‘Secret Daughter’ reviewed

 

One of my all time favourite books has been ‘Sister of my heart’ by Chitra Bannerjee. It’s heartening to know that it wasn’t a one-off gem by an Indian author. ‘Secret Daughter’, by Shilpi Somaya Gowda is written with a similar empathy and understanding of human relations. I personally despise books that use the English language as a baton to tom tom in front of the reader convincing him/her of not being intellectual enough to appreciate it. Thus, I could never really find myself singing praises of Salman Rushdie and the likes (oh no, how uncool am I??). What attracts me to a writer is the ability to communicate emotions in a manner that they find their way straight to the heart of the reader.

Secret Daughter is the story of a girl born in a village in Maharashtra. To save the life of her unwanted girl child, her mother secretly gives her up for adoption where she is taken in by an Indian/American couple. The story traces the lives of the 2 mothers and this secret daughter that ties them. Not only does it delve deep into the psyche of an adopted child, it also intermingles that with the yearning of a person trying to find roots when they were growing right under her feet.

Secret Daughter is a tale that touches the heart. It is beautifully crafted, wonderfully narrated and begs to be read. Get yourself a copy.

 

Rating: 4 on 5

The beauty of change

My uncle loves to keep reminding me time and again – the moment you feel complacent that your life is perfect and don’t want things to change, they will. You can not stop that. Just accept that they will.

In my humble few years in adulthood, I have realised the truth in those words. As children, we are insulated by the love that surrounds us and we believe that people mean what they say and clearly demarcate between friends, acquaintances and foes. As we grow older and not-so-wiser, we slowly become jaded. Things, yes. Circumstances, definitely. They all change. But what affects us most is when people change and thus do relationships. Friends that one made along the way slowly keep falling through that sieve of life and losing themselves. New ones get added but our new found cynicism refuses to allow ourselves to open up as much to them.

Its not such a dark thing either. People change for the better too. Relationships evolve. When you grow together, sometimes you have the benefit of being a part of the journey and this brings us closer. My relationship with my sister, parents, relatives, husband, best friends – each of these has changed many times over and continues to do so. What makes some of these relationships special is the belief that if I don’t like the changes that are happening, they are momentary – they will change again.

And that is what gives me the humility of holding myself back from trying to control each of these relationships (or so I like to believe). Que sera sera….what will be will be.

Adarsh Scam & the Nation's Ire

The collective fury over the Adarsh Apartments scam confuses me. For the uninitiated, it is an apartment complex built in the prime area of South Mumbai on land that was allocated for war widows of the Indian Defence Forces. The permission to build 10 stories was flouted and a sky scraper built in its place. Each flat whose market worth was actually around Rs.8.5Cr was bought by people of high standing like some ex chiefs of the Indian army etc. for Rs.85lakhs.

Since this scam has been brought to light by the media, there has been an uproar on the fact that flats were wrongfully allocated to ministers, private owners and other people of public standing. This uproar doesn’t confuse me. I believe we all like to vent our frustrations on these occasional scams. It just changes face from a CWG to an Adarsh. Corruption itself is not a phenomenon new to India or to all of us. Neither is it new to any country in the world. Corruption exists in most countries at various levels – some larger than the other. Financial frauds, economic busts like the recent one, political payoffs – all of these are faces of corruption at some level.

So what confuses me is what it really is that has irked us so much about this. CWG I understand – we felt that we all pay taxes and those taxes were being misappropriated. But in this case we all know of someone who had gone to see these apartments being built when they were being built and their only regret at that time was that they did not have the funds to get a flat of their own. Everyone loves a deal! They knew that the market cost of the flats were atleast 10 times of what they were being asked for. I am not too sure if the knowledge that this land was originally meant for war widows would really have changed any of our minds to purchase one of these flats being offered at a pittance.

So is the ire really regret that found translation into a smug smile if-I-did-not-manage-to-get-this-one-no-one-else-did-either! Or if it really is anger at corruption – and if it is, how deep does this corruption truly run?

Why this is a great time to visit Delhi

My 2 bits in optimism for this city that I love....in its full glory in the festive season that it is best visited in.

Read my latest article published on Rediff on why its a great time to visit Delhi. Click here

The grand epic saga of the CWG 2010

----Cynicism Alert ----


As someone very wise said once...."Hindi filmon ki tarah humari zindagi mein bhi akhir tak sab thik ho hi jaata hai....happies endings" (like in Hindi films, in our lives too towards the end, it all falls into place). Little did the respectable king khan know at the time, he may as well have been refering to the Delhi Commonwealth Games 2010.

First things first. Before we won the bid for them, I (like most of us) had no clue that these games even existed. How archaic to have a world sporting event named after the collection of colonies of the British Empire! And our Raj hangover for us to rejoice over hosting them!! Nevertheless, I put my cynicism aside and like every Delhiite started hoping that this would help clean up my beautiful city and once the hullaboo was over, we would be left with some great infrastructure to our disposal like the Asian Games did 3 decades back!

And then the media frenzy started. It suddenly became fashionable to criticise the games, the infrastructure, the money spent, the hygene standards. Barely would anyone of prominence have given a byte and media would be all over him like a pack of hounds! And the smart statesmen like Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh did not dirty their hands in this mudslinging and justifying.

So overwhelmed  were we all with this crazied attacking that most Indians almost involuntarily started hoping that the Games would be cancelled or a big disaster so that they could shake their heads in dismay and say - I told you so.

And then a strange thing happened. 2 days before the games, suddenly there came this positive publicity when athletes started arriving. Canadian, Australian and other athletes started pouring in from 68 nations and seemed quite happy with the arrangements and the infrastructure. They gave interviews to the same effect completely ignorant to the fact that Indians were rooting for them to say the opposite! And miraculously overnight Indians developed sudden patriotism and started facebooking on how they wished the games well. How it was fantastic that Delhi had 18 new flyovers, a spanking new CP complex, Metro that now reached most corners of this vast metropolitan, an airport terminal 3kms long, cultural festivals, the Delhi Eye so on and so forth. The coup de grace ofcourse was the opening ceremony. I wouldnt compare it with the Beijing Olympics but frankly, the ceremony was spectacular, beautifully designed and executed and world class (the buzz word of the day)! And we all rejoiced on how we had triumphed.

Hindi filmon ki tarah humari zindagi mein bhi akhir tak sab thik ho hi jaata hai....happies endings.

Changing hues

Change is inevitable they say. The only constant. And yet, the mind wonders whether people ever change? Some schools of thought say that once a person’s personality has been defined (in the formative years), events may alter short term behaviour but long term behaviour and attitude can not change.

This comes as a blow to most people who wish one aspect or another of someone they love changes. It could be anything – a habit, the way a person reacts, extent of expressiveness or even as simple as tidiness. But if you really think about people you know, you may realise that at the core of it, in the long term, the intrinsic person remains the same. Does this mean we should not believe in giving second and third chances? Does it mean it is easier to accept something rather than hope that the future will be different?

I have mixed feelings on this. I know in my heart that people don’t truly change. They learn to curb their behaviour or pretend otherwise. On the other hand, in my not-so-long lifetime, I have met a few people who changed completely. Some overnight, some over a period of time. Such that they often become the complete antithesis of who they were. Is this a phase, one wonders? Or is it the reality? 

Adios for now

Dear readers - or well those of you who patiently waited me through my blog's silence these past few months! As you may have noticed, the frequency of the posts has been erratic and not very promising. So I figured it is probably best to take a short sabbatical and come back with renewed thoughts. Check back with me in a few weeks....I'll be back!!!