Dad

Dad, 

I need your help.

Please hate me.

Push me into the unknown. 

You have always been there for me.

Someone to fall back on. 

A loving hand to hold. 

But your love drains me

of my love for the unknown.

I want to stand on my own feet;

I wish to control the ground I stand on.

But now, I want to run away,

from every gust that comes my way.

Even when my heart pleads so hard,

its curiosity is killing me,

eating me up from the inside.

This war leaves scars inside me.

My heart wishes to fly away, to unknown lands,

facing any stream that comes my way.

But habit holds me back.

Force me out, father.

I do not want to live this battle.

-Shantipriya Shennoy

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS BY JOHN BOYNE

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne is a holocaust novel. It is about a heart-robbing  friendship  between Bruno and Shmuel .Bruno is the son of a Nazi commandant whose family shifted from their home in Berlin to a house  near a concentration camp .Deprived of his new life without school and friends, Bruno sneaks out of his house to explore his neighborhood. During this venture by the iron fences near his home, he meets a Jewish  boy named Shmuel  on the other side of fence. In the midst of this cruel world they found resemblance in each other .Their friendship grew  beyond the iron fences that not even the deadly mist could separate them.

   Annette Sebastian

                                                              

Yellow Lights of Death by Benny Benyamin

YLOD. In a café by the seaside, 2 friends, Christy Andrapper and Jesintha , witness the murder of a young man. When Christy discovers that it was Senthil, his classmate from school, who had been shot, he tries to follow up on investigation.
28 year old Andrapper is just another author under the weight of familial expectation and writer's block, until he witnesses the bizzare accident of his friend being shot dead.The events that follows after are full of suspense and creepiness.  In YLOD , forgotten chapters of history are fleshed out, geography tweaked around Diego Garcia becomes a branch of Kerala almost. An amount of romance is added to the correct measure. The plot often feels disingenuous, like a pre-solved exam paper. The book leaves you with trails that you cannot but go and search for it. A thriller and a must read.

-Sangamithra Ashokan