Books that shaped me: 05

"Women can never be angry; she can only be neurotic, hysterical or frustrated."

The story of Jaya is not unlike the story of our mothers, sisters, grandmothers; she's the typical Indian housewife whose life revolves around her husband and children. Her life is confined to the roles she has been put in - A daughter, a wife, a daughter-in-law and a mother.

Following a disaster that befalls her 'perfect' family, over the span of a few weeks, Jaya ponders over her life's incidents, going back in time and reliving memories as if it were happening in the present. Jaya tries to find out what went wrong and why. She comes to the realization that her marriage is nothing but a sham; a facade to save her from the beguiling remarks of the society.

"Love? No, I knew nothing of it. I knew only my need of Mohan. And his need of me."

The events that she reminisces introduces new characters that had once or still plays an important part in her life. Some people bring out the good feelings and memories but some bring out ugly and bad truths. Jaya is seen to be going through an emotional turmoil and it seems as if she's facing a mental breakdown.

The title of the book is significant of the chosen silence on Jaya's part. Before her marriage, she is shown to be an assertive woman, expressing her views and opinions clearly but years of subtle subjugation on the part of her husband, her family; even her mother has slowly transformed her into a woman who chooses to stay silent in order to maintain her marriage and other familial relationships.

"It was so much simpler to say nothing. So much less complicated."

Towards the end Jaya realizes that all this time, she has been pointing fingers at others for her unhappiness. She realizes that she has not lived for herself but for others; she realizes that she needs to begin again, trying to make the most of her remaining life. The book ends with an uncertainty but also with a hopeful thought. Jaya is unsure if she can mend things with her husband and with her family but she knows that all she can do is hope for better things.

"We don't change overnight. It's possible that we may not change even over long periods of time. But we can always hope. Without that, life would be impossible. And if there is anything I know now it is this: life has always to be made possible."

This book will make you uncomfortable and heavy with so many emotions. It is full of existentialism and asks the right questions and creates beautiful situational ironies.

Each character, whether they are directly linked to Jaya or not, plays such an important role in building up the plot. I wish I could do justice to the book and the author with my words. All I know is that this book deserves more recognition than it has currently in the Indian reading scenario.

Book Review: Cilka's Journey

TW: Mentions of the holocaust.

The only thing that made ‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’ a worthwhile read for me was the anticipation of the book that followed: Cilka’s Journey. I was very excited about the book because something inside me told me that it’d be a better experience than Lale’s story of survival and love; probably because this time it would be a woman’s account of the horrific history.

Obviously, this book is more carefully written and I could feel that it was an attempt to correct the mistakes made in the first book. The trouble I had with the first book was the absolute disconnect with the characters. In this one, I could at least feel something. Cilka’s horrific experiences did stir up emotions in me. But then again, the fact that it is narrated in the present tense still kept bugging me. Although, the way the narration kept moving back and forth in time made it quite interesting.

Coming to the accuracy of the events behind this book, I am happy that Morris has duly mentioned that this book is mostly fiction based on whatever traces of information she could find regarding the obscure figure of Cecelia Klein. My usual research after completing the book has brought to my attention that there are controversies regarding this book as well. Cecilia’s husband’s actual name was wiped from the story and replaced with a different character named Alexandr. In the Afterword she writes:

“I have not included the name of the man she (Cilka) met in Vorkuta and married, in order to protect the privacy of his descendants,”

This was done later on due to the grievance that Cecilia’s stepson George Kovach (her husband’s son from a previous marriage) put forward when he was approached by Morris and her publishers in order to acquire some pictures of Cecilia and her life after the Siberian Gulag. George, on listening to passages from the book, said that it ‘had nothing to do with the Cecilia that he knew, or her history as she (Cecilia) recounted to him’

I liked the story for how it at least attempts to show a woman’s struggle for survival in a concentration camp as well as the Gulag system but for that I had to treat it just like I would treat any other fictional account and not as a part of history. Nevertheless, I am glad that I read the story of Cilka because it did give me more insight into life after the liberation of the concentration camps. Cilka’s character has been crafted flawlessly, I must say. Morris has tried to build up a character with limited information and for that, she does deserve some praise.

The controversies that I learned after finishing the book did not tamper with the emotions that I felt while reading the book and my respect for a figure such as Cilka still remains the same. I adore and respect her bravery and her dedication towards the people she built connections with; not only in Auschwitz - Birkenau but also in the Siberian Gulag. As the author herself begins the book by saying, “I hope that further details about Cilka and those who once knew her will continue to come to light once the book is published”, I too sincerely hope the same because Cilka Klein/Kovachova and her story deserves to be known to everyone out there.

Pujo, Nostalgia and a very different world.

It is almost September and while the rest of the world remains unmoved; unturned by the sudden change of weather, for a Bengali, it is a time of utmost excitement and anticipation. The countdowns have already begun on every social media platform. The WhatsApp group that remains inactive for the better part of the year is bustling with messages from old friends.

There is no doubt in the fact that Bengalis, wherever they are situated; no matter how young or old; look forward to Durga Pujo like a child waiting for their favorite snack. I am no exception from the crowd. Just like the mother Goddess prepares to come home for a few days, my preparations of coming back home are always done months ahead. Tickets booked; leave application submitted duly at my college office; all the new dresses packed neatly in a suitcase, I always find myself on a train station right before Mahalaya, listening to Birendra Krishna Bhadra’s “Mahisasur Mardini” on Youtube! Apart from the Pujo itself, this has become a ritual for me for the past five years.

But Pujo was not always about homecoming. The very first memory I can recall about Pujo is that we used to wake up to the beats of the dhaak. Wearing new clothes and pandal hopping was no less than a ritual for us. But the way we received Durga Pujo has changed considerably over the years.

As a child, my main aim during Durga Pujo would be to acquire as many new dresses as I could from my parents and relatives. Then there was the constant nagging for the firecrackers and extra money for the toys and the sweets at the yearly fair. As a teenager, I looked forward to just get a glimpse of the pretty boy volunteering for Ashtami’s Pushpanjali. And if I were feeling more ambitious, all my efforts would go in trying to get him to help me out with the flowers meant for the Goddess’ feet. ‘Ashtamir prem’ used to be the most talked-about topic among giggly groups of teenagers of which I would always try to be a part. As an adult, I look back on these silly memories I have of pujos that have gone by with a similar vigor that I have for my mother’s delicious cooking and the congregation at my friends’ house. And over these 23 pujos of my life, one thing has remained the same: My love for the traditions and the customs that remind me of the fact that being old-school is not that bad. 

Pujo for most of us Millennials is not really about religion or faith. It is more about reminiscence and nostalgia; it’s about meeting friends and family that we haven’t met in months or years. ‘Pujor adda’ is a real thing for Bengalis all over the world and any outsider might be surprised at the range of topics we can have! It’s a celebration nonetheless; for believers and non - believers alike.

And just like the end of every good thing, Durga Pujo ends with the Goddess going away to her beloved husband, promising us to return again next year. So we all hide our pain and sorrow of going back to our mundane lives in faraway cities by chanting ‘Asche bochor aabar hobe’ although we’re not quite sure if we’d be able to keep that promise. We know that the goddess will keep hers though. So even in a rapidly changing, covid - spreading world, the Goddess came and went last year; although rather quite silently and most of us decided to be better people and not go out. Some of us couldn’t give up on the temptation but inwardly we all hoped that we’d be able to celebrate in a better and a healed world in the coming year. So last year’s ‘Asche bochor aabar hobe’ was chanted a little louder and with a little more hope.

Can we call it a post-pandemic world yet? I’m not so sure. But it is a different world, anyhow. Most of our friends and families have fortunately been vaccinated and that is something to be celebrated for sure. With the world slowly opening up, we will be coming back home for the Pujo again but some of us might come back with a heavy heart this year, knowing that their group pictures this Pujo will have a few missing spaces: probably a friend, or a parent, a sibling, or any other beloved family member.

The question that circles my mind every now and then is: will Pujo remain the same even after we have lost so much?

I’m not looking for an answer to that question yet because I don’t know if I am prepared; for the answer might just break my heart. But I am hopeful that we’ll move past the bad things and keep the memories of the departed alive in our hearts. This year I plan to laugh a little more and walk an extra mile to see a pandal because, in an uncertain world, we never know when we are doing something for the last time.

For Venus: A Musing.

"ভেবে দেখেছো কি তারা রাও যত আলোকবর্ষ দূরে, তারও দূরে, তুমি আর আমি যাই ক্রমে সরে সরে।"

On rare evening skies, you can see Venus twinkling down at us like a star. It feels pretty close but the Earth and Venus are not close; are they? They are light years apart; to be precise, 0.0024 light years. It might feel negligible but in kilometres it comes down to 154.3 million kilometres.

And while the poets still write about the unrequited love of the Earth and the Moon, on evenings like these, I often think about you, Venus. I think about how we feel awfully further apart with each passing day; each passing year. We're becoming a memory in each others' minds; or a notification hurriedly swept away on our phones. We're here and this is what dead poets have referred to as oblivion. This is how we end; going further and further apart; not an 'almost' anymore.

But on such evenings when I spot you in the sky twinkling as if smiling that broken toothed smile of yours, I think of us and the time of our almost perfect, almost happy story. Our 'almost' might be breathing its last but dying embers are also capable of providing heat, aren't they?

"ना जाने कोई, कैसी हैं ये ज़िंदगानी, ज़िंदगानी; हमारी अधूरी कहानी।"

(Probably the only song that will make its way to you without being lost in translation)

#random_musings #evening_skies

(Disclaimer: The picture used here is not mine. All credits to the person who uploaded this on Instagram)

Book Review: The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

TW: Mentions of Holocaust.

Just as I finished the book, I began my research and I am still reeling from all the information that I have gathered about the book and its people. So, I can’t promise you the best of the reviews around here but I can certainly help you decide whether you’d want to pick this book up or not.

I have been eyeing this book for more than a year but never did it occur to me to read its blurb or a review. I think it’s partly because I assumed this would be like the other holocaust fiction I have read so far. I certainly didn’t expect it to be a love story of two Holocaust survivors.

So definitely, this book is based on true anecdotes derived from The Tattooist of Auschwitz named Lali Sokolov (Named in the book as Lale). It is about how he met Gita Furman (Gisela Fuhrmannova), another prisoner in the Auschwitz - Birkenau concentration camp, and how they fell in love with each other and survived the holocaust because of the Russian army invading the camps and releasing the prisoners back in 1945.

So what went wrong while I was reading?

I had a hard time connecting with the characters. The narration is in the third person and is in the present tense for some weird reason. I failed to understand such an implication. There were obviously some lapses in the narration of the story as Morris herself admits to towards the end of the book, in a section titled ‘Postscript’. She writes, and I quote, “He told his story piecemeal, sometimes slowly, sometimes at bullet - pace and without clear connections between the many, many episodes.”

Hence, I have come to the conclusion that it was a very tough job to extract information from an aging and dying man, telling a story of an event that happened around 60 years ago. Not to mention, Holocaust survivors often have trouble remembering a lot of details about their lives inside the camps. The sheer trauma makes them really forgetful of the incidents many times.

But what really, really bugged me was the fact that the narration could have been made better regardless. Since Morris has mentioned right at the beginning of the book that ‘it is not an authoritative record of the events of the holocaust’ implying that she did take creative liberties in creating more characters and placing them in situations where they were not, she could have explored more on the character arcs of both Lale and Gita and maybe some other crucial characters.

I have been frantically reading articles and reviews on the internet about the book and how it came to be published and I have come across an article from The Guardian (you can find the link down below) that lists the factual inaccuracies in the book and there are not one but several such incorrect information and incidents that have no historical basis. Morris has defended all of it in a newer addition to the reprint of the book but I still found it bothersome because the book mentions that it is ‘based on the powerful true story of Lale Sokolov’. She could have just passed it on as ‘Derived from the true incidents as narrated by Lale Sokolov’ and it would have still been acceptable to history nerds like me!

The fact that young readers might be misled through this book is actually very bothersome. They might not know how to distinguish fact from fiction and might read this book and believe the incidents just like they are mentioned. I don’t think that is desirable since the holocaust still remains the most debated topic of world history and it would be better if everyone is educated with the correct information that is available on official sites.

Coming to the part that I enjoyed the most in this book: the pictures and the personal anecdotes of Gary Sokolov; Lali and Gita’s son. He talks about how their past experiences shaped his parents as more compassionate human beings, giving so much value to family life and advocating to live one’s life to the fullest because we never know what might happen. By the time I finished the book, I was kind of misty-eyed; I am not gonna lie. Surely, this book is a story of hope, survival, and love. It is moving to know about Lale and Gita’s undying love and devotion for each other. But the fictional account itself failed to propagate it to me.

Heather Morris’ own experiences of visiting Lale’s hometown (Krompachy) and the Auschwitz - Birkenau camp are also insightful towards the experiences of the people that once lived the horror of the holocaust.

All in all, I think I will forever be conflicted about this narrative but I am really excited to start with Cilka’s story, which is the sequel to the book.

Important links: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/07/the-tattooist-of-auschwitz-attacked-as-inauthentic-by-camp-memorial-centre

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/bestselling-tattooist-of-auschwitz-love-story-blurs-facts-experts-allege/amp/

You can find the shorter version of this review on my Instagram page:

https://www.instagram.com/the.boi.poka/

Book Review: Imaginary Maps.

Literature has long been used as a tool for resistance and the correct representation of people and societies that do not generally find themselves includedwithin the mainstream society. Such writings aim towards the upliftment of the said minority societies. It is what critics have often referred to as “writing one’s way to power”. Imaginary Maps by Mahashweta Devi is one such work that brings out the oppression of the colonizers and the inherent prejudice and cultural bias of people belonging to the upper class; people much like you and me; who have never really struggled for anything.

For people who don’t know who Mahashweta Devi is, she is considered to beone of the prominent faces of India’s Adivasi movement. She was a Bengali activist and writer who devoted her whole life to the empowerment of the tribal people of West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Chattisgarh regions. Her works are primarily in Bengali but they have been widely translated into other Indian languages as well as in English.

Imaginary Maps is a collection of three short stories although the second and third are often considered novelettes. They were translated from individual works written in Bengali by renowned literary critic and translator Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.

The book opens with an interview of the author that was conducted by the translator herself. The interview creates a premise for the readers as to what they should be expecting in her works. Mahashweta Devi talks about her journey as an activist and how her travels in the obscure forest and hilly regions of Bengal, MP, and Chattisgarh led her to create characters in her stories. She emphasizes that these characters are not mere fictional descriptions but such characters can actually be found in the tribal villages that she has spent her life in, interacting and working with them. The translator’s note by Spivak helps the reader in situating the stories into a historical context since most Indian and Western readers are expected to be unfamiliar with the tribal experiences. Both the author’s interview and the translator’s note were very insightful for me.

 

Coming to the three stories, the first one is titled ‘The Hunt’. The original Bengali title of the story is ‘Shikar’. The story is about tribal women’s struggle for survival but the story of Mary Oraon could also easily be the story of every woman in our country where her privileges - economic, political, and sexual - are determined by and judged by the dominant cultural perspectives. It discusses in detail the issue of sexual violence and power that upper caste men tend to exert on tribal women. Mary Oraon has been portrayed as a powerful character, hardened by her circumstances as she takes matters of her sexual freedom into her own hands.

‘Douloti, the bountiful’ is probably one of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever read about the subjection of women who are forced into sexual labor as a way of paying back monetary loans given to them and their families by men in power. The second story gives more insight into the bonded labor system that is still prevalent in the tribal villages. The character of Douloti acts as a sharp contrast to Mary Oraon and her story marks the real position of a helpless tribal woman in Indian society.

‘Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha’ is the third story and is a more factual account of the workings of a fictional tribal village. It was surely a compelling narrative but with each page, I started feeling more and more disconnected from the characters because frankly, there are too many of them to keep a track of. Nevertheless, the story presents an appropriate account of the culture and ways of the indegenious people, their beliefs and the realities in which they continue to exist even when their identity is often almost negated by the rest of our country.

You can read the shorter version of this review on my Instagram page. The link is given down below:

Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale.

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays in the maze.”

I am not going to introduce the author or the book in this review. I think everyone has heard of this book because of the Hulu Series that it was adapted into around four years ago. And Margaret Atwood is a household name when it comes to Proto feminist and feminist fiction. I also do not wish to give the plot of the book to people who are looking forward to reading this.

The Handmaid’s Tale, although, is a Dystopian fiction, or rather a Speculative Fiction as the author prefers to call it. For people who don’t know what speculative fiction is, it is a genre that explores elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nature, or the present universe.

I have been moved by a number of books in this lifetime but very few books have ended up scaring me. The Handmaid’s Tale is one such book that has kept me up at night thinking about it. If I could describe the book using one word, it would be ‘gripping’. From the very first page, you will get sucked into the world of Ofred and the other handmaids like her.

The language is terse and compact and employs brief sentences. There are a lot of full stops which many might find annoying but I didn’t. I think it added that extra element of suspense and fear. The narration is fragmented too. Ms. Atwood’s narrator is what we literature students call ‘an unreliable narrator’. Ofred often skips from one train of thought to another. She gives half descriptions of incidents and although that is a brilliant technique to write a Dystopian novel, it also makes the narrative very hard to follow. I had the most trouble with such a narration because it broke my flow a bit. Nonetheless, the storyline is pretty fast-paced.

A Goodreads review of this book bashes it on the basis of logical realities that it fails to gratify. It said, and I quote, “Societies don’t change overnight.” But I think they do. With the Talibani invasion, we have been proved that things can and do change for the worse and such things do happen quickly. Although the likelihood of such premises to occur in powerful nations like America is pretty low, I must agree. But who knows? The way we have been witnessing drastic changes in the world order over the past few years, one can only wonder. We may not have written rules on the subjugation of women, but every day women of the world (even first world countries) are made to feel the difference of their gender in various sectors of life. We may not have an autocratic government yet that makes women property of the men and the state, only to be used for reproduction purposes, but women all over the world are still denied abortion rights and god knows whatnot. Hence, this book didn’t quite feel like dystopia to me. It just felt like a prophecy of sorts; a dark future that awaits us. 

You can read this review and many other such reviews on my Instagram page. Here's the link:

https://www.instagram.com/the.boi.poka/