Author Archives: memoriesandsuch

In My Hands Today…

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The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House – Stephanie Lam

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It’s 1965 and eighteen year-old Rosie Churchill has run away to the beautiful but run-down Castaway House in the seaside town of Helmstone. But when she uncovers a scandal locked away in the walls of the old house, she soon comes to realise that neither her own troubled past nor that of the house will stay buried for long. . .

In 1924 fresh-faced Robert Carver comes to Castaway House to spend a languid summer in the company of his much wealthier cousin, Alec Bray. But the Brays are a damaged family, with damaging secrets. And little does Robert know that his world is about to change for ever.

As Rosie begins to learn more about Robert, the further she is drawn into the mysterious history of the house, and their stories, old and new, entwine.

In My Hands Today…

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he Stationery Shop – Marjan Kamali

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Roya is a dreamy, idealistic teenager living in 1953 Tehran who, amidst the political upheaval of the time, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood book and stationery shop. She always feels safe in his dusty store, overflowing with fountain pens, shiny ink bottles, and thick pads of soft writing paper.

When Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—she loses her heart at once. And, as their romance blossoms, the modest little stationery shop remains their favorite place in all of Tehran.

A few short months later, on the eve of their marriage, Roya agrees to meet Bahman at the town square, but suddenly, violence erupts—a result of the coup d’etat that forever changes their country’s future. In the chaos, Bahman never shows. For weeks, Roya tries desperately to contact him, but her efforts are fruitless. With a sorrowful heart, she resigns herself to never seeing him again.

Until, more than sixty years later, an accident of fate leads her back to Bahman and offers her a chance to ask him the questions that have haunted her for more than half a century: Why did he leave? Where did he go? How was he able to forget her?

Instagram Interludes

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Facebook reminded me sometime back about our trip to Langkawi some eight or nine years back. So I decided to share some photos here. We went when the children were little and so hired a car and took our own sweet time to roam around. On one such trip, we came across a Thai wat and a Hindu temple next to each other and the location just below some cliffs made for some stunning photos!

2020 Week 29 Update

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We’re done with another week of staying home. Sometimes when everyone are trying to work in a single room, it really gets to you as it happened to us this week.

Our air conditioning spoilt sometime in June and when we called the repair guy, we were told to change it, so off we went to the closest retailer and were told we could only get it installed earlier this week. Now, I really want to tell you all that in hot and extremely humid Singapore, air conditioning leans more towards a need rather than a luxury. Till our new airconditioners were installed, I had very bad and broken sleep as I would wake multiple times a night soaked in sweat! But back to our aircon installation. Since they were installing aircons in all our bedrooms, and it was a whole day affair, this ment that all four of us, were plonked in the living room doing our work, which included calls at various points of the day for each of us. This was seriously distracting as we had to be very mindful of making sure we did not walk into each other’s videos or make noise and disturb the others audio feeds. Anyway, all ends well that ends well.

India’s Covid cases continues to soar and each time I see the news, I am worried once again for my parents. With more than 1 million confirmed cases now, the country has the dubious distinction of being the third highest country, after the United States and Brazil. In India, my home state of Maharashtra has the largest number of cases with a mortality rate higher than the national average with less than average daily testing. This is very sad to me, especially when I know that living outside India, at this point, even if there is an emergency, I really don’t know how I can even be there for my parents. My parents and especially my father is also very conscious of this fact and makes sure he is not going outside. His take is that unless there is a vaccine for Covid, he will stay indoors. Both he and my mother have underlying issues, so coming down with the coronavirus can prove fatal to them.

That’s all from us this week folks! Stay safe and mask up as there are reports coming out of those countries which have started to have some sort of normalcy of new cases and spikes. So unless needed, stay indoors where you are much more safer.