Lost in Her Nest, Found in the Cosmos...
When you leave behind a ‘dream life’, things are bound to go seriously wrong. When Praajakta decided to turn her life around completely, she boarded a plane right away to whichever state summoned her. She let life happen without a prescribed manual for a while, and… How did it unfold!
16 Stories from the Mystical Townlets of India
The Turning Page is a collection of humour stories based on the experiences of the author as she travels through the remote hamlets of India, hops onto mountains, or twirls onto the beach sand, teaches rural children and instead gets schooled herself, works from posh cafes one day and from spooky caves on another, wakes up to the alarm of sparrows, cows, and goats, or spends the night counting stars.
These travel tales are weaved with many flashbacks and fun peeks into the rural India of the seventies, a typical household of the nineties, and the brain of a messy, nomadic girl who refuses to fit into any of society’s boxes.
A Girl & Her Backpack
Follow Praajakta as she travels through India, surviving, and thriving on the adventures and misadventures of solo travel.
Meet the weird partner who imprisoned her travel life, or the many snakes who are fond of her for some unexplained reason.
Experience the struggle that starts from her name itself and continues into learning simple, life-saving skills.
Resonate with her fights against the traditional, Indian overprotective parents who were convinced their daughter was a saintly, obedient student of their rulebook, until she proved otherwise, in her first book – The Turning Page.
Places Where The 16 Stories Were Born...
Maharashtra
1. Mom & Dad's Village, Konkan, Chandrapur, Mumbai, Home/Florence School
Himachal Pradesh
Manali, Dharamkot, Deo-Tibba, Spiti
Meghalaya
Tyrna, Rainbow Waterfall
Uttarakhand
Har-ki-Dun, Uttarkashi, random villages
Goa
Palolem, Netravalli, Benaulim, North Goa.
FAQs
The Turning Page is a collection of real short stories from my motherland, India. It is a memoir, but in a humorous tone. Its a story of every 90s kid and his/her household. Its about the panic situations I faced while travelling but later became funny anecdotes in this book.
Per my experience, everything that changed in my life was because of the trips and tours I did. When I look back, I feel like I was dead from within for a very long time. Travel brought me to life. Travel is important because it makes you connect with yourself in ways you never knew, it brings you face-to-face with your deep beliefs and unresolved emotions. It teaches you to have long conversations with strangers.
As one of the guests on The Ranveer Show rightfully said India is atleast 4 countries bundled into one. While the go-to destinations are Goa, Himachal Pradesh/Uttarakhand, or Rajasthan, our country is a long list of travel destinations for all sorts of tourists and travellers.
This question can’t be answered as a Yes or No. It depends on too many factors to generalize. But in my travel experiences, I have met too many good people, and felt safer and freer than in my home. If you are good enough to smell foul from a distance, nothing could be scary for you.
Solo travelling is now becoming quite a mainstream idea now. A few pointers:
- While packing your luggage, remember this- you may have to catch trains running, may have to life bags without help and there may not be people around you to lend something around you. Now Pack.
- Let someone in your close circle know where you are at all times.
- Note important phone numbers as soon as you land in any place.
- Can’t stress on this enough- Trust your intuition.
Usually, people start from Goa for a solo trip in India. It’s an easy state to navigate. But it would be idiocracy to label any place as the safest place for female solo travel in India or anywhere else, for that matter. The world is filled with good and bad people so you are as safe as you can be. Do small solo trips till you gather enough courage and then you’ll realize how the world of solo travel opens up to you.
As one of them, I believe, its the most unique generation. Our grandma’s wrote letters to us, and also video call us. We wore frocks as kids, grew up to discover jeans to bikinis to customizing our own clothes. We are in touch with our history better than the Genzee, we carry a lot of parental trauma. We grew up going crazy for Bollywood songs and SRK.
While we are trying hard to break the stereotypes we grew up with, we also want to make our orthodox parents happy. So the strugglers, the confused are all the 90s kids.
Too many. The first I ever read was Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, then progressing to Carolyn keen’s Nancy Drew, then to J.K Rowling, Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown, Haruki Murakami and all.
I come from a Marathi Household, so I grew up reading P.L Deshpande over a thousand times, and books on Shivaji Maharaj by Ranjeet Desai, and Vishwas Patil.
When I accidentaly read Dave Fox, I instantly knew I wanted to become a humour writer. I am in love with Erma Bombeck, Nora Ephron, Mark Twain, Samantha Erby for their humor. George Orwell is a genius for Animal Farm, I believe.
Occasionally there come phases where I read romantic novels, and then Nickolas Sparks comes out on top. I felt my heart broke into pieces while reading Khaled Hussaini’s Kite Runner.
Okay, I’ll stop.
TESTIMONIALS
A collection of 16 stories, the author wrote as she travels to different places in India and experiences different Vibes with the same Approach of - Humour & to-the-point thoughts. The start of the book is something I genuinely enjoyed the most in which the author combines the fictional world with her fancy writing, and that's where the out-of-the-box thoughts brewed. "Tom Cruise swiftly fell from the sky on the Quidditch field to announce the tournament's winner." I felt the author had such a strong imagination power that she can make any simple scenario into a masterpiece through her words. Like she did in this book. Especially in the chapter 'Bodyguard Lizzy Reporting'. I was impressed when the author introduced my fav Gal Gadot, though for other reasons ... No spoiler, but yes, that was also done nicely. The tone of the book was super friendly and the author did not give a damn about how other people will react especially when she mentioned certain things about Dog and Cat lovers, lolz. The real pictures after every chapter and the in-between sketches gave a different vibe to the book that was again, a unique touch. She writes, "Agreed, Parle-G tastes perfect with tea. We identify with the biscuits because of their malfunction when dipped in tea. It is the rightful wife to tea. But tea is so self-sufficient, it doesn't need a wife!" Haha, I was talking about such kind of language and emotions that I enjoyed reading after so long. There are many other chapters that she covers from her life experiences, like ghosts, snakes, her phone, and many other kinds of stuff, that will surely give you a dose of reading joy.
Travel fiction a budding genre, one of my favourite ones has a dearth of good literature. I always crave for short stories on travel memoirs but have came across very few books till date. So when my friend Praajakta told me that she would be launching her first book which is a compilation of some of her stories from different parts of India she has been to in last few years being a digital nomad I got quite excited to get my first eyes and hands at her freshly churned delicacy. And since she mentioned that it would have a pinch of humour in each and every story I literally got impatient to read it. So when finally I got access to the ebook I gorged upon it like a hungry kid who had waited for so long to get his dose of a perfect dessert made of travel experiences, stories and puns. And guess what, I wasn't disappointed at all. Not having read a book in a while it's feat for me to finish half of the book in a single session all thanks to sublime writing by the author which kept me so engrossed that I got teleported to different parts of the country which she has mentioned in her stories. Never did I felt like reading a book, instead it felt like living in the stories meandering through the nostalgic alleys of an indelible childhood of 90's. Every story and every instance mentioned was so relatable may be because all the kids born in that period are the branches of a common "Kalpavriksha" or the "Tree of eternity" fed by the roots of golden memories.
"Incredible Stories"
"Praajakta's ability to find humour in seemingly ordinary situations elevates the book to a must-read. Attention to detail is remarkable and genuinely funny. An endearing personal account written with utmost sincerity dipped in self-deprecating humour."
No journey is a straightforward one. There are always some twists and turns, some of them totally unexpected ones. In this book "The Turning Page", the author has penned down her experiences of such twists and turns she encountered while traveling to different corners of India. The book prepares its readers to fully appreciate the beauty in the uncertainties of their journeys.
Read #theturningpage by @praajakta_ sometime back. They say its easy to make your audience cry, but way more difficult to make them laugh. As a debutant you did an excellent job in narrating these 16 stories @praajakta_ Not even once I was bored of reading any event. And those small drawings in between so simple and beautiful and well placed. Loved every bit of it. Light read - read, relax and enjoy. Looking forward to the next one from you 🥰