Weekly Photo Challenge – Favorite Place

The topic for Weekly Photo Challenge this week is Favorite Place. The idea is to share an image of our happy place, a secret spot we love, or a faraway location we return to again and again.

The first picture is that of the area covering a bookshelf in my bedroom. Having lived out of my suitcase for almost sixteen years owing to education and then job assignments, the only constant companion that I had throughout were books. Whether I stayed in a hostel or as a paying guest or in rented apartments, there was always a bookshelf stacked with books that I loved reading. Whenever I moved cities, I always had the movers & packers pick them up and deliver them back home in Bengal, India.

Two years back when I moved back to Kolkata for good, I was pleasantly surprised to see that my father safeguarded my entire collection in various cabinets and bookshelves in our apartment. With a barely few month old baby then, the distance from the bedroom to any of the rooms felt like kilometres together. Thus this bookshelf was built-in a corner of my bedroom. The books are handpicked by me and each of the shelves has an assigned genre like new collection, regional books (Bengali in my case), humor, classics, crime and thrillers and so on. This space is extremely personal and close to my heart. Irrespective of my emotional state, this corner has never failed to give me happiness and comfort.

Author: Sonia Chatterjee

An alumnus of Presidency College (Kolkata), Delhi University, and XIME (Bangalore), Sonia Chatterjee holds two post-graduate degrees in Chemistry and Management and an MFA in creative writing from Writer's Village University. With eight years of experience in the banking sector as a Branch Head, she took a sabbatical from the corporate world to start her blog soniasmusings.com. Her blog consistently featured in the Top Indian Blogs list from 2019 to 2024. Her articles have been published on various digital platforms such as Women's Web, Youth Ki Awaaz, Tuck's Magazine, and Period Magazine. She was invited as a speaker at the Breaking Barriers, Kolkata 2018 event by the Women's Web, at the Women Writer’s Fest, Kolkata, 2020, and the Crime Writers Festival, Kolkata,2025. Sonia has written two detective thrillers titled ‘Deal of Death – Introducing Raya Ray’ (2019) and ‘Diary, Deceit, and Death – A Raya Ray Adventure’ (Vishwakarma Publications, 2024) and a non-fiction book on true crime titled ‘The Sanyasi Who Became a King’ (Sristhi Publishers, 2025). Her book ‘Diary, Deceit, and Death’ was shortlisted for the PVLF Awards 2024-25 in the Best Fiction Category. Sonia lives in Kolkata with her doctor husband and nine-and-a-half-year-old son. View all posts by Sonia Chatterjee