Lewis Caroll once said, “the things most people wan t to know about are usually none of their business.” I find this quote increasingly substantial as far as its nature is concerned. It is  true indeed  that we are all interested in other people’s matters when our own matters need utmost care.

Author: Libba Bray
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Published by: Random House
Year of Publication: December 9th 2003
Series: Gemma Doyle Trilogy
Pages: 403
Verdict: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Synopsis:
Gemma Doyle is an outright teenage rebel with an attitude that is unforgivable in the Victorian Era. Hating her existence in the dusty and grueling plains of India, she harbours a great deal of dislike for her mother mainly because she does not comply to Gemma’s wish of moving back to London and attending a finishing school for proper young ladies.
Under very mysterious circumstances, Gemma’s mother loses her life shunning her husband, Gemma’s father into an oblivion where his life is ruled by alcohol consumption. Thus suddenly Gemma’s wish comes true when she is transported to London where she is admitted into Spence Academy, a finishing school where proper young ladies are honed to make perfect dutiful wives to their husbands. Wracked by guilt for being ruthlessly sarcastic and intolerable towards her mother, Gemma deeply blames herself for her mother’s untimely demise and is unable to celebrate her admittance to London’s society.

I stood at the edge of the forest both enticed and reluctant. Behind me the village beckoned. Houses with chimneys from where wisps of smoke coiled upwards promised me home and hearth.  The warmth of home and hearth lulled me to take a step back. But a deathly cold air escaped the forest and fanned my hair. A deep chortling laughter rumbled somewhere in its belly. The rumbling vibrated causing the moss under my feet throw up tiny stones and tickle the roof of my feet. Of all things dark and sinister, of all things evil and mean that awaited me in darkness anywhere, this one was certainly the blackest and I took a step forward nonetheless.

A pause has descended over my blogging for which I am sincerely apologetic to my dear readers.  No, I did not plan to take a breather, nor a pre-planned hiatus. The biggest peril my writing suffers as of now, is my impending move which may be interpreted as a period of zero writing. I genuinely feel inadequate and imperfect when the pleasure of conveying my thoughts on paper, be it physical or digital, is robbed from me.

‘They say that shadows of deceased, Do haunt the houses and the graves about, Of such whose life’s lamp went untimely out, Delighting still in their forsaken hosts’. – Joshua Sylvester (Poet, 1563-1618)

I have seen that many of us are simply appalled by the very mention of ghosts. They do not possess the nerve to talk or hear about a haunting. I do not know whether it is  the concreteness of death, that a ghost of a dead person perplexes them so, or it is that, the thought of waking from the dead as  a possibility baffles them to such a great degree, that a mere mention of ghosts or a haunting sends them bolting for the door.

Dracula or Vlad Dracul Tepes III. Who was more fearsome ?

“there, on our favourite seat, the silver light of the moon struck a half-reclining figure, snowy white, something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it. What it was, whether man or beast, I could not tell.” – Dracula (chapter eight)

The year was 1890, and when Irish novelist Bram Stoker was  holidaying in the small fishing village in the north-east coast of Whitby in Yorkshire, he was fired with deep inspiration to write a tale about a count of eastern European nobility who has been undead for hundreds of years and who regains his youthful charm by drinking blood. He walks among human beings as one, and is secretly in search of his long lost love. Nothing or none can stop him even  the fact that his love no longer belongs to him.

Encouragement, stimulus, inspiration (whatever you may call it) has fueled me like never before. You want to know how? Well it’s from reading what other people have written. From reading what budding writers, accomplished writers have written. While I open my arms for a huge huge thank you hug to Stephanie Perkins for allowing the likes of me to take a peek into the writer’s link ( her blog is fantastic by the way), I am elated with excitement because I have discovered Holly Lisle’s eminent blog and got swept away immediately! I have read huge amount of blogs by other writers but I have not read something that touched me, something that whispered”let me help you” in between the lines, before.

This is a dedication to that one tiny spot on the map, that minuscule of a town located on the north eastern Himalayas of India, where I was born and raised, where my roots lie. Historically, Kurseong has been an uneventful little town except for few schools established by the British, located in perfect spaces on the face of the biggest hill looming over the main road. A sluggish small town with a small scanty train station where the legendary Toy Train stops just for refueling. The shabby appearance of the town however is broken by rounded small undulating slopes of green tea gardens that are forever playing hide and seek with thick mists during the monsoons. But other than that, it is just a very sleepy little town where nothing much happens.

It’s interesting how people you meet during various stages of your life should create an impression that goes on to build a vivid mental picture that is entirely different from what you see in front of you. Sometimes its a picture that is a much better version than the person himself /herself and sometimes it’s a picture far worse. Regrettably though, the latter occurs more often times than the former. The picture painted then, stays forever, for always, making you wonder, how come.