Book review: The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (OLD REVIEW)

I have been so so late in picking up The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. I had heard so much about it from booktubers and bookstagrammers. But kept on putting it off for some other time. Finally the last month of December 2020 gave me a chance to read it. And I'm so happy about it. 

Its a book about Sita. Sita's narration of life. Her life, from being a princess of Mithila to being Ram's wife and then their excile for fourteen years, being captivated by Raavan

Sita, was found, yes found by king of Janak. And king Janak and his wife loved her more than their own daughter Urmila. The sisters love each other. The fact that they are not daughters from same parents doesn't matter to them a bit.They live their childhood and youth as princesses filled with all the luxuries of love, affection and wealth too. As they grow into beautiful women and their parents aspire to get them married off, the princesses worship Parvati for finding their dream prince. Sita is blessed by King Shiva. Only someone who can pick up Shivas bow and arrow 'The HAR dhanu' can marry Sita. 

One day during their journey, Ram and Laxman happen to land in Mithila and welcomed by King Janak. Ram is a warrior and defeated the demons on the way. All the neighboring kingdoms are singing praises about Ram and Janak would be happy to get his daughter Sita to get married to Ram. The marriage ceremony takes place in presence of King Dashrath. Ram is married to Sita, Laxman to Sita sister Urmila and other two brothers of Ram to Sita's cousins. Sita and her sisters are welcomed in Ayodhya as the new princesses. Sita finds a way to be a good daughter in law amidst complicated family relationships, King Dashrath and his three wives Kaushalya, Kaikeya and Sumitra and four sons and their families.   

Kaikeya is a wicked queen and wants her son Bharath to be the King and not Ram as the kingdom of Ayodhya wants. She reminds Dashrath of his unfilled promises years ago and asks him to fulfill her wishes on the day of Ram's coronation ceremony as a King of Ayodhya.And the unfilled promises are coronating Bharath as King of Ayodhya and sending Ram in exile for 14 years!!! Laxman, his beloved brother doesn't agree to stay without his brother. So Sita and Laxman start with Ram, for a journey of 14 years in excile. 

Their journey through forests, fruits and roots as their meals and leaves as their bed and torturous struggles for living, the writer has been successful to glue you to the book. The narration is so intriguing that the plots set in front of one's eyes. The most gruesome plot of Raavan's plan to make Sita captive in Lanka makes the book unputdownable. And finally the plot of Ram, Laxman, Hanuman and the Vanarsena rescuing Sita. 

On rescue, she is looked upon as impure by people of kingdom and Ram. This gives her deep pain more pain than what she endured in Raavan's captivity. But she is destined to have this pain. She is destined to go through 'Agnipariksha'. 

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has amazed me with her writing so detailed and smooth, choice of words and the power to keep the reader hang in there till the last word and sets an example of an incomparable storyteller. No need to tell that TBR for 2021 will have The Palace of Illusions ☺

One thing which continuously came to my mind is the Sunday mornings during childhood, when the whole family would sit together and watch Ramanand Sagars Ramayan. May be it was glorified in the serials, may be we do not know exactly what happened, what is important is that families had Sunday breakfast together. And the families who didn't have television were invited happily to watch it. Have we lost that essence of finding happiness in small things in today's world? 

P. S. : I want to read more about Urmila, she wasn't allowed to go along with Laxman in exile. She was ordered to stay back and take care of the family. Have we ever thought what did she endure? If anyone has come across such a book please let me know. 🙂

 

New Experiment

I reviewed Manjiri Indurkar's It's all in your head, M today and I have started reading Murakami's Men without women yesterday. I'll be reviewing it by today evening or tomorrow. As 'BOOKISH COCOON' is a new start I miss my reviews on books that I have read earlier and reviewed either on facebook or my earlier blog. I have closed my earlier blog as it was not consistently updated. And also that blog brings to my mind the journey of  decade from 2010-20 which was rather painful for me. I do not wish to relive those years from my life. 

So to feel good in my cocoon and not to miss my old book reviews, I have decided to post one old book review after some new reviews until I feel like, "THIS IS IT" and I no more miss my memories of the books read or memories attached to reviewing them. I don't know whether this is going to work out or not. But as of now, the 23rd May of 2021 I wish to do it. And so I'm going to do it until I feel like. So now let me dig deep in the folder of memories to decide which old review I'm going to post. Till then I'm going back to my cocoon to live some more moments. 

BOOK REVIEW: IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD, M

Hello from my cocoon!

As updated I wasn't into reading since what happened last week. But I gathered myself and decided to start reading as nothing but reading might be able to give me some solace in this difficult time. 

So I picked up It's all in your head, M by Manjiri Indurkar. Its a fast paced read. 

The protagonist of the book M is a young lady in her twenties who is dealing with anxiety and depression. She starts narrating her story from her journey in the ambulance to an emergency room in the hospital because of the stomach illness caused by a virus. She becomes very sick and  discloses an account of her struggling mind and body. Her body has been under constant torture of pills, examinations and visits to doctors. And her mind has gone through  spells of depression, anxiety, low self esteem and discussions with therapists about these issues. 

She is always anxious when it comes to her health. Any little change in the body like a simple limb pain or an headache intimidates her and makes her anxious to a level that she thinks this is going to turn very serious and will cause her to die. She thinks she has inherited her anxiety genes from her mother and grandmother. 

M had an abusive and traumatic childhood. She was sexually abused, raped by a boy many years older than her. But she was too young to understand the horror of a abuse. She mistook this guy as the romance relation of her life.She realizes the hurt this incident has caused at a very later stage of her life. Since then she has been constantly seeking for validation from people around her mainly her relationships with the other gender. She then falls for Aditya, an NRI who is grieving his mothers loss. M tries to play the role of his friend, mother, care taker and seeks validation from him. However this relationship also ends abruptly.Next comes the guy Avi. She is truly in love with Avi but the series of not so healthy relationships continue.This guy is self obsessed to keep his interest always before M. But she, the lady who is trying to seek validation this time from Avi doesn't see it coming. Her mental health is at the brim and is about to collapse at any time. It takes her months of visits to therapist, and hell lot of courage to leave him and find a way to heal herself. 

The story also narrates various passages of her stay with her boyfriend in Delhi, visits to places there, her hometown Jabalpur, narrations of her life with her grandparents, her academics, her love for literature, her vulnerabilities and much more. In the end M leaves us with a hope that she is paving her way out of being weak, vulnerable and letting it go. 

One thing I want to share is that the author has given me something I badly needed.  This is the reproduction from the chapter where she visits a therapist to help her boyfriend. Her therapist asks that why she was taking a therapy session for a person who is not even in the country to which she replies that she wishes to help him with his grief. On this the therapist says, " This need to make others happy, this compulsion to care for others beyond 'normal'  boundaries is usually a response to trauma". This  answered many questions in my mind. 

What I feel...

Some days are very rough. Rough to the extent that I feel hopeless, helpless and my mind becomes a super super dump yard. So many thoughts travel at the speed of light. Multiple thoughts at same time. Some are born talented, some are born intelligent, some are born born with super powers, but me, I'm a born over thinker! :( 

Books have helped me in this to some extent. Sometimes books fail too. That fragile my mind has become. Sometimes it becomes so stubborn, it doesn't allow me to get over the thoughts. I have realized this past few years that overthinking creates a problem in concentration, retention and productivity. 

I am attempting not to be a over thinker. After trying a number of things and being utter failure when it comes to discipline in meditation and yoga etc. reading and listening to different things help me to stay calm for few minutes. I am trying to read to the best possible in the available time and listening to audiobooks or stories or anything which will keep my mind engaged for that particular time. Also I'm ambivert by nature. With my closest friends I go talking like a super fast engine and with others I'm like leave me alone! I'm fine being alone than be surrounded with people with whom the frequency doesn't match at all. I feel like I'm listening to a damaged cassette tape (Do you even know how does it play? Ask those born before 2000's. They know how to fix a damaged cassette with a pencil :D).

Now that I have blabbered so much what I mean to tell you that through this blog I will be sharing all that I read and listen to. I just want to share. This is going to help me I know. See I'm writing this post and I'm just typing whatever that comes to my mind and the hotchpotch is at break for a while. 

Going back in my cocoon now!!! 

Image source: The Internet 

BOOK REVIEW : 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo'

Hello from my cocoon!!!

I have started reading 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo' yesterday. I took a day off from work. I was excited to have a day for reading. I wanted to read a book on Kindle although I have loads of paperbacks there unread. I don't know what made me download 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo! It was somewhere back of my mind to lay my hands on this book. And yesterday was the day.

Believe me I traveled with Nuri Ibrahim and Afra from the town of Aleppo in Syria to England. Nuri Ibrahim is a beekeeper in Aleppo who has chosen his profession of beekeeping over his father's business of textile and fabrics. He feels he understands the bees and so do the bees. He is practicing beekeeping with his cousin Mustafa. They are living a normal life with their families and families of bees. 

And then the Syrian war happened! The town of Aleppo is demolished in the bombing. Nuri and his wife Afra lose their only son Sami in the bombing, and Afra loses her sight. What Nuri Ibrahim is left with is, a dead son, blind wife and burnt bees. When Nuri and Afra realise there is nothing left for them in Aleppo, they decide to travel to England through Turkey and Greece with the help of smugglers. Ofcourse would these immigrants make it through the legal way? 

In the meantime, Mustafa's family is already in England and Mustafa follows them. Now the journey starts for Nuri and Afra. It is their journey of hope and doubt. Some days its bright and the refugee center has a place for them on the path. Some days are as gloomy as they could be. In some refugee centers they are unwelcome. Nuri and Mustafa are in touch with each other through mails. Mustafa is hopeful of Nuri and Afra making it to England. Nuri too. But some days the obstacles give the feeling of being stuck in the refugee centre forever. 

It appears that Nuri is too strong to endure this hard journey along with his blind wife Afra. But one who appear to be too strong, are the weakest within. They just presume to be fine and blindfold themselves about the stress disorders. It is found that Nuri's physiological condition of the brain is fine but he is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Poor Afra feels helpless. But some acquaintances on the way support the immigrant couple. 

Finally after an arduous journey hope wins over the doubt. Mustafa is more elated than anyone to see his cousin finally making it. Nuri is as equally elated to see Mustafa. Afra finally starts seeing blur images and colors. Afterall the doctor had also diagnosed that her blindness too is a resultant of severe trauma of her sons death. 

Nuri and Afra may be hoped a little more than they doubted it, as the quote in the book says, 

:SOMETIMES WE CREATE SUCH POWERFUL ILLUSIONS, SO THAT WE DO NOT GET LOST IN THE DARKNESS".

My BOOKISH COCOON

My reading journey began somewhere in 2010. Till then it was only academics that occupied a major portion of what was read and studied. I don't remember many of the books read. Infact I tried noting them down and writing reviews of the books in my diary. However couldn't succeed in it. So many of the books couldn't be listed in Goodreads too. How do you remember the books you read and what do you follow to remember the contents of the book? Ofcourse it doesn't matter HOW many books you read, what really matters is did a book change something in you for the BETTER?

Books were a solace in the toughest of times and cheered me more in my happiness . They came in to support when some people broke my trust, they were there when I was lonely, they were there when I felt lonely in the crowd. They were there when a friend left this world, they were there when mom was severely ill. They were also there in the happy times when I got the job, when I got married. I never realized this for years. Slowly when I got to realize all of it, I decided to pen down everything I feel after I read. I have had a blog since 2010 but never posted on it consistently after job happened, and then there were numerous reasons. Then I posted on Facebook whatever I read. But however it isn't satisfying me for various reasons.

So I have decided to take up this interest of reading to a blog. I have named my blog "BOOKISH COCOON"...After all its my cocoon, I feel so safe in there...