I never thought I’d live to see the day when my book club --Book Bound, went virtual and online. Too many months offline due to COVID 19 and the members kept wondering, why we could not go virtual?

After conducting the Masters PG Dissertation exams online, for St. Joe’s & getting ready for JNC, MCC & Krupanidhi college sessions, I realised it was pretty simple. All those unknown fears vanished.So much easier not to bother about timing oneself, to walk to college. No bother of keeping my clothes out the night before and my bag to snatch, as I left the house at 8:30am, to reach on time for the first class.

Instead I just kept my eye on the various clocks across the house and when it was time I clicked myself into the meeting. They could be on Skype or Google Meet or like the latest set up for me by a senior CISCO employee, on Webex. Authors are very grateful for my help in getting their books off the ground and once they are guests on my book club, they stay firm friends, ready to help and support me.

I had no one to do it for me, for my first book. No platform to launch myself instead I had to pay for everything. From the hall in the club to the parking in the church and the snacks, we paid for it all.That’s when the penny dropped and I decided to start a book club called iBrowse in the CC with a win-win formula for both sides.

Soon, the members liked the format which I planned, to help authors get noticed.We start the evening with the star of the evening -- the author who introduces her book to us all. None of us have ever read it, except for me, and so are eager to know more. And it evolves -- I play the evening along by ear and it always falls on its feet.

So our first meet last month in July, went online with Google Meet. It was really a sort of dry run where I had not even got myself prepped about a book that I had read. ( I read all the time and was reading a pile from Harper Collins) However we are all readers in the club and in minutes we had all shared about books that we had read and enjoyed through the month. One member talked about Ranbir Kapoors book after his death and how terribly full of gossip it was! That's why people buy it - we had to remind her!

I ALWAYS, like a true academic, read the author's book to the last page and dissect and bisect it to plan my questions for the evening. It’s amazing how each person resonates with the author on a different level. For me this time we had Anmol Malik a young 26 year old who had just returned from doing a degree in Creative Writing in the UK. She is based in Mumbai -- the famous Anu Malik’s( Bollywood musician’s) daughter.Her entire book resonated with me, because like her I had spent a year in a British college and in a British University hostel. It was like doing my year all over again through her eyes. I loved it.

Anmol is actually a screenplay writer for movies and a lyricist for songs, so one of us asked her to sing and she DID -- one of her songs on YOUTUBE which has millions of hits. Just like that! A Trained LTCL ( Trinity College, London, like me) on the piano, she just plays and sings like Lady Gaga!

I love my book club and because it’s virtual we have THREE members based in London now! Truly makes me so very happy that the club I started in the Catholic Club prospers on and I have my own smaller and much more interactive and intellectual club, which I prefer. All thanks to my parents and my maternal grandparents, who gave me the gift of reading.