Flaky leather, faded ink and yellowing pages preserve ancient dreams, liquid heartbreak and effervescent happiness. Journals are one of those things that record ones passage through life in black and white, literally.
And that is what Me and that extra N ( Rs 129, Smriti Publishers) is —a treatise on growing up through the eyes of a young girl, Netra. “Netra lives among us, she is actually one of us and yet different in her own way,” says author Nivedita Basu, “It is the journal of a girl and captures her life between the ages of 12 and 25. It talks about how she grows and evolves over the years.And since it also captures how she deals with men it is called ME and that extra ‘N’.”
It is all there — first love, failed relationships, teenage angst, friendship, jealousy — in short the entire gamut of emotions we go through while growing up. “Some incidents are borrowed from my life,” admits the 25 year old adding however that she had read several published diaries before writing her book.
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Nivedita, who is currently pursuing her PhD in the Indian Institute of Science, is a bibliophile who loves sci-fi and medical thrillers. She also enjoys public speaking, painting, cooking, dancing, travelling, photography and adventure sports. Writing, however is her biggest passion, she says adding, “I have always wanted to write and I knew I had it in me. It is great that I have a supportive family that has always let me be. I want to become the most read author in the country some day.”