Book Review: Before We Visit the Goddess

My rating: ●●●●○

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Before We Visit the Goddess

UK: Simon & Schuster UK, 2016

224 pp. ₹1250

ISBN: 9781471146961

Summary: This one presents itself as a great, brief read which seems to be taking you along on a journey through ages to explore lives, looking back on the decisions made and the steps taken to basically survive. It is when you switch off from the book, close your eyes to recapitulate what all happened that you connect the dots and feel amazed on how everything written, though all disconnected, makes freakingly perfect sense. A great read, indeed, worth all your time.   

My take: Three generations – Sabitri, Bela and Tara – have their ways with life; they seem to be taking certain decisions which make perfect sense to them at particular times in their lives; still, they carry the weightage that came along with the steps taken. The connection between the characters, although belonging to different generations makes great sense along the read.

There are various aspects of this book which seem intriguing the first time you hold the book, like the cover, which has borders similar to that of a saree telling the readers it might have something to do with feminism and a simple portrayal of the most basic requisite for worshipping, i.e., flowers, the TOC which mentions chapters in a disconnected series of time and the title which gives way to a whole lot of questions which are answered well through the read.

The book follows a non-linear narrative approach with sections titled aptly and dedicated to each protagonist. You would find multi-layered characters of all the three leads, which are revealed layer by layer slowly and, thus, this helps maintain a slightly mysterious air around, keeping the reader glued for more. This wonderfully written journey of three women will surely want you to dwell into the book deeper and deeper and will bring a smile onto your face towards the end when everything will seem so apt. I particularly liked the last and the final letter Sabitri is able to write to Tara after so many efforts and this is what made me fall in love with the author a little more.

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Final word: That sensation, the goosebumps, what I look for in any book while I finally reach on to the last page and to the last words - this book gave me precisely what I was hoping for. My first read from Divakurni has been a extremely well-written, dark, grim story about three generations of women - mother, daughter and granddaughter. This book would keep you glued till the end, wanting you to understand what led to the various acts. Further, the disconnected TOC intends you to be even more focused trying to put it all together like pieces of a puzzle. I look forward to reading her other writings.

One year, countless memories!

This day, last year, we took the plunge to start living together, giving shape to our dreams. Reaching here, to this decision, settling in India and choosing to tread on the path which could prove to be extremely tough wasn’t taken in a day; it took us months and to me, it all seemed like an era.

I always tell my girlfriends it never seems to me that I live with my husband; the time we are spending now seems a mere extension to our dating time, when, of course, we were not staying together. It’s been a fun one year which has taught many life lessons I could possibly write a book about but, for now, let us do with a blog.

1. No expectations = life full of surprises. Pretty much. I never expected him to cook or wake up early and make me tea or take extra care of me when I am not well. He did, and I pretended to take all that like a breeze!
2. Friendship > marriage. Well, this dates back to the time from where it all started – it all started with friendship. So, we decided to retain the flavor and not adulterate with expectations marriage might hold from a couple.
3. You + Me = We. A massive change. Yes, it is a couple taking decisions now in almost all the spheres. For the first time in my life, I have been putting my view in taking big decisions and enjoying the discussions happening before the consensus is settled.
4. Marriage ≠ proving to each other. Accepting the other person the way he is, his way of living and thinking, habits, culture from where he comes all clubs into a package home-delivered to you, all wrapped in a gift paper. Living together would give way to whole lot of revelations which should just be taken as a milestone in knowing in each other and crossed happily.
5. Love = being comfortable. That pretty much is the crux. One year is a long enough time to understand each other rather clearly and be able to breathe superfine in each other’s company. When there’s nothing to prove to the other person, you learn to live just the way you are.
6. Marriage ≠ growing up: Yes! Be as crazy as you have always been and never let go of the things which actually bring pleasure to you. Though you have decided to grow old together but this sense of satisfaction of being with the right person might actually reverse age for you! Do not ever think of succumbing to societal pressures just because you’re growing old. I’ve been thinking of taking life one second at a time and, trust me, it makes me feel real light.
7. Best times = sitting and talking: Just this. I trust in you and you trust in me. That should end the story well.
8. Feelings ≠ words. When you live together with your husband and the feeling of being married starts sinking in, you realize that love is much more than words could ever define. It engulfs your relation, keeping it warm and giving you enough space for growth. You know no words could ever tell him how you feel and this feeling is so contagious that each other's mere presence would leave no space for words. You realize loving each other becomes as a habit as breathing.
9. Clashes ≠ serious fuckups: It’s perfect to fight like pigs and come together later in the day because you need someone to talk to. It would always be your decision what you would want to prioritize at any given point – person, relation, matter or your ego. After all, any stupid decision taken in haste would not mean end of all the problems, but starting of a new set of problems.
10. Success = being happy: This is my final word to sum up my one year this day. Love is being happy because you’ve been blessed to live the life of your dreams, to see things falling into place, to feel god’s blessings in all spheres of life and because you have so much to thank god for and even more to look forward to!

To the sheer happiness that spreads when we're together!

Five Tantrums He's Sure to Throw at Home if He's an Entrepreneur

Hola to you all who'd read this article first on Techstory!

To a wife, nothing would come across as bad a nightmare as her well-settled, ambitious professional husband’s plan to kick his stable job right in the bum and start working for himself. While this might sound tad too grand on the face of it, especially when he will narrate his future plans to you, but things would, by all odds, get way too graver, deeper and tasking as you’d get neck-deep into them. 

Being a wife to any from the genre of husbands in question here, you really have no option other than facing him head-on almost all the times and learning to glide off all the tantrums he would, knowingly or in a fit, throw at you. Some of them are surely interesting enough to talk about in detail. 

1. The days when all he’d want is to be sentenced to solitude
This is the time when he’d showcase ‘the no mood’ channel on the television of his face. Since his life and, to a part, his mind would shy a classic pressure cooker, thanks to the lots of decision-making he’s committed to himself, all that you’d listen from him is the ‘leave me alone’ whistle he would occasionally blow. Well, get set to face doors being banged on to your face, because your dear hubby is thinking out loud on the other side of them. 

2.  And the ones when you’re his guiding star

You’re a modern professional, who knows her ways with work and home, and you have the finances in your hands; bud, you have got to have your halo up all the time! You’re his knight in the shining armor, the person who is playing it live in the corporate world and who is abreast of the times in her industry and can vaguely foresee the near future and who has money clinking in her pocket, all available at her disposal. You surely would have been the most loved person in the family had you been the groom; umm, being a bride might, too, bring occasional days of happy realization to him and to you, this would only bring episodic bouts of ‘momma’ love.

3. And those when he’s nervous and doesn’t want to admit
On a lot of days, you are just going to see him glued to the bed and he won’t say a word why he’s religiously meditating in his dreams. Well, by now, you know that he has shedload of tensions running a marathon in his mind and the simplest way he has chosen to defeat them all is by switching off his mind from the race. He would simply sleep away all his troubles, and expect you to better not judge his way of living by his weird habits. Gah!

4. The talk-less, do-more trash
You would see a massive behavior change in him the moment he would step into the world of entrepreneurship; he would want an atmosphere at home resembling that in the house of a kid who’s appearing for boards. Soon, you would want to break the deafening silence by blabbering since you would, obviously, not want to talk rocket science with him and that’s when he would want to extend the already-mindboggling silence to extend indefinitely, plainly because he thinks he has so much to plan right at that moment that he wouldn’t want to simply waste his time yattering with you. On the contrary, you’d be tad too surprised when you would get to know how much he talks to every person he meets when he puts his entrepreneurial cape on! Well, God made friends, anyway, and we made internet!

5. He doesn’t want it but he wants it
Sooner enough or until his venture would break the back of the breakeven point, he’d run out of the means to run his ‘supercool’ lifestyle and, then, he has you. On one hand, where he will never say that he wants to buy that pair of jogger jeans he had seen his ‘some’ idol wearing, on the other hand he would still want you to understand he wants it. No, you are not bringing up an extremely cranky, moody and overgrown baby, you are just trying to put up with this guy you love with all your heart and soul, and his ways? Well, good luck with them, until you need some expert psychiatric counselling on how to calm your mind when all that you see in your husband is a sweet-looking, giant punch bag!

On Your Anniversary!

Hola, MaPa!

Today y’all are going to cross a legendary milestone in your relationship and the history of our family and it brings me so much joy to write this letter to both of you! We are standing at a great height today, from where the view is surreal and things seem pretty much under control, but what has taken from you two to reach here is something indescribable. What has mattered all this while is you two surviving the hardships together, not looking at the size of the problems while solving them and wanting to win over any tough situation.

My chest swells with pride thinking how you have not only started small and made it big, but also how you, as two individuals, were in it together to face it all. No wonder you own every inch of freedom you enjoy today. Your marriage has been a perfect example of ‘opposites attract’ and we all know what has taken from both of you to get used to each other! There have been good times, bad and seriously sad, but it all passed like a short night and there we were, again, to welcome a fresh day.

You don’t know how your mere presence and your way of carrying your life has been there in our lives as a great beam of hope. All our childhood, we knew we had your back every time we were in some serious shit and I am sure that is a very big thing. You had this additional responsibility of solving our fuss while handling your own. Our lives, too, have been no less than drama but you have surely handled it all like an artist.

You’ve not only taught us surviving really long ‘rainy’ days, but also partying all the while we were passing them. This is the perfect time to thank you both for giving us a life we never knew we deserved, for bringing up us well in the circumstances that there were, for taking care of us through thick and thin, for helping us pass this really tough phase called, teenage, for putting up with our struggles, for understanding our wishes and demands, for trusting in us with our decisions in life, for loving us unconditionally all the while and for giving this amazing sense of support we always have in the back of our minds because of you two.

No wonder, we two are a hybrid version of a, clean-hearted, outspoken, very sweet dad and a smart, caring, loving mom! You two perfectly complete this incredible place we love to call our ‘home’!

Happy 30th, 70 more to go! *touchwood*!

I'm still waiting for you to get her home, bhai! :)

Jumping on the bandwagon

In my too little a life to call an experienced one, I have passed through many such trendsetter phases which were provoking enough to instigate an action out of me. Irrespective of what was responsible for setting the momentum, the consequence always resulted me jumping on the bandwagon.

The earliest one I can recall was taking an engineering entrance exam because it was so much in vogue to overlook and behave you didn’t know. No wonder I did not find even a single fabric in me to tailor myself to the looks of an engineer. God bless that examiner who, also, did not find me good enough to dress like one! Anyway, that was way too back and, of course, I have enjoyed treading on the path lesser opted for.

Following getting educated and starting to earn, there came a phase in life when every social media I was subscribed to was filled with high-definition pictures of pre-wedding photoshoots, wedding capsules, artificially-created, romantic shots, woes-into-vows videos and mushy love messages. Getting married stays so much in fashion while you’re in your 20’s that almost everyone you know is busy finding someone for you who, of course, doesn’t know you (spares off from special convincing). That’s when it struck to my parents, and a little to me, that their daughter now needs to be pushed off this house to find her abode in someone else’s. Funny how things change, the place you have spent all your life growing up stays yours but is no more yours to say. Anyway, the craze stays for some time, until routine sets in and you get used to living with whosoever legal system ties you with.

Time inched a more towards getting older when I was just figuring out the difference between being a part of a family and being a family myself, veering my brain to the sensible path, not the one which looked cooler and trying to act mature while still carrying the same, stupid, unripened inner self. This is the time when things have changed again and something still newer has set its foot in vogue. Everyone I know is once again back in picture to make me meet someone who doesn’t know me (no special convincing here, too). Take a hint!

Well, I shouldn't really blame them, for that is what's happening all around them, and me. I suspect everyone I know is so bloody saving money off using a protection that all that hear from every direction is that I am going to become an ‘aunt’! From people at work to closest of close friends to people I see almost every day to even celebrities, everyone seems to have been bitten by cupid’s stupid cousin who is busy presenting 'maternity time-offs' to girls, especially the ones in my closest social periphery. The happiness, excitement and nervousness these girls feel and what they have conveyed to me is so palpable that I would have immediately jumped on the bandwagon had I been my older self. I look at my pocket, then, and feel buying my dream Thar would be way better a decision for now. It would be hell of a ride, I am sure, but I would still enjoy being a fence sitter for now and revel in being called (with a heavy heart) an ‘aunt’!

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The Backstage Life

Casually browsing my television, I came across something which did not let my brain move on to other things. It was about the women who never came to the front and who were totally fine living a common man’s life when they could have easily reveled in celebrityhood, while their husbands actively scored hits over hits on Wikipedia searches. This was a random cookery show I was kind of stuck at till the credits set rolling and I noticed how a show being hosted by Sanjeev Kapoor was produced by his wife, Alyona Kapoor. I was amazed at how despite being equally well-read and talented, she was never really attracted to the ever-pulling limelight. And, then, I was reminded of so many such, who had delighted in their spouse’s success without creating noise about their own presence.

I have, for a very long time, emulated my idol, Sudha Murty. Reading more about her revealed to me how she, despite being from a service-class family, happily gave away her savings to fund her husband’s idea to start his own venture. All her life she believed in the power of her good thoughts and karma and stayed backstage, cheering him, a stalwart who is now an IT sensation in the entire world. She had her own area of expertise and interest, which she never lost hold of. No wonder her simplicity speaks for itself, even today.

Before I get carried away expressing my love for her, I should better come back to what I am trying to put forth. These women of substance seem to me not only an effective propelling force behind the successes of their spouses, but also a strong pillar of support who was always busy cushioning the grounds for their husbands just in case they fall bad. No wonder they meant business all the time they were being sensible while letting their husbands happily build castles in the air of the empire they would build sometime in future. I am sure trusting these weird, creative species requires whole lot of belief, patience and fingers crossed behind backs.

Speaking of whatever little experience I have, I am sure these ladies, after years of enduring an entrepreneurial husband, when finally get to see their nights turn into day, have very little left in them to claim their share of fame in the work space which never really belonged to them. I am sure there are enough reasons behind living the backstage life, the strongest one being the fact that they have been wanting, praying, begging for that one stroke, one shot, one right move in the play that would strike the chords for the idea to work right so much that they finally do not want to adulterate the taste of victory by giving it their personal flavor. 

Waiting for the first success, the first right move, first good news is nowhere a small task and having invested so much in wanting to see it real doesn’t command any more of their participation, other than them watching everything from the backstage. It is like you assist in cooking a dish and stand all the while in the kitchen watching it prepare, only to savor it way later after it was ready when the flavors are finally off your head, right?

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