The Unforgettable Desire

I held out a coffee tumbler that I had bought a few weeks ago, after I decided to quit drinking coffee. My grandfather took it from my hand, read the text on it – Do what you love, love what you do. ‘This is what I used to tell my students. I didn’t use these exact words.’ I turned my head towards him, ‘This is what I often tell my friends and juniors too!’ He continued, ‘Accounts is a subject that I love. I used to tell my students that to understand the subject, to do well, they have to love it.’ I was excited. ‘I say the same for English!’ There were a few other people in the dining room then. Different conversations were taking place at once. No one was paying particular attention towards us. I had been making a presentation of coffee mugs and the equipment that I used to brew filter coffee. My voice itself is a people repellent. I talk so much for so long that people lose interest. They are also aware that I won’t stop until I am done showing everything in my agenda, so they re...

When I read Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore (2002) , I wondered about the falling fishes, talking cats and mysterious men and women. When I read South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) , I wondered about the mysterious woman and how a person can seem like a figment of imagination when s/he leaves no physical proof of existing. When I read Norwegian Wood (1987) , I wondered about how there is nothing in particular to wonder about. The translator’s note in Norwegian Wood states how some readers call it ‘just’ a love story. The translator, Jay Rubin, goes on to show how it’s ‘not’ just a love story. I agree with him. I had put a lot of effort in figuring out why fishes fell from the sky when I read Kafka . I assumed that I needed to read more of Franz Kafka and Japanese culture. However, I ceased to wonder about it when in his interview with The Guardian last year Murakami stated that it was the job of the ‘intelligent people’ to figure out what fishes falling from the s...

There was this professor by the name Dr GR Taneja. He did not teach me. He retired from my college, in Delhi University, a year before my admission. I met him once, in the beginning of the second year of my graduation. I was waiting outside the principal’s chamber with a friend to get the permission for conducting the auditions for our theatre group. I did not know Professor Taneja then. I had heard a lot about him from my seniors. On that uneventful day, he was just a man who cracked jokes about the principal we mutually disliked. It was an awkward, yet funny moment. The moment passed, so did years. Four years later, during the final semester of M.A., I came across his name. I was working on a project report on a couple of Salman Rushdie’s works. As my mind boggled with a hundred articles/newspaper reviews/literary papers and their bibliographies, I saw a book by the name – The Novels of Salman Rushdie . It had GR Taneja as one of its authors. It was an exciting moment. Among a...

A man sitting on my seat offered to get up when he saw me undecided - should I ask him to get up or simply climb up the side upper berth?   I took the book that I was reading out of my backpack as he began to get up. As we stood side by side for a few seconds, he asked me, "What are you reading?" I showed him my copy of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah . He tried to read the author's name and perhaps, failed. He returned the book with a look that made his friend chuckle. I wanted to tell him, it's a Nigerian name. I wanted to tell him that the title of the book is what Nigerians tend to call people who move to America, something like Amriki or Amrika-wale as we Indians might say in Hindi. I didn't want to explain without being asked, which was quite unusual for my ever-explaining self. Later in the evening, as I climbed up to the upper berth, allowing my co-passenger to have the lower berth all to himself, I wondered about the former moment. I bega...

Ray, P. (1995). Yajnaseni (15 ed.). (P. Bhattacharya, Trans.) New Delhi: Rupa Publications India Pvt . Ltd. Pratibha Ray’s Yajnaseni ― an epistolary novel, beginning at the end and ending at the beginning ― tells the tale of the most complex epic of all times by turning the victim into a survivor, by bringing the marginal woman to the centre. Draupadi is perhaps a character who has carried the weight of every single patriarchal injustice towards women. The beautiful dark-skinned princess born from a sacrificial fire with the purpose of establishing dharma on Earth had been a victim of male gaze, lust, arrogance and ego, beginning from the Kauravas to Pandavas. “Despite someone else being the root of all causes, they emptied the entire cup of blame on my head and went away – leaving me thus at death’s door. (2)” Yajnaseni , retells the Mahabharata from the perspective of Krishnaa. It is her story of womanhood, for she follows every act of Dharma - of being a wife divide...

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 have been juggling many life choices in my mind. I took a month off from Hyderabad. I went home. Before I left, I was in an internship that changed my way of looking at things. I realized, either I am not willing to accept ‘reality’ or I am not meant for jobs. I cried many times in my office washroom. I was frustrated that I could not read and write in that period of time. When it was over, I went home - away from the environment I usually live in, away from the people I usually interact with. I went home to discover myself. In the one month I spent at home, I read five books. I did not write anything worth publishing on my blog. I ended up with a few drafts nonetheless. What I liked the most at home was, the way my parents looked at my reading. Every time my mother talked about my reading habits, I could sense pride in her voice. I challenged my father at reading books. I had a good time. Every other day, I used to tell them about a strength or weakness of mine that I discover...

The stories of already established mythological works from the point of view of an almost invisible character has given way to the contemporary genre of retellings and mythological fictions. Among these, a strong voice has been that of the women who were mere props in the metanarratives that were written with patriarchal ideals. Kavita Kané’s Karna’s Wife , Sita’s Sister , and Menaka’s Choice are newbies in mythological retellings and fictions. The three books are love stories of side tracked voiceless women in the grand narratives. What the books do is that, introduce the readers to characters that they might not have thought about, like that of Uruvi, Urmila, and Menaka respectively and yet hail them based on the favourite patriarchal feature associated with women, self-sacrifice. The three books have their women protagonists smitten in love and eventually subjugated by it. In these stories, the storytelling is quite contemporary as opposed to the characters who are eon ...

“I speak three languages, write in Two, dream in one. Don't write in English, they said, English is Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins, Every one of you? Why not let me speak in Any language I like? The language I speak, Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses All mine, mine alone.”   -Kamala Das, An Introduction I have been asked, “Odia is dying, isn’t it?” I don’t answer the question. Because, I cannot answer the question.

In a recent conversation about time travel I was told that had I not had cancer then I might have been pursuing medical or something else. It might have been a hypothetical example. It might have been a personal belief. But it is not the first time that I was said so. I went down the rank sheet post cancer. There was a time when I was among the toppers of my class and I aspired to be the highest scorer in the 10 th boards, then there was the time when the ranks didn’t bother me. In between there was cancer.

Exams. I love the preparation leave for exams. The mind is under so much pressure and yet the creative aspects flower the best during this time. The pressure of getting to know the syllabus, of finding the texts online, of making a time table, of failing to study, of being tired of trying to study can be really really frustrating. The mind looks for escapes. The mind conjures all the stagnant creative powers of the entire semester and puts it in one direction, be it a really nice status update, a few sketches, poetry, or even cooking. And trust me, people are in almost always in a disbelief that you, yes you, actually did any of it.

When a book written by an Indian having British English, American slang, Urdu, Hindustani etc. in one narration without a glossary in the end goes on to become an international best seller, one asks why are we still so focused on using the ‘correct English’? When I completed my graduation in English Literature, I asked myself why as Indians we are still so concerned with the British pronunciation and make fun of the Indian English i.e. the Mother Tongue Influence on English. Probably I was a bit too late in thinking about the issue, given my mind is still a victim of colonization, but I asked it nonetheless.

Being born in a family of book lovers, I was taught not to judge a book by its cover at an early stage. So I didn’t. Instead I judged the book by how its contents looked. For example, if the book does not have colorful pictures or large font, then it simply wasn’t my type. I held no fascination for novels, I was happy in my little world of Tinkle, Amar Chitra Katha Comics, Pinky, Chacha Chaudhury etc. The first novel that I finally dared to read with its small font, at the age of 13, was One Night@ The Call Centre . Since then I have taken pride in saying that I did not have a good start into the world of novels and do not let anyone convince me otherwise. The journey then on must have been good enough because now I wait desperately to lay my hands on the tiny fonts of my Literature books without any prejudices.

‘Back then happiness was a choice because reciprocation wasn’t a necessity.’ It took me a re-reading of a few treasured books from my teenage collection to come to this conclusion. Also the readings made me realize how badly I had misjudged the books when I was 17. I am simply happy about the fact that the one book I had loved the most in those years remains my favorite in its own way even today. Back then I saw it merely as a story of love lost and found and lost again. But today when I finished the book, The Best of Me had a lot more to it than love.  Beyond the love story of the protagonists, it served as a reminder of the importance of human relationships and the purpose of one’s life in reality. In my previous reading, I had not noticed how much importance was given to the surname of the characters which ultimately decided their fate. The struggle in the capitalist world though vaguely mentioned was there nonetheless. Even though love story is what Nicholas Sparks...

In my first year, I was shocked by the attitude of the people in the ‘city of my dreams’. In my second year, I was shattered as my beautiful childhood seemed no more than a big lie. In my third year, I was devastated failing to accept the meaninglessness of life and the sorry state of the country I live in. If I am asked someday about my graduation, then I would speak the aforementioned lines to define it. These lines do not provide the beauty that Literature is assigned with; the beauty that can be seen and appreciated even by the non-literati. But here I am whining about the life literature gave me. More than often I have said to my friends that literature has the ability to ruin one’s life no matter how much s/he romanticizes it; the life in which one is happy obsessing about the self in the tiny bubble that s/he thinks to be the entire world. But am I really upset about it? After the result of my board examination was out, I went to my Dad and said that I wanted to pursu...