Book Review: The Nine Chambered Heart by Janice Pariat

Title: The Nine Chambered Heart 

Author: Janice Pariat

Publisher: HarperCollins India

ISBN:  978-93-5277-379-4

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 200

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  5/5

INTRO

Since science says that beating organ exists in our body is a four chambered muscle, but Janice Pariat took the pen and transformed the whole theory. And I am glad she did so.

In her book, the Nine Chambered Heart, Janice has woven an unnamed character, and described her by multiple point-of-views. In simpler words, one character met with nine narrators, and this way generates nine different perspectives. Backdrop of every story changes with respective narrator. So we could perceive the personality of main character into different angles. Vivid and striking at once.

BLURB Says:

You, though, are as beautiful as light splitting through glass.’ Nine characters recall their relationship with a young woman – the same woman – whom they have loved, or who has loved them. We piece her together, much as we do with others in our lives, in incomplete but illuminating slivers. Set in familiar and nameless cities, moving between east and west, The Nine-Chambered Heart is a compendium of shifting perspectives that follows one woman’s life, making her dazzlingly real in one moment, and obscuring her in the very next. Janice Pariat’s exquisitely written new novel is about the fragile, fragmented nature of identity – how others see us only in bits and pieces, and how sometimes we tend to become what others perceive us to be.

STRUCTURE

As Book begins with a fascinating relationship between a student and her art teacher, while in other chapters she meets with a stranger and spend five days with him, and I loved the part which depicts her relationship with a musician.

Janice writes in a story “We feel it’s the right time to be in love...the right age...the right season...and the person is incidental”

In an interview with Firstpost, Janice talks about central character that “I wanted to keep her distant. She remained distant. There was nothing I could do, or wanted to do, to bring her closer to me, to the narrators, to the readers. It was also necessary because this book is about the subjectivity of perspective and its splintering. Having her voice in the narrative would make her the 'authority' so to speak, while this way we're left to imagine what it is she experienced, much as we must do with the people in our lives”

“I wanted to replicate how it is in life, with the people we're with, and love. We never have access to them entirely. Neither them to us. We know each other in fragments and slivers. I guess the book then is about both. The absent central character and the nine who conjure her,” Pariat says. 

As far as writing is concerned, It is smooth and poetic as well. Here, I want to praise Janice’s craft, how she observes such small details of life that binds her reader completely. I liked just how glimpse of love and despair projected in this book. It is so refreshing to know about central character through nine different narrators, who unravels the depth of her identity bit by bit. It silently depicts the truth that somewhere we can’t know someone whole at once, we present in someone’s life, just as bits and pieces. I loved it when reading goes on with pauses only.

This Gem of a book not only makes us entertained but asks a important question, if one person romanticize the relationship same as the other? When two person falls in love, haven’t they carried different memories?  Why did we tend to love those we can’t have them? When we fall in love with someone, we create a perspective about them, and we don’t want them to change, isn’t it selfish to do so?  

Janice Pariat’s Nine Chambered Heart tries to solve the puzzle of human heart which dangles between need and want, and eventually how a personality evolves. The Nine Chambered Heart by Janice Pariat, is totally engrossing and a type of read which should be checked by every reader. I relished it and put it into Highly-Recommended-list!

JANICE PARIAT

ABOUT AUTHOR  

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was given the Young Writer Award by the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, Canterbury. She studied English Literature at St Stephen's College, New Delhi, and History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her work - including art reviews, cultural features, book reviews, fiction, and poetry - has featured in a wide selection of national magazines and newspapers. Currently, she lives in New Delhi.

CONNECT WITH:   Twitter | Web

Book Review: Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra

Title: Memories of Fire

Author: Ashok Chopra

Publisher: Penguin Random House India

ISBN:  9780670090341

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 420

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4/5

But, nothing it seemed had changed at their old haunt. Even after a gap of over five decades. The wilderness was a hidden gem- quaint and unique. It had not lost any of its charm and was still, in more ways than one, a place of pilgrimage, which evoked a spiritual longing, was it just the well preserved….the treasured emotions of the days gone by that had resurfaced? Was it just nostalgia?

Memories of Fire by Ashok Chopra, is a life journey of five childhood friends, who first met at boarding school in Shimla, in 1950s. All were the same age, with a difference of just about a month or two between each.  There had never been a time when they had not been together like a bunch of quintuplets. But life would take them along separate paths.

Although the story runs in flashback, the first chapter begins with a meeting of these four friends,  after a gap of five decades, and they indulge immediately into memories of past, school day-offs, their beautiful as well as ugly truths and bits of love flings. It is not some contemporary fiction but story embedded with such real incidents, related to Indira Gandhi’s era.    

Here, I want to mention the thing I loved the most about Ashok Chopra’s writing, He has surprising skills of observing small details, Memories of Fire is full of such nostalgic words and scenes, I could almost see those images, as Author mentioned Wooden Phaatak, Atlas Bicycle, Binaca Geetmala on Vividh Bharti, jane eyre’s thornfield hall and many more, It is really fascinating to read about Bishnois Samaj and their rituals, Plus that small part of Begum Akhtar. While reading the book I could tell that Ashok Chopra has lived richly experienced life.

There is not a single protagonist in the story, every character comes with its own past and journey. If I am going to discuss about those five friends then Vijay Thakur was only a Day Scholar among them, Rest were  boarders, and Vijay is so unclear about his life goal, and living in some haveli. At one place, author has woven a scene around Vijay’s thoughts, I could visualize that part, where  Vijay stood in his favourite room of the haveli, that scene filled his heart with resurgent hope, “if the haveli could resurrects itself from its dead past into a life in the present, there was hope that it could step into the future too.”

Apart from the story, if anyone wants to learn, how to draw an character sketch, this book would be a perfect read, As author summoned of Vijay character in few lines — Vijay thakur , help everyone and was ever willing to share their problems. Yet, another unsolved mystery about him was that he never seemed to have any problems of his own, friend would describe them an impenetrable carapace, somewhat of an enigma.

Coming on other friends, second is Deepak, god gifted with phenomenal memory anything he ever read he could easily recall and quote. Deepak would get most upset if an author quoted incorrectly or translated poorly. He was in regular correspondence with eminent writer historian, Khushwant Singh, that part was really fun to read.  

Third one, Reza Ahmed who would really interested to know more about Bishnois- the member of small religious group who are mostly concentrated in the western Thar Desert, which overlaps the area of Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan and runs along the borders of India’s Rajasthan with Gujrat and Punjab. It is really interesting to know how Bishnoi word derived. As Reza’s friend told him that preservation of the environment was their religion. Their rituals, this is a common practice there Bishnoi women are known to suckle young orphaned animals to save their lives.

Forth one, Balbir Singh, Author tried to put some humor with this, he writes, Punjabis have strong sense of their genealogy. If you bring two Punjabis – total strangers- together you can be sure that within five minutes they will have traced each other’s family trees back to at least four or five generations and what’s more in the process would have discovered the kinship between them and if they for some reason failed to find a relationship, they would surely make one up, which would seem very convincing.

And Fifth one, Radhey Shyam, who ends up in Jail, He seemed somewhat daring though, In that conventional environment, he took courage to fall in love with his young female teacher, while he was just a much younger male student. I was curious at one point to know how deeply ingrained faith and arising issues impacts their whole life.

Basically Author, depicts the life of that era when communities were close knit and people come together in each other’s joys and sorrow. Each treat the children of the other as their own, and they spend more time in each other’s homes than in their own. When old tradition and values exist, people share almost every moment of success and failure, happiness and pain.  

As blurb says Memories of Fire is inspired by true events and interspersed with the dark contemporary history of India and Pakistan along remarkably realistic characters who tackle prejudice, prestige, privilege and even prison head-on. It also asks the epic questions: What makes for happiness? Why do people make certain choices and not others? And why do men and women willingly make tremendous sacrifices for those they love?

Ashok Chopra has created an authentic, densely peopled universe with a distinctive period charm. Memories of Fire is a vast, colourful, emotional, political and social journey, with a cast of characters that is interesting, sympathetic and lifelike.

ABOUT AUTHOR  

Author of the bestselling Of Love and Other Sorrows and A Scrapbook of Memories: My Life with the Rich, the Famous and the Scandalous, Ashok Chopra has occupied some of the hottest seats in the Indian book trade-executive editor of Vikas Publishing House, vice president of Macmillan India, publishing director of UBS Publishers, executive director and publisher of the India Today Book Club and Books Today as well as chief executive and publisher of HarperCollins India. Currently, he is the chief executive of Hay House Publishers India and is working on his next book, The Lovers from Rampore. He lives in Gurgaon, near Delhi.

Pablo Neruda - I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still
it is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
it seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
it sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
it is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I’m happy;
Happy that it's not true. 

- Pablo Neruda

Note: I have tried to recite this piece here at soundcloud.  

Book Review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Title: Turtles All the Way Down

Author: John Green

Publisher: Penguin Random House

ISBN:  9780241335437

Genre: Fiction, Young Adult

Pages: 286

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4.5/5

He’s trying to treat you like you’re normal and you’re trying to respond like you’re normal but everyone involved knows you are definitely not normal. Normal people can kiss if they want to kiss. Normal people don’t sweat like you. Normal people choose their thoughts like they choose what to watch on TV. Everyone in this conversation knows you’re a freak.

When it comes to YA genre, John Green hits the place. There are very few authors who could place themselves into that genre with such grace. I loved how John Green captured the emotions of teenagers; he doesn’t depict this Y-generation teens any less. They read. They Think. They Suffer. They question to themselves about their existence. John Green put them on journey and how they trying to cope up with various situations is so relatable to me. Love, Parting, illness, Loss are the key factors of Green’s novel, Still I like how he maintained the serenity amidst them.

Frankly speaking, I was so excited when I first heard about his latest, Turtles All the Way Down, and I’m glad, It didn’t disappoint me a bit. With Turtles All the Way Down, John Green presented a quaint character, 16-year-old girl, Aza who has been suffering from anxiety disorder. It leads her into many behavioral situations, for instance, she doesn’t like her own body, she obsessed with a finger’s wound, and she seems worried all the time about microbes present in her body. It is quite different to read how John Green depicts a new whole world, running inside Aza’s head. The way she thinks in repetitive mode, readers feel those indefinable emotions instantly.

To be honest, it is not a fun read, as John Green’s other novels were, yet I found the plot so absorbing that I finished it into two sittings.

Basically the story begins with some mystery, Russell Pickett, father of Davis, (Aza’s childhood friend) he has gone missing and big reward money drew attention of Daisy, Aza’s best friend. Daisy and Aza both decide to search Mr. Pickett, and how this decision has been changed their life eventually.

During this search, Aza begins to feel attraction towards Davis, who is already troubled with sudden disappearance of his father, John Green crafted that part beautifully, how Davis calculating the absence of his father was so consuming, On the other hand, Aza comes to know about the despair Davis feels in spite of being rich. There is so many secrets behind Davis’s Big mansion.

Although Plot of Turtles All the Way Down revolves around this mystery, Yet John Green didn’t forget to focus on his main interest that is Friendship, quirky moments between lovers, memorable pinches of words, and small life lessons, as Green writes “True terror is not being scared, it is not having a choice on that matter” and “I is the hardest word to define” I have underlined whole book, just to read them over and over.

And the cover of Turtles All the Way Down hides something; you get to know once you start exploring the book. Give your love to this novel, because John Green went deeper to decipher those unspoken emotions of teenagers and presented to us, I was not even sure about if they existed before. Recommended.      

READER’s MOMENT  

We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.

The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.

One of the challenges with pain--physical or psychic--is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can't be represented the way table or a body can. In some ways, pain is the opposite of language.

I thought, lying there, that I might love him for the rest of my life. We did love each other—maybe we never said it, and maybe love was never something we were in, but it was something I felt. I loved him, and I thought, maybe I will never see him again, and I'll be stuck missing him, and isn't that so terrible. 

You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person, and why

ABOUT AUTHOR  

John Green's first novel, Looking for Alaska, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award presented by the American Library Association. His second novel, An Abundance of Katherines, was a 2007 Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His next novel, Paper Towns is a New York Times bestseller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for Best YA Mystery. In January 2012, his most recent novel, The Fault In Our Stars, was met with wide critical acclaim, unprecedented in Green's career. The book also topped the New York Times Children's Paperback Bestseller list for several weeks. Green has also coauthored a book with David Levithan called, Will Grayson Will Grayson published in 2010. The film rights for all his books, with the exception of Will Grayson Will Grayson, have been optioned to major Hollywood Studios.

CONNECT : Twitter | Website

BUY ONLINE: Turtles All the Way Down (Flipkart)

Book Review: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss

Title: Forest Dark

Author: Nicole Krauss

Publisher: Bloomsbury

ISBN:  9781408871799

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 290

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4.5/5

Some books demand your proper attention. They want to hold your hand and transport you into another world, where respective characters breath and you feel their every move, every emotion.

Nichole Krauss’s Forest Dark comes into that category only. If you think you could finish it in few sittings, you are not doing justice with these certain reads. I have read Krauss before, loved the prose then, and I am glad she didn’t lose her charm into her recent launch FOREST DARK. Her narrative is so absorbing, and magnetic that you want to savour it sentence by sentence. It makes you think and suffer and then leaves you with questions that don’t need to get answered.    

Forest Dark begins with disappearance of Jules Epstein, 70 years old, rich lawyer, who recently got retired, divorced and father of three. He has spent his whole life running into a race where he gets everything he aspires but after retirement he inclines towards spiritual thoughts, for instance what’s the meaning of money? What is real definition of success? And he decides to donate his wealth, whereas his lawyer friend takes this donation thing as some disease and calls it radical charity.

Besides that there is other protagonist, Nichole (When I read the name I thought it is some kind of memoir and then I read her interview at various platforms, Nichole is nothing to do with author Krauss except she created this profound character) So, Nicole is 40 years old novelist, living in Brooklyn with her two sons, her marriage is drifting apart. At one place Nicole express herself that she wanted to be writer who is free, without responsibilities who can write create her heroes, live their insecurities, happiness their life but she was not brave enough. I found that part was so beautifully written; I underlined it and mentioned it too, here in the Reader’s Moment.

Krauss’ Forest Dark is interlaced with two protagonists, their lives run into parallel world and that makes the story interesting. Yes I found it bit of confusing at some places but that’s totally acceptable when you get to read such sensitive work. With many Twists and turns, quirky characters with flaws, a new perception about Isolation, and the journey of self discovery, Forest Dark surely holds a soft place into reader’s heart. 

READER’s MOMENT 

Beyond this, Epstein made no effort to explain himself to anyone, except once to Maya. Having arrived thirteen years after Jonah, and ten after Lucie, at a less turbulent and agitated epoch in Epstein’s life, Maya saw her father in a different light. There was a natural ease between them. On a walk through the northern reaches of Central Park, where icicles hung from the great outcrops of schist, he told his youngest daughter that he had begun to feel choked by all the things around him. That he felt an irresistible longing for lightness—it was a quality, he realized only now, that had been alien to him all his life. They stopped at Theupper Lake, thinly sheeted with greenish ice. When a snowflake landed on Maya’s black eyelashes, Epstein gently brushed it away with his thumb, and Maya saw her father in fingerless gloves pushing an empty shopping cart down Upper Broadway [...]

How else to explain myself, then? Explain why I went along with Friedman, refusing to heed all the obvious warnings. One often hears people say that it’s easy to misunderstand. But I disagree. People don’t like to admit it, but it’s what passes as understanding that seems to come too easily to our kind. All day long people busy themselves with understanding every manner of thing under the sun—themselves, other people, the causes of cancer, the symphonies of Mahler, ancient catastrophes. But I was going in another direction now. Swimming against the forceful current of understanding, the other way. Later there would be other, larger failures to understand—so many that one can only see a deliberateness in it: a stubbornness that lay at the bottom like the granite floor of a lake, so that the more clear and transparent things became, the more my refusal showed through. I didn’t want to see things as they were. I had grown tired of that. [...]

When I was young, I thought that I would live my life as freely as the writers and artists I took as my heroes. But in the end I wasn’t brave enough to resist the current pulling me toward convention. I hadn’t gotten far enough along in the deep, bitter, bright education of the self to know what I could and couldn’t withstand—to know my capacities for constriction, for disorder, for passion, for instability, for pleasure and pain—before I settled on a narrative for my own life and committed myself to living it. Writing about other lives can, for a while, obscure the fact that the plans one has made for one’s own have insulated one from the unknown rather than drawn one closer to it.

ABOUT AUTHOR

Nicole Krauss is the author of the international bestseller The History of Love, which was published by W.W. Norton in 2005. It won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Ėtranger, was named #1 book of the year by Amazon.com, and was short-listed for the Orange, Médicis, and Femina prizes. Her first novel, Man Walks Into a Room, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction. In 2007, she was selected as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and in 2010 The New Yorker named her one of the 20 best writers under 40.
Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Best American Short Stories, and her books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. She recently completed a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

CONNECT:  Website

BUY ONLINE: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss (Flipkart) 

Book Review : What Kitty Did by Trisha Bora

Title: What Kitty Did

Author: Trisha Bora

Publisher: Harper Collins

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Pages: 306

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4/5

INTRO

It happens hardly, when I started adoring the book by its cover only. This time I couldn’t resist myself by doing so. A girl with messy hair depicts not only physical appearance but her miserable life. After reading just few pages of What Kitty Did by Trisha Bora, I was almost sure that It would be a roller-coaster ride of happenings. It is not fair to bind it in any specific genre, as it contains suspense, emotion, drama, eye-roll-witty dialogues and comical characters as well. It makes this-300-something paged novel an interesting read.

STRUCTURE

Basically the story of What Kitty Did by Trisha Bora, revolves around a protagonist names Ketaki Roy (Kitty) She is twenty something, a millennial, works as Journalist at Poise. Though she writes articles about how to get love on Tinder or How to lose belly fat in ten-twenty days, Yet She knows her life is not going anywhere with this. What I realized that Trisha Bora’s What kitty Did is a character specific book, Anybody can relate to protagonist, Kitty. She is lost, confused, searching for the motto of her life. In spite of all I found her interesting, cause she seems real to me somehow.

This novel, What Kitty Did, begins with a girl, who finds herself in a bed with a 59-old Perv, at the opening party of some grand hotel. Next morning she succeeds to run from that place but something leaves behind. It seems normal at first but reader is totally unknown what is coming next.

On the other side, Death of a high profile celebrity creates suspense in the story. When Kitty’s Boss assigned her to write an article on the sudden death of Roxane Merchant, she seems excited to find this project but she doesn’t realize in what terrible situation she is getting herself into. Now she is on journey to find out if it is heart attack or some conspiracy. There are some odds and obstacles in front of Kitty but she would realize later that it is all for better change.

While describing her novel’s protagonist Trisha Bora says “Kitty is someone who is unsure of herself. Her forte is baking but she writes for a fashion magazine. Many students take up English literature as a last resort and most are left confused at the end of the course as to what they could pursue next. There are only three years during BA so I wish there could be an orientation on the first year itself about professional options that students can explore after the course so that they can proceed accordingly during their studies.” She adds, “English literature makes you question and deconstruct and that aptitude takes you through life. It equips you with an acumen that is helpful forever.”

In a chat with Dailypioneer, Bora said “I never intended to make her one. She is a millennial and as you can see that this is the first time in human history that millennials cannot afford their own houses and cars. The young lot needs to be dependent on parents for major financial causes, and friends for moral and emotional support. For instance, salaries have not gone up and lifestyle choices are getting expensive every day. Consequently, the young generation has not been able to secure themselves in monetary terms. Kitty is also supposed to be a regular millennial living in a bubble, distanced from all current affairs and politics around.”

All in all, What Kitty Did by Trisha bora seems relatable piece of literature, I mean kitty did all the things, a Delhi girl usually faces in real life, we all escapes from the messy situation by laughing at ourselves, we try to make joke in tough conditions, we all struggles yet hope dangles inside our heart. We fall, we fight. We stand again. That’s what life is all about. What Kitty Did is a window to look into a Delhi based adult’s life. You could find some hilarious descriptions. This light hearted novel could be your weekend read. Go for it.

ABOUT AUTHOR  

Trisha Bora studied literature at Miranda House and started a career in publishing immediately after. She has worked at Random House India, Rupa and Dorling Kindersley, and is currently commissioning editor at Juggernaut Books. Her writing has been published in many journals and publications. 

CONNECT:  Twitter

BUY ONLINE:  What Kitty Did By Trisha Bora (Flipkart) 

Book Review: The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara: A Supernatural Thriller by S. V. Sujatha

Title: The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara 

Author: S. V. Sujatha

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

ISBN:  9789386021090

Genre: Fantasy, Indian Mythology

Pages: 188

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  4/5

INTRO

Before expressing my views on The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara by  S. V. Sujatha, I need to confess that it is my first supernatural thriller read. And I am glad I picked the debut work of Sujatha. It was quite tough to put down the book, once you get started. How story evolved around a good and evil makes it interesting read. Author maintained the fluency in language and well crafted dialogues. Characters are powerful yet interesting that makes it enjoyable read. The way author narrated the story, It is hard to believe that it is her debut novel. I found it interesting and spent two nights surrounded with demons only. Ha!

STRUCTURE

Basically The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara by  S. V. Sujatha  sets in Chottanikkara, a village in Kerela, that is infested with hair-raising Demons. And then there is a demon hunter, Devi, a brave girl with her lion, Ugra. It was interesting to know the sole purpose of her life is to slay the demons and save her village from horrifying situations. She is bold yet kind. She values the relationship yet knows what is needful. She is skilled in art of war and disciple of  Parshuram, who had taught her the very art of exorcism. There are various monsters Brahmaraksha, Jalpishacha, present near village, She usually binds the demons and traps them into a sacred tree, Aristha Vriksha. The twist comes into the story when Devi, realized that something happening in her village, which is beyond her power.

Although Villagers have faith in her, they know she will save them and protect them from blood-sucking demons, Yet they are in fear, cause the new demon, named Yakshi was not that usual one. How this horrible Demon closely connected with the Demon-Hunter and what happened in her past that made her so powerful, that’s the main theme of the novel. It is really thrilling to know, at what price Devi gets rid of Yakshi. It is supernatural thrills, still you get emotional. Here, I want you to know The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara by  S. V. Sujatha  is a teen-read, due to its well woven characters and mytho-background, it grabs the attention of reader of any age. If you want to explore supernatural thriller genre,, You can give it try. READ!

In an interview with Deccan Chronicle Sujatha said “I happened to visit Chottanikkara temple eight years back, and was very much moved by the divinity the main dieted radiated. I was amazed by an exorcism ritual, I witnessed. On enquiring more about it, I came to know that there are two forms of Devi, the deity. One was meant to provide prosperity and other would clear of the most monstrous demons that possessed people. The legends caught my interest and I tried to know more about it and ended up as a novel.”

READER's MOMENT 

He was strong, Kannappa. Intelligent, too, for he was a priest when he was alive.” Devi stopped herself from telling him about the demon’s dying words. She did not want to worry him.

Her father snorted. “But not smart enough to stay in the marubhoomi. They never learn, do they, these demons?” he said. “We have forbidden them to come into our land, yet they do not listen...You hunt them down, Devi, show them they are not welcome in our lands, yet they keep coming, one after the other, each more reckless and foolish and stubborn than the one before it. Why do they not heed our warning?”

Devi smiled sadly. “I suppose we will never be rid of them because they were once like us...men and women who had hopes and dreams. But when they died prematurely and violently, they could not go peacefully into the next cycle of their lives, but had to return to this one as abominations filled with evil. We know they can’t stay away because they lust for what we have, and they also want to exact revenge for the injustices done to them when they were still among the living. They desire not only our flesh and blood but are driven by forces beyond their comprehension, which will allow them no rest, no peace, until they are dispatched once and for all. And their nature being what they are, they will kill and maim, they cannot help themselves.”

“These demons are not too different from me, then,” Kannappa muttered uneasily. The lines on his face were growing more prominent, as he spoke. “I was like them too. I took what I wanted, I killed and ruined lives, revelled in the power I held over people. I was a demon too. Just as abhorred, just as feared, just as savage.”

His eyes went to the face of Meenamma he had drawn on the wall above the cot. It had been there ever since Devi could remember, before she was even born. She had always woken up looking at it, the face of Kannappa’s daughter, the girl who would have been her sister. Meenamma’s face was painted with charcoal. Kannappa would often darken the portrait with moist soot from the kitchen stove so his daughter’s face would never fade from the walls of his hut.

“She never did like that I was a bandit. She used to plead with me to stop. But I never listened. Then, she left me,” he whispered, his eyes welling up with tears of pain and regret.

Note: Just a request from a sincere reader to Publisher (ALEPH): Text is too small to read, I almost considered an eye sight check-up. Please improve this into your upcoming beauties. Thank You!

ABOUT AUTHOR  S. V. Sujatha was born in Madras, the land of filter coffee and elaborate meals and wonderful temples. She is a graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme where she eventually found her calling as a writer and storyteller. She currently lives in the United States of America and is a full-time writer. This is her debut novel, born out of her love for the Mother Goddess and passion for Indian mythology  

BUY ONLINE: The Demon Hunter of Chottanikkara (Flipkart) 

Book Review: A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

Title: A State of Freedom

Author: Neel Mukherjee

Publisher: Penguin Random House

ISBN: 9780670090150

Genre: Literary Fiction

Pages: 275

Source: Flipkart Review Program

Rating:  5/5

While trying to check the bill before settling at the reception desk – just an old habit, inculcated by his father, of giving any bill a once-over to see that he had not been overcharged – he realized that he had lost the ability to perform the simple function of adding up the individual items and the tax that together made up the grand total. He tried again and again. Then he took out his wallet and tried to count the rupee and US dollar notes nestled inside; he failed. Something as fundamental to intelligence as counting was eluding him. In the peripheries of his vision he could see a small crowd gathering to look at him; discreetly, nonchalantly, they thought. The news had spread. It was then that he broke down and wept for his son.

First of all, allow me to keep this structure-of-the-novel thing away, and let me focus on the initial paragraph of A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee. I am sure, after reading this, you too would have noticed the way Mukherjee drew attention of his readers. It simply showed the power of his prose style. The way he observed things and transformed them into words is surely inexplicable. It was like he opened a hidden window of a world which existed inside us only. Our surrounding, that we often ignore, Mukherjee took his characters from there only and showed us the mirror. Frankly speaking it was gut-wrenching at some place.     

STRUCTURE

A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee, It fascinated me more because it is written in an unconventional style. Five Protagonist Five Stories, not linked on the plot basis yet connected somehow.

In first segment, Mukherjee introduced a man, who returns to India with his six years old son, he visits Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, trying to revive his roots. Meanwhile he realizes he has become the stranger in his own country. Then something happened that changed the whole situation. Just loved the part where he was trying his best to save his kid from witnessing this grim situation of India.

In Second Segment, a London based son (unnamed) visiting his parents in Bombay, he has come for local research on Indian cooking as he is going to write some regional cuisine book. Here he met Renu, who cooked food for his parents, Suddenly he started to take interest in their lives and realized the gap of these two classes, how the renu’s past unfolded, it was really heart storming. You read those characters and trying to identify various faces into our own surrounding, that's the impact of Mukherjee’s Characters’ Arc.

When it comes to third segment, it would fascinate you the most and if you are four-legged angel’s lover then it will be heart wrenching read. Mukherjee unpacked the emotion of fear and love while revealing his quaint characters especially baby bear, Raju and his owner lakshman, how he tried to get him ready and trained for another source of income. There was so much to read between the lines, those pauses provoked you to read quickly with a curiosity—what will happen next with baby bear?   

In Forth segment, you meet a girl who is trying to alleviate her social condition, in her own possible ways. Her struggle for existence seemed so apt in current scenario. It is always hard to read about underprivileged characters. Yet soothing to your soul cause they come up with hope at last, to a better future. And you feel inspired of after experiencing their will to survive.  

Last segment of this book, leaves you with myriad of questions, If you unintentionally obstruct the freedom of others, gradually it effects our concept of belonging and loss. In Neel Mukherjee’s word—the sense of migration.

All in all, You could read the book, you could close it with great relief but you could hardly get rid of its deeply-woven characters. I have no words to praise Mukherjee enough. Just loved the way Mukherjee narrates his stories. Sometimes it feels so engrossing that you found yourself enveloped into his  world only. Extraordinaire!  

CORE

When we heard of any abroad based Indian author, it is presentiment that he would have written about Cooking or Migration, more so ever the complications he had to face while changing countries and all that nostalgia especially Maa Ke Haath Ka Kadi-Chawal. 

Here, Mukherjee tried to derange this league and coming up with a new concept of Migration. He made me rethink the definition of it. How could we attach the with migration thing only, while migration is a state of mind that we usually sensed here in India only. And this is the core of Neel Mukherjee’s A State of Freedom. 

In our lives we often migrate through our social class, thought-level process, and financial condition. Of course, A State of Freedom would not be an easy read. It will move you, along with doubts, expression of freedom  and trouble your mind till the last. A State of Freedom is a portrait of our own existence. Worth every moment. 

READER’s MOMENT

Something about the urgency of the swarming and the indescribable sound that emanated from that swiftly engorging clot of people, a tense noise between buzzing and truculent murmuring, instantly transmitted the message that a disaster had occurred. Otherwise how else would the child have known to ask, ‘Baba, people running, look. What’s happening there?’ And how else could the driver have answered, mercifully in Hindi, ‘A man’s just fallen from the top of that building under construction. A labourer. Instant death, poor man.’

He had refused to translate, had tried to pull his son back from craning his neck out, but as the queue of cars moved forward, through a chance aperture in the hive of people around the death, he saw, for the briefest of flashes, a patch of dusty earth stained the colour of old scab from the blood it had thirstily drunk. Then the slit closed, the car started advancing inch by inch and the vision ended. He saw his son turning his head to continue to stare at the spot. But had he really seen the earth welt like that, or had he just imagined it? There was no way he could ask the boy to corroborate. As soon as he thought that, all the worries came stampeding in: had the child seen it? Was he going to be affected by it? How could he establish if he had without planting the idea in the boy’s head?

‘Who knows what he’ll do? We have never been able to tell what goes through his head. He says he’s going to come back in two years.’ Pause. “Two more years of sending money,” She said, then quickly tried to dispel the burden of the last few words by her usual dismissive tics.

‘I said to him: Stay as long as it takes to finish what you are reading, you don’t need to think of money… but who listens to me?’ the shift in tonal gear this time was to mock-carping, a time-honoured Bengali way of expressing deep affection.

Then, another shift with: “He says he’s going to come back and built me a house. We shall see”

ABOUT AUTHOR

Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. His first novel, A Life Apart , won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and his second novel, The Lives of Others , was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize. He lives in London.

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