Book: I Made A Booboo
Genre: Non-fiction/Parenting
Author: Shivangi Sharma
Publication: Rupa Publications
When I opted to write review of three books by Rupa Publications, I wasn’t expecting a big bundle delivered at the doorstep with all three books at once. Now it was a matter of choice for me to read any one of them.
I chose to read Shivangi Sharma’s “I made a Booboo” first because the blurb promised to take me down the memory lane when my baby was born. The title of book was unusually funny and reminded me of the movie ‘Baby’s Day Out’.
I started reading the book enthusiastically because being a mother I kind of knew what to expect from the caricature on the book cover….and I could identify with the world turning all topsy-turvy with the arrival of the baby. As I read along a constant smile played on my lips…it seemed the author had peeped into my bedroom to spy before writing the account.
The pregnancy jitters and apprehensions in first few pages resonated with my condition and I guess most of the mothers will identify with the story too. Once our bundle of joy arrives in the world, it makes sure we learn patience with its own set of rules of sleeping and waking up. But may be because I followed my mother and grandmother’s advices to the word, my daughter adapted within two months of her birth, the schedule I set for her feeding, bathing and sleeping….the first two months however had been similar to the author’s experience with sleepless nights making me look more haggard instead of a happy woman.
Though I left my job only few months into my pregnancy and never looked back but I can relate to the guilt pangs of the author. It is because of that guilt that I let my baby have all my time exclusively for herself even ignoring time meant for husband and disregarding his needs.
Author has used humor well in describing the routine of a new mother and managed to not become a preachy-here-is-what-you-should-do self-help guide on bringing up a baby kind of book.
After few pages however the account of the author post-pregnancy though hilarious becomes monotonously predictable and I got bored halfway through the journal. Relating a few episodes is fine but the book goes on and on about similar events and is repetitive. It should have been a shorter book to keep my kind of readers engaged.
Many new mothers will find themselves in the same shoes as the author and enjoy reading the account as if it was their own. Readers with grown up kids will also reminisce and laugh on the similar events…
A light perk you up kind of read.
I was travelling when this book was delivered at home. Accustomed to think novel as a at least 200 pages thick, I was surprised to see this booklet thinner than a travel guide!
The characters of the epic Mahabharata are as complex as it can get with each one having shades of good and bad, right and wrong, compassion and ruthlessness and the more you read various stories of Mahabharat, more facets to each character are exposed.
More often, it’s the crime thrillers, war-espionage-spy stories, detectives and mysteries that lure me to a book store. The affair with mystery stories and thrillers started in school with Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie and shifted to Robert Ludlum with Bourne series. Later Dan Brown became much favourite.
Most of my age have grown up listening to stories of Ramayan from our elders and can narrate the common and most popular stories from the epic quite easily to our kids.
The educated Indian women are slowly but surely beginning to reclaim their voices which were being repressed since many centuries now. They are now being vocal about their likes, dislikes, emotions, desires. They are no longer crying behind closed doors and silently bearing the ill behaviour meted out to them by their own spouses. They have become bolder and are not afraid to walk out of a stagnating relationship. They know what they want and are working towards having it.
Shoma Abhyankar 