Good thrillers, crime and investigation are the most engaging stories for me and they are pretty rare to find. But when you find one. You just can’t stop until you reach “The End”. Anita Nair, Salil Desai, Sujata Messi, Vaseem Khan and Abeer Mukherjee are a few names which are setiating our hunger for Indian thrillers. Today I want to add one more name to the list. Kanchana Bannerjee has given us her second crime thriller “Eye On You” and man, it’s a gripping tale.
My favorites from “Eye On You”
Eye On You is the story of Myra, a leading sales head of a reputed company and social media influencer on the side. It revolves around the event of her getting raped in her own bedroom without any signs of forced entry in the house, no signs of struggle and no forensic evidence. The story is set in today’s Gurgaon with all of its problems like overcrowding, worsening air quality along with many others. New found glamorous career of being a social influencer plays an important role in the story to take it forward through various plot points. It connects with the reader because of the contemporary settings and events which we read and hear around us.
The style of writing is fluid and fast paced which makes the book interesting to read. The way of narrating a story with the perspective of different characters takes it to a next level. Grab your copy to enjoy a gripping thriller story.
Blurb
You’re seen, tracked, and followed everywhere you go. Every line & picture you post; someone is watching. All that information in the wrong hands is a recipe for disaster.
You have a smart door, a CCTV; everything is controlled via an app on your mobile phone. All they need to do is to hack into your phone. Anyone can get in, anyone can see you inside your home.
How safe are you inside your home?
Myra is a young, independent, single working woman living in Gurgaon. After a party in her home, she wakes up the following morning and discovers that she has been raped. But she was at home, surrounded by her friends.
Who could have done this to her? Was it one of her friends or a stranger?
My Rating
Book Cover: 2/5 Writing Style: 4/5 Story: 3/5 Overall: 3/5
About the book
Book: Eye On You Author: Kanchana Banerjee Publisher: Self Published Genre: Crime Fiction Pages: 188
Today, I would like to introduce you all to a very old friend of mine, practically the first one in my life. Sarang Ganoo, a master product designer, is a very lively person. He specializes in industrial and strategic designs and is keen to make the products which will last in today’s world of “Use and Throw”. Now he has taken his passion to create something sustainable to a next level and dived into the field of urban farming. Currently he is working as a designer and builder at ‘The Urban Farm.’ I have chatted with him about his views about urban farming and composting specifically for this article. This will definitely take the Clean will Win message a step forward! So, here’s our conversation for you all!
Aditya: What is ‘The Urban Farm’?
Sarang: At The Urban Farm, we want to create tools such as a composting system for your small house kitchens or a range of balcony planter systems which helps you grow edible foods in cities. We want to make farming in urban areas simple for all people.
Aditya: Why composting? And how does it work in rooftop / urban farming?
Sarang: Indian city‘s generate one of the highest levels of organic waste in the entire world. In India Chennai generates the highest organic waste every day. 64% of city waste is organic waste. This problem can be tackled at every home regardless of how big or small and how much space they have. Hence composting. Composting makes your organic waste into an amazing organic soil. 102 home compost system, designed and developed by urban farm is the ideal out-of-the-box companion to start your composting journey.
Once you start composting you will have fertile organic soil at home. Once you start having really good organic soil at home the most general next step is to think about how we can grow food in the soil. And that’s what people do once they start having compost at home. They start thinking maybe I can start growing chilies or tomatoes at home and that’s how the revolution starts. And that is how it is connected to urban farming.
Aditya: What’s so special about 102 Home Compost?
Sarang: Specialty of 102 home compost is that it is the easiest home compost system in the market. How it works is- in a kit you get three fabric bags, 2.5 kg of coconut fiber, a stand and a tray with soil-make powder as an enzyme. To do the composting one needs to put 1 inch of coconut fiber underneath in the bag. After that you put your daily organic waste preferably chopped into less than 1 inch pieces at the end of the day. You spread just a spoonful of soil-make powder on top of the organic waste. Cover this entire thing with 1 inch of coconut fiber again. After layering this you just have to keep layering exactly like this until the bag is full. Once full, keep it aside for 20 days and whoa of your home mountain like soil is ready!
The Urban Farm team
Wall of their rooftop farm
The lush greens of The Urban Farm
Sarang enjoying his farming
Aditya: I heard that there’s a setup on your roof where you grow green leafy on water? What’s that? And how did you get into it?
Sarang: It’s called Hydroponics. It is a method by which one can use only water and nutrients and micronutrients solution together to grow edible plants. Hydroponics works only with green leafy vegetables. We have done lots of hydroponic farming on our rooftop farm. We realised that it’s a great method to start something easy. However, it is not that suitable to grow large amounts of vegetables very profitably in a climate like India. We even have ample resources such as sunlight and fertile soil available all across the year. Yet, we believe that Hydroponics has a very good potential to be an additional source of income for lots of people living in the cities.
Aditya: Is it the next “in thing” or the need of an hour?
Sarang: Right now people are at home and they have realised the importance of nature around them. Many people have started growing some sort of flower plants as well as some sort of edible plants in their balconies. And I think people are now getting the hang of it. I hope that this trend grows more so that it helps us in making a sustainable future for nutrients and great food available across the city for everyone.
Aditya: ‘The Urban Farm’ is promoting both soil based and water based farming, isn’t it kind of contradictory?
Sarang: Not at all. Each method has its own place in the larger scheme of things. Because of climate change we need to make sure that we have enough good nutrient food preferably without too much GMO available to the larger population. I think methods like hydroponics do help in some ways to achieve that.
Aditya: Tell me one thing which people of our age should change as a step towards sustainable living.
Sarang: One thing people of our age can start doing is start composting their own organic waste at home. Do not expect your city to take away your organic waste. It is you who has generated the waste and you are responsible for making sure that it doesn’t go to the landfills and pollute our environment in the city!
Today is 14th March and since 1997, it is observed and celebrated as an International Day of Action for Rivers. Participants from 20 countries attending the first International Meeting of People Affected by Dams, decided on this date to unite to conserve and protect rivers, other water bodies and watersheds against destruction. This year, we are celebrating this day with the theme “Rights of Rivers”. Today when we are equipped with cutting edge technology and engineering, we think we can command the forces of nature to do our bidding. We have encroached too much on nature and ignored their rights. Rights they have because of the might of beastly forces they possess. This perceived supremacy over nature has blinded us and we keep encroaching more and more upon the Rights of Rivers and streams. However, the culture of the Indian subcontinent was not like this before.
Described as सुजलां सुफलां in our national song वंदे मातरम् by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, India is the Land of Plenty. Northern Himalayin perennial rivers like Ganga, Sindhu and Yamuna, uniquely west bound river Narmada; Godavari and Krishna as lifelines of Maharashtra and Telangana; Kaveri of Karnataka and Andhra along with colossal Brahmaputra have given this quality to this subcontinent. Over the thousands of years, these mighty rivers gave birth to many civilizations along their banks with the constant flow of life between their origin and mouth. We consider our rivers as Goddesses and worship them every evening with a pomp in many cities. Ganga Aarti from Varanasi and Prayag is a very famous event. Right from the Sindhu Civilization of Harappa, Mohenjodaro and hundreds of other settlements to today’s modern cities of India, we are totally dependent on this constant flow of life. With the progress and development of civilization, humans started bending the forces of nature to their convenience. It curbed the Rights of Rivers. We dammed the constant flow of life
What are the Rights of Rivers?
I believe there are two very basic rights which rivers have carved themselves, in literal and figurative sense. First is to “flow continuously” from its origin in hills to the mouth to meet the sea and second is the “Right of Way” between the banks which it has carved itself by flowing for thousands of years.
Settlements started to grow on the banks of rivers as they were a source of water for all human activities like agriculture and industries along with household consumption. Increased urban population leads to the surge in water demand. Cities started looking for surety of water supply. Many rivers in India are not perennial as they are solely dependent on monsoon for the water. We started constructing dams to solve this problem and assure the constant water supply. As of the beginning of 2021, India has over 5700 large dams across the country. There are many more small dams and barrages scattered all over the country.
The flow of water in the rivers is almost zero as every city tries to hold almost all the water in the dams to cater to the ever increasing demand of the city. For example, Mutha River in Pune sadly now carries only sewage that is coming from the STPs of the city. Khadakwasla dam does not release any water in the river unless it is full in the monsoon days. As a result, there is no water flowing in the river. The natural ecological stability of the downstream region depends on flowing water in the river. Even The Krishna Basin Tribunal has ordered 6 cusecs of constant water flow in the river. However, the ground reality is a complete contrast to the order.
Rivers and streams flow between the two banks which are carved by the river itself. Rivers undergo waxing and veining as seasons change throughout the year. This is another important Right which rivers have carved for themselves. During monsoon, with the heavy rainfall in upstream catchment areas, rivers do come out the banks and inundate the plains which are above the banks. We call this phenomenon “flood.” There are regulations in urban areas to deter the construction and occupation of the floodplains to avoid the loss of life and property if flood occurs. Flood zones are marked with probability analysis of possible inundations in case of high floods. These flood zones are no development zones. However, lawmakers considered the definition of the River and River Channel “no brainer” and did not formulate it when they created these rules and laws.
These two things have created a loophole in development controls and Indian cities are witnessing a huge encroachment in the river and flood zones. Small streams are the feeder networks of the rivers. They are literally murdered by dumping debris into and constructing upon them. The chain of River ecosystems in its watersheds is broken with the loss of these streams. As a result, Indian cities are facing devastating effects of broken ecosystems. One part of the country faces urban flooding with short bursts of heavy rainfall. While there is a drought in the other parts of the country at the same time. The Mumbai floods of 26th July 2005 was the first alarming event from the chain and since then it is happening in one city or the other regularly. Surat, Chennai, Bangalore, Kedarnath (Uttarakhand), Kashmir. List goes on. Every monsoon, the list gets longer and longer.
Honoring the Rights of Rivers
To sustain human settlements and live a good life we should start respecting the rights of rivers. As a common citizen, we should stop polluting the rivers by our personal actions. We should create an awareness for banks of rivers and streams to be the sacrosanct Right of Way.
Let us join our hands and think about the rivers as trustees tasked with taking care of them for our future generations and protecting Rights of Rivers.
It has been more than two years since I finished reading “Shogun“, the first book of ‘The Asian Saga’ series of James Clavell. It introduced me to a feudal systems of Medieval Japan. The book revolves around the first British sailor – pilot who crashes on Japanese coast and a very powerful daimyo Lord Yashi Toronaga who is a main contender in a race to the Shogunate. Japanese philosophy is scattered throughout the book in a form of various quotes and dialogues between various characters. However one particular thought stayed with me the most.
“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”
Lord Toranaga, thinks when he is pondering about his situation in whole feudal system and a race to the Shogunate, the arrival of the Englishman in his province, possibility of clash between the Englishman and the Portuguese Christians at the same time.
“Live in the moment” is what we have always been told when one starts to dwell in the past or is daydreaming about the future. Brooding over what we missed in the past is not going to help us unless and until we learn from it and move on. At the same time, thinking about the future just enough to plan for our today’s action is perfectly alright, in fact, is necessary to be successful. However, dwelling either in the past or in future always make us lose the joy of the present.
I remember a very heart touching scene from an animation movie Kung Fu Panda where Master Oogway gives his last and best teachings for Po, the Dragon Warrior. “There’s a saying, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the ‘present’”. Teachings of Master Oogway and the pondering thought of Lord Toronaga share the same belief.
We have always been taught to keep working on your job in hand, neither think about what fruits our efforts will bear nor worry about if we have missed something in the past. Unnecessary worry of future and regretting the past will only make us lose the moment in hand. In a way just like Clavell said, life is a very sad thing which lasts only for a moment. We can’t control the future nor can we change the past. But at the same point, it is very beautiful if we enjoy that moment. The only thing in our hand, is to live in “a limitless now”.
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I wish, we could meet again, just for a while, and feel the same feelings in our hearts.
I want to lose the challenges and stumble and bear that sweet pain.
will you call me back again when I am about to leave? I want to feel my heart racing again.
I wish that blossom will bloom again surrounding us, and I’ll listen to those fiddle tunes again.
Let’s live those times again, You and I. Let the time lapse, again…
I am taking my Alexa Rank to the next level with #MyFriendAlexa. My current ranking is 4,815,106. I am trying to Hope to improve on this. Hope you all enjoy my Marathi poems.
It has been more than two years since I finished reading “
