For whatever number (9) of books I read in 2023, here’s the round-up post. side note: This might be the last of the ‘year in books’ post on this site. Starting in 2024, moving to log all ‘read’ books in a physical ‘reading log’ notebook that a friend recently gifted. Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino – While the world has been going gaga over ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ I picked this book from KH, thanks to D…
Unfinished business. Starting this race report on a dramatic note may have piqued your interest already. Backstory: The रथी-महारथीs of our running group started running the various races at the Sinhaga-Rajgad-Torna (SRT) trail ultra marathon in 2019. What started with a couple of folks became a mass movement with most people from the group participating in it since 2021. After running the 25km edition in 2021 and doing the other parts of the 53km route during different hikes, I also…
Prescript Before I even begin to document the journey to the land of Buddha i.e. Nepal, let me first note down the technical basics. When I went to Nepal my website was up and running. When I came back the account was suspended. Of course, my hosting renewal was due and I forgot to renew before leaving. After coming back I tried in vain for a week to change the hosting provider. My impatience to document the 2 weeks in…
Another year gone by. So many books and so few read! But the ritual continues. Was reading through one last book on 31st so took time to compile this list and publishing it only now. In addition, I also read a few children’s books that I bought for M and H in Goa. Also few cookbooks as part of this. I have no reading goals for 2023. But will continue to try to read unread books from my shelf and…
Preamble: I took this up as a project for NaNoWriMo. Our writing community had a great setup for this. Carve out morning time to write-write-write. I had it all worked out. Of course, life happened. I could not complete heck even begin writing this. So I extended it saying ‘lets-try-to-finish-it-this-year-Y’ trying to meet the Dec 2022 timeline. Becoming a non-believer in traditional start/end of the year at a specific date so if I can’t publish it this year, no biggie!…
Baba (my father) mentioned the other day ‘Amitabh Bachchan is turning 80 this year!’ Because I was in my own world, I nodded — more like wow what an important piece of information to know — and forgot. And then I read about it yesterday (his actual birthday) in the newspaper. From getting my news from Twitter to transitioning back to the newspaper it’s been quite a journey – more on that later. But I sat with that piece of…
Where shall I start to try to capture this adventure? Let me begin at the beginning. As the popular version of the great battle of Pawankhind goes, Shivaji Raje was under siege at Panhala fort surrounded by Siddi Johar’s forces for months. They broke the siege and escaped the enemy forces on 12 July 1660. The ensuing battle is well known in Marathi history where a handful (600) brave warriors including Baji Prabhu Deshpande fought the enemy forces and lost…