One is so used to seeing websites that it is no longer a big deal to see one but what is certainly heart warming is the sight of your own website with your name as the URL. I had never made a website till now. I had thought it was necessary. Nothing has triggered the necessity now per se but the fact that the second book, The PM's Wishlist got released meant that I had to have important resources at the fingertips of readers keen to know more about the books or about me. This point and need to have a dedicated website, emerged from the online articles and experts who were pretty vocal about it. I agree that one can't have serious readers being sent all over the internet if they needed to know more. The Website is now up and running. Hope you like it.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
e-book published on Amazon.com
I am excited that my book Amman - a tribute to my mother is now available as an e-book on Amazon. I have also created a special promotion and the book is now available at 0.99 USD for the next 72 hours. You will need a Kindle app reader but that can be downloaded for free on your desktop, ios or Android device. Happy ReadingThe ebook on Amazon.com
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Invitation to Mothers
Discussion Forum on FB: Invitation to Mothers
Ammanthebook is inviting all mothers to share their thoughts about how they want to see the best for their kids and how their own experiences continue to shape the manner in which they care for their kids.
Ammanthebook is inviting all mothers to share their thoughts about how they want to see the best for their kids and how their own experiences continue to shape the manner in which they care for their kids.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Chapter 1 : Amman: Happy Mother's Day
I remember her sitting under the large tamarind tree, quietly reading a book for hours at a stretch. In a way, I was responsible for that. I was in lower kindergarten that time in St Joseph’s Convent, Kamptee. I remember I was very well behaved and composed on the first day of my school; and specifically during the first few minutes that she was there. The moment my mummy had walked out and they closed the doors, my bravado had vanished. She decided that she was going to sit in the school compound reading and I could see her through the window, to reassure myself whenever I wanted. This arrangement was in place for many days. The teacher tried shifting my place after a few days so that I wouldn’t look out of the window too often. I guess I started getting too fidgety or something and was shifted back to my window seat, much to my delight.
Kamptee is a small village. It is about a couple of hours drive away from the nearest big city Nagpur, which is a prominent city in central India. My school was the only English medium school in the village. The school benches were small and painted in bright but gaudy colours and smooth oil paints that had been further smoothened with use. The class room was neat and clean, and had a tiled roof like the ones we see in bungalow shots of Hindi movies. The room had a window that faced the play ground. The tamarind tree had a circular slab constructed around it. Kamptee derived from Camp T was a typical army cantonment town with houses, bungalows and mall roads that bore the stamp of the British era.
Just outside the window was the tree. Mummy used to sit below it for the three hours that I was in the classroom. It was a reassuring sight, if ever there was one. That’s the first real memory that I have of Mummy and the visual has stuck in my mind. It looked like a picture postcard with the large tree at some distance and my mother reading quietly without looking up for those long three hours that I was in class. It was awesome. It was serene. One could hear the faint humming noise of students studying in different classrooms in a still kind of suppressed silence punctuated only by the occasional breeze or the distant grunting of grazing cows and goats. I don’t remember whether my classmates teased me since I was the only kid in the class whose mother stayed back but it didn’t matter. When you are that young explanations are neither sought nor offered, I guess or maybe it was unwritten rule. Once I felt a little more comfortable at school, I tried convincing myself that she liked reading.
Kamptee is a small village. It is about a couple of hours drive away from the nearest big city Nagpur, which is a prominent city in central India. My school was the only English medium school in the village. The school benches were small and painted in bright but gaudy colours and smooth oil paints that had been further smoothened with use. The class room was neat and clean, and had a tiled roof like the ones we see in bungalow shots of Hindi movies. The room had a window that faced the play ground. The tamarind tree had a circular slab constructed around it. Kamptee derived from Camp T was a typical army cantonment town with houses, bungalows and mall roads that bore the stamp of the British era.
Just outside the window was the tree. Mummy used to sit below it for the three hours that I was in the classroom. It was a reassuring sight, if ever there was one. That’s the first real memory that I have of Mummy and the visual has stuck in my mind. It looked like a picture postcard with the large tree at some distance and my mother reading quietly without looking up for those long three hours that I was in class. It was awesome. It was serene. One could hear the faint humming noise of students studying in different classrooms in a still kind of suppressed silence punctuated only by the occasional breeze or the distant grunting of grazing cows and goats. I don’t remember whether my classmates teased me since I was the only kid in the class whose mother stayed back but it didn’t matter. When you are that young explanations are neither sought nor offered, I guess or maybe it was unwritten rule. Once I felt a little more comfortable at school, I tried convincing myself that she liked reading.
Thursday, December 7, 2006
My First Book: Amman - Tribute to Mother
Amman- Tribute to Mother
Foreword
The story of Amman exemplifies the various ordeals faced by an average upper middle-class Indian family. This story is about an educated, talented and intelligent woman who had to go through a series of struggles at various stages of her life in order to fulfill her dreams and her aspirations. It is the story of a woman and a mother who has faced the battles of life with stoic courage, perseverance and a determination to succeed however daunting the odds looked.
The simple and lucid style will most certainly take you through a collage of incidents and memories that ring so true with scores of incidents and experiences one sees around us. Some of the incidents are poignant and some outright inspiring. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book could be used at a certain plane as a reference manual of sorts by young mothers keen to mould their little ones.
The story about the real life goddess, as the word Amman means is replete with examples and situations that are very ordinary and yet present themselves as vexing problems in lives of so many families. This story is not about the struggles of some celebrity because neither the protagonist nor the author is a celebrity. Millions of families go through life’s roller-coaster of joys, problems, trials and tribulations and face them with the ammunition of faith, determination, self-respect and hard work at their disposal. This is a story of woman who went through the seemingly normal, unsung and completely unglamorous set of events and faced the vicissitudes of life with loads of positive thoughts and a fierce determination to fight back without settling for the consolation prizes that life’s race offers.
I am glad Sachin decided to write this `non-story’ because this is one story that has to be told so that people in different situations and different predicaments realize that life’s joys are to be culled out from the routine and the mundane challenges and that inspiration does not necessarily come from the lives of the great but from the lives of people who make themselves great on the small and big theatres of their own lives. This book celebrates the struggles, the wins, the tears and the smiles and it celebrates what life is finally all about – living and living well.
Prof: Yogita Karnik
Back Cover of the Book
“It seems like just yesterday that my father took me to this lady who would be taking my 'English Conversation classes'. Little did I know then that ‘Amman’ was to play such a pivotal role in my life... It was much later that I realized that her strength, her determination, her versatility, her confidence in herself had always been an inspiration... Her joie de vivre has forever been infectious... I am the woman I am today because of the undying faith she has had in me..... I met her after almost six years... Six years, and I'd grown from a vulnerable, unsure teenager into an engineer, only days away from leaving the country... Six years, but nothing about this woman had changed... I entered her new home in a new town, and still felt the same rush of familiarity... I left that day with the assurance that all I had to do was turn around, and this wonderful teacher of mine would be standing there, with more belief in me than I would ever have in myself.” Aditi Thanekar
This book captures the aspirations and struggles of an average upper middle class Indian family. The bonds and values running invisibly through the pages of the book seem to have acquired a character of its own. It’s a story about an educated, intelligent and talented Indian woman who has been through struggles at various stages in her life be it her own education or her son’s. The description of life style, virtues, qualities of a typical Indian home stands out in vivid details and it could possibly be a family you know well. It’s quite likely that some episode or events may remind you of a few incidents from your own life in some form.
This is a story of a mother who had to struggle to put her life in place. This story may take you up nostalgia lane for nothing mentioned in this book is fictional. It’s a tale about people who never make it to the lime light and whose struggles never get mentioned. Seemingly ordinary mortals end up performing far more stellar and braver roles, than one would imagine, making their own lives and those of people around them happier.
Millions of households and families battle various setbacks and this book is almost a saga of how the much vaunted Indian Middle class goes about living its life. Ordinary lives are a combination of extra-ordinary struggles that go un-noticed. Fasten your seat belts; the trip to nostalgia can get a bit bumpy.
Foreword
The story of Amman exemplifies the various ordeals faced by an average upper middle-class Indian family. This story is about an educated, talented and intelligent woman who had to go through a series of struggles at various stages of her life in order to fulfill her dreams and her aspirations. It is the story of a woman and a mother who has faced the battles of life with stoic courage, perseverance and a determination to succeed however daunting the odds looked.
The simple and lucid style will most certainly take you through a collage of incidents and memories that ring so true with scores of incidents and experiences one sees around us. Some of the incidents are poignant and some outright inspiring. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book could be used at a certain plane as a reference manual of sorts by young mothers keen to mould their little ones.
The story about the real life goddess, as the word Amman means is replete with examples and situations that are very ordinary and yet present themselves as vexing problems in lives of so many families. This story is not about the struggles of some celebrity because neither the protagonist nor the author is a celebrity. Millions of families go through life’s roller-coaster of joys, problems, trials and tribulations and face them with the ammunition of faith, determination, self-respect and hard work at their disposal. This is a story of woman who went through the seemingly normal, unsung and completely unglamorous set of events and faced the vicissitudes of life with loads of positive thoughts and a fierce determination to fight back without settling for the consolation prizes that life’s race offers.
I am glad Sachin decided to write this `non-story’ because this is one story that has to be told so that people in different situations and different predicaments realize that life’s joys are to be culled out from the routine and the mundane challenges and that inspiration does not necessarily come from the lives of the great but from the lives of people who make themselves great on the small and big theatres of their own lives. This book celebrates the struggles, the wins, the tears and the smiles and it celebrates what life is finally all about – living and living well.
Prof: Yogita Karnik
Back Cover of the Book
“It seems like just yesterday that my father took me to this lady who would be taking my 'English Conversation classes'. Little did I know then that ‘Amman’ was to play such a pivotal role in my life... It was much later that I realized that her strength, her determination, her versatility, her confidence in herself had always been an inspiration... Her joie de vivre has forever been infectious... I am the woman I am today because of the undying faith she has had in me..... I met her after almost six years... Six years, and I'd grown from a vulnerable, unsure teenager into an engineer, only days away from leaving the country... Six years, but nothing about this woman had changed... I entered her new home in a new town, and still felt the same rush of familiarity... I left that day with the assurance that all I had to do was turn around, and this wonderful teacher of mine would be standing there, with more belief in me than I would ever have in myself.” Aditi Thanekar
This book captures the aspirations and struggles of an average upper middle class Indian family. The bonds and values running invisibly through the pages of the book seem to have acquired a character of its own. It’s a story about an educated, intelligent and talented Indian woman who has been through struggles at various stages in her life be it her own education or her son’s. The description of life style, virtues, qualities of a typical Indian home stands out in vivid details and it could possibly be a family you know well. It’s quite likely that some episode or events may remind you of a few incidents from your own life in some form.
This is a story of a mother who had to struggle to put her life in place. This story may take you up nostalgia lane for nothing mentioned in this book is fictional. It’s a tale about people who never make it to the lime light and whose struggles never get mentioned. Seemingly ordinary mortals end up performing far more stellar and braver roles, than one would imagine, making their own lives and those of people around them happier.
Millions of households and families battle various setbacks and this book is almost a saga of how the much vaunted Indian Middle class goes about living its life. Ordinary lives are a combination of extra-ordinary struggles that go un-noticed. Fasten your seat belts; the trip to nostalgia can get a bit bumpy.
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