transcribed in her subconscious: grasshopper adored

Nino's mum says she loves me. I have met her only once, for an intense minute at the end of the Ahmedabad launch. A lovely young woman with tears in her eyes approached me to sign my name in the book.

'Is this saree your husband's gift or your mom's?' asked the stranger.

'You have read my blog.' I realized.

'I am Nino's mum!' she said, and we hugged like long lost friends.

Here is her review of A Grasshopper's Pligrimage, and I am too touched, too flattered to comment coherently.

All I can say is it is her capacity to absorb, her pot that got filled and her love that spills out into the review.

Of all the reviews that I have read, hers is written with a spirit very close to Gopika's (my protagonist) : unabashedly and adoringly.

I still dont know your first name, Nino's mum, but you are a darling. May you find your calling and may you find the courage to walk the path.

Here is a small part that I copied.

There have been several books that have become transcribed in my subconscious, Midnight's Children being one of them. This book also did the same, maybe because it came at a time when I was tiring of my direction-less search for emotional identity, for the meaning of spirituality as it applied to me, for my connect with the purpose of my existence.

Gopika, the novel's lead character, is both relate-able and a revelation. First on, the author deserves a kudos for writing a genre that has been classified as 'fiction-spiritual', a first of sorts. The search for the physical and tangible itself is so confusing, that the thought of a woman who wants that thing that sets her soul afire, is both brave and foolhardy.

There are several instances when Gopika speaks out to the reader, when she spoke out to me, the medium of typed words on paper dissolving with the frankness of her thoughts, .....