Memories of my Father by Jayanthi K Manikandan

The bond of a father daughter bond is such a beautiful bond of understanding, protection, hero worship and more, that we all have heard, read, and seen in multiple movies in almost every language. This is a universal affection and bond that brings a warm feeling within us that almost always results in a spontaneous 'Awwwww' from our mouths. If our father was close by, then an unconscious hug, or at least a physical touch is inevitable in those instances. 

Jayanthi K Manikandan’s Memories of my Father is a loving memoire that gives us glimpses of this beautiful bonding between a father and daughter (in addition to insights about her father itself), during her growing up years, as well as her adulthood, the various phases that this relationship goes through and the myriad of changes that happen as the child grows and starts having a mind of her own.

Cover Page of Memories of my Father by Jayanthi K Manikandan

As I was reading through the memoire, I saw a lot of similarities in the life of the author and mine that I could relate to, specifically with respect to the changes that come due to the father’s job, the family structure, and the culture in which she and her father have grown up and more. Through every chapter about her father, I was able to see the admiration that the little girl had for her father, the hero worship that is such a normal part of a girl child's image about her father. Girls are blamed for expecting their father (a version of him at least) in their spouses. This is true to a large extent because they feel well protected and cared for within the loving embrace of their father. This protective shield of care, pride, and trust in them and their abilities is what women seek in their life partner, but many a times are left earning for it. 

I was thrilled to read the name of the place called Virudhunagar, a place that is as much a part of me as Chennai, Lalapet, Lyon, Groton, Harrow, and Alexandria are. Virudhunagar is a small town to the south of Madurai. Though a business town, not many people are even aware of its existence. 

As the chapters move on, I saw the happenings that was common in almost every home, in the state of Tamilnadu. Culturally, the entire state wasn’t so different in what each family wanted for their children and their wellbeing, and how they implemented and executed these visions and ambitions by supporting, guiding, nudging, and paving the way for their children. 

In Jayanthi, I saw every child who had multiple dreams during their growing up phase that came nothing close to the path they chose for themselves (or in many cases their families chose on their behalf) with respect to their studies and career. I saw bits and pieces of my grandfather, my father, father-in-law, and every other father figure I have seen while growing up, in the various habits, incidents and events that Jayanthi narrates. 

Reading the Memories of my Father was mixed bag feeling for me, especially considering the formal relationship that I had with my late father.  

One small thing that bothered me while reading the book for the formatting of text, which probably is an occupational hazard as a documentalist & facilitator, writing and reviewing multiple documents and presentations as part of my job role. In many sections I found myself automatically trying to place the cursor and remove the additional line spacing or the indent that was a bit out of place. 

You can download Jayanthi K Manikandan's Memories of my Father, published as part of the Blogchatter's Ebook carnival at - https://www.theblogchatter.com/download/memories-of-my-father-by-jayanthi-manikandan

My book - Free Rein to Thoughts - is also part of this Ebook carnival. 

This blog is part of the #BlogchatterEbook carnival & #TBRChallenge

Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats by Tomichan Matheikal

The title of the book and the cover page were what intrigued me a lot to start reading the book of short stories. Humpty dumpty is a nursery rhyme character that I always felt bad for, as a child. Even today, when I hear (or see) the rhyme, it makes me wonder why the illustration of Humpty Dumpty was egg like? This visual representation painted by the rhyme gives a very gory image of the person – Humpty Dumpty - as the progresses. The phrase 10 Hats… though Humpty Dumpty also wore a hat in the illustrations, this brought the image of the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit, from Alice in Wonderland – probably the result of the cover image where a woman is walking towards a grand archway that looked like a gateway into another world…. Rightly so. 

Cover page of Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats by Tomichan Matheikal

The 10 short stories transported me into a different world than my home, through its narration. It elicited a rainbow of emotions, feelings of fear, smile, laughter, awe, affection, love and more. While this was for the words that one reads, each story has layers to them highlighting the societal hypocrisy, duality, reality in each of the events that unfold. The people in the short stories feel like they were one among us, our family, friends, neighbours, conmen, godmen, and leaders whom we might know, and probably also met in our real life, who think like us, and sometimes we might probably also see a reflection of ourselves in one or more of the characters from these stories. Some we might accept while some we might be against. It was pleasure to read names that I have been used to hearing from my everyday life, experience the beauty (and eeriness of) locations that I have visited with family and friends during my school excursions and family vacations, all over again.

My favourite story from the 10 short stories was Phantoms on a Desert. I loved the way in which it brought out the uncanny similarities of emotions, needs, and behaviours of two people who were poles apart even with respect to their gender (among other things), which highlights the stark reality of life, that underneath all those layers of exhibitionism, barriers & boundaries, wants & needs, likes & dislike, at our core, we all are one and the same, especially when we are at the safety and security needs level in Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. The other reason why I loved this short story was the coinage of the words Musanghies & Kirshangies. This is the first time I am hearing these words and the explanation for them had me in splits, pulling me completely out of the fear/horror that I was still experiencing after reading the first two stories (just before retiring for the night). 

After a long while, I was motivated to read through a book, without wanting to break away from it for any reason. It was an absolute pleasure to read the narrative style of the fiction stories that brought out political, societal, and communal lack of standards, the mind and it’s complex working, the beautiful shades of people that we come across in our everyday life – good, bad, ugly and the myriad of other variations across these three. 

I would surely go back to these short stories more than once, and maybe it might also become a bedtime read that I would read with my children too whenever that happens (now that they are older and overlap time for bedtime reads have considerably reduced).

This e-book, Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats, has been published as part of the #BlogchatterEbook carnival 2022 and can be downloaded at - https://www.theblogchatter.com/download/humpty-dumptys-10-hats-by-tomichan-matheikal 

My book - Free Rein to Thoughts - is also part of this Ebook carnival. 

This blog is part of the #BlogchatterEbook carnival & #TBRChallenge

Let it Go! Let it Go! - The Self Guilt - Let it Go!

Thanks to the ever-charming host ‘King’ Khan, Latha started watching a popular TV show - “TED Talks India”. On a relaxed Sunday, she saw a recorded episode, focusing on women empowerment. Two speakers talked about girl child education (Safeena Hussain – Educate Girls) and standing up for sexually abused children and women (Trisha Shetty – SheSays). Both these speakers and their causes hit too close to home – one because she believed that educating the girls is really a single stop solution to most problems that we see in our society and the other jolted her from her pacified state of mind that all is fine, to acknowledge that some wounds are so deep that the scars remain for life!

Halfway through the narrative of Trisha, Latha was stunned to feel raging emotions in her mind and tears started rolling down her cheeks uncontrollably. Just then her husband entered the living room, got a glimpse of the TV screen and immediately rushed to give her a comforting hug. This instant feeling of love and security gave her the shoulder she wanted and she eventually calmed down – as Trisha completed her speech and the sound of claps reverberated from the TV screen. 

Like Trisha and millions of women across the world, Latha had also experienced such abuses. In her early teens, Latha was visiting her relatives’ home during her summer vacation for a short homestay. Taking advantage of the situation that she was staying alone with his family that night, without her parents, one of her cousins had touched her inappropriately when she was sound asleep.  She had just hit puberty and was already dealing with physical and emotional changes and was baffled by experiencing such a lewd behaviour at such an unexpected moment. Though she had the presence of mind to quickly react & run to safety before it could have gotten any worse, she felt immense shame to not be able to share it with any of the adults around. In the morning, to her astonishment, her abuser coxed her to remain silent and made her feel guilty by implying that she probably enjoyed the encounter as well! His remarks were convincing enough for her to carry the guilt, though she strongly refuted his lewd statements. She missed her mother and could not wait to get back to her home.

Once in the safety of her home, she still could not bring herself to speak to her Mom. Every emotion that Trisha was talking about, including looking at herself in the mirror and asking “Why did it happen to her?” “Why did she let it happen?” “How did she let it happen?” kind of questions in a never-ending loop drove her crazy and eventually she decided that she had to let it all out. Still, she wasn’t comfortable talking about it to anyone, not even her Mother who unlike the other mothers of that generation, was very friendly and open to talk anything. Almost a month had passed and she feared that her Mother might also judge her. So, she decided to pen it down in a diary and kept it well hidden in her shelf. She kept moving the dairy every day, but as fate would have it, her Mother did find it and also read it and confronted her.

Though Latha felt cornered, her Mother comforted her and said she will not be judged and that she need not blame herself (as Latha had written in the diary), as it was not her fault. Hearing this, Latha started bawling, lying down in her Mom’s lap. Her mother told her not to hold herself responsible, and that most women go through this, including herself! This shocked Latha to another silence but made her realise how the double standard of this society places an enormous burden on the woman for character building and associates the same with her sexual chastity. The absurdity of this was something she wanted to change and this prompted her to choose her career path in Behavioural Sciences. Mother asked Latha to “let go” of her guilt and promised to stay by her for any emotional support that she needed. A few months of erratic emotions and a few Mom-Daughter talks (Mom playing the role of a counsellor) later, Latha was able to come out of victim mentality and guilt, but the incident itself left a deep scar in the mind of a teen that she hasn’t been able to forget.

She never went back to that relatives’ home after this, though she did not shy away from speaking with that family if she happened to meet them on other occassions. Her abuser never bothered her again - guess he saw the change in the demeanour of Latha and felt that he might end up in trouble if he pursued her further. There were other such encounters where aged men tried to take advantage of a teenager alone at home or those leechers who felt no shame to grope her on a crowded bus, that she took for her school.

Such incidents only strengthened the resolve that Latha had made to pursue a career in Psychology, primarily to be the kind of support that her Mother was for her, to many more than just her future children. Her Mother always quoted that “You can only feel guilt when you were responsible for an action”. In all these cases, Latha was only a passive innocent recipient of abusive behaviour, and so she was not responsible for what she had to face. This lesson stuck with her for life.

She knew that not all survivors were lucky like her to have a Mother who listened and supported them in all their decisions and situations. She wanted to set up a support system for sexual abuse victims to cope with the after-effects of such trauma and also to spread the message that a survivor of sexual abuse has no need to wallow in self-guilt. She aspires to create a society where not only girls but boys are also taught about boundaries, educated about appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, taught to acknowledge and deal with emotions and vulnerability and create a gender-neutral mindful parenting strategy, that would enable parents to bring up well-rounded (grounded), responsible adults.

This focus drove Latha to pursue Arts and Science after school, top her Masters in Behavioural Science and become a Psychotherapist who excels in counselling sexual abuse survivors, their families, conduct parental workshops to increase awareness on related topics for both genders, including giving tips on gender-neutral parenting strategies that ensure healthy mental growth and outlook for the children. Hearing Trisha speak of similar vision made her feel that she is not alone and there is hope for a better tomorrow for our future generations.

As Latha woke up the next day, reminding herself to get in touch with SheSays, she walked to her home office to get ready for her first appointment of the day.

Yes – she now helps others also to “let go” of the unwarranted guilt!

Typical Day If Something Goes Missing - Won The Hachette India Contest!

Pic. Courtesy: Google Images

Today evening I received my prize for winning the Contest Alert on March 9, from Hachette India. The challenge for the contest was to 'Create a story about a typical day if something goes missing'. Below is my entry for the same which won me the book - THE GOLLANCZ BOOK OF SOUTH ASIAN SCIENCE FICTION. I am thrilled and excited to start reading this book.

This is my first attempt at writing fiction.

_____________________________________________________

It is 7 a.m. in the morning. Aashi and Aadi walk down the stairs, as always, half asleep, to get to the wash basin to brush their teeth. The house is unusually silent for this time of the day, but they are still unaware of the eerie silence. They enter the kitchen and find that their morning hot drink is ready for them, which they pick up and drink and then switch on the TV. After 15 minutes, Aashi, heads to take bath and get ready for school while Aadi is still seated on the couch watching TV. Nishanth (their Dad) is sleeping. Aashi, on her way to the bathroom, wakes up her Dad and heads to the take bath. Nishanth, comes down for his coffee and notices the silence (or rather just the noise that is coming from the TV and nothing else). A school day morning is never silent. What was wrong? He heads to the kitchen and finds it empty. He thought he didn't see Nithya beside him when he woke up and she is neither here in the kitchen, and that too on a working morning. Now he is concerned and looks in every room, but she is nowhere. His heart is beating fast and he is very close to a panic attack. He rushes outside hoping to find her in the garden or walking around in the community only to have his hopes crushed. Now he is in full-blown panic mode.

He comes inside and asks Aadi if he saw his mom. Aadi says, "No papa."

Aashi is out of her bath and Nishanth asks her "Do you know where your Mom is?"

Aashi says, "I thought she was in the bath in your room."

Nishant says, "No, I have searched for her everywhere but I can't find her."

Aashi says, "Did you try calling her mobile or messaging her on hangouts?"

Nishanth does both only to find that the phone was ringing in their room. Now he goes frantic with anxiety, wondering if she actually did take his word seriously and walked out on him to her Mom's place or elsewhere, as he had asked her to when they were arguing the previous night, just before hitting bed. He picked up his phone to call his Mother-in-law, but then stopped himself. What would he tell his mom-in-law if Nithya wasn't there? Just then, Aadi notices that it is time for his bath and walks up the stairs, picks his clothes from his room, and then opens the door to the sit out calling out, "Ma, it is time for my bath. Can you help me with some warm water please?"

Nithya, promptly responds, "It is already done. Go and take your bath.".

She walks down the stairs with her head held high and a knowing smile on her face (and a glint of pride in her eyes only for Nishanth to see) and into the kitchen to pack the children's lunches. Understanding dawns on Nishanth and he realises how much he took her presence for granted and vows to himself to give more quality time for Nithya and their personal relationship over and beyond the roles they play as spouses, parents, among others. He now knows that Nithya is his earthing and he needs her by his side always for him to be the successful husband, father, employee, son, brother, and friend. A few seconds of her absence was enough to realise her importance in his life.

Amazonia (Novel) vs. Avatar (Movie)

Having read most of the fiction novels in "Medical Thrillers / Scientific Adventures" category, by Robin Cook / Michael Crichton, I decided to try different authors this time. Last week, I did a random search in our Groton Public Library, and picked up this book - Amazonia by James Rollins. When I browse 'Editorial Reviews' of novels, I look for Amazonian Jungles, Egyptian Pyramids and other Ancient Myths, Mutations / Genetic Engineering and Aliens :-) This book seemed to have some of these "feelers" and so I got it issued. Having completed this 420-page novel in less than a week (usually, I take 3-4 weeks) is a testimony that I enjoyed reading it. Yes - It did meet my expectations with all elements of Amazon - Native Indian Tribes, Anacondas, Swamps, giant Caimans & a good dose of Scientific unknowns - Mutated Creatures, Pre-historic Healing Tree, Incurable Virulent Plague etc. From an 'Action' standpoint, you have Quasi-military rangers, trails & chases, death traps, stealth weapons, explosions to keep you glued to the story's mainstream.

A very interesting point is, I did notice lot similarities in this novel (released in 2002) and "Avatar" movie (2009). I have seen the movie earlier in Dec. 2009. In the movie, you have Hometree - the Tree of Souls, deposits of Unobtainium (!?!) beneath it, Na'vi tribe protecting it and RDA corporation trying to destroy / exploit it. In this novel, you have Yagga - the Healing Tree, source of evolutionary genetic library beneath it, Ban-ali tribe protecting it and St. Savin Pharmaceuticals trying to destroy / exploit it. Coincidence?? James Cameron should answer this question, though I did not see credits/reference given to this author/novel in the movie. I also noted that many readers reflected similar thoughts in the writer's blog @ www.jamesrollins.com.

Now that I have got a new author, who writes the genre I love, I am looking forward to read his other novels like Excavation, Subterranean, Deep Fathom, Ice Hunt etc.

I also googled some trivia below:

• In 2007, James Rollins was hired to write the novelization of the script for the movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull".
• James Rollins and James Clemens are two of the pen names of American veterinarian "Jim Czajkowski" - He sold his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California, to concentrate full-time on writing.