You either need a glass of wine or a cup of strong black coffee to handle all the drama that The Bitter Pill Social Club has to offer. I am going to seek pardon for my language right now itself as a warning because if the following is offensive to you, then you should stay miles away from the book.

First page into the opening act, and I am sold. It grabs the essence of the current society (especially that of south Delhi and south Bombay or SoBo like many say) right by its balls. There's no holding back here, no tongue-in-the-cheek shenanigans, no bars maintained, no chewing of words. It's an absolute in-your-face-bitch kinda book.

The story begins off with Sana aka Sunaina, finding out that the guy she has been dating for a while and hoped was in love with, actually has the hots for dudes, thereby leaving her ring finger's desire of having a solitaire around its girth, as a broken dream.

And that's when all the drama begins.

But not the teary oh-my-god-how-can-you-do-this-to-me-I-am-so-in-love-with-you kinda weepy overrated melo. This is the eyeball rolling, phone flicking (there's a lot of it), verbal abusing, over drinking sorta drama.

So Sunaina Kochar is the point from which we slowly gain an insight into the "freakshow that is her family" AND friends as well. The moot point is that whoever is related to the Kochar family, by blood or by friendship has a mess on a silver plate for life. An absolute mess.
So this book is not only about Sunaina, it talks equally enough about all the other characters as well, however you could say that Sunaina is the founder of The Bitter Pill Social Club.

Like I said that this broth of a tale has not only the story of one life but several, and for the sake of binding it all and uplifting the flavours, there is a hell lot of spices added as well.
For example, there is a scene which I think is like the garamasala of drama, where we see a girl, her ex-lover and the guy-who-wants-to-be-her-lover have a small blowout.
To add some sweetness we have romance, quite a lot of it in fact.
Then to balance it out, you got to add some salt (I believe they are from the tears that have rolled from the cheeks to the pot of life) by having some really caustic moments like when Leela turned out to be an opportunist in disguise. There was a time when I thought there is no one who is nice or has some semblance of normalcy, 'cause even Leela, the girl who appeared to be smart and caring turned out to be a bitch. Kinda seemed like the moral of life is to tell people that every one is a scheming retard.
Next to give it a kick there is some chilly in the form of jealousy and cold shoulders.
At this point when you taste the broth you feel there is something missing, something is needed to add more depth to that flavour profile, or else it won't be like ma-ke-haat-ka-khana, you add some bay leaves; true cooks know that it adds great richness to soups and stews, and that is when you are taken deeper into the relationships. Because while this book focuses a lot on the cheap glitter of lives that we take as the shine of gold, Rohan Dahiya also shows what life actually means for us now, how we are living without living. It seems like we have a new definition of 'living' these days. Only if you post pictures on Instagram, worthy of having #couplegoals or #wanderlust or #foodporn in the comments section, people think you are living. And if you don't live according to these norms then Lord... you are a dinosaur. Life doesn't always have to be flashy and false, and that is proved by Samaira who was once a mean chick but has now turned into a down-to-earth social worker (yeah you knew something was like this was coming).

Now that the flavour is alright, you think of adding some Vodka, because what is adulthood if not having the legal authority to pour some booze over anything we want? And that's when we get scenes like where a father hits his middle-aged son and his son wants this to stop only because he barely resembles Ben Affleck which helps him get laid. I was rooting for the dad actually, the son I think is a jerk.
And to finish it off, we add some garnishing to give it a good presentation before the hapless consumer of this soup gets blown away by the complex flavours, in the form of a big fat Indian wedding. Pompous weddings are essential for the existance of Indians. I am a firm believer of that and I also think they are the ultimate stage where the real drama unfolds. Oh no. It should be EXPLODES.

Talking of food and ma-ke-haat-ka-khana reminded me that there is a place where Rohan Dahiya describes comfort food. I intend to write a letter to Oxford telling them that this is what they need as the perfect definition of comfort food. Every other attempt to explain it has fallen flat.

Love, love, love and love. What is this world without love? Absolutely nothing. Zilch. But you feel that love is deceitful and true love is a farce. Well there happens to be a formula to find the love of your life, clearly defined in the pages of this book and that is:
1 bottle of Wine + Unlimited number of Cigarettes + 1 shared joint + Rain + Some star gazing = A night spent warming the bed and possibly worming into each other's hearts as well.
Also, here the belief is that a joint tries to join people, but it lasts only while the smoky head from smoking up lasts.
But worry not, apparently it is possible to find warm fuzzy love in this world of shine and shimmer. And those of you who think that Tinder is a waste of time 'cause you only find people you never want to see again, it's time for you to go back to that app with gusto. Apparently you can find true love there in the middle of all the other one-night stands, just like Surya found Dhiraj (but definitely after finding a whatshisname who was a married man with kids).

Another important facet of this novel is the generation gap we suffer from. You know how the major difference between GenY and GenX is that one thinks that it has all sorted while the other has it all scattered? Well this club shows that whoever is its member, be it young or old, holds an array of badges for commemorating the number of times they have screwed themselves up thoroughly at some point of time or the other. So no one has their lives sorted. Be it in your twenties or in your freshly fuckable (you'll know why) forties/fifties, everybody's life is actually a soup. So the Kochar family is a chaos in its truest sense and here it appears that the elders have lost their shit more than their kids have.

An interesting fact that I came across, is that this book originated from a playlist. Every chapter name is actually a song and they add well to dramatization really. My favourite is 'Lonely for you only'.

Amidst all the praises I have for the book, I felt that there were some lose joints in the jumps of the plot, and they are most likely to make you go like what the hell happened? So I feel there is a bit of a continuity problem in some areas.

Full of stingy comments like 'a fresh out-of-bed selfie later' and 'when her no-makeup makeup was scrubbed off", and some subtleties thrown in like "with no roughage in their nasal passage the face numbing coke hit them immediately", make this book a super fun read. There are also these really interesting bits of eye-opening and life saving information like "People who wore Kolhapuri chappals rarely had anything interesting to say" and that those who listened to Nucleya were smarter than the rest.

What I derived from this drama galore is that, the more we try to be liked by all, the more we end up pretending, the more we pretend, the more the falsitudes grow and misunderstandings happen leading us to be lonely creatures in this world full of people and end up giving absolutely zero fucks to even those who matter. On the other hand, by remaining true to oneself, you may not be liked by all, but at least you will have some one with you because they value who you are. Its as if we are growing thinking that the world is nothing but an empty shell and there is no one to give us the affection every being desires. Only at the end when we can't hold up the pretense of loving to live alone anymore, do we crumble. The other thing that I strongly felt was the relation between a mother and a child. Yes we do have differences in ideologies, but sometimes that difference is enjoyable. We wouldn't want our parents to be like us. Hell no. They are our pillars of support. Aren't we the ones who run to them for direction when hope runs bleak? Aren't there moments where we just want the comfort of a mother's lap or the ease of striking up useless banter with our dads? So can you imagine how horrific it would be if our parents turned into confused souls like us? We like them to be a little old fashioned.

But relax, this book isn't a preachy one AT ALL. It is anything but that. I think it's an absolute riot of laughs and tears.

This would make an amazing film I think. Got all the bollywood-y masala in it. Like a Madhur Bhandarkar or a KJo film definitely!
And since I am the Director of my own film in my mind, I would cast Meryl Streep as Tina and Karishma Sharma seems like a perfect fit for the shoes of Sunaina!

Note : I received this book from Bloomsbury in exchange of an honest review.

Grab this book from Amazon right now!

To begin with let's say that Drishtikon is a thriller with a different approach. It is not the quintessential gruesome murder, with several people behaving suspiciously to let you point fingers at throughout the film, with sporadic shooting of bullets and hour long chases.

Every night, when we go to bed, some one wishes us 'Good night, sweet dreams'. Sometimes the dreams we have are sweet and some are not so sweet. Then there are nights where we sleep soundly and its all dark in our mind, no dreams whatsoever. But when we see those visuals in our slumber, we either jolt up all of a sudden, realizing that what we just saw has never happened and will never happen, or we continue sleeping, with a grin breaking across our faces without our knowledge.

But, how would it be when you saw something terrible AND you know that it WILL happen? How would it be to see dreams where you witness horrible deaths, the dreams where you can smell the saltiness of the blood and even get a hint of its metallic taste? You would say that it is a nightmare, that you just need cold water to be poured on your face or maybe a sharp kick on your bum to throw you out of bed and bring you back to senses. Alright, you wake up from that horrible nightmare. But when you see what you dreamt of, happen right in front of your eyes, moments after you dismiss what you saw in your sleep as a nightmare, how would you feel? Terrified? Scared? Helpless?

Then you can probably fathom an inkling of what Sapna Vaid felt when she started getting these kind of sapna in her sleep. It wasn't just one dream a night. It was twenty dreams a night. And it wasn't just twenty deaths. She even saw massive accidents where tens or hundreds of people died. The surprising bit is, she wasn't born with this gift, neither did she do any hooch pooch to start dreaming of such things. It just started happening to her from one fine night.

Often in such cases people tend to follow back the genes of such an individual to see if any of their family members ever portrayed any such capabilities. So let's take a look at Sapna Vaid's roots.

She belonged from a middle class family like any of the girls she grew up with. Her parents were extremely simple and kind people. Both of them had very humble beginnings to their lives. But they were a step ahead of the others in their prime. They were a couple whose love for each other stemmed from their love for books. Sapna's dad, Prakash, was the calm and composed kind, whereas her mom, Kalpana, would go and bash up anyone she found doing something wrong without thinking twice. However when these two souls came together they dreamed of making their own small world away from that of the others. They had two children from their matrimony, Vikrant and Sapna. With their meagre savings they had bought a flat in an isolated locality, furnished it with basic necessities and moved in with their family. Vikrant and Sapna were like any other siblings and shared a very deep bond with each other. Prakash couldn't believe that he had his own comfortable house, a caring wife whom he loved deeply, two perfectly beautiful children and a peaceful life to lead. But he should have been wary of all the peace his life had then, because in the near years the peace that he once had would be just a memory.
The first blow came to them when Vikrant was in the twelfth standard. Fate played its first bout of cruelty on this happy family by killing Vikrant in a tragic train accident. The family was devastated. It was as if Vikrant had taken a part of their soul and left for the heavens. We think time heals everything, but it may not always be true. It's just that people figure out ways of survival as time passes by, but the wound still remains. Prakash imagined Vikrant beside him in every moment of his life, Kalpana drew images and Sapna wrote letters to her dead brother. They all had methods of coping up with this loss. Life resumed its pace for them, but only to be thrown terribly off track and that too forever when Sapna had her first dream of death.

At first they thought she was having psychological problems, and tried to rationalize with her. But what Sapna was trying to explain to her parents, hit home, when she avoided an accident from happening right before her mother's eyes. That's when she realized that her daughter wasn't turning delusional. Sapna was afraid of closing her eyes at night, she was becoming a shadow, but Sahil, her friend in college was the one who held her down. Sahil loved her deeply and Sapna loved him too. Sapna's parents approved highly of Sahil and he was a part of their family for them. But next comes Kabir, the man who turns their world on their heads.

Kabir, a rich, famous and handsome business tycoon, gets fascinated by Sapna's story when she saves his life. The business man that he is, comes up with a plan to help Sapna, and also rake in money in the process of course. He comes up with the idea  of a show which would help the victims in Sapna's dreams save their lives. So he took the innocent Sapna, and a handful of other people and begun a show, which turned Sapna into a worldwide sensation. They worshiped her and believed in her when they saw that what she said wasn't a farce.

She turned into a messiah for the people. But also a murderer in disguise?

The author Amit Sharma, very carefully chooses to talk about the world of dreams threaded amazingly with reality. He tries to not make it sound too fantastical or out of the world. He knows that the concept will sound outlandish, so he comes up with theories to make it stick to the ground.

As a matter of fact another 50 pages more would have worked even better for it I think.


Note: I received this book as a review copy from the author Amit Sharma in exchange of an honest review. I would like to thank him for giving me this opportunity.

Author : Amit Sharma 

SOC Rating : 3.5/5

Genre : Science Fiction

Publisher : Readomania

Publishing Year : 2017

Sometimes words betray us when we try to describe a book. The best of us may take a while to do some justice to the novel that left us speechless. Sometimes, you wan't to tell people how you felt about reading the book and sometimes you don't, just because you think that what you felt while you were engrossed in those pages is deeply personal. Homegoing is one which leaves me in the middle. I want to tell people about what I think of this book so that they can rush to the stores, at the same time I don't want to say anything at all because what I felt when I imagined myself walking midst the African natives speaking Twi, is something residing in one of the rooms of my heart.

On 8th of March, International Women's Day, I had the privilege to attend and cover the Tumi Annanya Awards held by Beyond Dreams at the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad.
The aim of this award show was to honour several female achievers, to give them prominence in this male dominated world and encourage others of this clan to come to come forward and shine bright in their life.

That this show is of a different kind was proved by the inauguration ceremony itself. It is an award show for celebrating women, and what better defines women than mother nature herself. So instead of lighting the customary diyas on a dais, the show started off with the watering of a plant, symbolizing the need of both women and nature in an environment where both of them are deeply neglected.



The first awardee of the night was Agnimitra Paul, awarded for her Excellence in Fashion Designing. Having catered to all the three strata of the film industry (Tollywood, Bollywood and Hollywood as well), she gained immense popularity, but her work doesn't end there. In spite of having such a star studded clientele she also focuses on creating designs that her next door neighbour can wear and more importantly, afford as well. So she is not only a designer for the celebrities, she is also a designer of the masses. Rarely do we see a designer who has once reached the stars, think about the people who live and breathe beside her as well.



Up next, the rockstar of Kolkata, Usha Utthup took the stage and did she rev up the crowd or what! Such an amazing stage presence she has. The sharp and witty emcee, Ms.Madhubanti said that had Usha di not stayed back in Kolkata and moved up to California or New York, which she could as a matter of fact, given the timbre of her voice, her shelves would be stocked with Grammys instead of the Tumi Annanya award and she couldn't be more correct. The entire audience whole-heartedly seconded her words. Once on stage, wearing her trademark kanjeeveram saree and sneakers made of kanjeeveram too, she said 'Munni toh badnaam ho gayi, I called Sheila lekin uski jawani chali gayi, Anarkali toh disco chali gayi, Chikni Chameli, Jalebi Bai koi nai ayi, lekin aap logo ki Darling reh gayi (the song Darling in the film Saat Khoon Maaf was sung by her)' and after this she sang a couple of lines from Darling and the crowd went berserk! Kamran Khurshid, a singer of soaring popularity, came up on stage to do an impromptu performance with Usha Utthup and sang Senorita with her. The crowd cheered on immensely and the audience clapped to the rhythm. There wasn't any soul in the audience, young or old, who didn't tap their feet or hoot for the duo. She was presented with the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Music.




Tanushree Shankar, the popular veteran of dance, was awarded the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Dance. A very reserved and charming lady, she stuck to saying a few words in her soft voice.




Next we had Alokananda Roy on the stage for receiving the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Social Service. She has been in the industry of performance for about six decades! Being an incredibly humble personality, she said that the most important duty of a woman is being a mother, irrespective of the sex of her child. She said that through her art, she has been a mother to hundreds of both boys and girls, and jokingly said that she has crossed the record set by Gandhari. What she believes is that all a child seeks is acceptance without any conditions, and any lady who can provide that is a successful mother.





If women don't help women, then who will? This question is best understood by Ms. Saira Shah Halim, a lady who has dedicated her life in improving the life of many unprivileged girls and intends to do so further.  Tumi Annanya Awards gave her the trophy for Social Activism.

An extremely dignified personality in the domain of theatre, Ms. Dolly Basu, graced the stage and told the audience that everyone sitting in the audience was entitled to freedom of choice, but then there are so many who don't have this basic right and it is our duty to do help those who don't. She was awarded the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Theatre.



Koel Mullick, seconded Ms. Dolly Basu's notions, as she came up next to receive the award for Tumi Annanya Award for Bengal's Madhubala. She said that she belonged from a family where she wasn't treated differently just because she was a girl. She was given every possible freedom and says that she feels unbelievably lucky  as she shuns to think what her life would have been had she not been allowed to do so.





One of the awardees, a lady who needs no introduction at all, we have seen her on the silver screen and seen her work behind the screen as well for decades, Ms.Aparna Sen received the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Direction. Unfortunately she wasn't able to grace the show with her presence due to other commitments, but her husband Mr.Kalyan Ray, who has spent twenty-five marvellous years with her, was too happy to take the award on behalf of his wife. He said that in the interim that they have been together, he has seen her take on the role of an actress, a director and a mother with equal panache, and it surprises him to no extent, as he wakes up every morning to see and be amazed by the zeal with which his better half thinks of new ways to improve herself even now.




A lady who made women a force to reckon with in the world of media, is Ms. Rita Bhimani. She was given the Tumi Annanya award for Excellence in PR and Corporate Communications, as she has been running a successful PR agency called Ritam for the past fifteen years. When you see her speak her mind with clarity at a soft yet firm voice, you cannot help but appreciate this lady who has gained prominence in a sector where even men consider it difficult to firmly find their feet.

Many of the awardees of the night said that a feminist cannot only be a woman. A feminist goes beyond the boundaries of gender. A feminist is any person who supports and works for the rights for a woman and gives respect to a woman.

So the next awardee of the night was Ms.Manabi Bandopadhyay, a person who is seen as a transgender in the eyes of the world, but is a person who strongly believes in the fact that her soul is that of a woman. Going beyond the perceptions of the superficial society, she is a professor and is known to be the first transgender in India to receive a Doctorate in Philosophy. Here we are in a world where we fight for letting girls go to school and colleges, and here is Ms.Manabi who firmly states that the right to education is not entitled to just a boy or a girl, it is entitled to anyone who dreams and craves for education. She was awarded the Tumi Annanya Award for Excellence in Education.



As we said that feminism isn't something that only women support, Mr.Utpal Chatterjee, another personality renowned in the world of journalism and feminism rights, was honoured with the Tumi Annanya Award.



This award is to state that if you are working for the upliftment of women in this world, then you will be acknowledged, irrespective of whether you are a woman or not. This award was a representation of humanity. Humanity that should go beyond the gender biases of man and woman, as after all we are humans and first, and a boy or a girl later.


It has been my honour to be present among such eminent personalities and I give Beyond Dreams my heartiest congratulations for holding such an outstanding show. The execution of the Tumi Annanya Awards has been phenomenal, but as it is said, that it is the thought that matters - it is great to see that minds are finally coming together to uphold womanhood and the idea of it hasn't just remained as a seed, it has finally bore some fruit. Here is to hoping that Beyond Dreams manages to continue this in the coming years.