This book impressed me very deeply. Yalom is a psychiatrist who has written many scholarly works on psychotherapy but this is his first novel. Since then he has gone on to write many more award-winning and bestselling novels based on group therapy. Someone gave me this book and I like to keep it for re-reading. There’s a line in it that says: "Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident." Very inspiring.
Omar Abdullah: Ghost Wars By Steve Coll
It’s about the involvement of American and Saudi intelligence in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion till the day before the twin towers came down in New York. I had travelled to Afghanistan last December which made me curious to find out more about what was happening in this region. This book gives me at least one point of view—the American point of view.
Since I usually read two books at a time, I began reading M.J. Akbar’s Blood Brothers. It’s too soon to say anything about this book. Reading is a habit I inherited from my mother, and I make the time for it, no matter how busy I am. Especially with all the shuttling I do between Srinagar and Delhi, I find plenty of time for reading on the plane ride as well as at the airport—as can be imagined, it’s a blend of airport fiction with non-fiction.
Malavika Sarukkai : Poems of Love and War by A.K. Ramanujan
I have so little time for fiction now, so this is the one book I dip into nowadays is A.K. Ramanujan’s Poems of Love and War. These are his translations of the early Tamil Sangha poets but so contemporary, and fills my need to find metaphor, and keep my mind as supple and creative as when I am dancing.
But the book I find most moving is Wisdom of the Ancient Spheres: Mantras of the Rg Veda by David Frawley. It has a philosophy I find inspiring, taking me beyond the self to the wider cosmos, and instilling a sense of wonder at all there is around us. I find a lot of meaning both for my life and dance in this book which is why I am travelling with it wherever I go.
Zarine Khan: The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks
This book was gifted to me by my son-in-law Hrithik Roshan. It’s a marvellous love story about two old people who meet after many years and whose love for each other endures even after their youthful romance has ended.
