The Rebelle blog

Penguin publishers first came up with a set of 80 books in 2015. Then, they published more and now the boxed set of poetry/prose/short stories has gone to 120. Today, on Instagram, while admiring another fellow reader's Little Black Books (LBB) collection, I lamented how in Indian currency the box set is still expensive. She gave me this wonderful idea to ship it from Book Depository and I promptly looked up the website. To my utter disappointment, Indian Currency transactions don't exist. There's Indonesian Rupiah but not Rupee. I got so excited at the prospect of seeing an entire boxed set for affordable prices, and would have bought the entire set but alas! These are just some disappointing moments and yet there are far greater trivial issues we need to address. One of my closest friends is miserable and battling depression. She texted me about symptoms and the likely causes she's experiencing this. I hope to be able to help her out of this self-imposed misery....

Snakes! I dreamt of snakes last night. One of the many incoherent dreams I have had recently. My hatred for gliding reptiles goes way back to my childhood when I remember seeing one of my Dad's relatives have a fit after being chased by a snake through cotton fields. He had almost died from the shock and poor man lived with mental imbalance for a few years. My Dad's mother used to jump and be afraid of Discovery TV channel each time us kids tuned in for watching shows like Deadliest Catch or Survivor man. She couldn't bear looking at snakes, tigers, lions- the fierce species. It didn't help that she had spent all her life in a farm house surrounded by tall crop fields. She was even wary of light. Darkness had been part of her most adult life. She found that change difficult to embrace. As a child, I remember seeing small field snakes during monsoons around the quiet bungalow we lived in, surrounded by a large plot of uncut wild grass and trees. The terrace provide...