India, May 18 -- Dear Reader,

This is my week of non-reading. I've been forced into literary rehab.

As someone who spends all their free time between the pages of a book, this is pure torture. The only times I haven't read were when I was forbidden to -maybe there were exams, or maybe my mother decreed I was straining my eyes too much. Even then, there were always inventive ways around the ban: reading a Five Find-Outers mystery between my science textbooks or reading Gone with the Wind under the sheets.

But now, even I know it's time to stop reading. I've returned to Mumbai to a house filled with cartons that need unpacking, a desk cluttered with unpaid invoices, and chaos in every corner. I have a week to fix it all before leaving ag...