The Unforgettable Desire

In the last couple of years, a lot has changed within me -be it the perks of having a plenty of alone time or the downside of a mind that’s never without a thought. I am a person who jumped off a cliff at Rishikesh. Between the moment when I was off the rock-solid ground and hadn’t hit the water, I thought, “Did I jump, or was I pushed, or did both happen at the same time!” When I was out of the water all I could think was, “What’s the big deal about the experience? It was so tiny a moment to feel anything at all?” When I asked so to my already-experienced-cliff-jumping brother, he said, “That’s just how it is.” All I am saying is that I had a thought even in that tiniest of a second and I am unashamedly okay with it. It has been recently remarked by a dear friend of mine that I think so much that I do not let myself feel anything. I am working on those lines whose roots are as deep as the hive in S tranger Things , believe me . Having firmly established that, the one thing that...

The One who Swam with the Fishes , Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, India, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2017, 1st edition, 152 pages, ₹250. Add caption Satyavati has long been seen as a fisherwoman who manipulated her way to the Kuru throne. A selfish unashamed woman who wasn’t satisfied merely by being the queen but made her to-be-born sons the heirs to the throne of Hastinapur instead of crown Prince Devavrata. Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, in her The Girl who Swam with Fishes from the series  Girls of The Mahabharata weaves the story of how a fish-smelling girl of divine birth, raised in a fisher community, finds her way to her Destiny. It shows the story of Matsyagandhi evolving into Satyavati of The Mahabharata . The contemporary storytelling makes the book distinct from the poetic language of an epic. At the same time, the Vedic setting and time period isn't forgotten as the modern storytelling describes a span of year in terms of rain and that of a month in terms o...

I am the woman who breaks families. Sita, Draupadi, Helen of Troy and the likes of them, the ones who are known to have triggered wars so tragic and glorious that poets, singers, storytellers Couldn’t help themselves but keep those women alive ages after their lifetime. No war was their fault. If something has to be blamed, how about the fragile male ego? Those wars, - they were the wars of testosterone. - they were to prove the right over wrong. - they were to show the prince charming from ugly frog. - they were to let men drown in their ego. - they were to pump up the unquestioned pride. - they were to limit women into boundaries. - they had nothing to do with women. - they were about men and their conquests. I am no Sita, no Draupadi, no Helen I am a woman who breaks families, for real. I make married women from generations before feel useless. I ask them, how could they tolerate what was done to them? I ask them, why did they n...