Kadmanivasi. My Blog. Geeta Ramani

  Celebrate endings - for they precede new beginnings!  This year has been like no other, in more ways than one. As the year comes to a close, it seems to be a good time for reflection and introspection. The corona lockdown was an unavoidable measure to fight the onslaught of the virus and arrest its spread. At first, I found it suffocating, I didn't know how to spend my time indoors. I was terribly saddened by the cancellation of my visit to be with my grand children. Time, as they say, is a great healer and now I have come to enjoy the slow and relaxed pace of life, doing especially all that I enjoy the most. My childhood was marked by an absence of story reading, not story telling. Every night, my grandmother would narrate stories and like the proverbial thousand nights, they would continue the next day. This is how I learnt the stories of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. I loved to read my school text books. I also remember the two books I received as gifts as a child, Li...

  Last children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India 1919–1939  Compiled by Laurence Fleming Introduction by Mark Tully The book is a  celebration of childhood, a fascinating compilation of 'a snapshot of memories' very much like a school magazine with photographs, of foreigners, especially English men and women who had spent their early years here. 'India is not a country that one can forget', writes one. Another says 'One could not have wished for a happier and freer childhood than to have grown up in such privileged circumstances'.  A remarkable feature was that, at least one of their parents was born in India, many had grandparents who were living in India or had worked here, in various capacities. They served as  professors and teachers, nurses and doctors, they were to be found in the Army, Police, and Railways, they served as Forest Officials , Civil Servants, Missionaries, Geographical Surveyors, traders and  engineers. It is inter...

  I have just finished reading the book: CRACKING THE CODE: MY JOURNEY IN BOLLYWOOD, by Ayushmann Khurrana. It is a gem of a book, written with youthful enthusiasm, and a rare wisdom and maturity. Ayushmann's slow, steady and successful rise in stardom brought back memories of another young star, that shone bright, albeit briefly, that of Sushant Singh Rajput. From chasing his dreams to living it - Sushant's life appeared like one dream run! But it was all real, and it was there for all to see.   Several of his videos are testimony to hours of rigorous workout he put in to maintain that chiselled handsome look. The pages in his diary reveal the hours of planning and preparation that went in, not only for the role at hand, but also to achieve personal goals. He was an excellent dancer and a connoisseur of books and comes across as an unusual combination of brawn and brain. He was a student of science, he had a deep understanding of physics, he was a star gazer.  With ...