The story of a move: my journey to a self-hosted blog

Around the start of the month, as I was idly scrolling through Twitter, I saw a tweet about Host My Blog. Curious, I clicked over to their profile, and saw that they offer web hosting solutions for Indian bloggers and small businesses.

Then I saw their pinned tweet – Start a blog with .in @ INR 227 a year.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yup, it was INR 227 for the year.

That’s roughly the price of a cup of coffee, I thought to myself, and immediately dropped them a message to find out more.

The story of a move

I had been toying with the idea of moving to a self hosted blog since a while, but it seemed like a really scary proposition. WordPress.com had been home for about 10 years, and they took care of everything – spam, SEO, space et al. But my dreams were growing, and the blog was starting to feel a bit restricted.Continue reading→

Book review: The Reflections of Queen Snow White by David Meredith 

What happens when “happily ever after” has come and gone?
On the eve of her only daughter, Princess Raven’s wedding, an aging Snow White finds it impossible to share in the joyous spirit of the occasion. The ceremony itself promises to be the most glamorous social event of the decade. Snow White’s castle has been meticulously scrubbed, polished and opulently decorated for the celebration. Things could not be better except for one thing: The king is dead.
The queen has been in a moribund state of hopeless depression for over a year with no end in sight. It is only when, in a fit of bitter despair, she seeks solitude in the vastness of her own sprawling castle and climbs a long disused and forgotten tower stair that she comes face to face with herself in the very same magic mirror used by her stepmother of old. It promises her respite in its shimmering depths, but can Snow White trust a device that was so precious to a woman who sought to cause her such irreparable harm? Can she confront the demons of her own difficult past to discover a better future for herself and her family? And finally, can she release her soul-crushing grief and suffocating loneliness to once again discover what “happily ever after” really means? Only time will tell as she wrestles with her past and is forced to confront The Reflections of Queen Snow White.

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My friend and I

I’m curled up on the sofa, looking out at the rain falling steadily down. The weather outside – rainy, overcast, ominous – reflect the thoughts swirling around my head.


There’s an inner turmoil that’s been brewing within me since a long, long time. A problem that seems to have no solutions. No matter how much I try, or how often I upbraid myself for failing, it just doesn’t seem to work out.

And now I’m convinced there’s more to the problem than meets the eye. It’s not a simple case of do X to achieve Y. There’s something buried deep within; this problem has spiritual roots.

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On my art table: Handmade Journal

 

Before I started art journaling, I was an avid journaler. In fact, I still am. There’s something about writing, about paying attention to each day, that draws me back to the journal.

The journal is a sacred place for me, which is why I’ve always been drawn to beautiful notebooks. But there’s something really special about handmade journals, don’t you think?

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Ebook review: Got me for life by Chandni Moudgil

Women. Are they complex creatures or the simplest of beings? The answer is perhaps not as simple.

In a series of 26 short stories, explore the world of EveryDay Women with me. They aren’t the superheroes who claim to save the world. They are the ones who form a part of your world.

They can create magical moments, make or break people, manipulate relationships, slip in and out of roles or refuse to fit into one at all. They are the real women in our lives. But the common thread that binds these fascinating women is , they don’t need anyone to make their world better – they have themselves for life.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you find a bit of someone you know in each of them.

Let the stories begin?

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Ebook review: The Other Side of Love by Richa Singh

“Twenty seven is the last age to get married an in style.”

So begins this short novella, which was was penned by Singh during the month-long Ultimate Blogging Challenge.

The story follows 27 year old Radha, who, of course, is not yet married. She lives a rather lonely existence. She’s friend zoned by Sushant, the man she loves; her sisters are married and settled; and her mother is worried about Radha’s future. But instead of being forced into marriage, Radha accepts a teaching job from a coveted institute.

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Ebook review: 26 by Aditi Kaushiva

26: 26 Stories. 26 Colours. 26 Emotions, is an anthology that strives to explore the myriad hues of life by painting 26 bite-sized stories, each based on 26 colours which commence with every letter of the alphabet from A to Z. The themes developed in these stories range from marital despair to urban city-life blues, from love to loss, from child abuse to infidelity, divorce, and much more.

This short eBook is a collection of 26 pieces of flash fiction. Kaushiva wrote each story in a day, in an attempt to show that short, swiftly written and transient narratives can be as powerful as complexly-constructed prose.

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Book Review: Sweet Breath of Memory by Ariella Cohen

Life is in the telling.

Sweet Breath of Memory by Ariella CohenWhen Cate Saunders walks into Amberly’s Italian grocery store Vitelli’s, little does she know how her life is going to change. Weighed down by the loss of her husband John in the Iraq war, having lost the house they bought together, and all dreams of the life that they wanted to build, Cate has accepted a job as a caregiver.

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Imagine a world without words

Among the many worlds that man did not receive as a gift from nature but created out of his own mind, the world of books is the greatest… Without the word, without the writing of books, there is no history, there is no concept of humanity. And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books. – The Magic of the Book, Hermann Hesse

Imagine a world without the written word. Without a way to easily access and share humankind’s collective knowledge. A world where books were not a thing, where reading and writing were unknown. What would such a world look like? Continue reading→

#MicroBlog Mondays: The first Gurgaon BYOB meet-up

  
The first Gurgaon BYOB (where the last B stands for books, not booze) meet-up took place yesterday at The Wishing Chair’s adorable Mad Teapot cafe. It was quite a turn out, and I was blown away by the variety of books and authors that people brought along to the discussion. Ranging from Murakami and Rushdie, to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, to an Indian author from Nagaland and an Iranian graphic novelist (yes, the Iranian graphic novelist), to a pilot and a sports writer – the discussion was engaging, illuminating, and passionate. The best thing was the absence of Chetan Bhagat and his ilk – although there was quite a heated debate on bad writing and there being no such thing as bad writing. It was a stimulating meet-up, and I came away with a couple of more books added to my TBR list. Here’s to more BYOB events in Gurgaon; may the tribe of readers grow!

Linking up with MicroBlog Mondays.