OUR MOON HAS BLOOD CLOTS

Just a few days back,I got to know about Nandita Haksar’s book titled ‘The Many Faces Of Kashmiri Nationalism -from the cold war to the present day’ which traces the history of Kashmiri Nationalism through the lives of a Pandit (Sampat Prakash)who became active in politics during the Cold war years and also through the eyes of a Kashmiri Muslim (Mohammad Afzal Guru)who became active in the early days of the Kashmir insurgency.

And my thoughts immediately went to ‘this’ unread book sitting on my shelf from way back and I thought ‘If not now-then when?’ and picked it up.I have just finished reading it.

This is the first-hand account of a Kashmiri Pandit ,Rahul Pandita about the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits.It is narrated as seen through the eyes of Rahul as a fourteen year old and as an adult and describes the way the move impacted the lives of the displaced Pandits from their homeland.The brutality of the torture and killings.The mass massacre.This heartwrenching story is about the violent ethnic cleansing of a community backed by Islamist Militants.About how they had to leave their homes in the valley,seek shelter in refugee camps and spend their lives in exile in their own country.This is a deeply personal story of history,home and loss.

My Views:

This story is the first person account by Rahul Pandita who speaks about his experiences as a Kashmiri pandit and his eventual forcible migration to Dehi in the 1990's.It is a heartbreaking account of a person being forced out of his home.The brutality and horrors they faced,how they were forced to live like refugees in inhuman conditions and forcibly driven out of their homes in the valley to Jammu and elsewhere.He recounts how his father and people from his fathers generation still call it Shahar and still speak of ties that bind them.

It was painful to read about the torture these people went through,constantly living in the shadow of fear.Fearing for their lives,something as basic as that.Watching helplessly as their homes were ruthlessly plundered and destroyed.Pandita says,'I am uprooted in my mind'.He tries to make some sense of home by taking snapshots of his house occupied by someone else,when he returns there years later as an adult.

Reading about all this makes me lose faith in the world.It makes me question everything and view every ‘good’ around me with suspicion and skepticism.

The mass massacres,rapes of innocent,helpless women,being bludgeoned to death,being forced to eat meat when they were non-meateaters,being shamed in public.Where is humanity?The highest form of desecration is an assault on the persons soul.What can be worse than that?And for what?Just because you belong to a different religion or ethnic group?

Pandita talks about how his mother often recalls his home as one with 22 rooms back in the valley.The desperation in her eyes,the hoping till her last breath to go back to that place she called home,that glimmer of hope in her eyes when she talks about it.Everything was too hard to contemplate.It seemed like one colossal mess.

He also goes on to say how the Pandit community have got a raw deal.Even now the funds for the resettlement have been siphoned somewhere else,leaving them in the lurch.

This is Panditas story and his point of view.It was harrowing to read and Im sure terrible to experience.

However Kashmir has been a contentious issue since a very long time.I believe that before anyone voices their opinion about anything they have to listen or be aware of the complete story.An event of such proportions must have surely been witnessed from multiple perspectives.There are two sides to every story and sometimes there may even be multiple points of view to consider before one makes an informed opinion/choice about what ones views are.My knowledge of the Kashmir issue is loosely based on the few newspaper articles Ive read or the news reports Ive viewed on television.Just scraps of information.Just a year back the Pandits demanding resettlement were in the news again.There were a few things I read here which conflicted with something Ive read elsewhere.So even though I strongly condemn the heinous killings and completely empathize with Kashmiri Pandits.I reserve judgement till I have read more and know more. Maybe its about time I pick up Nandita Haksars book.

THE COMPLETE MAUS

This graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman won the 1992 Pulitzer prize and I have been relentlessly pursuing this book ever since I got to know about it.I kept badgering the librarians to get the book for me and suffered withering looks from them.Finally got my hands on it and I just spent the weekend reading it.I had thought it would be easy to read considering that it is a graphic novel but I was proven so wrong.This book was unsettling to say the least.

The complete Maus combines two parts of the story.Part 1,"My Father bleeds History"and Part 2,"And here my troubles began".It tells the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife surviving the holocaust.It shows Art Spiegelman interviewing his father,Vladek about his experiences as a Polish jew and a holocaust survivor.However there's a difference,all the characters are represented as animals:Jews are mice,Germans are cats,Non-Jewish poles are pigs,Americans are dogs,French are frogs.This haunting story told by using graphics captures the horror of the holocaust in a way that has never been done before.It also explores the extent of the psychological impact an event of such proportions leaves on the survivors and their families.

My Views:

Nothing in life ever happens for a reason.There are never any rational explanations about why or how things happen the way they do.Nothing is ever right or wrong or good or bad.Everything is relative.Everything is random.There are no heroes,no villains.There is no after-life,no heaven,no hell.We live and we die,everything in between is optional and at the end nothing really matters at all.How else would you explain something as horrible and devastating as the Holocaust?I am always left disturbed when I read or watch a movie about the genocide of millions of Jews carried out by the Nazi regime during world war 2.I hadnt expected a graphic novel to talk about serious historical issues and evoke a reaction in the reader.I had to go over the pages and re-read them to take it all in.I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I turned each page.

I truly admired Vladeks spirit,enterprising nature and resourcefulness even in the face of extreme adversity.I cannot even begin to imagine what he endured and his ability to hang on to hope in the darkest of circumstances just goes on to prove his strength of character.However when you survive something of this magnitude,it just changes something in you.Vladek was a difficult man to live with and Art makes that very clear.He hasnt made him the hero of the story but has narrated it just as it was.He even goes on to tell us about his fathers prejudice towards African-Americans.When someone has been through hell and back, there is always a price to pay not only by the people who go through it but also by the people affected by it indirectly.Art is dealing with his own demons (survivors guilt)and tries to find some way of allaying this guilt in the form of a comic strip 'Prisoner on the Hell Planet' about his mothers suicide.However I dont think catharsis is even a possibility sometimes and you just have to live on hoping to come to terms with whatever it is that happens in life.This story is very emotional because it is so real.

The horrors of concentration camps,Auschwitz,Nuremberg,the bunkers,the zyklon B showers are too
grisly to even imagine.The use of allegory to depict characters as animals works effectively as cats are known to prey on mice.So jews being mice is an apt metaphor.It provokes us to think about nationalities,races and our judgemental views.

It is scary to think that we live in a world that has witnessed such tragedy.It is not easy to write a story about one's own family with such honesty and I think Spiegelman deserves all the credit for it.I went through a gamut of emotions while reading this book.It just manages to change something in the way you think about life.

I unreservedly rate it a 5 out of 5.

THE NIGHT CIRCUS

Do you believe in Magic?Im sure you would answer that with a smirk or a sneer and I wont really judge you for it.Life does make cynics of all of us.I resisted this book for the longest time for precisely the same reasons.However as luck would have it,I ended up picking it last week and have only just returned from one of the most beautiful adventures I ever hoped to go on.

The story in brief:

Le Cirque des Reves or The Circus of Dreams is a travelling circus which serves as the backdrop of this enthralling story.But this circus is unlike any other,it has an air of mystery surrounding it .It has no set schedule,appearing without warning and leaving without notice and it only opens at night.There are numerous tents with mesmerizing acts performed by the most accomplished of artists and everything is meticulous down to the last detail.In this Circus of Dreams,two illusionists trained by great Magicians belonging to different schools of thought have been magically bound to fight one another in a contest which will span their entire lives,until one of them wins.The magicians have created this contest for their own sense of power and are just using their two students as puppets.The circus serves as the arena where this magical duel takes place,however these young proteges are not given any rules to play by,they dont even know who their opponent is,they have been only told to best the other by creating the most complex shows and maintaining them.However competition eventually changes to admiration and then finally into Love.But a lot is at stake and choices involving a lot of other lives must be made.

My Views:

This book was unlike anything I have read so far.But there are rules to be followed when you are reading it.You cannot read it amid distractions.I was cooped up in a closed room with minimal noise for the entire duration I was reading this.Also you dont read a book like this just for the sake of reading it,you have to experience it and truly live inside it.It was an interactive book.Yes,it took me almost double the time it takes to read most books because I was left with no choice but to imagine everything,conjure it up in my minds eye.The vivid imagery and delicious descriptions left me craving for more.The rich imagination was so captivating that I had quite a time returning back to reality.There are good books and not so good books and there are books which you will remember for the rest of your life,as long as you will live.This was one of those for me.

Might I say that it was a wonderful assault on the senses!Charms,Talismans,Tatoos,Tarot of Marseilles,Fortune-tellers,Acrobats,Conjurers,Contortionists,Dancers,Fire artists,Chocolate mice,Caramel apples,Chocolate pop-corn,the ice garden,a sunken rose-garden,the wishing tree,the pool of tears where sorrows can be tossed like stones,the stargazer,I could just go on forever.I was enchanted!I also got to meet the Reveurs-the circus enthusiasts who seek each other out often spending hours discussing the minutest of details and when they depart ,they shake hands and embrace like old friends even if they have only just met,feeling bound to each other in ways only they can know.I loved every character in this story even more when I realised that each of them was there for a reason.Each had a part to play in the grand scheme of things.

This story was about the dark side of magic as well.However it was also about love and defying fate,about how anything can change at anytime because the future is never set in stone.
It was about permanence and endurance.About how people want to believe that magic is just clever deception,because (as the magician says at the end) 'to think it real would keep them up at night,afraid of their own existence'.

Sometimes we need to escape the real world and indulge the child in us.After all, Oscar Wilde has rightly said-

'A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world'  :)

I know this review doesnt do the book justice.All I can say is that I absolutely enjoyed reading it and cannot recommend it enough.It was Magical!

Needless to say 

I rate it a 5 out of 5.

NEVER LET ME GO

I know I am quite late in picking up this book.I usually keep away from reading dystopian fiction but somehow even before I realised what I was getting into,I found myself being swept in the flow and then there was no turning back.I hadnt read the book blurb but dont regret it.This book managed to change the way I think about dystopian fiction forever.I finished reading it last night.

This is a fictional story about three class-mates,Kathy,Tommy and Ruth living in a boarding school type of institution called Hailsham.Even though they seem to be having an ordinary childhood on the surface of it,there are mysterious rules and teachers constantly reminding them of how special they are and urging them to make art as if their life depended on it.Now years later,Kathy is a young woman,recounting the memories that made up her childhood at Hailsham.Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life and as she looks back at their shared past,she eventually comes to terms with the meaning of life and their shared fates.

My Views:
This story just blew me away.Kazuo Ishiguro is a brilliant story-teller with master-strokes up his sleeve.When I began reading this book,I was surprised at the pace it set,it just slows you down completely because it is narrated by Kathy in a very matter-of-fact way.I was aching with curiosity and kept wondering about what would really happen next.This went on for the first two parts and when I reached the last fifty or so pages of the last part,everything just began to fall in place and it hit me point blank in such a way that all the withheld emotions just came to the fore.Can you understand what I am talking about?This is powerful writing.Very Evocative.

The story is told by Kathy in a very strange manner.She tells you what happens first and then goes on to explain how it got to that point.This was how almost the entire story is narrated and you are reminded of events unfolding and you realise the significance of these events only later and begin to piece it together.I have come across people talking that way,they tell you an incident and later talk about something totally unconnected and then when you have almost forgotten about the incident they come back to it and say, 'Oh so that is where the incident fits in place'.So you realise that what actually takes place is much larger than that little detail which fits perfectly.I guess I am rambling but I cant think of a better way to say this.

So she talks about their days at Hailsham and how they were allowed to do normal things like playing and even encouraged to make art and listen to music and buy stuff using tokens.However you realise soon enough that somethings amiss and then comes the big reveal that this story is about a group of genetically engineerd or cloned children that are being exclusively bred as 'donors'.Their lives are set out for them,they become adults and then start donating vital organs.This is the only purpose of their lives.Everything is told in such a resigned way,that you want to walk up to Kathy and shake her and scream at her to do something about it.She keeps saying --'I dont know what it was like where you were' and you feel so helpless and so drawn to these children.

Can one imagine life like this.With not a shred of hope.Just living on with no real future,knowing the course our lives will take and knowing that whatever we are doing now is all going to be futile in the end.It is eerie if you think about it,makes me wonder if Ishiguro is implying that we as humans are perhaps also living by the rules set for us(societal norms)without questioning,just being pawns in someone else's game.Maybe we are living in a bigger version of Hailsham and are clueless about it and death is the only thing that binds us together.

The friendship between Kathy,Tommy and Ruth is beautiful.How Kathy connects them all together and holds on till the end ,tethered only to their shared fates will make you desperately wish for a happy ending.It talks about the meaning of art,love,bonding,betrayal.How art proves that you have a soul.How love has a proper time,a time that may be lost or missed.How nothing you do later can bring back what it once was.

Of course there were some things which were a little questionable like which organs they were donating because they spoke about four donations and nothing about cross-matching was ever mentioned.But then I think that even though the scientific basis is not a strong point of this novel,it is more about the emotional and personal world of the clones.

This story has moved me in ways I cannot really explain.I loved this book.I rate it a 4 and a half out of 5.

THE HOUSE WE GREW UP IN

I noticed this book as I was browsing through some book listings and picked it up on a whim.I had no idea what I was getting myself into.Just a little leap of faith into the unknown.Turns out:I needed a breather at the end of it all.It was just too much to handle.So bad that its good...if you get the drift.

Onto the story:
This story is about the Bird family,who live in a beautiful house in a picture-perfect Cotswold village.The girls Megan and Beth and the twins Rory and Rhys share an idyllic childhood and live with their free-spirited,fiesty mother Lorelei and their sweet father Colin.They have annual Easter celebrations involving the extended family and home-cooked meals ,all planned by Lorelei who wants to make each moment of their childhood a happy one.Lorelei being the bohemian she is exists entirely in the moment,loves rainbows and believes that she can just freeze time by collecting mementos and filling the house with them  as a reminder of events and moments gone by.

Then one Easter weekend,tragedy occurs.The event is so devastating that,it begins to tear the family apart.Years pass and the children have become adults,found new relationships and just drifted apart to such an extent that they dont even meet each other or their parents.Lorelei has become the country's worst hoarder.She refuses help from every quarter and chooses instead to live life as a recluse for six long years.But then something happens that calls them home,back to the house they grew up in and to what really happened that Easter weekend so many years ago.

My Views:

I began reading this book on Saturday and realised a few pages down that its going to be a long night.As predicted I read it through most of the night and have just put it down.I think that says a lot about the book.I went for a long walk to clear my mind and get out of the Bird family before I sat and typed this review.Yes this book is emotionally draining and a gut-wrenching read.

Havent we all heard that a dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it?!Families are the unit that holds us all together,we have shared-childhoods,quirks which only the close unit is privy to,secrets,problems,yet a common thread runs through it all,tightly wound around the spool.A million cracks on the shell sometimes yet it all holds up well.And families share a common home,a safe haven,something to come back to at the end of the day or maybe at the end of the year or at the end of several years.This book is about one such family and the home they grow up in.

This story spans a time frame of about thirty years and shifts back and forth to reveal the past and present.
The Bird family has more than its share of tragedies.But sometimes the devastation is just so total that you have to accept the fact that certain things will never go back to how they used to be and that is exactly what happens here.Each member uses a different coping mechanism to deal with what happens and that changes the course of their lives forever,making them the people they eventually turn out to be.Drifting apart,scattering away.Living life on a precipice sometimes,silently carrying the burden of guilt.However sometimes shared grief,loss and love are enough to bring people together again.I could see each character objectively and then analyse things from their point of view.I could feel Lorelei's pain.I could understand Meg and the others but Beth's character was a bit hard to digest.

I hadnt heard about a Hoarding disorder before.It was just totally shocking to know that something like that exists.(Mental note to myself to clear a years worth of newspaper articles stored in my cupboard)This story just pulled me in so completely that I got utterly involved in the lives of the characters.It moved very quickly and I had to literally dodge numerous curveballs which were so totally unexpected.So many complex issues ,mental disorder,betrayal,adultery interwoven in one captivating heartfelt story. All the characters are flawed but compeletely relatable and it seemed so real.I think the story concluded on the right note.Although it takes them a really long time to get there, it was heartening to see them finally be able to accept,heal and forgive themselves.

Loved the style of writing ,it was thought-provoking and poignant.This may be my first book by Lisa Jewell but it most certainly wont be my last.Highly Recommended!

I rate it a 4 out of 5.

THE GOOD GIRL

Saw this book on the New York Times bestseller list.The cover intrigued me and I was looking to read a good thriller,so I picked it up.Finished reading it in two days.

The line which managed to catch my attention and prod me to really go and pick this one up was :

'Ive been following her for the past few days.I know where she buys her groceries,where she has her dry cleaning done,where she works.I dont know the color of her eyes or what they look like when they're scared,but I will.'.....So I was ready with a bag of chips for this creep-fest.
Here goes the gist of the story:

Mia Dennet teaches art at an alternative High School in the city.She lives away from her high profile parents (a prominent Chicago judge and his socialite wife).One night, Mia enters a bar to meet her on-again,off-again boy friend.At first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand.But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life.

When Colin decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota instead of delivering her to his employers,Mia's mother Eve and Detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them.But no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family's world to shatter.

My Views:

Why does everyone start comparing every new thriller with a female protagonist to 'Gone Girl'?
Let me begin by telling the deluded ones that this is NOT Gone Girl.
This book is not quite there but I also think we need to get past the Gone Girl hangover.When I pick up a thriller ,I like reading it at a stretch.I dont like to lose the pace and some stories dont allow me to.In this case I didnt want to lose momentum.


This story is narrated  through the eyes of Mia's mother,her captor (Colin/Owen) and the detective handling the case.The story shuffles between what happens before and after the abduction.It is a non-linear narrative but it isnt too hard to follow.However,I found myself not getting involved in the plot.I was just a by-stander and continued to remain there till the end.Besides, Detective Gabes as well as Colin sounded so similar in the beginning.I like the characters voices to be distinctly different when multiple characters narrate the story,however here it was evident that the same person has written the lines for both of them.(If you know what I mean)All the characters seemed to have regrets and were looking for a way to atonement.They seemed uni-dimensional.

I couldnt empathize with the main characters , except for Colin's mother.The story however was a bit different because no sooner than we are told about Mia's disappearance,we are also soon informed that she has been found and comes back home.What we dont know is why or how she was captured and she doesnt know it either because she suffers from selective amnesia and has no recollection of anything that has happened to her.What follows is what really happend to her and why.

At this point I was desperately trying to do some guess-work to figure out how it would all end.What I couldnt understand was how Mia falls in love with Colin. My mind screamed-' Stockholm syndrome'.She really begins to see similarities between the two of them.So of course Colin has to be the 'good little bad guy' and has a past which leads him to be who he is and he is not that cold-blooded after all.From there it went a bit down-hill and got to the point of being predictable.However there is a twist at the end but it seemed to be thrown by-the-way and didnt manage to create the desired impact.

On the positive side--It is fast paced and an easy read.I cannot say I could entirely figure out the story.

But my search for the perfect 'Thriller' continues.

I rate it a 3 out of 5.

GO SET A WATCHMAN

My love affair with 'To Kill A Mockingbird' and Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch commenced almost simultaneously,when I first read the book and subsequently watched the classic almost two decades ago.So ever since it was revealed that Harper Lee was to publish a new book, fifty-five years later,with the same characters,I just couldnt wait to get my hands on it.I went right ahead and got my copy.Ive only just finished reading it today.

This story takes place almost two decades after 'To Kill A Mockingbird'.Jean Louise Finch or 'Scout' as we all know her returns from NY to her hometown in  Maycomb,Alabama,in the years preceding the Civil Rights Movement, as a 26 year old young woman.She comes home for a brief vacation and to meet her father Atticus.After reuniting with her family and a childhood friend she learns some disturbing hard facts about the people dearest to her.Caught between the childhood values she has grown up with and the present,she finds herself questioning everything she has learnt so far including the values she so strongly upholds.

My Views:

'History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people'--these moving words by Martin Luther King come to mind as I sit here after reading this book.

I normally reserve my opinion when it comes to judging people until I've met them a few times.But Atticus!

Now Atticus was someone I'd known all my life and having had to change what I felt about him was a betrayal of sorts.Yes Atticus Finch is a racist and unapologetic about it.

Jean Louis Finch was disillusioned and so was I.Initially I thought that there was a catch somewhere,that someone would just come along and tell me that it was all a joke.Nothing of the sort happened and a lame explanation was provided that he did what he did so that he knew whose faces were under the hoods,in order to limit the harm they could do!Really Atticus!?I thought I knew you better than that!

Yet then comes a thought that people change,everyone changes according to the times they live in and thats a fact you've got to accept.But then they go on to tell you that Atticus Finch hasnt changed.He was always like this.Now,THAT killed me.

'To kill a Mockingbird' was narrated from Scouts point of view,when she was a kid and you cant help but see the world having a pollyanna-ish outlook.Maybe as a grown woman,she needed to transition from the illusion of the past.Yet...how does one change the values one has grown up with?Isnt there nothing known as integrity?

I did not find it to be an easy read.Especially when it came to Dr Finch and his high-handed explanations wherein he combined scraps of nineteenth century english literature and religious knowledge.But we had been warned.Still,I had to read it twice to try and understand what he was driving at.

The book did shine in parts and it took me back to the good old days.It took one back to Scouts childhood in flashback chapters but they  seemed a bit random.What I didnt like was that nothing was fully explained.I didnt like that the Finches were fence-sitters,neither did they condone White supremacy nor did they condemn it.The explanations provided to resolve Scouts quandary were unsatisfactory.One cannot help but compare it with 'To Kill A Mockingbird' but it was just its shadow in comparison .Would it have been better if I had read this first as an independent book?I dont think so,I would have to question whatever I read in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and I could still never reconcile with the fact that Atticus is who he is.

I had very high expectations from this book and was sure of giving it a full five stars.However I just cannot bear to rate it any less so I am not going to.