My first Indiblogger meet in association with Berger Express Painting

 

Indiblogger Family

It was Flipkart Outdoors event in Mumbai, then it was #QuakerBowl event in Mumbai & then a series of events continued across Mumbai, Bangalore & Delhi. And I kept missing those events where I could have met my fellow bloggers much before. 

First, I wasn’t confident. I was skeptical about myself whether I should go to these events. I had my anxieties & worries. When I was convincing myself to attend at least once, I had personal commitments to fulfill. Somehow I did not get chance to meet to my fellow bloggers. 

And finally I had an opportunity right in my inbox inviting me for Indiblogger meet in association with Berger Express Painting. I registered & I was in. I decided no matter what I would go. 

The day arrived. I hired a cab & I was on my way.

The moment I arrived I was warmly welcomed by Sujata Tawde & I was too eager to meet this lovely soul who has this infectious smile brightening her face. All my anxieties melt in no time as soon as I met her. She guided me since it was my first meet. 

I soon get to interact with my fellow bloggers like Yamini Saha Dipanwita Meghana Sanjay Thampy Priyanka, Nikita, Jayashree & many more. Indiblogger made every arrangement to have good networking amidst new & well-established bloggers. In no time, I got a chance to meet people who were working but were passionate about blogging.

Berger XP event

I believe that the walls to have emotions & they express through the language of colors. Yes, Berger Express Painting event was out there to change the way you paint your home. 

After initial introductions Ankit invited Mr. Chandranath Mukharjee to talk about Berger Express Painting solutions that how the solutions provided by Berger has helped consumers to get rid of painting problems. 

Mr. Chandranath Mukharjee sheds a light stating that, “the budget is not a constraint for an Indian consumer but the certain expectations what they have from painting solutions are not well-resolved.” 

In India, they need an occasion to paint their houses but that occasion almost takes 5-6 years. He also stated the common problems faced by Indian consumers are excessive time, amount of dust that involves in painting process & dissatisfaction with final finishing.  

As a result, Indian consumers are never satisfied with the final outcome. 

He explained every nitty-gritty of the painting solutions that left us in awe. Moreover, he went on to explain how perfect color can be obtained by following right procedure.

Fun. Fantastic. Fantastico  

Indiblogger team made sure that we had a good time. We were tweeting and at the same time, we were chatting with our fellow bloggers. As a good host, both Ankit & Nihal kept us engaged in various activities like Musical Chair, Quirky pictures on Twitter, & many more.  

Getting the hands dirty

We Indians love colors in everything. Even our festivals are colorful in nature. Be it Holi or Diwali, we either have to paint our faces or walls. Berger Express Painting took a chance to let us paint blank canvas in different colors. We were Team Better consist of me & my 7 fellow bloggers. 

It was time for us to get our hands dirty. We poured all our imagination & made sure that the picture painted by us had a rainbow of colors.

After schooling, it was after many years I took brush in my hand & made colorful strokes worked on the blank canvas. Slowly & gradually, our picture was ready. More or less, every team presented the spirit of Mumbai through colors. 

It was a fun to paint our imagination through colors.

Taking home a goody bag full of some awesome memories  

The event was done with the last activity of painting. Indiblogger Team captured our glowing faces & it was time to say goodbye.

Overall, I didn’t realize how fast time flew. I was given a goody bag but I would say the was full of memories with some important learning & lessons.

Let your walls express with Berger Paints

Finding Juliet (Book Review)

Book details

Title – Finding Juliet

Author – Toffee

Genre – Fiction

Publisher – Srishti Publishers & Distributors

No of pages – 216

Main characters – Arjun, Anjali

Other characters – Krish

Plot

Arjun & Anjali are the main characters of the novel. Arjun is a nice guy who is in search of true love. However, he falls in love thrice but every time something or other thing goes wrong. 

 

Dejected by the games of love he moves to Bangalore where he ends up meeting Krish, an irresistible flirt who turns out to be his mentor guiding right path. Krish helps him understand women better with his philosophical style.

But then will he be able to get true love? Will he be able to successful in his career as a lyrist? Find out in Finding Juliet.

Finding Juliet now available at InfiBeam or Amazon

Review

Finding Juliet has an abrupt storyline with lots of loose ends. The book cover was very interesting but alas the storyline failed to impress me. The novel is a typical teen drama where main lead Arjun gets trapped between the fantasy of true love & the misinterpreted coolness. His first crush to Aditi to his childhood over-caring friend Anjali, Arjun failed to understand girl’s mentality when it comes to love. Sometimes it was time that played spoilsport in his life and sometimes his own incapability to impress girls or understand their feelings made him unsuccessful in his love stints. 

The plot turns out to be lot of clichéd elements like girls, liquor, drugs, fickle ambitions of popularity, booze and lot of sex. The story also revolves a lot around an unnecessary & misinterpreted definition of being cool. The characters like Aditi, Sakshi, Smita are nothing but are always hungry of sex as if women find their escape only in physical pleasure. It was completely turn off when the story introduces chapters that revolve around these characters. The trail of seduction & lust never ends & the author keeps adding new characters like Ruchika and Esha. 

Erotic sex escapades keep continue in more than 150 pages of the novel. The story becomes extremely inconveniencing when our puppy like innocent Arjun had to take sex lessons from Ruchika. 

The biggest turn off was when the author keeps describing how ‘Sakshi keeps brushing her soft breasts on Arjun’s back’. Arjun’s life now becomes full of girls where neither his eyes nor his soul seek for true love as you continue to read several sex escapades throughout the novel. 

Serious incidents like Arjun’s parents’ death in bomb attack never touch the core of it in a real emotional manner that should have been. On the other hand, Anjali had to wait for years to get her true love. In fact, she is the geek who patiently waits for the main lead to come in her life & never catches a wrong route unlike Arjun. 

Overall, the storyline failed to impress me as it had many loop holes as well as it failed to convince me that since when girls have mastered the art of sex. Our main lead was such an underdog that only girls had to teach him how to have drugs; how to kiss a girl and how to have a drink or two, that too taught by girls. With every chapter I felt it was only girls who run the bar late at night or somehow they know everything about sex & seduction. It was only boys who did not know anything. It reminded me that life is nothing but ‘Love, Sex & Dhokha’. 

Overall, I couldn’t digest the story but I appreciate the effort of the author that keeping the Indian sentiments he gives us a happy ending. 

The good part

The only breeze in the story is the characters of Krish & Anjali who keep guiding Arjun whenever he stumbles across the troubles of his life. The author builds up faith in us by introducing them that good people do exist on earth.

The writing style & the book cover

The writing style is very simple. The book cover is very enticing and I wish the story had a same effect on me. Title is apt to the storyline but the tagline does not suit to the main lead of the story. 

My Rating 2.5/5

The book can be recommended to those who enjoy story with sections of eroticism. 

About the author

Toffee loves narrating interesting stories with subtle insights. Through his books, he wants to share beautiful stories, reach out to people and touch their hearts. Finding Juliet is his second book, written specially for India’s Generation – Y. 

Reach out to the author at Facebook.

An Exclusive Interview with Author Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

From best-sellers to short stories, writers are the one who keeps us engage with fictional characters. They keep us highly entertained & enlightened and through their eyes we see the world of imagination. 

However, it is more exciting to know the person behind that story, that book. Today I am bringing you an exclusive interview to enlighten with valuable insights when writing is in process and how the author brings us his/her share of short stories. After all, everyone has a story to tell. 

I am presenting Tejaswini Apte-Rahm, the author of These circuses that sweep through the landscape. Here’s the candid talk that we had:

Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

Q 1: Tell our readers about your background & how did you get into writing?

For as long as I can remember I’ve been scribbling for pleasure – a fragment of a poem, the beginning of a story, perhaps just a few lines of observation or character description. But I seriously started writing fiction just a few years ago. 

My career has always involved writing – I interned as a copywriter in an ad agency, worked as a journalist at The Asian Age and Screen magazine, wrote freelance articles for various newspapers, and then for ten years I worked as an environmental researcher and writer. So I have been writing in one form or another for all of my career. Even though most of this had nothing to do with writing fiction, it kept the wheels oiled – I learned to produce quality writing to a deadline, as well as to write in different styles for diverse audiences.

As far as my background is concerned, I was lucky enough to go to schools where creativity was part of the curriculum – I was at the JB Petit High School for Girls in Mumbai till the age of 13, and then at the United World College of South-East Asia in Singapore till the age of 18. At both schools, music, drama and creative writing were a natural part of school life, and this was a great foundation for writing fiction. 

Q 2: Which writers inspire you for writing?

I’m a great admirer of the short fiction of Roald Dahl (his short stories for adults) and Doris Lessing. Both are masters of the genre and show you the heights a short story can attain. They use language with the precision of a knife edge, to cut to the dark heart of a character. Doris Lessing combines that with a beautiful compassion for her characters. Both these authors have been an inspiration for me. 

Q 3: As a child, which books or fictional characters fascinated you the most?

I was a great fan of Enid Blyton’s boarding school and adventure stories. I read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte when I was 13 years old, and the character of Heathcliff made a huge impression on me. I’ve read it many times since. It showed me that evil does not need a reason to exist, that it can exist for its own sake. And that the writer does not necessarily need to spell out the reason for its existence. I like to write stories with characters that are made up of shades of darkness, where everybody is a bit of a villain. I’m pretty sure that’s a direct influence of Wuthering Heights.

Q 4: Where do you get ideas or inspiration for your writing?

I keep my eyes and ears open. Often seemingly ordinary situations are actually quite extraordinary. It depends on how you view them. Often the idea for a story comes to me as an image or a fragment of conversation. For example several years ago I came across a well-dressed man standing on the road, screaming into his phone. It was obvious that he was screaming at his wife or girl-friend, and I felt an intense dislike of him. I then started thinking about the circumstances in which his wife would have tolerated such behavior, and what social contexts they might find themselves in as a couple. That grew into my story Drinks at Seven, which features a man similar to the one I saw on the road that day. 

Q 5: What genre do you enjoy the most while writing short stories?

I enjoy writing stories which are slightly dark and twisty. I like to explore the shadowy boundary between dark and light – it is such a small step from one side to the other side. This has endless dramatic possibilities.

Q 6: What does your family think of your writing?

My husband is an enthusiastic supporter of my writing. I like him to be the first person to read a story when it’s done. He often reads multiple drafts of the same story, giving me his comments and suggestions. Since he reads widely himself, he is a valuable ‘first reader’. My daughter who is only six years old is already showing a lot of interest in reading and writing herself, which is great.

Q 7: Can we expect your next writing stint & if yes, what & when?

I’m now working on a novel. I’m enjoying the process of writing in a completely different genre, particularly since it involves a good amount of historical research. 

Q 8: Lastly, what writing tips would you like to give to upcoming writers?  

It’s important to have a disciplined writing schedule. Inspiration is not enough for producing good writing. You need to harness inspiration to writing techniques and experience, you need to experiment, you need to be prepared to throw away a lot of what you’ve written and start again. This can happen only if you write regularly, whether or not you feel inspired to do so. It’s also essential to read widely and across genres.

You can visit our author at www.tejaswiniapterahm.com or stay in touch with her on Facebook

Buy author’s latest book on Amazon or Flipkart