The Rain

In between her sobs,
She tells her story,
My hysterical friend,
The rain.

How she had waited
For years
For her true love
To come back.

She remembers
How he forgot
Or never bothered
Much about her.

How her longings
How her love
She hid behind
Grey veils.

When she could
No longer bear
Her sadness
She burst to tears.

Once in a while,
She weeps inconsolable,
Abandoned and lone,
Through the night.

She sobs and chokes
Her long silver hair
All scattered
Over her frail body.

In between her sobs,
She tells her story,
My lone friend,
The rain.

A House for Mr. Biswas

He thought of the house as his own, though for years it had been irretrievably mortgaged. And during these months of illness and despair he was struck again and again by the wonder of being in his own house, the audacity of it: to walk in through his own front gate, to bar entry to whoever he wished, to close his doors and windows every night, to hear no noises except those of his family, to wander freely from room to room and about his yard, instead of being condemned, as before, to retire the moment he got home to the crowded room in one or the other of Mrs. Tulsi’s houses, crowded with Shama’s sisters, their husbands, their children. As a boy he had moved from one house of strangers to another; and since his marriage he felt he had lived nowhere but in the houses of the Tulsis, at Hanuman House in Arwacas, in the decaying wooden house at Shorthills, in the clumsy concrete house in Port of Spain. And now at the end he found himself in his own house, on his own half-lot of land, his own portion of the earth. That he should have been responsible for this seemed to him, in these last months, stupendous.

A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) is V.S. Naipaul’s third novel and deals with the life of Mohun Biswas, an Indian settler in Trinidad and his struggles to have a house of his own. Born the wrong way and considered to be unlucky by his parents, his prank leads to the death of his father. His mother and the four children are separated, Mohun taken into the care of his aunt Tara and her husband Ajodha. To earn a living, he works as a painter of signs and falls in love with Shama of the Tulsi family.

The Tulsi family is a joint family with the mother Mrs. Tulsi, her two sons, her sister and family, her fourteen daughters, their husbands and children, all living under the same roof. He longs for a house of his own and builds two, one of which blows off in the storm and the other catches fire. His struggles to have a house of his own that be “unaccomodated and unhoused” is the theme of the novel.

After years of poverty and humiliation, Biswas gets a job as a news reporter and his fortunes change. He saves money and when his son Anand is humiliated by Owad, the present Tulsi patriarch, he buys a house and takes Shama and his four children there. The house has so many faults that he did not notice but then it is his own and he dies there.

The novel portrays the lives of Hindus in the West Indies and the joint family system is humorously portrayed especially the nicknames that Mohun Biswas devises for his mother-in-law and his brother-in-laws. At the same time, there is pathos in the rootlessness and humiliation that a poor migrant has to suffer in an alien land. A House for Mr. Biswas combines both laughter and tears to depict a man’s attempt to find his self and his own "privacy and space" as Naipaul himself says in his BBC Interview.

Recompense

For every word of harshness that you hear,
There is equally a word of love somewhere.
For the darkest hours of the wakeful night,
At the end of which is a beautiful dawn.

For the loss of innocence of childhood,
There is the growing maturity of years.
For the loss of a life near river green,
There is lot more sunshine to equal.

For the trenches that this life fell into
There are the new scales that it climbs.
For the years lost in search of dreams,
There are these words pn a virtual page.

Which brings in daily, strange comfort,
For every friend lost, that of strangers.

THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT: PAULO COELHO AND HIS BOOKS

A warrior of light values a child’s eyes because they are able to look at the world without bitterness. When he wants to find out if the person beside him is worthy of his trust, he tries to see him as a child would.  (The Manual of the Warrior of Light).

Paulo Coelho, the literary alchemist, was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in August 1947. He was a highly successful songwriter for the rock star Raul Seixas until he met with his mentor who advised him to go on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. This walk changed his life and he converted to Christianity. This life-defining journey forms the theme of his first novel The Pilgrimage, published in 1987. He advocates through this book that “the extraordinary is always found in the way of the common people."

Coelho’s second book The Alchemist has become a universally admired modern classic because of its allegorical nature. It describes the journey of a young Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago to the pyramids of Egypt in search of a treasure and the philosophy of the book is lies in these lines: “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

Brida is Coelho's third novel and narrates the story of young woman who experiments with sorcery and other magical traditions. In this novel, he dealt with the theme of the feminine face of God, which was a strange idea to most people.

The Valkyries is about the exorcism of personal demons and discovering one's strength. This autobiographical novel narrates how Paulo and his wife Chris go on a spiritual quest to the arid Mojave Desert to meet the Valkyries, a group of warrior women who travel the desert on motorcycles.

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Veronika Decides to Die and  The Devil and Miss Prym are part of a trilogy called "On the Seventh Day". This trilogy is a week in the life of someone ordinary to whom something extraordinary happens.

The Fifth Mountain is based on the story of Elijah from the Bible and explores the prophetic questioning of authority, rebellion and liberation. At the same time the novel is a powerful metaphor of human self-confidence and strong desire for self-fulfillment by helping other humans.

The Manual of the Warrior of Light is a collection of Paulo Coelho's teachings summed up into one volume. It includes proverbs, extracts from the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, the book of Chuang Tzu, the Talmud and various other sources, and is written in the form of short philosophical passages.

Eleven Minutes narrates the story of Maria, a young girl from a remote village of Brazil, who goes to seek her fortune in Switzerland, only to find that reality is lot harder than she expected. But when she least expects it, she experiences love.

The Zahir is about a bestselling novelist who enjoys his luxurious and peaceful life, until the inexplicable disappearance of his wife from their Paris home. Coelho compares a marriage with a set of railway tracks which always stay together but cease to come any closer. This novel is journey from a stagnant marriage and love to the realization of unseen but ever increasing gravity between the two souls.

In Like the Flowing River, Coelho offers his personal reflections on a wide range of subjects from archery and music to elegance, travelling and the nature of good and evil. He shows us how life has lessons for us in the greatest, smallest and most unusual of experiences.

The Witch of Portobello starts with the death of the main character Athena and is narrated from the perspectives of many people who knew her. They each provide a different view of her, describing not only what they saw and experienced but adding their own impressions, interpreting her through their own beliefs and fears.

The Winner Stands Alone is set at Cannes during the Film Festival and narrates the epic drama and tension between the three main characters- Igor, Hamid and Gabriela in a 24 hour period. He offers a novel full of suspense, a mirror image of the world we live in, where our commitment to luxury and the success of any cost often prevents us from hearing what the heart actually whispers. He points out that money, power and fame are what drives most people.

Aleph is an autobiographical novel that depicts his search for spiritual renewal and growth. Coelho decides to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world. This journey helps him to open up to friendship, love, faith and forgiveness and be stronger in the challenges of life.

Coelho has written more than twenty novels and his recent work Manuscript found in Accra deals with the story of an Englishman who discovers a manuscript that figures an ancient alchemist named Copt, who answers questions of a crowd who are gathered inside the city gates of Jerusalem in 1099. What is success?” poses the Copt: “It's being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.” His works focus on the discovery of the self as means of spiritual fulfillment.

A tear

The light of your laughter,

The wonder in your eyes,
The pride of your work,

What all have you lost,

What all did the brutes
Wrest away from you!

 We will give you the tears,

We will remember your life,
We will keep you from slander,

But then what else can we give

Who have no power to return
What you lost- a promising life.

 

A Spring without voices

On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.

 

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring published in 1962 was about the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the environment . It is a fable on the environmental apocalypse of the modern age. The title denotes the silence that comes over nature as the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird species have become extinct.It was a spring without voices.

Carson, a marine biologist pointed out that the reason for this destruction of the environment in the United States was the uncontrolled use of organic pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and dieldrin used to control pest insects in agriculture. Though these compounds led to agricultural benefits, they posed serious threats to animal and human life as Carson proves by giving scientific evidence.

This book was a clarion call for greater awareness about the great destruction that human beings were causing to the Earth.

The Name of the Rose

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. This library was perhaps born to save the books it houses, but now it lives to bury them (Eco, 396).

Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose is a historical murder mystery set in a medieval monastery in fourteenth century Italy. What moves the story forward is the attempt of a medieval Benedictine monastery to preserve the aura of knowledge within its boundaries. Such an attempt to keep a work of art hidden, in this case, the second book of Aristotle’s Poetics, is not just for preserving the aura of arcane knowledge but not to destroy the order of the Benedictines. The book, which is believed never to have written or lost is in the library of the monastery but its existence is a secret as the library is not open to outsiders and functions by strange customs of secrecy. There are many secrets related to the library, which nobody know mainly because only the librarian knows about the contents of the library. The monks can only ask for titles but are not allowed in the place where books are kept. The library makes copies of the rare books with the help of illuminators and scribes but then the books are given only for that purpose. Murders happen because of this secret book of the ancients on laughter is lusted after by the scholarly monks. To investigate the murders, a Franciscan monk William of Baskerville arrives at the monastery along with his novice Adso of Melk. This monk, in a very Sherlock Holmes- like fashion deduces the truth of the matter from accidental incidents.

Nissim Ezekiel's "Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S"

Friends,

our dear sister

is departing for foreign

in two three days,

and

we are meeting today

to wish her bon voyage.


You are all knowing, friends,

What sweetness is in Miss Pushpa.

I don't mean only external sweetness

but internal sweetness.

Miss Pushpa is smiling and smiling

even for no reason but simply because

she is feeling.


Miss Pushpa is coming

from very high family.

Her father was renowned advocate

in Bulsar or Surat,

I am not remembering now which place.


Surat? Ah, yes,

once only I stayed in Surat

with family members

of my uncle's very old friend-

his wife was cooking nicely…

that was long time ago.


Coming back to Miss Pushpa

she is most popular lady

with men also and ladies also.


Whenever I asked her to do anything,

she was saying, 'Just now only

I will do it.' That is showing

good spirit. I am always

appreciating the good spirit.


Pushpa Miss is never saying no.

Whatever I or anybody is asking

she is always saying yes,

and today she is going

to improve her prospect

and we are wishing her bon voyage.

Now I ask other speakers to speak

and afterwards Miss Pushpa

will do summing up.


By Nissim Ezekiel

A True Gift in Green

To know the mind of woman, he has to know first, the mind of the land.

Sarah Joseph is one of the celebrated women novelists of Malayalam literature and she has he has received numerous awards and honours such as Kendra Sahitya Academy Award, Kerala Sahitya Academy Award, Vayalar Award, Cherukad Award and O.V. Vijayan Sahitya Puraskaram. Her Malayalam novel Aathi was published simultaneously with its English translation Gift in Green by Valson Thampu in 2011. In her interview with Valson Thampu, Joseph speaks about how she modelled the land of Aathi on a island Valanthakkadu in Ernakulam district of Kerala. She was amazed by the lives of the people who subsisted in fishing, picking mussels and farming Pokkali rice. They earned as much as Rs. 300 a day picking mussels but never fished for more than that as they count on the fish and mussels as their fixed deposits. The author praises the subsistence perspective of the people of Valanthakkadu by basing a novel on their simple life.

The land of Aathi is pristine covered with water on all sides. The people lived the water-life, drawing sustenance from the water and the fields. Their water-life meant that their daily immediate needs were met from earth and water as they could collect enough food to feed the whole family just by working till noon everyday. The mangroves that surrounded the land of Aathi contained plenty of fish, which the people used to catch with their bare hands. During high tide, these fish and prawns were carried across to the rice fields, from where the people caught them. They also knew the secret of growing rice in salty waters. In Aathi, people from the ancient times lived the water-life, harvesting only what they need from nature.

The destruction of the pristine, land, water and its people starts with the advent of Kumaran, a business tycoon who sees in Aathi, the means of making money. With his coming, the modes of living such as the water-life and farming are replaced by construction of buildings resulting in pollution, creation of toxic waste and destruction of natural habitat. The novel also shows the environmentalist concerns of the writer as she describes the present-day issues of Kerala such as water contamination, lack of proper waste disposal systems, dumping of biomedical waste in rivers and waterbodies, the use of endosulfan to ensure profit in farming, the problems of landfilling, destruction of marshes disposal of plastic and biomedical waste and so on. However, nature cannot be exploited and contaminated forever and the waters of Aathi rise in a flood and purify the whole land.

A decoration

Cat on a cold tin roof

Every picture speaks a story. This photo was snapped through the window on a cold day! I was coming down the stairs and saw that our neighbour's cat was napping on the tin roof, next to a madal (dried cocunut branch). This is the same villain who used to steal into our home and cause a lot of havoc.

The Flight!

The Flight

The Art of the Perfect Roti

Styles in cooking differ; as many styles are available as there are people. This is one lesson that I learnt once I got married. For many of the food items that I knew how to cook at home were made differently here and held with amusement as well.

It was strange how a simple task like making a chapattis or a roti can be so different. My mother makes it big and wide as big as the tawa at home. It's soft and my comments were always along the lines that all her anger at people she sublimated in the act of making the dough for chapattis.

Here, at the new place, the rotis were small enough to fit the vessel my new mother-in-law (I mean one and the only mother-in-law) had and she could make it round and soft and full, like the ones shown in the advertisement for atta.

First, my trials at making rotis were met with laughter and my husband would remark:" Do these rotis go to the gym everyday?"My father-in-law said: "Kid, I'm past 65 and my teeth are shaky. If I eat these everyday, most probably I wont even have to visit a dentist". True to what he said, three months after I landed, his tooth fell.

Somehow I kept on making rotis and didn’t give up. Finally in a historical moment that witnessed great applause from all, the roti came out perfectly made and soft. More than my years at the college, these few months in the kitchen were the toughest in history.

New Woman

This soul was once like a huge flame leaping to the skies,

Then it withered, dried and drooped to the very earth;

Sometimes, like Icarus, it leapt out of its many mazes,

But burnt out in the heady dash for total freedom.

 

Then she brought forth a new-born, a swaddled baby

She sang her magnificat of newly found motherhood;

The soul forgot its troubles for a joyous interval

And learnt how to escape the many mazes again.

 

Yet mostly this soul was a single-celled organism,

Cowardly and crawling in this huge universe,

Too silent, too shut out and too withdrawn,

Incapable of learning or making its way around,

 

Sometimes, it longs for the crazy days of yesterday,

When the sun of total freedom had burnt its wings.

A writing woman gathers no fat

Every writer needs a space to write, be it a lap-top or a quiet corner in the room, where you can sit and mull over things, real and unreal, present and past, serious and trivial. That idea of a sacred space can be found in the writings of many women writers, especially Virginia Woolf who spoke of the need for having a room of one's own.

For a woman to write, she needs to be free from the guilt of not doing household chores, unless she is well-off and has one or many house-helps. Otherwise, writing is like walking on tight rope- you might fail to balance the work world, the home world and the world of words. But creating balance comes out of setting priorities in day-to-day life.

Writing is a great relief from the world of stress; it can release lots of tension and keep you occupied with the jigsaw of creating good content. The satisfaction that you derive from writing a page can never be compared to that a well-cooked meal or a sparkling floor as each has its own value in life; but a piece of writing has a lasting value in that a meal disappears in a day or two, depending on the artistic talents of the cook and the floors have to be swept again and again.

Barn-owl in the backyard

New Year Blessing by John O'Donohue

"On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets into you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life."

NOTE: I have re-posted this poem by a Celtic poet John O' Donohue. It's a beautiful blessing and stayed at the first page of my diary last year... 

goat days

Goat Days, written by the Gulf Malayali Benyamin and translated by Joseph Koyillapally, is worth reading and worth remembering as well. Like Yann Martel's Booker-winning Life of Pi, Goat Days captures the ordeals of an innocent man in a hell beyond his imagination.

Najeeb has the typical Malayali dream, of being in the Gulf and sending money home. His desires resemble the luxuries of a Gulf-returned Malayali: “ a gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain”. He lands in Riyadh on a visa sent by his friend's brother-in-law but the life that awaits him there does not even resemble his earlier dream.

He finds himself in a masara tending goats, camels and sheep; working day and nighting; feeding them and milking them; in fact, living like one of them. He forgets even the simple pleasures of his former life such as wasing himself or even the right to privacy while defecating. However, he finds the company of the animals more comforting than that of the cruel and inhuman arbab. He longs for his homeland, the bath in the river, the presence of his family and for rain...When Najeeb breaks out of his masara and runs away, it is a huge step towards the unknown. Like Pi, Najeeb thanks God for being with him during his ordeal.

Readable and memorable, Goat Daysrepresents the ordeals of many Indian immigrants across the Gulf countries, the reality of which is glossed over by the glittering opulence of the few lucky ones. It is surely a slice of real life. May be a goat's life.

Publisher: Penguin

Price: 250/-

Cowrie shells

Once we were both wanderers every day.
We looked at each other and the world;
Picked up cowrie shells from the sands
As we roamed the seashores together.

The shells were of many shapes and sizes,
Smooth like porcelain and treasures;
Much like our words and thoughts then
That exuded much love and many dreams.

We spoke of cowrie shells and the seas,
The words began late but never ended,
Who you were I could never know well,
Condemned to be a wanderer after all.

You remain an enigma now; a stranger with
Whom I spoke of dreams and cowrie shells.

Life in Small Pixels

A life in small pixels,
For an eye that has loved
To wander and stare at life,
As far as it goes,
Without any inherent fervour
Or the joy of life.

Joy of life,
The much-quoted joie de vivre,
Common among all cousins,
Friends and the young,
Somehow found missing,
From the beginning.

Yet the mind knows
And understands fully well;
That this life is mine alone
A sum of all experiences,
Yours and mine,
Bitter sweet.

Your eyes trailing on words
Splashed across the page,
Ah! the magic of that smile,
Cryptic, heavenly and mine,
A moment too momentous,
To capture in small pixels.

What we try to do together
Is to find beauty in the gross
And loveliness in the wordless
Limitless boundless blue skies,
To still the flowing river
Sip the magic of togetherness.

Many more days of silence wait,
Till this rambler can set forth
On faraway adventures across seas,
To watch the red-orange sunset
To feel the foaming waves dash,
Once more against our feet.

Till then, life goes around,
Prisms that capture moments
Made from minutest abstractions,
Versions of beauty around,
A mind in pastel shades
Capturing a life in small pixels.

You and Me

What brought you back to my mind, I do not know
But I do not like the surges of tears that rise,
That still rise though it’s been so many years
Since we walked away from our future happiness.

Words, reasons, explanations I cannot find at all,
But the heart wants to scrawl a few more words,
In that curious hieroglyphic that we had invented,
To encode a secret message just for your eyes.

But then the years have made us so apart
For so long that I do not know you anymore,
Nor the heart’s language or its silences,
Even my own self I hardly recognise anymore.

You have a mirror to look in; so do I have,
What we’ve is more than what could have been

The Black cat with green eyes

Shadows

Your words dance across the pages,

They swirl and twirl and laugh.

Mine are like bits of coal before them,

I hide them away in embarrasment.

When I miss you, I seek their laughter,

Your lightness and your fooling around.

Then I remember that though like coal,

You hold them close to your face.

How else can I put a finger on my joy,

That comes to me during saddest hours.

How else can give a reason for your face,

Dark and long for so many dreadful days,

The dark shadows are still on your face,

Though it's been a long long long time.

One last word

In the bright season of May

years ago our paths diverged;

not that I didn't love you,

yes, I did but there wasn't time.

Time, for us to start afresh

with stubbles of old loves,

for you, with your silences

and me with my clowning...

after the tears wore away

and my heart forgot its pain,

nothing remains of the old,

except a few flashes in words.

But now the world forgets not,

even after years of tears

it brings your name to me

in whispers and laughter.

True love it may have been

No longer live but in words.

Butterfly

The Spirit of Christianity

Once every hundred years Jesus of Nazareth meets Jesus of the Christian in a garden among the hills of Lebanon. And they talk long; and each time Jesus of Nazareth goes away saying to Jesus of the Christian, "My friend, I fear we shall never, never agree. Kahlil Gibran 

The poetry of trees

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky, we fell them down and turn them into paper, that we may record our emptiness. Kahlil Gibran

The Indian Terminator

The world as portrayed by books and movies are fragments of a bigger world, events and people and objects given importance based on one's perspective of life. Jane Austen's world view was influenced by the importance she gave to love and marriage; while George Orwell saw a world that was afflicted by forms of political power; the mainstream commercial movies of Bollywood told love stories, the old wine in many new bottles.


Given the amount of publicity given to the movie, Ra-One was disappointing. The movie is only Bollywood's version of Terminator 2 : Judgment Day though not as good as the orginal. As you start viewing the movie, you are shocked by a kind of comic beginning starring Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt. You feel a surge of disappointment as the movie progresses. The graphics dominate the plot and you feel that may be this movie was made for kids. But the jokes on condoms and poweryoga startle you into realising that it cannot be. As G-One bids farewell to Sonia, you are suddenly reminded of the farewell scene in Terminator 2 : Judgment Day. 


The movie comes alive somewhere in the last 45 minutes and you feel that you have wasted a lot of your valuable weekend time, watching a movie that is badly arranged anyway. The world view of the creator is rather confusing: to defeat a machine you really need another machine. The saving grace is the song "Chamak Challo" that somehow makes up for the entire movie.

Beatrice and Virgil

Yann Martel's novel Beatrice and Virgil is an allegory that represents the Holocaust using animal characters. The novel is about writer's block and has the character of the writer Henry L'Hote talking about his writing experiences and also of his encounter with a taxidermist called Henry. This metafictional novel has it all in terms of its several inserted genres including a play, an essay, a brochure, a short story, extracts from Flaubert's short story "The Legend of Saint Julian Hospitator" , a poem in the form of a list and a set of imaginary situations called Games for Gustav. These inserted genres were written by the taxidermist Henry and later recreated by the writer Henry while on the hospital bed after being stabbed by the taxidermist Henry.


Just as in Life of Pi, Martel manages to create more than one dimension of the story and the story flits back between the story of animal extinction and that of the horrible massacre of the Jews during the Holocaust. Martel, through the voice of the writer Henry remembers the six million Jews who were killed during this historical event of genocide. As survivor testimonies show those who survived were no better than those who perished. Martel brings in echoes of several survivor testimonies including that of Primo Levi.


The animal characters Beatrice and Virgil are named after the poet Dante's guides through heaven and hell in The Divine Comedy, the medieval allegory about the state of the soul. From the innumerable allusions to several allegories, it can be deduced that the allegorical form was deliberately chosen by Martel. The allegory commonly spoke of the state of the soul and also gave lessons about humanity's place in the whole scheme of things. Here, Martel brings in an allegory that can be read in both ways and due to the metafictional nature of the novel, there are clues as to read the allegory in terms of animal slaughter and racial purification. Using this allegory, Martel blurs the line between cruelty to animals and cruelty to fellow-beings, showing a belief in the unity of all beings in the universe and an exhortation to live and let live.

Othappu

The Novel Othappu by the celebrated Malayalam feminist writer Sara Joseph has a strong woman character Margalita. Set against the life of Christian Thrissur, the novel depicts how Margalita, a nun hailing from one of the ancient Syrian Christian families flouts all traditions to fall in love with a Christian priest Roy Francis Kareekan. Their love is made intense by the vows of chastity that both of them have to keep and they throw away everything just to be together. But is breaking all rules to be with the beloved worth the trouble? Which is more important listening to your heart's voice or listening to the world? These are some of the questions posed by the novel.

Instead of creating a melodrama out of a delicate subject of love between a nun and a priest, Sara Joseph has delicately handled it but at the same time creating a very strong woman character before whom every other character pales in comparison. She is like a rock in times of trouble and creates her own identity in a society that has divested of all her previous roles- daughter, sister, believer and nun. For her, "love is joy; the joy of love is God; and when you can keep the joy of love in your heart, the whole world will be at peace and the earth will blossom" as she lives a life of sacrifice with Nanu, an orphan child and her unboby baby in her womb.

The English translation of the novel by Rev. Dr. Valson Thampu and published by OUP is also available as Othappu: The Scent of the Other Side 

Warrior of Light

Warriors of light always keep a certain gleam in their eyes.

 They are of this world, they are part of the lives of other people and they set out on their journey with no saddlebags and no sandals.

They are often cowardly.

 They do not always make the right decisions.

 They suffer over the most trivial things, they have mean thoughts and sometimes believe they are incapable of growing.

 They frequently deem themselves unworthy of any blessing or miracle.

 They are not always quite sure what they are doing here.

 They spend many sleepless nights, believing that their lives have no meaning.

That is why they are warriors of light.

Because they make mistakes.

 Because they ask themselves questions.

Because they are looking for a reason – and are sure to find it.

A tryst with Food: Salt n Pepper Movie Review

The story of romance of the not-so-young, the delicacies that come in one scene after the other ( young viewers, I am not talking about Asif Ali or Mythili) and the unusual songs (I mean AanaKallan), Salt and Pepper , directed by Aashiq Abu is a trendsetter. It combines culinary adventure and realistic depiction of  a love affair that happens  from a misunderstanding.

A misunderstanding is the shortest cut between two hearts, Kahlil Gibran has said . Maya and Kalidasan are unmarried, passionate about food and lead quiet lives. Until a misdirected call connects Maya and Kalidasan and they start talking to each other about their lives and their passion for food.

As the conversations progress, they decide to meet. But both of them are in their late 30s and not so happy about their appearance and decide to send in their young friends. As both of them do the same thing, this twist adds to the comic element resulting in an affair with Manu and Meenakshi, the young friends who come disguised as Maya and Kalidasan.

The songs are amazing especially “Kanamullal” and “Premikumbol”. The most interesting part of the movie, however is how the two foodies share a recipe for baking a multi-layered cake known as Joan’s Rainbow, which was cake made by a loving wife who waited patiently for her husband to come back from WW II. As he was delayed by the four days, she made three layers of strawberry, pistachio and orange flavours and melted the chocolates he brought and poured it on the top. This is the rainbow of love that they had created and which they infuse into the two lovers who create the rainbow magic individually.

The stunning Swetha Menon and the realistic Lal have acted superbly. One unforgettable moment of the movie is when Kalidasan goes for a pennukanal and brings home a cook, played by Babu who has amangaed to break out of his  villain stereotype.

A tryst with food, Salt and Pepper has a feel good effect about it! Hope, for the sake of my friend Swapna from Hyderabad, who loves Kerala food and can’t understand Malayalam, the movie gets remade in Hindi soon so that she can tell me, “Yeah Suni, stop raving about that movie. I have seen it too!”

Cross-roads

Your coffee will be cold, the very words,
That fetched you back to me just now,
When I felt years could erase a memory
That I do not wish to bring up again.

Drawing a boundary separates the terrain
Into many different nations on a map.
But is erasing a person from life the same,
For us who were so much like each other.

Conflicting memories the mind brings back,
One of love, one of hatred, one of desire,
All etched against the summer rains
And cross-roads in our individual lives

Yes, I had taken a lonely path away from you
I remember, drinking coffee.

Eternal Silence

A couple walked past us
On that rainy day
Huddled together.

While you and I
Moved on hurriedly
Drenched in silence.

Your shy eyes lingered
Now and then on me,
Wet and wild with glee.

With throbbing heart
With hungry eyes
I stowed away your magic.

You never said a word
I never said a word.
Only silence and the rain spoke.

When we spoke at last
It was with indifference
To the magic between us.

So threw away the words
And the magic between us
What is left is just silence.

Woe-man

Out of the rib of man, she was created,
The source of life and mother of all men,
(And women), her yoke made heavy
By the first sin of disobedience.

Yes, she was not alone in her sin,
But his paradise was taken away
Though not as condemned as her,
In sinning against the Creator.

Thus sorrow became her fate,
She shrieked as her flesh tore
And brought forth her children
And her husband smiled proudly.

A strange tale is a woman’s
Whose flesh takes a man’s name.

Inspiration from writer Chetan Bhagat

Love at first sight

She stood before the holy place hands folded,
Her face all aglow with the beauty of her heart,
Her eyes closed as she muttered her prayers,
Enough wisdom to live well and nothing else.

Stepping out into the courtyard, her eyes met,
A radiant face, equally aglow with radiance,
Purity and love so much that she forgot herself
Felt as if she was looking in a mirror.

Climbing down the steps, her racing heart,
Flashed to her a future of mutual joys,
Her heart, a butterfly fluttered and flew
As she saw the rituals around the holy fire.

She mused wisdom indeed God has given
To walk away from love at first sight.

Where knowledge is free

 “You and your Google Books”, that’s what my friends keep telling me all the time. A few years earlier, friends teased me about quoting from books and living by some book or the other and planning to write books. 

But now with the changing times, I swear by Google Books. Anything from Literary Theory (I’m a student of English literature; the fascination never ends) to cooking, I find this library extremely useful. 

Even the MLA handbook has a format for Google Book entries. So, this is a season of reading but not in any library but from where I am. Thanks to technology!

Orchids

Trojan Horse

I, dweller of a modern city loves to wander in yours, 
In that enchanted world you collaged out of lores,
The worlds have changed but man is the same ever,
So do your ancient words resonate in my ears.

A Trojan horse means not the same for you and me, 
For you, it was a false step, a free gift regretted.
For me in an age of virtual lives and technology,
It’s a sign that soul is dead, so are god and love.

Starting from an ancient stealth trick of war, 
The modern free gift is across the world,
In the guise of one world and friendship
 To steal, to harm and never to feel remorse. 

What lessons do we learn from Odysseus,
Are the lessons most needed in this world.