The Zoya Factor
Book written by Anuja Chauhan

One of the craziest book i have read in the last three months of reading frenzy and i can say my book-reading lifetime too. The craziness of this book can be best appreciated by somebody who understands the cricket frenzy in India or is an Mills & Boons type of romantic.....obviously i related to the latter.

Before i say anything more....this is a work of pure fiction...so obviously all this has never happened in Indian cricket.

The story revolves around this woman Zoya who is a facchu in the advertising industry and happens to be born on the same moment when India won the world cup in 1983. She, the Indian cricket team (except the team captain...yes yes Dhoni...but he is called Nikhil Khodha in this book) and soon the entire cricket world is convinced that she has this power which will make the team win if she has breakfast with them. So the book is about how she becomes the great "Zoya Devi" in our superstitious cricket crazed nation from a no-one of the advertising industry. When all she wanted was to meet Shahrukh Khan (I immediately connected on that one) in one of the ad shoots she was sent to do this work with the Indian cricket team and she was a "cricket challenged" person like me . In a true MB style she meets Nikhil Dhodha and her encounter starts with an uncomfortable situation. The story crazily proceeds as the "Zoya Devi Factor" keeps getting re-inforced and the romance between Nikhil and Zoya moves and ends in a true MB style.

I must say that my knowledge about the Indian cricket team and the advertising industry has definitely become better....and most of all I can never see MS Dhoni as Dhoni ever again...he is Nikhil Khodha for me.....Zoya's love :).

Hope a miracle like this actually happens in the next world cup for India.

Unaccustomed Earth
Book written by Jhumpa Lahiri

I love talking about this author as I have read all her books....its a great feeling for a non reader like me. I highly recommend her for anyone who wants to read some simple and highly engaging stories on human relationships. I am sure you must have heard of her books "The Namesake" which was adapted to make a popular film and " Interpreter of Maladies" which won her a Pulitzer prize...but i think "Unaccustomed Earth" is by far her best writing.

This book has simple short stories that focus on one aspect of relationships that most of us are in...either father daughter, siblings, friends, room-mates, significant others and the not so common emotion of dealing with parents second marriage.

These stories are of individuals who are either first or second generation Indians in the US so obviously has a lot of emotions/issues/ situations that people like me would never face or like some of my friends in the US say that ..."it doesn't happen like that"....but then i feel they are very genuine. Irrespective of where we live or what generation we belong to its easy to relate to those emotions. Another interesting aspect of these short stories is that even though they are individual stories with no cross reference but you realize that she is talking about the same set of people in different relationships.

Once I started a story I was not able to keep the book down coz I wanted to know the end and in most cases the endings surprised me.

Eat Pray Love
Book written by Elizabeth Gilbert

When i read the back cover of the book...i thought...oh no .... not another "journey through life book"....but now i am going around recommending it to everyone i know.

I loved the book as the author mirrors my thoughts on learning about life through traveling. The author shares her experience of traveling and living in Italy, India and Indonesia, how she learns and re-discovers herself by exploring a new country, meeting new people and living in a new culture. Somewhere it touched my vagabond spirit and made me think about my own experiences of living across six cities in India through different phases in life...so think about living in different countries.

While she lives in Italy she learns a new language, visits the lesser known cities in the country and being a real food lover experiences the city "gastrono-micaly" (did i just create that word!!!).Then she comes to India to discover the spiritual aspect to her personality and lives in an ashram. Her experiences of meditation are so close to mine (which i dare not share) that i bonded with the book right then. One small island of Indonesia is the final leg of her journey and since i am a sucker for a happy ending....i loved it the most ( you have to read it to know more). And it is written with the right mix of humor, facts, intelligence and close to life feeling...that makes it amazing

Another interesting aspect of the book is on she starts her journey with a completely planned itinerary in Italy, then deviates a bit in India and then lands in Indonesia with absolutely no plan....so when they say that the best surprises in life when you are not planning...they actually do...and for a "project planner" like me (what my hubby likes to call me) the real take away from the book was "LET GO AND LIFE WILL TAKE YOU ON A SPIN"