RICHA TIMES

I recently finished reading A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, and honestly, it left me with such a warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s one of those books you don’t expect to get attached to, but by the end, you find yourself thinking about the characters as if you know them in real life. The story is about this grumpy old man named Ove. At first, he seems super irritating, like the kind of neighbor who’d yell at you for parking slightly out of line or not following the rules. He’s basically done with life after his wife, Sonja, passes away. Ove feels like he has no reason to live anymore and decides to end his life, but life (and some very interesting neighbors) have other plans for him. What I really loved about the book is how it slowly peels back the layers of Ove’s character. You start by laughing at how grumpy he is, but then you realize there’s a reason for it. His past, his love story with Sonja, and the things he’s gone through make you see him in a totally different light. It’s a...

Have you ever had the experience of feeling like the things you do best don't get noticed? That regardless of how much effort, heart, and soul you invest in something, it just doesn't get the credit it warrants? It's perhaps one of the most heartbreaking feelings in the entire universe. But what stings even worse is when the person you think should least fail  the person you thought would never  disappoints you. We keep speaking about how life humbles us, and indeed it does in the most surprising ways. It takes us so low at times that we forget we ever were on top of the world. These instances where you feel invisible even when you have given your all are  real. You begin to doubt your worth, your decisions, and the direction your life is heading. But here's the catch  exactly those moments have the most significant life lessons of yours. One of the most difficult things life teaches is this: when you live for others, you are considered a good person. Everyone loves ...

Khaled Hosseini’s  The Kite Runner,  published in 2003, is an emotionally powerful and deeply human novel that explores friendship, betrayal, guilt, and redemption. Set against the backdrop of Afghanistan’s political upheaval  from the fall of the monarchy to the rise of the Taliban  the story follows Amir, a privileged Pashtun boy, and his relationship with Hassan, the Hazara servant’s son. Amir narrated the story and talked about his childhood life in Kabul, how he kills kites and enjoys playing with Hassan on a daily basis. Amir's childhood friend Hassan never loses faith in him due to their different social backgrounds. The peak of the novel becomes extremely painful when Amir wins the kite-flying competition one day, but Hassan is violently attacked when he goes back to recover the kite that had crashed. Amir's silence at that time of crisis is a burden he carries for the rest of his existence. The story then cuts away as Amir and his father escape to America af...

Khaled Hosseini’s  A Thousand Splendid Suns  is a heart-turning  and beautifully written novel that explores the struggles, sacrifices, and silent strength of women in Afghanistan over a span of thirty years. Through the intertwined lives of two women, Mariam and Laila, the book portrays the harsh realities of life under a patriarchal society, war, and personal loss. Mariam, a bastard child of Jalil, a successful businessman, and his maid, Nana, is the start of the novel. Mariam lives in a small,  kolba (hut) outside the city of Herat, waiting constantly  for her father to love her. Despite Jalil visiting her from time to time, he will never acknowledge her outside their house. Mariam idolizes him and wants to live with him in the city, but this fantasy is destroyed when he turns her down after her mother, Nana, takes her own life. This is the starting point of Mariam's lifelong struggle. After the death of her mother, Jalil's family accelerates Mariam's wedding...

Akarsh Khurana's Karwaan is an uplifting, expressing film that uses a road trip as a metaphor for the turns and bends of life as well as unsaid blessings. In 2018, the slice-of-life drama brings together an unlikely trio  Dulquer Salmaan, Irrfan Khan, and Mithila Palkar  on a road trip that none of them had imagined but all of them needed. The movie is about Avinash (Dulquer Salmaan), a frustrated IT professional from Bengaluru who finds himself trapped in a job he had never dreamt of. His dull life is shaken when he comes to know that his father passed away in a road accident. But when the mortuary gets it wrong, he is delivered a different body, and he embarks upon a road trip to Kochi to exchange corpses. They are joined in this bizarre quest by Shaukat (Irrfan Khan), a foul-mouthed, cursing friend whose perspective is different, and Tanya (Mithila Palkar), a tough little girl with issues of her own. Most notable about Karwaan is that it's so normal. It's not a flashy dr...

Mimi, directed by Laxman Utekar, is a straightforward yet tear-inducing drama of a surrogacy arrangement and the unplanned journey that follows. Shot in a Rajasthan village, the film blends humor, family drama, and social commentary to offer a simple, feel-good cinema experience to the audience. The movie is about Mimi Rathore (Kriti Sanon), a young dancer and choreographer who wants to create a name for herself as an individual in Bollywood. When her money was recently provided by an American couple, John and Summer, in a surrogacy offer in exchange for money, she accepts only as an investment in her acting career. But halfway through, the couple has cold feet and rethinks their idea in fear of the child being born with a medical defect. Pregnant and abandoned in a conservative society, Mimi experiences one emotional and social disability after another with chancing upon an unlikely source of help in the form of Bhanu Pratap Pandey (Pankaj Tripathi), a eleghant and pleasant taxi drive...