pen.books.and.scalpel

BOOK NAME: Azad Nagar NAME OF THE AUTHOR: Laura T. Murphy GENRE: Non Fiction PUBLISHER: HarperCollins India Azad Nagar is a brilliant take on the revolution against modern day slavery. The revolution was started by the kols, the indigenous tribes in a village of UP, India. They were enslaved by the so called superior caste, Patels. Azad Nagar is a small village in UP which wasn’t even found in the maps until recently. The kols were enslaved by the Patels by forced labor, torture, land invasion, meagre wages. When they resisted, they were subjected to kidnapping, human trafficking and all sorts of torments until a mutiny was initiated by Amar and Chotti. The revolution ultimately helped the kols by smashing their chain of slavery. PROS: Extremely well researched work. There are foot notes at the end of few pages when some details needed clarity. Notes at end of the book with references to other articles for further reading. The cover - like, look at it. Empowering book on the powerful ...

BOOK NAME: Best Intentions NAME OF THE AUTHOR: Simran Dhir GENRE: Literary and Contemporary Fiction PUBLISHER: HarperCollins India WHERE TO BUY: https://www.amazon.in/Best-Intentions-Simran-Dhir/dp/9354891519 How accurate it is to say that we learn something new from every book. Honestly, I have not been the same person as before once I finished this book. I am so happy to have gotten my hands on it. Thanks to @blogchatter BLURB : Gayathri, the elder daughter of the Mehra family, turns out to be her family’s biggest disappointment by choosing to stay single in her thirties. She becomes an historian turned journalist rather than practising law as expected. Her younger sister, Nandhini chooses the opposite and gets married to Amar and follows her everyday routine at office. Gayathri and Akshay, Nandhini’s brother in law, lock heads initially but eventually start seeking comfort in each other. Gayathri gets caught in a political battle when she starts writing articles against the rig...

Charu, the third daughter of the Sharma family loses her eyesight as a child. She feels neglected by her own parents, who send her to her grandmother’s place to be brought up safely. She receives this special gift of being able to know what people are thinking and to follow real incidents through dreams. She uses this gift for solving crime cases along with her friend Ravi. She and her team is called for help by the state minister, Prithvi Chauhan who was also her old friend, to find his missing daughter Myra. During the events of unravelling the case, she also discovers her own forgotten childhood traumas and the reason for her separation from her family. PROS : To be honest, I never realised this book was a part of a series. I haven’t read the other books in the Haveli series. This is as good as a standalone book. The writing was detailed and imaginative. It kept me guessing till the very end and kept me on the edge of the seat. It was fast paced and a page turner. I liked how the in...

I read this book recently for my book club discussion and had been taking my own time to review this because I wanted to process what I exactly felt about it. I was so skeptical about starting this book earlier because I did not want to get disappointed, considering the hype around it. This was my first book by TJR and I should say, irrespective of what I felt about the storyline, the writing was extremely impressive. I just did not want the book to end and it was more the writing that kept me hooked than the plot line. THE PLOT : Monique grant is a journalist at Vivant. She is struggling with a broken marriage herself and wants to make her career take off. She finally gets an opportunity to interview one of the greatest Hollywood stars of all times, Evelyn Hugo. Little did she know that Evelyn doesn’t really want to give an interview to Vivant. But she only wants to tell her story to the world and particularly, only through Monique. PROS : The writing is absolutely terrific and so abs...

I have been meaning to write a post on breast cancer for the breast cancer awareness month. But the inspiration to write this post now came from one of my patients I attended to in my OPD. She was just 40 years old, unmarried and came to me with a breast lump which was there for the past 3 years. She kept neglecting the lump thinking it would go away or shrink. The lump finally ruptured through her skin and started releasing foul smelling fluid and she was even asked to apply turmeric and milk over it by her  neighbors and relatives which she immediately obliged to. By the time she came to me, the lump was huge, ulcerated and infected and had already spread. I had to diagnose her with stage III breast cancer and she is now scheduled for her chemo sessions which will be followed by surgery. If only she had come earlier, a breast conservation would have been possible.   SYMTOMS THAT SHOULD CAUSE WORRY: - Swelling in the breast which is hard and is not or have stopped moving...

BOOK NAME : The Magic Mindset NAME OF THE AUTHOR : Preeti Shenoy GENRE : Non Fiction, Self help PUBLISHER : HarperCollins India WHERE TO BUY : https://www.amazon.in/Magic-Mindset-Find-Happy-Place/dp/9354227724 Happy to be reading another non fiction self-help book, which I discovered, is another genre that I really like. The idea of the book Magic Mindset was conceived by the author during the start of covid-19 when she got to witness the sudden change of events in day to day life. What started off as a blog post ‘21 days of positivity’ drew appreciation from many readers all over the world for bringing positivity into their lives, slowly transformed into an idea of a book after the author had suffered a personal loss. This book is a comfort read for all the disturbed and confused minds. BLURB : Sometimes, it's not easy to find the silver lining. While positivity is about looking at the bright side of things, the magic mindset embraces and accepts that it is not always possible to ...

“But you know our society, when you don’t raise kids, they raise questions.” “And how did you handle them?” “I didn’t. I ignored them.” -THE MESS IN HER WOMB BY DR. CHHAVI GANDHI JUNEJA So, here’s the deal - you write a book which speaks about real issues like mental trauma, dealing with infertility, childhood trauma and dysfunctional families with a beautiful cover page printed on it and written flawlessly - I’m sold! And when the book is in own voice and written by a doctor turned author, that’s an A1+ for me. (I have not even started hyping this book up😅) TMIHW is about Drishti and Pranay, a happily married couple, embarking on an IVF journey. The journey is not as easy and the physical and emotional trauma is borne by Drishti, who struggles to cope with conception and her full time job as a physician. She is persistent though and bears all those agonising undeserved treatments (both therapeutic and from the society) to have her baby. Whether this journey gives her what she needed ...