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Book Review - The Dalhousie Murders - Aneeta Sharma

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  A couple honeymooning in Dalhousie stumbles upon a dead body and set things in motion. The victim is identified as the employee of a firm named Grow Green Enterprises co-owned and co-partnered by Lalit Bharucha and his wife Kiyana. Inspector Kanet is tasked with the investigation that keeps taking him back to the firm at every step. To make matters complicated, a detective named Indraneil keeps approaching him with information that the police inspector finds speculative and with no basis. As the number of suspects lines up and as the case takes up many angles, it becomes a race against time for the inspector and the detective to find the culprit before another crime is committed. The plot: I like a good old-fashioned crime mystery/thriller which keeps the reader hooked on to the story, creates intrigue about the same but sans any gory details, unnecessarily heavy violence and harrowing descriptions of crimes/crime scenes that we find in so many thrillers. The plot of Dalhou...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - The End (For Now!)

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  Read Diaries Of Day 5 Here! Day 6 – Trichy Early morning I, my husband and my kid left for the temple of Uchchipulayar. There are around 400 steps to this temple. The steps are placed at a good height from each other, so every step was challenging. We got a good measure of our fitness levels while climbing the steps. First we visited our Kuladev Thaayamaanavar. This is the deity of Lord Shiva in a feminine form. Legend has it that the Lord came to the help of a pregnant lady about to give birth and assisted in her safe delivery as a midwife. Hence the name Thaayamaanavar (The Lord who is a mother). Lord Shiva is in the form of a majestic lingam here. Flower garlands and entire batches of bananas are offered to the Lord. A devotee who had bought bananas offered some to us as Prasad. Tiny gesture of kindness but immense happiness! We climbed some more steps from where we got a beautiful view of the entire city of Trichy.  On one side there was the majestic towering Gopu...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - 5

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Read Diaries Of Day 4 Here!   Day 5 – Pazhani Before I start writing about our tryst with Pazhani, I have to mention the elusive peacock. The hotel in Kodaikanal resonated with the sounds of a peacock early in the morning. From the sounds, we could make out that the peacock was very near. Not once did we ever get to see the bird. But on the morning that we were to leave Kodaikanal, as I stood at the window of my room and gazed out on the garden below, I saw the flash of a blue tail. For just a few seconds, a peacock stood beside a plant and before I could comprehend fully, it stealthily vanished. The peacock that had been teasing me with its sounds every morning finally gave a brief glimpse on the day I was about to meet Lord Muruga, whose vaahan is the peacock. I took this as a good omen. The bus ride from Kodaikanal to Pazhani was downhill and led to a mass puking event initiated first by one of my nieces, then my son and finally yours truly. Nausea didn’t allow me to enjoy t...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - 4

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  Read Day 3 Diaries Here! Day 4 - Kodaikanal  We had decided to first visit the lake and then continue with the rest of the sightseeing. After a delicious breakfast and some photo sessions, we started for the lake.  Kodaikanal lake is pristine, surrounded by small winding paths and hills looming yonder. We were only 12 of us this day so we arranged for two boats, 6 of us in each. There was a guy who rowed the boat. We had a serene experience listening to the gentle rush of water and watching the landscape at leisure. There were ducks who played hide-n-seek with us, raising their heads every now and then and when caught staring, ducking (pun intended) into the water. The weather too was perfect for a boat ride. The children got down from the boat with satisfied smiles and we adults breathed a sigh of relief.  Next on the list was Coaker's Walk, a pathway offering stunning views of hills surrounding Kodaikanal. I would put this place as a must-visit, if nothing ...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - 3

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  Read Day 2 Diaries Here! Day 3 – Kodaikanal Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have slept in. The birds were making such a beautiful racket that it was difficult to sleep in. I woke up at 5.30 and went out for a walk. To say that it was challenging would be an understatement. To start with, it was cold. Secondly, the steep incline of the path made it really difficult to walk leisurely. Still, feeling quite adventurous, I decided to climb up the slope and head towards the entrance with the intention of capturing some snaps of the rising sun. With a palpitating heart and shivering frame, I climbed the serpentine slope only to see that the entrance had a locked gate. The shortness of breath and daftly beating heartbeats made it impossible for me to cry, otherwise I would have. Cursing every slope on the earth I walked down the steep path. The plus side – I got to see many different varieties of birds and could hear their intriguing songs.  There was one bird with a black bo...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - 2

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  Diaries Of Day 1 Day 2 – Coimbatore - Kodaikanal We enjoyed a delicious South-Indian breakfast at the hotel before checking out. The plans to leave asap flew out while we were busy doing a photo-session which had its own share of blunders and laughter. Some people had already gotten inside the bus and had to be summoned, pleaded to and threatened to get down and join our photo shoot. Some were busy exploring the neighboring shops. Some had to freshen up, ‘just in case’. Some refused to be photographed without their glares. Needless to say that by the time we left the hotel, it was around 10 am. Someone lazily reminded that we were supposed to check-out by 8. The drive from Coimbatore to Kodaikanal was pretty uneventful. We had our first view of Pazhani temple dedicated to Lord Muruga when we halted beside a restaurant for lunch. The temple is perched atop a hill. We were going to visit the temple after two days. To be honest, the height of the hill and the ominous tracks le...
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2025 Vacation Diaries - 1

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The most meaningful journeys rarely follow the maps we carefully drew at the beginning. Life's greatest adventures start the moment we surrender our certainty about the destination and fall in love with the winding path. -Etheric Echoes Day 1 - Coimbatore The above words more or less sum up the trip of 2025 aka the trip that wasn’t ‘tripping’. Sitting on the side-lower berth of an uber-crowded train, with two girls sharing one RAC seat attached to my side berth, I thought I would write about how all three of us sat as if traveling in an unreserved berth. May be I would write about how my legs got cramps, since I couldn’t stretch them much. I would definitely write about the side-upper berth where hell literally froze over for me. I have felt this cold only once, that too in a small town named Kufri in Shimla. Two normal blankets, one woolen blanket and a sweater – none of these worked. Then there was the massive headache. Best left unsaid. But even as I write about these disa...
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