Book Review #94: 31 Miles:Can we ever win against ourselves? by Vinita Bakshi

Title: 31 Miles: Can we ever win against ourselves?

Author: Vinita Bakshi

Publishers: Rupa Publications India

Genre: General Fiction

Pages: 220 (Paperbound)

Source: Advanced Review Copy by Publisher

There are certain epochs in one’s individual life where it takes a substantial twirl and the whole thing happens so fast that one cannot fathom the rationale or judgment behind it. And undoubtedly, it poses some vital consequences when this happens in the middle of the life. The book “31 Miles” precisely narrates the midlife crisis of a woman who has lost a sense of control over some events that has changed her entire life.

The protagonist of the novel is a middle aged woman, Manasa, aged about 40 years. Growing up in a traditional orthodox family left her no choice but to give her consent for an arranged marriage at a young age. Now, she is well over 40 years, blessed with two beautiful daughters Malvika and Shonali and an ever loving husband, Abhijit. She considered herself as a regular Indian middle class home maker with the sole intention of taking care of her family and giving the best of her abilities to keep everyone happy. She grew up with no concerns whatsoever. But, an ill-fated episode made her to lose trail of her life and go into deep crisis which occupies the next part of the novel.

Sitting at home doing mundane tasks made Manasa to distaste her life. One day she decides to join a cuisine course. There, she befriends some affluent people that changed her perspective towards life. She now considers establishing her own company that specializes in the nutritious food, new food recipes and everything related with food. In order to keep herself in this advanced technical world, she learns computer and most significantly she decides to make her presence in the social media world. She opens her account in one of the popular social media websites and to her surprise she sees many of her childhood friends. One among them was Rajan Chopra. Though she was quite familiar with that name in her memory, she couldn’t relate this person to any of her childhood friends. Within few days, Rajan Chopra introduces himself as Manasa’s elder sister classmate and befriends her on social media. Slowly unanticipated events started to unfurl between them.

Rajan Chopra, the strange character from the novel starts to communicate more candidly with Manasa. He started sharing couplets, poems and Bollywood songs with Manasa to win over her. This is the important part of the novel as far as I can see. Now, readers shouldn’t judge the protagonist as too naïve and pretentious that falls for a guy at this age. Manasa never experienced this kind of admiration even from her husband. She felt surreal to hear Rajan’s swaying words every day. As the days progressed, Manasa was absolutely immersed with this outlandish man. She started to develop feelings towards him.

In a general sense, befriending strangers online is not advised. Teenagers at present are the most affected people. So, what would possibly happen when grownups, who are new to this social media circle, that doesn’t know the consequences it would have on their life, befriends strangers? Things can get hideous if they start interacting with them. There can be many appalling experiences. Our protagonist exactly faces the same experience in her life.

The next stages of the novel are the main part which I am not including in this review. 

Manasa became too emotionally involved with this man and she started to feel culpable towards her husband and daughters. Was she able to meet this mystery man? What was her thought process when she decides to meet him in person? Was this man as genuine as he appeared to her in social media? Was Manasa ready to give up everything to get back to this person? What happened at the end? Has everything become normal again? To know the answers, read this book.

Overall, the book is quite impressive. As a debutant author, Vinita has done a brilliant work. The language is simple and narration is lucid and engaging. The best part of novel is the emotions expressed by the protagonist Manasa. You can vividly capture those moments while reading. Personally I felt that the novel is bit stretched. It could’ve been reduced by 20 to 30 pages. Apart from this, the novel is quite brilliant and I enjoyed reading it.

P.S: There is a sequel to this novel coming up in future!!

My Rating:

4/5

Note: This book was given to me by the publishers in exchange of an unbiased review.

Book Review #63: Title Is Untitled By Santosh Avvannavar and others

Title: Title is Untitled

Authors: Santosh Avvannavar, Kundan Srivasatava, Rajashree Ghosh and others

Publishers: CreateSpace Independent publishing platform

Genre: Non-Fiction/Social Awareness

Pages: 120 odd pages

Source: Review Copy by Author

Finally I’ve read a book that kept me thinking for a while. The book made me to realize what is right is not always deemed to be right. This book covers the most important aspects of the modern Indian society and its flaws. It is more accurate to say it as flaws, since, this book covers some of the most serious happenings in our society, and be it on the male or female populace. The atrocities, the crimes, the extortions, abductions, scams, etc… has been covered in a greater detail in a conversational type. Yes, this may be a work of fiction, but, only the characters are made to be fiction, but, the story is simply straight forward.

This book "Title is Untitled" is on the category of “Social Adult Book” because it covers majorly the aspects that are mostly related to the problems that are faced by the adults. At the same time, the readers have to be reminded that, these kind of criminal offense are happening against children too. There are 11 stories that the authors have written in this novel, while each story has covered a topic, mainly, child marriages, sexual fantasies, marital rapes, suicides among men, domestic violence, prostitution, abduction, blackmailing, abuse of power, retirement scams, education scams etc… It is a serious book and it gives the readers a chance to ponder over few things. The title of the book “Title is Untitled” is very apt for this book.

Each story in the book speaks of a social evil, and the victim may be either men or women. Authors have not shied away from speaking their mind about some of the topics which are considered way too taboo in a conservative society like India. For instance, a particular story speaks about a man, who gets abducted by a group of thugs and abused him and forced him to a marriage that he was not at all consented with. This is popularly known as Groom abduction and it is quite rampant in various parts of India.

In another chapter they talk about a woman who has abused the domestic violence laws and made it as a business. Her sole purpose is to marry a gullible man and force him for divorce citing some unacceptable reasons and get alimony from him and search for a new victim.  

Another story speaks about a person who is not at all qualified for even a degree finds an institute that offers Ph.D. degrees for negotiable fees. This institute is not a legit and not even government approved. This person pay a hefty amount of money for his degree and without even doing a zilch of research of his subjects, he ended up getting his Ph.D. This particular story tells us that there are scams at even higher education level.

One more story is of a sexual fantasy of a young woman, who is all but cared for her unusual expectations when it comes to love making, which actually resulted in a more serious damage mentally and physically. And, like this, there are many stories from the book, that each speaks about a certain social evil. There are little facts at the end of every chapter that gives us the statistics about the problem that they’ve discussed in the chapter.

The writing style is a commendable job. They’ve avoided too much adult content and focused more on the issue. Grammatical aspects are quite satisfying. Content wise, it is rich and as I said it before, it is pure message oriented. In this age of money making race, several other authors try to write some garbage to make some quick money, but, these authors are an exception to that case. They have focused more on the content, more on educating the society and less on the money front.

I am highly impressed with the designing part of the book. The front cover image looks stunning and appropriate fonts helps the readers to read the book comfortably.

Towards the end of the book, you can read little profile of all the authors, through which we will come to know that, they’re working towards a better society, motivating people towards a better living and educating them.

Rating this book is a little tedious job. You don’t get to see this kind of book often. It’s short, crisp and contains a bundle of information and facts that can be used widely to teach the masses. A must read book at any cost. I highly recommend it.

Note: I received this book from the author in exchange of an honest review.

Buy this book from here:

Amazon

From Flipkart:

My Rating:
5/5

Book Review #29: Vamshavruksha By Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa

There are few books that questions your own existence and the root of your family.!! Yes, S. L. Bhyrappa had written this novel in the year 1965 which is close to 50 years now and still it is one of the epitome of all his novels put together. Written long ago, this book captures the essence of transformation of families and persons from a traditional Indian background to a modern India and the ups and downs that they face while doing so. Vamshavruksha can be literally translated to english as FAMILY TREE.

In the year 1972 this novel has been adopted as a movie under the same title by one of the renowned directors and a great personality in Kannada B.V.Karanth in association with a popular kannada plays writer, actor Girish Karnad. This movie have won the best direction national award and southern Indian filmfare award. The story is so gripping and it is thought provoking.

As I finished reading this novel, several questions arose within me. Who am I ?, Who are my ancestors ?, What is the purpose of our family tree when we are not even sure of who was the first person from our family ?, Can anybody answer such questions ?, Certainly not. This book captures this very arguments through our protagonists and gives us an amazing literary journey.

This novel captures the tale of two families, Shrotri and Rao households, that captures their journey that spans over three decades. In first few chapters, there is introduction of the characters of these 2 families without any twist. Later what follows in subsequent chapters is almost a biographical journey of Srinivasa Shrotri, his wife, his young widowed daughter-in-law Kathyayini (she plays an important role in this novel) juxtapositioning against the literary journey of Dr. Sadashiva Rao, his wife Nagalakshmi and his younger brother Raja Rao.

The journey of Kathyayini and Dr. Sadashiva Rao from their own perspective is a way ahead of time considering the novel's publishing time, where modernism was not so encouraged by the traditional practitioners. This particular part of the novel explores the love life of Kathyayini with Raja Rao that stood on questioning grounds of morality and cultural impact. Whereas, Sadashiva Rao's tryst with Karuna Rathne a research student of him, whom he marries on the sole purpose of completing his research books, after realizing he alone cannot complete his books.

The essence that these stories are narrated by Bhyrappa is a treat to read from the book. Through his characters he explores the age old fight between social norms versus personal happiness, morality versus individual choice, cultural tradition versus modern aspirations, family values versus individual choices, etc..etc..

This book brings us, the readers, into a debate on what is most important in our life. Holding onto the moral values or just be happy with the way we wanted. The re-marriage of Kathyayini with Raja Rao is a phase, where readers will question themselves on what she did was right or wrong. It also brings us to debate on the moral policing by Srinivasa Shrotri, who questions his daughter-in-law regarding her marriage and why its against the traditional social pattern, he also questions her whether she should take the kid along with her to her new house, by citing a reason that, kids actually belongs to the family first and then to the parents. Kids alone can represent the continuation of the family tree and when these tree breaks by a non-acceptable marriage, then it will be a bad name on their family and not on parents. Hence, it is left to Kathyayini's choice whether to uphold the accepted social pattern or to continue with her own decisions.

The ending is a true realization. The realization of Srinivasa Shrotri about his true birth and he himself doesn't belongs to the right family. Kathyayini realizes that, she shouldn't have remarried again just for the material pleasures that has no purpose after sometime. Whether Shrotri is right in terms of his traditional upbringing or Kathyayini is right in terms of her wishes is a never ending dilemma. Imagination left to the readers. Readers can introspect themselves which one is more important.

For sure, author SL Bhyrappa focuses on the moral decisions that people make or the social implications of the same for others. This is a must read book for everyone including the new generation of people. And must read for those, who justify the moral policing based on traditionally accepted societal patterns!!.

My Rating: 
5/5