Love

The Kitchen God’s Wife

Amy Tan’s books are based on the lives and experiences of her parents and relatives, who had migrated to the US from China. She was born in Oakland in California and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has written several books The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Her novels serve as cultural documents that describe the immigrant experience in terms of communality and identity. They contain the customs and rituals of China that might get lost in the new country in the process of cultural assimilation.

The Kitchen God’s Wife (1991) is her second novel and presents a mother-daughter relationship complicated by secrets- the mother withholds information about the daughter’s real parentage while the daughter hides her progressive multiple sclerosis from her mother. The novel begins in the present time when the daughter Pearl is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Then the story moves to the past as Winnie, the mother talks about her first marriage in China to a pilot named Wen Fu. All these secrets come out only because Auntie Helen, Winnie’s friend, who thinks that she is dying of a brain tumour, threatens to expose the secrets of both mother and daughter.

Winnie had lost her mother when she was a child and was brought up by her uncle’s family. She discloses her sorrowful past, her unhappy marriage, the deaths of her three children, her meeting Jimmy Louie, her escape from her first marriage and her marriage to Jimmy, whom Pearl calls father. Her bitter experiences at home after her mother’s escape (or death, she does not know the truth) make her angry towards her father. Later, when her marriage is fixed, her father asks her to spend a week with him. He asks her opinion about a painting in his study that she used to dislike. Then he adds: I liked this in you; so unafraid to say what you thought. Then he asks her present opinion on the painting and as she explains why she likes it now, he says:

From now on, he said at last with a stern look, you must consider what your husbands opinions are. Yours do not matter so much anymore (178).

During her times of trouble, she is helped by Auntie Du, Jimmy Louie and Helen. She was like the Kitchen God’s wife, who got no credit for her faithfulness and loyalty to her husband. Winnie, however decides to move and discards the image of the Kitchen God’s wife from her home because she feels that now that she has divorced her husband Wen Fu, this God has no value for her.

Once the secrets are out, both women try to come to terms with what they are entrusted with. Winnie wants to take Pearl to China to find a cure for her incurable disease. She brings the altar that Auntie Du had left for Pearl and finds a new goddess for it, a goddess with no name, obviously a factory error. She names the goddess Sorrowfree and tells Pearl:

But sometimes, when you are afraid, you can talk to her. She will listen. She will wash away everything sad with her tears. She will use her stick to chase away everything bad. See her name: Lady Sorrowfree, happiness winning over bitterness, no regrets in this world. Of course, it’s only superstition, just for fun. But see how fast the smoke rises- oh, even faster when we laugh, lifting our hopes higher and higher (532).

Tan portrays the miserable life of Winnie, who leaves China in search of a new life. She shows the patriarchal Chinese society that values boys over girls and does nothing when a man hits his wife in public. There is no one to stand up for the woman as it is considered to be her fate. Tan also critiques the generation gap that comes out of the prejudices that the old and the young feel toward each other. In the novel, the mother-daughter relationship becomes warm only when all secrets are let out and the prejudices overcome.

Amazing Resilience

What will you do if you are diagnosed with cancer at the age of 25? Lance Armstrong was not made to quit, but to fight.

In his inspirational memoir, Lance Armstrong, an American cyclist traces his struggle with cancer, life and the bike. It's not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life celebrates the undaunted courage and resilience of the human soul.

Lance Armstrong was born on September 18, 1970 at Plano, Texas in USA. He is the second rider to win the Tour De France titles in five consecutive years from 1999 to 2003.

He began his career as a cyclist in 1992 when he joined the Motorola Team. He won stages of the Tour De France in 1993 and 1995 but withdrew from three of four Tours attempted from 1993 to 1996.

Immediately after the 1996 Tour, Armstrong was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. After a series of combats with cancer through surgery and chemotherapy, he came to back into life fighting all odds against his survival.

He made a dramatic comeback by winning the Tour of Luxembourg in 1998. Next year, he attempted the Tour De France and became the second American to win the title for an American team. In 2003 he won his fifth consecutive Tour de France, thereby setting his name against the cycling champion Miguel Indurain.

A moving tale about life and survival, written in a direct style stating the facts, this book is a token of hope against the killer cancer. He fought cancer with the same spirit that he showed in mastering the bike on difficult terrain and emerged champion.

Life

Pensiamento Fantastico: The Strange Library

 The novel The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami narrates the story of a boy on a visit to the library. He is a dutiful reader and library-user who returns his books on time. He wants to find out how taxes were collected in the Ottomon empire and because such a thought strikes his mind, he wants to find out more about it. On enquiring about it, he is directed to a special section of the library. 

 

He meets a strange old man who assists him by bringing him three thick tomes on the subject-The Ottoman Tax System, The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, and Tax Revolts and Their Suppression in the Ottoman Turkish Empire- and lets him read them on the condition that he should sit in the library and read them. 

He tells the old man that his mother will get upset if he doesn’t return home on time just like the time when he was bitten by a big black dog. The old man is furious that the boy wants to go home in spite of the assistance that he has provided and reminiscences about the time when he was a boy. The buy promises to sit and read for thirty minutes and he is taken to a “Reading Room”, an enormous labyrinth in the basement of the library. 

He meets  a sheep man who makes good doughnuts and obeys all the orders of the Old man. He discovers that the Old man wants to eat his brains and when he asks the reason for that the sheep man replies because brains packed with knowledge are yummy and grainy at the same time. 

A girl comes in bringing him a sumptuous meal and he is struck by her beauty. She can only speak with her hands and she tells him that her vocal cords were destroyed when she was a child. He finds that the library has turned out be a prison and he is not able to get out. He finds that the sheep man and the beautiful girl belong to two different worlds and that at times their worlds collide and overlap with each other. 

He worries about his mother and his pet magpie. As if to make his fears true he is held a prisoner and his pet magpie is eaten by a dog before his very eyes.  What happens to the boy? 

A little Kafkaesque and absurd, the novel captures an atmosphere similar to The Trial and brings in a sense of terror to the act of  visiting a library. In spite of the  way in which it portrays absurdity, this illustrated novella can make you feel hungry with its pictures of delicacies! 

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Stargazing with you

Though there might not be many words and many hurdles to jump over, this heart still wants to watch the stars fade away all along with you.Often it dreams of flights across all its mazes just to find solace in the comfort of your presence and at times, it feels that the time has passed and the magic gone. Despite of constant mistakes while wandering, it seeks within itself an answer, to wait patiently for you to come back again into this weary life. 

May be this heart would hum a new song or dance a new dance, a never-seen wonder of rejoice when you come home to me as my  soul friend. Till that day, this wanderer searches on many faces a semblance of its dream, feels down when it finds nothing in common and ends every journey with heavy feet and grim thoughts. Yet, with a spring of delight it waits on every corner just to see your face in every dream and looks forward to the surprises that life holds in its sudden trips and turns, turning a deaf ear to the noises that are around it the whole time.

@couple goals

Love notes from far

This night may be dark and quite long, my dear,
But I am up waiting for you to come home to me;
In the meanwhile, I take up my journal and pen,
And write down a few thoughts that cross my mind.

How did we begin this history of you and me once?
How did I learn to send love notes to you so often?
For when the muse comes, some words make no sense,
They often cut an old vein or punch an old pain.

But when your heartache travels from distant lands,
When your heartbeats reach me at this hour of night,
I cannot lie down on my bed peacefully any longer,
I think of that day when you looked at me surprised.

For in one moment, a nameless feeling overruled all,
Now, I have many lone nights to lull myself to sleep.