Blog Review: Memoirs of a Confused Gal

It promised to be a Secret Santa with a difference. 

Instead of buying gifts for someone who’d been naughty yet nice, Vinita, High Priestess at the FB sanctuary that goes by the name of Indiblogeshwaris, came up with the idea of reviewing the blog of a fellow blogger on our own blog. What better way to drive up readership for a deserving blogger, while making a new friend? That is the spirit of Christmas, after all.

The name that popped out of the Sorting Hat for me was that of Pankti Mehta, a relatively new entrant in the world of blogging. 

With a name like Pankti (it means sentence in Hindi), you would not expect anything less than sheer love for the written word from her. And that is just what you get.

She calls her blog, Musings of a Confused Gal, but there is little confusion here. Pankti’s talent is seen in  the range of posts in which she puts her pen (or keyboard) to good use. 

On her blog, you will see her short stories, poems, book reviews, musings, a story series titled, Anything for You, travel tales and photos.

It was her short stories and travel tales that I liked the most. Her short stories do a good job of reeling you, the reader in. She builds mood and atmosphere with as much ease and attention as she devotes to the building of her characters.

The story, Love Me, fills you with disgust and pity in like measure and that is its strength.

Faith is another story about a girl wrongfully accused at school and her sense of reassurance on knowing that her mother believes in her innocence.

Power play shows the depths to which people are willing to stoop when driven by ambition. Interestingly, this story reveals that the protagonist need not always be the polar opposite of the antagonist.

The Travel story details her trip to Sasan Gir, which is 400 km from Ahmedabad. This post was well written and showed both her love for travel as well as her sense of humour. It was in this section that I felt that she completely outdid herself. Pity there was only one post here.

A bookworm Indiblogeshwari, Pankti has reviewed books such as Chakra by Indiblogeshwari Ritu Lalit and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, a writer whose work I enjoy a lot.

This toddler in the world of blogging has set an example that I could learn from. So many of my posts sit patiently in the Drafts folder, waiting for me to come and wipe the dust off them.

Pankti, on the other hand, has very quickly built up a collection of 67 blog posts, even though she began blogging only in March 2013. The Indirank of 84 is certainly well deserved.

Jog over to her blog and check out more of her work. 

And have a lovely Christmas while you're at it.

May Jesus bless you with love and affection enough to keep you warm in spite of the cold outside.

Book Review: CHAKRA: CHRONICLES OF THE WITCH WAY

Title: Chakra: Chronicles of the Witch Way
Author: Ritu Lalit
Publisher: Author's Empire Publications
Pages: 319









Move over, Hogwarts. We have our own desi witches now. And they don’t need props such as brooms, huge cauldrons and pointed hats to prove they are so. Nor do they need to display rotting teeth and long dirty fingernails to grab your attention. And screaming abracadabra is so passé.


In Ritu Lalit’s Chakra: Chronicles of the Witch Way, the witches, known as japnis or Tais, and their male counterparts, the Japas, all lead normal lives. But there is no mistaking the power and the energy they possess, an influence that allows them to curse and heal, to perform astounding feats and to command the elements to do their bidding.


Having lost her brother Ashok and his wife Meera in a bloodbath initiated by warring clans to disrupt a ritual for ensuring peace, Nita Mohan, short for Parinita, blames the Japa way of life for their deaths and turns her back on her heritage. Preferring to live an ordinary life, she brings up her nephew Sandeep and her niece Samaira to remain unaware of their powers. The two kids, along with their cousin Roma, daughter of Nita’s older brother Ankur, lead a normal life as teenagers in cities do.


When Samaira unwittingly displays her powers following a harmless prank at school, Japas everywhere come to know of their secret. Soon after this, the three children disappear. Nita must find them before her family’s enemies do. She knows that those who have killed her brother and sister-in-law will stop at nothing to destroy the family and prevent the prophecy from coming true, the prophecy that decrees that the age of the Japas is long gone and that the age of the Japnis is nigh.


So well does Lalit succeed in creating this strange world where mythical beings with supernatural powers walk the earth that it almost comes as a surprise when we read of these characters doing banal activities like answering telephone calls or getting into cars. It is these acts that point to the vividness of her imagination, and draw us into the alternate world that is her creation, from the very first page.


Soon we get acquainted with these fantastic creatures belonging to five clans, each having an affinity to one element of nature. We become aware of the sometimes subtle, but mostly overt games they play in a bid to establish their own power and pull down the others. The politics of give and take, where allies turn into bedfellows before stabbing you in the back.


The women are all strong and feisty, capable of hastening the story forward and of turning it on its head. From the combat crazy Meera, to the feisty Nita, Samaira and Roma, they are all fiercely driven by their emotions and their tempers. Introduce into this volatile mix characters like Sinduri, the vindictive clan leader of the Varunis, Lata Irani, the librarian who is also a Tai, Panna Bagri, the warrior woman, and Neelam, who is actually a koyla, a being that can suck out the soul out of men, and you are bound to have a tantalizing book on your hands.


In contrast, the Japas appear to be the weaker sex, at least in this world. For, although they are fierce warriors and birathars who do not flinch from dying for their comrades, their energies and powers seem to pale against the might of the Japnis. Even Jorawar, a powerful and muscular Jalaj warrior, blessed by the author with hair up to his waist and an over-active libido, cannot match the vigour with which the women hold the reader’s attention.

While the pace remains easy going when describing the ordinary lives of the young Mohans, the sense of urgency rises dramatically when Samaira, Sandeep and Roma disappear. Thereafter the tempo picks up, and we become aware of the darker forces working behind the scenes to prevent the prophecy relating to the japnis from coming true.

Lalit’s hold over her narrative does not falter, as she leads us through numerous locales, as events race towards a thrilling finish. Her descriptions of the baoli and the temple are detailed, and help us visualise the scene better. Bonus points for thinking up the entire premise of the koylas and the manner in which Lalit has treated Roma’s character.

The only two roadblocks are posed by the manner in which the meanings of Indian words have been clarified and by the errors in the story. Putting the meanings of the desi words into brackets is an unnecessary distraction. A glossary or a footnote would have served far better.

The many inconsistencies in the book also hurt the enjoyment of the read. I wish the editors had spotted these before they were printed. Bhoomar is spelt with a 'u' the first time, and with 'oo' therafter. Also, Akshat is described as a Jalaj in one sentence and as a Pallav in the next. In one place, Akshat is spelt incorrectly. A character, Marjina, is referred to as Sinduri in one place. Lata is referred to as Maya in one place.

In another instance, Mickey, a nearly 16-year-old Japa, who has worked as a household help for a widow ever since he was eight years old, claims to have set by Rs3,41,00,000. (That kind of money in eight years? I wonder if the widow is still hiring.)

These and other such errors are annoying but since the story itself is spellbinding the reader learns to shoo them aside as if they were pesky houseflies. Lalit’s triumph lies in the fact that her story manages to hold our attention in spite of these errors.

Even as the characters wrestle with life and death issues, Lalit’s penchant for humour makes itself felt in the T-shirts with sexually provocative legends preferred by Nita. In fact, Nikhil, Nita’s assistant at the detective agency, stares at her breasts and even talks to them. Even though it makes one mad when that kind of thing happens in real life, it sounded funny on paper.

The book ends with a wedding and a sense of peace that is fraught with insecurity, a sober Roma and the likelihood of sisters pitted against each other.

Stage set for a sequel.

Ritu Lalit, here's to your next book!



(This post has been written for the Ultimate Blog Challenge, October 2013.)



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The Artisans' Champion

The work of their hands was once an intrinsic part of our heritage and tradition. Their handiwork enriched the fabric of our culture and made it a tapestry, at once complex, colourful and vibrant. Trade routes to and from India bustled with activity in ancient times, a success to which their forefathers contributed no mean part. 

But things are different now.


The artisan, once feted by royalty, languishes in poverty, forced to watch his nation whiz by at a breathtaking speed, leaving him far behind. The India of today has no time or attention to devote to the glories and treasures of the past. Caught in the confines of faster, quicker, cheaper, it fails to appreciate the world of ancient Indian arts and crafts whose creation involved a laborious process to which the labourer gave his all.


While there are a few NGOs and the odd corporate that is striving to revive and rejuvenate India’s ancient crafts and traditions, the efforts are nothing in the face of the massive need. While most of us would limit our charitableness to the writing of a rare cheque, and the giving away of an old wardrobe, Neha Gandhi, a Mumbai-based artist, conceived of a means to restore dignity to the artisans by finding them a market and helping them get the right price for their labour.


It all started during the earthquake that hit the Kutch region of Gujarat in 2001. Neha had volunteered with the Behavioural Science Centre, an Ahmedabad based NGO, to assist the relief effort. During her time there, she was struck by the wealth of handicrafts that she saw around and the unfortunate conditions of the creators of that priceless art. It was also the time when she came to know of the other side of public patronage, the one that is characterised by the greed of the middleman, unfair working conditions and earnings that could be best described as too little-too late.


Over the years, the graduate of Fine Arts in Ceramics from the prestigious Sir JJ School of Arts, Mumbai, has donned a number of hats, including one as faculty at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She could have chosen to live life as a well known designer. But the conditions of the artisans appealed to her sensitive nature and she decided to do something to make them better.


And so Matsya, Sanskrit for fish, was born in 2009. Determined to resuscitate rural arts and crafts in a manner that was ethical and served to give the labourers their just wages, Neha founded Matsya Crafts. Her initial investment was Rs 10,000 from her own savings. But beyond that meager amount, Neha was willing to put on the line her potentially successful career in the art scene in Mumbai.


Her enthusiasm for the cause was infectious and while she worked alone, unable to even afford the services of a peon, she was able to appeal, from time to time, to marketers and design enthusiasts with whose support she walked on. With every little success, she walked closer towards her goal of helping to connect the rural artisan with the discerning urban customer whose surplus disposable income enabled him/her to be a connoisseur of art.


Today Matsya works with nearly 2000 women in 112 villages, helping them to earn their livelihood without losing sight of the tradition that they have inherited over the ages. The women display their talents in embroidery, appliqué work, painting, sewing etc. These arts were once honoured by the royalty and found their place in the wardrobes of the nobility. And yet in recent times, their talents have barely enabled them to keep body and soul together.


Products such as home furnishings, studio pottery, the tribal wall art range, fridge magnets, finger puppets, pencil tops, embroidered bags and jholas, leather, copper art and other accessories, including a wide range of gift items, all designed to be of high utility value while being attractive and contemporary, were made available online. Ethnic is ‘in’, and Matsya’s founder had the foresight to see that in popularising ancient Indian arts and crafts, she would be able to help the impoverished artisans in ways that did not insult their dignity.


Matsya is much more than an online marketplace. By pushing ahead the boundaries of the marketplace, Matsya also offers to re-design hotels, homes and corporate offices, to develop and design products, and to assist other groups that wish to work with artisans. Neha’s organisation undertakes craft documentation, in an effort to keep the history and tradition alive. Currently, it is working towards gaining Fair Trade certification.


If Matsya’s aim were merely to introduce the buyer to the maker, it would have run its course soon enough. The organisation has tried to enhance the skills of the artisans through training programmes, designed to teach them modern production standards and contemporary design aesthetics. The idea is to create within the artisans a level of confidence that will equip them for the task of reclaiming their destiny.


Matsya also conducts craft tours for individuals and groups, enabling discerning travelers to talk to India’s traditional craftsmen and see the often humble environs in which great art takes shape. These tours, customised to the travellers’ interests and budgets, have so far been conducted only in Gujarat, but there are plans to take it further to Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.


Neha has the satisfaction of knowing that her efforts and her fledgling enterprise have made such a difference to the lives of so many women, and their families. While much has been achieved, much more remains to be done.


The young entrepreneur knows that there are others waiting out there, unsung and unappreciated, who could benefit from her unceasing efforts to be the bridge between them and their potential customers.


For the nearly 23 million artisans in India, these efforts spell the difference between the complete extinction of their traditions and their empowerment as skilled and talented artisans whose work regains its significance in the fabric of India’s culture.

Written for the Indiblogeshwaris Ladies Independence Special Contest in association with http://womenentrepreneursinindia.com/

Anands don't die

“Babu Moshai,” the leading man with the crinkly eyes said to his tall, gawky doctor friend, and viewers smiled in admiration. It was the first time that Hindi cine audiences had come across the term, Babu Moshai, Bengali for a gentleman. But there was no doubt that the term would make a place for itself not only in the lexicon of Hindi filmography but also in the minds and hearts of viewers.

Anand (Hindi for happiness) was the eponymous hero of the film, written and directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee. Anand (Rajesh Khanna) exemplified the cancer fighter’s motto, ‘I’ve got cancer. Cancer hasn’t got me.’ 

The film begins with Dr Banerjee winning a literary award for a story he has written based on one of his patients, Anand. Then begins the flashback detailing the character of Anand, a man whose unquenchable thirst for life even Cancer could not quell.

An orphan with no family of his own, Anand comes to Bombay to seek treatment for his sickness. Admitted to the clinic of Dr Prakash Kulkarni (Ramesh Deo) for treatment of lympho-sarcoma of the intestine, he rebels against the depressive atmosphere of the hospital and chooses to go home with Dr Bhaskar Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan).

Slowly Anand's charm and sweetness help him gain the affection of all those who come in contact with him.

I am no Rajesh Khanna fan. Even so, Anand is one film I can watch again and again. And again.

I am amazed at the strength and courage that a man on his deathbed needs to have to be able to touch the healthy around him with his philosophy of life. In contrast, so many of us have only to catch the Common Cold and we start moaning as if we were going to die within the hour.

Anand's spirit is undeterred even though he has the misfortune to know that his day of death is fast approaching. Even as the candle of his life melts faster and fiercer, Anand continues to forge new connections and friendships, backslapping random people and hailing them as Old Friend Murari Lal. He explains his strange behaviour by saying that every human being is a transmitter and a receiver; a person transmits a signal or a vibration and another person receives it and becomes a friend. 

Anand's behaviour teaches us an important lesson: that we must live life to the fullest, squeeze every drop of living out of it before it's time to go quietly into the night. In another instance, Anand is attracted to a young girl from a drama company. Since she can speak no other language but Gujarati, he buys himself some Gujarati language learning books in order to be able to converse with her, even though he knows he won't be around to test his language skills.

It was Anand who brought Shakespeare's All the world's a stage into my life. When I heard the Hindi version of those lines, I was impressed beyond belief, even though I was a mere child then. Years later when I studied Literature, I marvelled at the manner in which Hrishida had re-invented Shakespeare's lines.

Every character in the film was carved out so memorably. Even Durga Khote, the mother of Renu, Dr Banerjee's love interest, made her presence felt. As a child, I remember feeling the anguish provoked by her innocent questioning of Anand, as to why he wouldn't be able to make it to the wedding of Dr Banerjee, if it was solemnised a year hence. 

Other characters who left their mark in the film were the matron, Mrs D'Sa, who is stern, yet soft hearted, Dara Singh, the head at the akhada, who is recruited by Anand for the task of teaching some roadside romeos a lesson, and Isa Bhai, the head of the drama company, played by Johnny Walker, who is the one man who eventually answers to the call of Murari Lal.

They are all characters who have become memorable to audiences. Their sheen has not worn off despite repeated viewings.

The songs are another beautiful facet of the film. Zindagi kaisi hai paheli hai -- What a mystery is life. The lyrics of the song bring out the pathos and sadness of knowing that a person who is so full of life is about to be snuffed out forever.

Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye -- When the sun sets in the distance. This song portrays the sadness of seeing death advancing upon a person so inexorably, and of knowing that he has nowhere to hide.

Anand may not be an accurate depiction of a cancer patient. It does not matter if he has not lost his hair to chemotherapy and if his cheer is too good to be believed. The '70s were never the setting for realism in Bollywood.

The best thing about Anand is that Anand mara nahin, Anand marte nahin (Anand did not die. Anands do not die) when so many of us permit ourselves to die a thousand deaths each day.


(This post has been written in response to a prompt on Indiblogeshwaris, inviting posts on memorable Hindi films.)