The Unforgettable Desire

There are a few of us who like to listen to stories without judgment, for the most part. There’s something so easy about the good guy-bad guy tag in a romantic relationship that we dislike it. There’s always a supposed clock ticking to move on which basically means shoving everything that hurts in a corner and reliving the same story with another till the time to shove hurt comes again. But us, the few of us, we are cheerleaders during heartbreaks. We like to dance with pompoms when the ones who thought they’ll die without the love of their life learn to live, as they learn romance and love were a part of their life, not the whole of it. We don’t judge them for trash talking or being clingy or whiny, we love them for wanting to live on when their faith crumbles to be rebuilt. We hear such stories all the time. The stories of heartbreaks far exceed the ones of coming together. We hear red flags and toxicity more than morning cuddles and breakfast in bed. We don’t remind them that...

I won’t claim to know the symptom that dissociation is to many mental health conditions. I won’t be speaking about any mental health conditions; I have a very limited Google-baba knowledge about them. I have never felt comfortable calling myself depressed because I haven’t been medically diagnosed. I take depression seriously because it is as scary a word as cancer for a misinformed or selectively aware person or a person with limited awareness. When I began telling people that I cannot recognize my reflection in the mirror, most of them heard it as a metaphor. I was talking in real life figurative terms, they weren’t literal. I was terrified every time I looked into a mirror or took a selfie or got clicked in general. The image that I saw outside wasn’t the image I had in my head. It was not even the image that people showed me or at least the one their choice of words did. I was unable to relate any comment on my body or face or hair for that matter. I began seeing the...

Book Title: The One Who Had Two Lives Author: Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan Publisher: Harper Collins India Year of Publication: 2018 Price: INR 299 Pages: 228 The One who had Two Lives by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan was published in 2018. It is the second book in the series The Girls of the Mahabharata. As mentioned in the author’s note, the book is a stand-alone volume even though it has a brief appearance of Satyavati who was the protagonist in The One who Swam with Fishes . The One who had Two Lives describes the lives of Princess Amba of Kashi who is reborn as Sikhandini and identifies as Prince Shikhandi of Panchal. The book is divided into three parts. The first part narrates the story of Amba’s Swayamvar. The third part narrates the story of Sikhandini’s sexual reconstruction to Shikhandi. These parts unravel the story of the birth and life of the protagonists in a non-linear fashion. The second part, ‘In-Between’ is presented in the form of dialogue between Amba...

Reading has become an online phenomenon in last couple of years. Although every reader has a personal preference, a balance between printed and digital books has been achieved. With platforms like Bookchor providing online buying and selling of second hand books, many books and readers have been united when hope seemed lost. With Instagram cracking the code for most appealing feature for humans - a platform for (visually appealing) pictures - book bloggers are getting visibility as #Bookstagrammers (more on that in another post later). Books on Toast has taken up the trend to another level with its quirky reviews and interviews. What I am saying is, apart from the last weekend when Avengers: Endgame and The Long Night were trending, reading books has been getting a lot of attention. I have a reputation of someone who reads a lot in my circle given I talk about reading a lot. I have recently realised that I am selective about the books I pick up, usually literary fictions. I ...

I find men discussing the position of women and their dignity and honour in society quite amusing because I am not sure if honour and dignity have been defined or conceptualized from the point of view of women. In my head these terms have nothing to do with a woman, they belong to and in a man’s world or dictionary. Yet, innumerable discussions focus on women’s dignity and honour. What do these words mean? Thanks to my grandmother watching programs, with volume level higher than usual, on an Odia channel ‘Prarthana TV’ since six in the evening I overheard a discussion on Sita’s Agnipariksha (in a show named  Tarka Bahu Dura ). I was intrigued. Three men were discussing an issue that had a woman at its centre – one of the men being the host. The two other men appeared to have opposing views on the matter. However, these opposing views centred on the credibility of Ram being ‘Maryada Purushottam’.  What caught my attention was the idea of a ‘Chhaya’ (shadow) or ‘Maya’...

Silent All These Years , episode 19, season 15 of the longest running medical prime time drama on television, Shonda Rhimes'  Grey’s Anatomy,  is everything we need. The episode has two parallel stories revolving around the character of doctor Jo Karev (Camilla Luddington) whose meeting with her birth mother is revealed in flashback as she treats a patient named Abby (Khalilah Joi), who has been sexually assaulted. Having survived domestic violence, Jo Karev suspects Abby to have undergone something similar and assures her a safe space to speak about it if she wants to. Abby refuses treatment when another doctor, Teddy Altman (Kim Rave), is called for help. Teddy gains Abby's consent by treating her with utmost care and sensitivity without getting near her till she is allowed to. She suspects that Abby has been sexually assaulted which is later confirmed.  When doctors propose a rape kit for the patient in case she later wants to report the assault and get just...

A lot has been said about loneliness. A lot has been said about the difference between being lonely and being alone. I was raised in a ‘learn to be alone’ way that implied the idea of being self-sufficient. Given my childhood and teenage was dominated by my dedication to friendship, I was often asked, ‘Will any of your friends do what you do for them?’ It was based on the assumption of requiring reciprocation. I am not sure if I said it out loud, I might have, that, ‘I am not doing it for them, I am doing it because I need to do it for myself.’ A few months ago, during a conversation I asked a man if he was married. He laughed and mentioned that he is sixty nine years old. I simply added, ‘and…?’ Then he clarified that he is married and has many grand children. I understood his amusement, but I didn’t understand what age had to do with the question. A person can be widowed or divorced or homosexual or asexual or just single. Being sixty nine doesn’t say anything about his/her m...

Satyajit Ray adapted his grandfather Upendrakishore Ray Chowdhury’s short story ‘Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne’ (1915) as a film, bearing the same name that released in the year 1969, at the request of his son to make a film for children. Twenty years later, a similar request was made to an author by his son that had put the author in a dilemma, “You should never break a promise made to a child, but is the death of the author a reasonable excuse?” Salman Rushdie, the author in question, produced Haroun and the Sea of Stories in 1990, dedicating the book to his son. Ranade's Goopi and Bagha (Image source: The Hindu) Fifty years after Ray’s Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne , Shilpa Ranade’s directorial debut  Goopi Gawaiya Bagha Bajaiya (2019) has recreated the magical world of storytelling. After a few minutes into the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder about its uncanny resemblance of wordplay with Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories . Like Rushdie’s story, the film not only reminds ...

When a close friend made a coming out video about a year ago, I thought, “he shouldn’t do it.” A year before that video, I had asked one of my seniors from school to make a similar video because I was then a part of a storytelling club that was organizing an LGBTQ storytelling event. The thing that had changed in the span of a year is that, I had stopped looking at the LGBTQ as other. If someone doesn’t have to come out about being straight, then why should others? For something to be accepted as normal, we have to believe it to be normal. We do not live in that ideal world in my head and these stories of coming out are important, making the person along with many others accept themselves because oppression doesn’t merely come from outside, it comes from within too. Why am I talking about this? I am talking about this because I still have a smile on my face as I think about Shelly Chopra Dhar's  Ek Ladki ko Dekha toh Aisa Laga . It’s been twenty four hours since I watched the ...

Source - Indiewire On January 1, 2019, I sat down to watch Michael Curtiz's  Casablanca (1942). It had been on my to-watch list since I watched Damien Chazelle's  La La Land (2016) for the nth time in June 2018 while pausing the film to make notes. When I paid attention to Mia speaking about Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca while pointing at the studio-window in the Warner Brothers lot — and sleeping under a giant Ingrid Bergman wallpaper — I was reminded of a conversation I had had with a friend from my college theatre days. I had not taken his suggestion of watching Ingrid Bergman films seriously back in 2017 because I was busy feeling validated by “Fools who dream”. I was hooked to my laptop screen while watching Casablanca . When the film ended, all I could think was that the film doesn’t merely has a wow- factor or THE-factor, but it has the ‘What a beauty!’-factor.   Mostly, I was impressed by the idea of everything that’s happening during the second Worl...

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...

It is the year when breathing became a conscious act. It is the year in which one July evening I failed to feel my body for more than 30 minutes. In those minutes, the knowledge of my existence was terrifying. It was then that I knew I had to slow down, I didn’t know how to. I like the rush, you see, the rush of waking up to something new every day. Monotony, I don’t know how to live with that. Eventually, I got bored of staying in bed on days when I couldn’t get up. It is the year when I began seeing my life in terms of 365 days. Before 2018, a new year only meant writing the wrong date for at least one month. This year, however, has been about having symptoms of depersonalisation and derealisation, anxiety attacks, and shattered emotional and mental strength. It has been about accepting that things aren’t okay within. It is the year of losing people, relationships, and self. It has been about feeling empty and not being okay with it. It has been about drowning in a sea of ...

In November-December 2017, I was doing an internship at Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad. As much as I loved the work-environment, I hated the idea of being there from 9.15am to 5.30pm. I hated the idea of restraint. I felt caged although I was completely free within the walls of the office and had unlimited access to coffee. While doing my rounds in all the departments, I got a chance to interview a marketing executive who was in charge of briefing me one afternoon. He seemed friendly, so I asked him about how he ended up at OBS. Earlier I had interviewed one of their cartographers who was kind enough to tell me his journey from civil engineering to cartography. When the marketing executive completed his story, I asked him, ‘if not this job then what would you have done?’ He laughed at my question. He said, ‘I am a Tamil Brahmin. I should want to start my own business, but I am content with this nine to five job, the company takes care of my family, I would never trade this job for anyt...