Mommytincture reviews Karmic Kids

Four years after it is out, Karmic Kids still gets the occasional review. Thanks Mommytincture for this one.

 

Book Review – Karmic  Kids by Kiran Manral

If you are looking to let off some parenting steam (the one that builds up due to the never ending fatigue and constant pressures of being a parent)from your system, Karmic Kids is THE BOOK for you.

I am a fan of Kiran Manral’s writing style for the humor that she weaves into her accounts of day to day incidents that probably occur in every household raising a young child. But each of the accounts when read through her words makes parenting sound not much of a task and even chuckle worthy.

Karmic Kids starts from the time of the birth of a child to the protagonist (who is in all her rights and glory the author herself). As she traverses through the milestones of her bundle of joy, she not only narrates such incidents in her typical sometimes humorous and sometimes satiric style; but also at the end of every chapter brings in another mother’s perspective as a parenting tip at large.

The topics covered in the book, vary from feeding, timely hitting of milestones, handling toddler tantrums, adjustment, learning issues to teenage issues such as need for independence, and the significance of helping the build-up his self-esteem and confidence.

At most of the places, the author does manage to get a logically successful conclusion and seemingly can-never-fail parenting tips. But the fact that she has been a real mother with some real parenting issues, is reflected in stances where she talks about her failures and how she dealt with them in a constructive way.  One such point in book is where the author admits that she had a horrendous time trying to get her boy to become an enthusiastic reader.  She goes on to record how she came to gracefully accept this particular personality trait of her son, yet decides to never give up.

If you are looking for a parenting self-help book that is full of gyaan, but more than that it is a candid story full of chuckle worthy and at some points a loud laugh worthy moments, from a mother who has faced all those issues of parenting that there are to live through.

Story Telling Re-invented

P.S. – I have to admit here that throughout the book (or at least the part where the boy lives through his first six years of life) I found myself either nodding my head in agreement, shaking it in empathy or grinning widely at the absurdity of it all.

In the HT Brunch today

… with Andaleeb Wajid, Anita Nair, Abeer Hoque and Rakshanda Jalil.

5 women authors pick their heroes

First we had 5 male authors talk about their favourite literary sheroes. This week, it’s a role reversal!

BRUNCH Updated: Apr 13, 2019 23:50 IST

Sarah Mirza
Hindustan Times

Here’s who female authors love from the books

1. Bertie Wooster from Jeeves series

Picked by: Kiran Manral

“Bertie Wooster from P.G. Wodehouse is a boy who never quite grew up and never will, he definitely does elevate and, for all his muddle headedness and confusion he holds a right mirror to us trying to get out of various situations life throws at us, unfortunately not always with the hilarity that ensues when he does.”

 

Read the rest here. 

#MissingPresumedDead in The Sentinel

“Women can zip their lips, but when they open their minds and pen, they speak more than just words. They pen down heart, mind, soul and lives – real lives. Here are a few women writers, who have made a difference in 2018 and created gyres in the literary world, and the world (as a whole). Here are some of them….

Popular Indian author and blogger Kiran Manral’s “Missing Presumed Dead” is a riveting spine-chilling whodunit, which has a mentally unhinged protagonist and other undependable and untrustworthy characters. The plot has unexpected twists and turns that brings us face to face with the brittleness of relationships. Her first novel, “The Reluctant Detective” and “Karmic Kids” have become popular. Kiran is also the founder of India Helps, a network of volunteers who assist disaster victims.”

Read the original here

Excerpt from 13 Steps To Bloody Good Parenting in the Indian Express today

An excerpt from #13StepsToBloodyGoodParenting by Ashwin Sanghi and me in the Indian Express today:

 

Read it here

And here it is, 13 Steps To Bloody Good Parenting!

Honoured and delighted to have co-written this one with bestselling author and dear friend Ashwin Sanghi. We launched the book today with a FB live with mompreneurs and dear friends Ruchita Dar Shah of First Moms Club and Mansi Zaveri of Kidsstoppress.

Go check the video on my FB page here

Order your copy of #13StepsToBloodyGoodParenting today: bit.ly/13STBGP_TWI

And here it is, 13 Steps to Bloody Good Parenting

Delighted and honoured to co-author this book with the very fab Ashwin Sanghi.

Pre order your copy of #13StepsToBloodyGoodParenting now: bit.ly/13STBGP_TWI

#MissingPresumedDead “One for the books – the most compelling reads of 2018” on YourStory

 

“One for the books – the most compelling reads of 2018

Who doesn’t like a book with a strong female character? Here is a list of books that celebrated women in 2018.”

When your book gets mentioned in a list of the Most Compelling Reads of 2018, alongside fabulous reads like Becoming by Michelle Obama, The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, The Women in the Window by A.J. Finn, The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, and books you’ve loved like Eating Wasps by Anita Nair and The Shooting Star by Shivya Nath, you can only be immensely grateful.
Thank you Rekha Balakrishnan and YourStory

“Missing Presumed Dead by Kiran Manral

This book by Kiral Manral shows how lives can be torn asunder by mental illness and how the monsters in your head can be very real. Missing Presumed Dead is the story of Aisha, a homemaker and mother of two, battling mental illness. The family leads an almost-confined life on the outskirts of a small hill town. Her husband, Prithvi, is unable to provide the emotional support she needs and is caught in a personal quagmire of his own. Enter Heer, Aisha’s half-sister and the family’s world is turned upside down. The story moves through different situations like the disparate pieces of a puzzle. But is there an end in sight? Or is it all a crazy game being played. Read Missing Presumed Dead for answers that will shock you like no other.”

Read the entire article here

Festivelle #BossLady dinner

Last Saturday, the wonderful duo of Shruti Seth and Gul Panag invited me to a sit down dinner to celebrate Festivelle Boss Ladies. I have a soft corner for Festivelle, I must confess. Back in its first edition way back in 2016, I along with Shunali Khullar Shroff co-curated the wonderful panel discussions that went on through the two days of Festivelle, and it was a positive, energising experience.

The evening at The A Lounge at IndiaBulls was thoughtfully organised and curated, right from the hostesses down at the lobby level to guide us to the venue, which given my navigational abilities would have had me wandering through the premises for the rest of the evening, to the wonderful table arrangements, and the carefully planned seating which we promptly fell to disrupting because we wanted to sit next to each other. The room was full of wonderful, accomplished, high powered women and because I hadn’t worn my glasses (vanity prevents me from the spectacles and dry eye prevents me from the contact lenses), I went across and hugged the wonderful Ruchi Narain mistaking her for an old acquaintance, after which I promptly stayed put in one place didn’t dare wander away from between Shaili Chopra and Shunali Khullar Shroff in case I went over and hugged more people I didn’t know at all, even before the sparkly had hit. The evening’s proceedings opened with Malini Agarwal aka Miss Malini talking about how we needed to expand our circles of solidarity and how she’d managed to create this lovely initiative called Malini’s Girl Tribe. Post which we had to all introduce ourselves in three words or three sentences, I forget which, but at this point I was three glasses deep in wine and I only hope I did not crack some ribald joke which had everyone staring at me in horror and distaste. I was sitting with the very fab Malishka Mendonca, Shunali Khullar Shroff, Shaili Chopra, Naiyya Saggi, Nupur Asthana, Meghna Pant, Ruchi Narain, Shivani Malik and the complete hoot of a conversation we were having made all I ate escape me completely at the moment. The roomful of ladies included television stars, radio jockeys, dietitians, writers, journalists, entrepreneurs, celebrities, business women and more.

We came back home laden with goodies and warm fuzzy feel goods, and the sense of being part of a wonderful sisterhood of women who were there to build you up and not tear you down. More power to the sisterhood of the Festivelle BossLadies.

Interview | By liberating women, we are also liberating men: Author Kiran Manral on feminism

Thanks Shreya Thapliyal for this kind interview in The Statesman.

“In an exclusive interview to thestatesman.com, author Kiran Manral talks on a range of topics including social media influence on life, the perception of women, and #Metoo; she also has some advice for aspiring writers.

“Ever since I was a child, I had a very overactive imagination. I was constantly telling stories,” says Kiran Manral when asked about the reason she decided to write novels. This should, however, come as a surprise. An English graduate from Mithibai College, her blogs—thirtysixandcounting and karmickids — were among the most talked about blogs of the time.

The social media and our over dependency has almost made us delusional. We co-exist—the real world along with the digital bubble that we have created around us, with the lines blurring now more than ever.

Manral agrees, giving an example of how her son’s Instagram has young school girls posing in a “highly sexualised” manner. There is always a pressure to appear a certain way, she says, “but there should also be an awareness that this life is not entirely real”.

As a society, most of us define women on how we look. This pressure is not just for young girls, it can be tiresome for women who are hitting forty or fifty. Manral takes this question lightly and says she has come to accept the reality of not turning heads anymore.

As a woman, says Manral, she has witnessed all of that but what is upsetting is that once you reach that age, they become invisible.”

Read the entire interview here

With Sophie Hannah, Philip McLaren, Nilanjan Chaudhary and Bhaskar Chattopadhyay on panel at the Bangalore Lit Fest

Watch it here