Miss Wisey Pants

"I fought, I struggled, I obeyed, I compromised, I rebelled, I surrendered, but above all, and at last, I think, I found myself. I found the truth that is me. I lived the life given to me as a woman with all honesty, true to my instincts and faithful to my impulses, eager and yearning, but always true to myself. Always." There are books you don't just read, but books you have long conversations with. Ahalya's Awakening was one such gem. I immersed myself in it, read and re-read chapters to uncover the meanings they so beautifully hid. But most of all, I devoured it!  The book tells us the story of Ahalya, born a Princess, married to be a Rishika, but destined to be every bit a human first. As a young girl, she had to fight with her family for her right to seek education and not simply be married off to the best suitor meant to be her destiny. She stood her ground even when all the odds were pitted against her. As she grew older, she kept evolving and surprising hersel...

  "She remembered Nana saying once that each snowflake was a sigh heaved by an aggrieved woman somewhere in the world. That all the sighs drifted up the sky, gathered into clouds, then broke into tiny pieces that fell silently on the people below. As a reminder of how people like us suffer, she'd said. How quietly we endure all that falls upon us." Endurance is what comes to the mind when one reads A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a gut-wrenching account of two women connected by an obstinate thread of fate, violence and destiny. Although they are years apart, they find each other thrown together in the merciless rut of destiny where time stands still but sufferings continue to grow.  Mariam was once a wide-eyed little girl full of naive hopes & dreams. Cared for by a woeful mother, she lived from one day to the other desperate to see her father. A father for whom paying weekly visits to his illegitimate daughter was enough to fulfil his fatherly duties towards her ...