The Panacea Book Club: Adventures Beyond Reading

A slight detour from my usual blogs, where the focus is on destinations and the views along the way; this post is on a bonding trip. A trip to the outskirts of Bangalore by members of our book club we lovingly call The Panacea.

The Panacea

The dream child of our founder member Dr. Minati, the Panacea is a book club in our housing community. We are around fifteen avid readers who meet up once a week and discuss the book we have read over the week. This opens up many discussions and over the weeks, we have developed a healthy reading relationship. This not only fosters our interest in reading but gives us insights into the books read by others enticing us to read more and more. We also write reviews of the book in the book club archives making it a ready reference for others.

Our weekly meets

Nourishing young minds

Social media has really stolen the place of books from the hearts of children and we try to get it back by having a silent reading session once a week with focus on the children of our community. After the session, the children are encouraged to talk about their reads giving them a platform to develop their public speaking skills. Most of us find this very fulfilling and look forward to these sessions which are really therapeutic.

One of our silent reading session with the kids

In addition to this we visit Literature festivals, book fairs and pick up books of our choice. Literature festivals facilitate our meeting up with favorite authors. Let me share some pictures of the activities of The Panacea..

Bangalore Literature Festival

With popular authors

A Bonding Trip

With our camaraderie really building up, we decided to take an overnight trip to a farm house in the outskirts of Bangalore over a weekend. This provided us an opportunity to connect more with each other and enjoyed our reading session in serene surroundings.

Setting off from our community in a mini van, we reached the resort by noon. One of our members had brought her little one along and she added color to the group.

All set to go

On the way….

We reached the resort around noon and were treated to tea before we checked in to our rooms.

At the resort

After a sumptuous lunch, we took to our favorite hobby….reading. Reading is in our blood and so we enjoyed the afternoon quietness with a book .

Post lunch we took a walk in the farm. It was cool and pleasant and the fresh air of the countryside added to the feel.

The cool walk in the countryside

After the walk, we enjoyed the peace of the sunset…

The sun sets on a beautiful day….

As darkness set in, we were back at the resort with a cake cutting session to mark the success of the club…

Celebrating our success

A reading session followed and each of us were drowned in our books till it was time for dinner. Post dinner, we had an interesting Pictionary session which had all of us in splits…

Pictionary session

She seems to have had enough of us!!!..(or was it just sleep )?

Slowly, the yawns started getting louder and we knew it was time to hit the bed. The sounds of silence from the countryside lulled us to sleep.

Next morning, we got up on time for the sunrise but the cloudy skies cheated us. However we had a long reading session with tea and biscuits.

Morning peace…nature and books

Post breakfast, we packed our bags and started back home .

Ready to leave..

We enjoyed the return drive with a session of Book charades….our own version of dumb charades….

Book charades in progress…

The smiles say it all!!!

After a fulfilling retreat with nature, friends and our books, we returned home with promises to do it again…

This was an unusual blog for my regular readers. Hope you like the spirit of the episode…fun, friends and books.

My series on Egypt starts next week…. see you all there.

Till then, do subscribe, comment and give your feedback.