A letter to a friend who is a victim of abuse. Her situation is made worse by the fact that she is on a dependent H4 visa in the USA.

Some time ago, I received my first copy of My Paper, a monthly news publication for kids. My 5 year old daughter was so excited she wanted to read all the articles at once. Frankly in today's internet age I did not see any point in getting them a subscription to a newspaper. After all information is at their fingertips. They can look up anything they are curious about, and for fiction or activities I buy them books. So what purpose does a monthly news publication serve?

Neha has just returned from a long vacation. Her friends give her a warm welcome. But in the time she was gone, a new family has moved in to the housing society and her friends have issues with the new kid. Neha wants to be friendly with him, but will her old friends tolerate that, or will she lose her old friends in making a new one? Read on to find out.

I have noticed in various places, when a kid gets hurt and starts crying, sometimes, the grown up in charge rushes to comfort them but does so in strange way. For example if the child has stubbed his toe on the table, they beat the table and say, “Bad table, bad table!” Or if the child has banged their head on the wall, they sternly wag their finger at the wall and say “Bad wall!” Sometimes the child is encouraged to participate in punishing the offending inanimate object.

In modern relationships, terms like space, boundaries, communication and secrets are often used to assess a health of a relationship. We want to have open and honest communication with our partners, and yet we want space and to set boundaries. Are these demands incompatible or can they all be satisfied in harmony?

A grouchy old man moves in to a new neighbourhood. Why do the kids call him uncle Uh-Oh? Why is he so grumpy? The neighbourhood kids are determined to solve the mystery? Will they succeed? Read on to find out.

I was all set to go to Kolkata on a family holiday, when this book arrived. As a Percy Jackson fan, I couldn't be happier. It had been a while since I did a review for PlusMinus'n'More but the timing was perfect. Now I had some exciting reading material for my week long holiday. And the book definitely lived up to my expectations. For a detailed review of the book click here.

A decade ago, I lived in a foreign country. That was when I started using social media. For a few years, it was about catching up with old friends, sharing pictures and gossiping about what had changed. It seemed like our forgotten friendships could be revived through the magic of the internet. If anyone had then told me, that the internet would eventually be isolating people, I would have called them raving loons.

This is a set of 9 poems I have written to match 9 paintings done by my 5 year daughter Pell. The poems are, imaginitive, quirky, funny and adorable, and there is something for everyone. One poem is about Halloween, another about snowmen and a third about sea life. Read on and enjoy the colourful, vibrant paintings.

A blogger friend of mine recently wrote an article about being an over enthusiastic newly wed. Being ambitious, she always aimed high and marriage was no different. She took it on as something to excel at. So she was eager to tackle everything from being a working woman to running the household like clockwork. Being highly competent, she managed just that. Well at least until the couple was blessed with a beautiful bundle of chaos and then the expectations she had built up back fired and caused marital issues that required a lot of work to fix.

Vaishali was getting impatient. They had been stuck in a traffic jam for 20 minutes, on a Sunday afternoon. Insane! What could be the problem?

Papa and I have been together for a little over 16 years and today is our 9th wedding anniversary, and we spent over an hour, locked together in a room. Aren't you curious about what we did? I'll tell you in a moment. But here is some back story first.

The other day, when my two daughters were on the swings in the society play area, a lady came up to me and asked if they are twins. “No!” I exclaimed surprised. Why would anyone think that? “They are sisters.” I explained. “This one is 2 and a half and the other is 5.”

When we were kids, we were badgered by grown ups to read the news or watch the news in order to educate our selves and shed our ignorance of the world we lived in. In our times, news was quite boring and I wonder how many parents succeeded in getting their kids to actually read or listen to the news.

I just read The Gory Story Of Genghis Khan, and it has been far more enjoyable, than I could have imagined. Nayanika's cheeky writing style and endless supply of puns make this book as entertaining, as it is informative. And as for exciting, well it is about a blood thirsty conqueror ...

A blogger friend of mine has blogged several times, about a couple of issues that bother her. One is, the strange emotionally charged attitude we have to the English language and the other is the discrimination, dark skinned people in India face. After some thought, I have come to believe, it is possible, that these two seemingly disconnected issues, could indeed be linked.

Two adults may be given the same information, but how they receive or interpret it will be coloured by their, interests, past experiences and knowledge. Now think about how different kids interpret the same collective experiences they share in a Kindergarten class. This is a fun read.

Rules and laws are the foundation of civilized society. Yet it is not easy to make rules. A system that involves a large number of people, like a school, or a housing society, or a community is quite complex, let alone a city or a country. Rules are necessary for smooth functioning of groups. But no matter what rule is made, there will always be a few people who are reasonably inconvenienced by it.

and the deep wide chasm that separates them.

Sapna had her fingers crossed. She closed her eyes and prayed hard. She was getting impatient too. She wished Miss Khanna would count faster.

When I read the synopsis of this book, I was intrigued. A political thriller entangled with midlife crisis sounded promising. I wasn't disappointed.

White Mughals by Dalrymple explores an interesting period in British Indian history, when the daily lives of the British officials and Indian people were often tightly entwined. This period has been, later, suppressed by both cultures as a result of hostilities, that developed soon after. Dalrymple's account is well researched, referring to, and quoting from, official documents as well as personal correspondences, to obtain a complete picture on both microscopic and macroscopic scales.

Sometimes, in our enthusiasm to to extinguish patriarchy and gender bias, we lose sight of he important stuff and follow formulas and mantras. Do we forget, that is what got us here in the first place?

An early reader can read most of this one one on their own with a little help from a grown up. The PDF is available for dowmload at the botom of the page. You can prin it out for personal use.

An, easy to make, dessert, with delicous fresh strawberries and the goodness of dark chocolate, for you to enjoy with your little ones. Yum, yum yum ...