lives, Chanda harbors a guilt in some corner of her mind. A guilt that she is not responsible for, a crime that she has not committed a transgression that she was not a part of and neither did she understand the full meaning of it at that time. Sundari portrays perfectly that the past never gets obliterated, you can try to escape from it and change your perspective but it will find a way to catch up with you.

Nevertheless, delving and facing your past might not be such a bad idea either. When Chanda starts working in Ranveer’s software company, she is mesmerized by his charisma and is almost in awe of his confidence and affable nature. Ranveer too is smitten by Chanda and is inexorably attracted to her ignoring all the alluring moves of his secretary. But fate has better plans for them. Chanda is soon called back home to meet her father in law and bring home the errant husband who her parents are sure is somewhere around waiting to be with Chanda, as the astrologer prophesied.

In the mean time Ranveer too is upset with the absence of Chanda and heads back home that he had left many years back. His loving family is overjoyed to see him and forgives him for his mistake as a child. With a fantastic twist in the end, the two souls reunite, restoring the readers’ faith on destiny once again.

Sundari has wonderfully penned down a moving love story with twists and turns. The language and flow of the story is perfect and despite being a rom com it also leaves us with something to think about, by highlighting the social evils that only brings in more heartaches and inconvenience us. Also, and very importantly, the fact that if its fated it will happen.

Uday Mane’s Debut novel Helpline has an intriguing storyline. It begins with a twenty year old Samir in a series of strange dreams where in this very familiar girl appears and beckons him. His eyes open to a psychiatrist’s clinic and the reader immediately is aware of his condition. He has not slept in months, hasn’t eaten and has emaciated beyond belief. Does that remind anyone about a movie? Yes much like the Machinist, who harbor’s guilt and the psychological repercussions lead to insomnia, drug abuse and rapid loss of weight.

Helpline is a pathos filled love story, sketched on a large canvass stretching across many years. It is not a love story that blooms, blossoms and has the perfect ending. It about the love we harbor in us for years and no matter what the distances are we do finally open up to the feelings residing in us. The story is lovingly written and feels almost autobiographical and as a reader I think it is layered with many levels to it.

Helpline is not just about finding love and losing it but finding love in so many more people and in so many ways. Love and respect for a grandfather, sibling love, love and acceptability of people who are challenged. It also shows us how we, as parents, from time immemorial, live our dreams and ambitions through our children and in the process smothering their aspirations out of them.

Despite the engaging storyline the reading becomes laborious in places because of a few editing faux pas here and there. Its not just the grammatical errors that’s the downside but had Uday Mane put in more attention and thought into the language, it would have added and accentuated the pathos and the human frailties in the story manifold times. Moreover as we progress through the book, the ending seemed very hurriedly written and incongruous. The story would have been more poignant had he not been long winding and disjointed at the end.

Having said that, I think, he weaves in and underscores the fact that love doesn’t die out quite masterfully. Even though time takes you away, the heart finds a way and it reminds me of one of Paulo Coelho’s quotes, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” Though the universe conspired to bring Samir and Riya together, it was the appalling inhumanity that separated them again. 28^th September 2008 is etched in everyone’s memory and Uday Mane weaves giving us a glimpse of how pointless it all is. Yet again maybe the universe had a plan for him through the tragedy, as it not only makes him the writer he wants to be but he also eventually finds his life’s goal in, Siddharth, Riya’s challenged brother.

Uday Mane was born in Pune and raised in Mumbai. He works as a marketing professional during the day and a storyteller during the night. He is an avid reader, and loves to collect classic books.

The Helpline is his debut novel that was launched in March 2014 at the hands of Padma Shri Paresh Rawal.

                  
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Rapid Fall by Adiana Ray is a short whirlwind of a love story between the charismatic JD and the sweet and simple Sonia. Destiny brings the two souls together, human weakness separates them and good sense brings them back again.

It’s a well written, tight and fast paced rom com that has all the elements of a Bollywood movie. A charming dashing man with a high flying career meets the conservative and good natured girl, there are arguments and sparks initially but soon they recognize and give way to their tender emotions.

The circumstances, in which they meet are not so pleasant so we see a spate of tempers flaring and bitter disagreements yet there is an unmistakable attraction that none of them can overlook. The pull in their heartstring and the intensity of their passion resembled the wild untamed nature around and resonated the exact same tempo of the gushing waters of the river gurgling down the mountains and breaking all barriers around it.

When the marketing group from Ritam Exports come down for a tema building exercise to Rishikesh for rafting it was Rakesh who was suppose to be their guide. A freak rafting accident leaves Rakesh with a broken leg and JD as a favour takes over as the guide for the group. Though aware of his attraction for Sonia JD cant shake off his past and is shies away from commitment.

The rest of the story unfolds in Mumbai. JD and Sonia’s love story take a flight but when Sonia comes a bit too close to JD unable to make sense of the whole affair brings it all to a screeching halt. He is reluctant to take the next step, which horrifies the conventional and the mild mannered Sonia.

The title of the book leads the reader to believe that it would be a rocking tale of adventure and that is where it disappoints. The rafting trip is very short and leaves you with a feeling that it can only be dangerous and not too enjoyable, whereas my personal experience proves it to be on the contrary. The romance plays out not in the foothills amidst the adventure but in the dirt and grime of city life. Somewhere to my mind the team building exercise too is not fruitful if the team does not do anything worthwhile together. This leaves you with the feeling that it’s not very well fleshed out but then again Ray has tried to keep it short and sweet so that she can keep the readers captivated. The narration and the flow keeps the pace of the story admirably well though maybe the ending was a bit too rushed making Sonia look a little too gullible for a HR professional.

Despite some of its shortcomings its Ray’s style and poise that ultimately comes out as the winner in this short tale of love and romance.

                  
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