KhepiAri

Book Review: We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafazi and Liz Welch Quote: So when I dream of home, I dream of mangoes I can pick off the trees.i dream of quiet and grass. I dream of peace. And nobody can take that away from me. - Maria Everyone knows Malala's story. The girl who opposed the Taliban with her pen. She is the symbol of girl empowerment, she like many who have preceded her and many who will follow her, knows education is the only way for women to have her say in this world. Malala has focused on the biggest Humanitarian crisis after Global Warning, Refugees. Documenting eleven stories of eleven women she met around the world. Migration is a reality, it happening and it has always been happening. Sometimes migration is a voluntary process and other times it's a decision made out of desperation to survive. The most vulnerable to violence are women and children, in a world where resources are imbalanced and equality is a scarce commodity between men...

Book Review: Jasmine Days by Benyamin Quote: That's why I told you the story of the Imam. Poor Ali, he is an idiot who ran to the river to see the monster of his own fiction. If we don't see where a person is coming from, then all our education and experience is useless. In a Middle Eastern country, amidst the desert stands the City, full of immigrants from South Asia. In it lives rebellious Sameera Parvin, a Pakistani immigrant who works as a radio jockey. She is a crowd favourite, loves playing the guitar with friends and is content in the city that provides her identity and burgers. Her happy days began to crumble when her friend Ali an enraged Shia Muslim begins to tell her tales of atrocities the King and the nation has done against Shias. As the story unfolds we learn of inner politics of a nation, and a joint family: the Taya Ghar which is Sameera's place of grounding as well as emancipation. Sippie aunty and Aisha aunty present the di...

Book Review: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson Quote: I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too? The first time I came to learn about the existence of this book happened when I skipped a school day and stayed home and found the cinema adaptation airing on my television. I was thirteen and the protagonist of the story was thirteen. Melinda and I, we just connected. And I fell in love with Kristen Stewart's portrayal, I really wanted to scoop her up, protect her and marry her then. That was also the first time I really understood the reason for every daughters' mother's fear and concern. I asked my best friend to watch the movie the next day, who soon made an interesting observation about Melinda's ex-best friend Rachelle not being dumb and blinded by love for a boy to forget her reason and thought process. And it taught us one lesson we never forg...

Book Review: Poonachi by Perumal Murugan and Kalyan Raman Quote: ONCE, IN A village, there was a goat. No one knew where she was born. The birth of an ordinary life never leaves a trace, does it? Even so, her arrival was somewhat unusual. The story of an orphan goat, given to an old man by a giant, whom he calls Bakasuran. Named Poonachi after a kitten his old wife once had. You open this book and you woosh past it in one sitting. Animal Farm meets Female Dalit Narrative meets the Golden Geese story. It's a love story, a tragic love story with some tropey classic scenes, but it is the love story of goats. After a long time, it's a book I thoroughly enjoyed as well chocked on. The language so caring, lucid and sensitive that it comes out as a witty because it is paralleled with the harsh life of a female goat. The animals in the story think, feel, question the working of society. The nameless old man and old woman are as human as they could be, their economic ...

Book Review: The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa Quote: Until then, my life had been limited to the modest territory of Satoru's apartment and a small area around it. A decent-sized territory for a cat, really, but pretty modest compared to vastness of this world. A cat could never see all the sights the world has to offer in one lifetime. There's just so much out there. ___ A lone Satoru finds a stray male cat who loves basking on his silver van. An accident makes the cat seek his help. And since then cat is named Nana, a name he is not enthusiastic about and they live together happily for five years. Until one day Satoru sets off on a journey with him to re-home Nana, because of unforeseeable reason. They drive through towns and Nana witnesses things for first time; sea, horses, deers, farmland, mount Fuji, graveyards. The book is primarily told from Nana's perspective and shifts to third person narrative when required. Nana is sarcastic, witty an...

Every year the goddess with ten hands comes to visit the tribe called Bongalies. A tribe spread all over the world, loves eating sweets, fish, rice, and words. The goddess comes as daughter leaves as the mother brings a lot of emotions and excitement in the B genes. With her comes the headache of shopping and pandal hopping. None of which yours truly enjoys. Not only the goddess visits her family, she brings her children, her pet, and her children’s pet. My house is quite the human representation of that divine family. Our mother is as ferocious as the goddess, willing to kill and bite and rip for her children, flowers and pets’ sake. She has two daughters one who loves, let’s say anything related to material possession. Another who believes in burying herself in fiction to avoid public interaction. Again, my mom’s elder daughter has a handsome and short-tempered son-in-law who fills the vacancy of goddess’ war faring son. My mother doesn’t have a lion, but a Persian ...

To my imaginary reader buddies, let’s close our eyes and imagine our lives; it has its downs and ups, falls and rises, sadness and happiness, anger and love etcetera etcetera. It’s normal, ordinary and has a history. We were born and like the saying goes we don’t get to choose our name or family, hence we stick to them for life. Keep your eyes closed though. When my elder sister bought her egotistical six months old Persian Cat, the poor proud brat had no name. He had assumed “oye” and “Oi” to be his epithet. Finally when I named him Goldie, the happiness he had was shining on the tips of his whiskers. After that he has been supplied with multiple nicknames which somehow are always similar to mine, but he loves all his names. If tomorrow I were to stop calling him Goldie and call him Sunflower, he would be perplexed for few days, maybe weeks. My housemate and I, we have adopted a stray cat and named her Petush. For first few days she was far from responding to her n...

Every time I hear the word roots, my mind doesn’t flash the image of brown, muddy tentacle filled organism, but drags me back to my history class eight years back. My class teacher had asked us about the Slavic nations, we all were clueless. She had practically called us a batch of dumb-set high strung on ignorance. She had called our lack of respect for national history, regional past and personal chronicles tragic, and prophesied that this tragic trait would leave us handicap. Then she added the example of an arrogant little newborn leaf which was so proud of its luscious green colour that it detached itself from the brown tree. It died the very next moment. To her we were all going to face the same fate. Among the fallen human leaves of my generation, I am a proud member too. Few days back I was told, I need to stop writing in English and start writing in my mother tongue. No good writing happens in one’s second tongue. In its own place and context, it’s a very sound a...

Every day, health journals, newspapers, e-papers, magazines, blogs, micro-blogs, tumblr and infinite other portals publish pieces about physical well-being. The infamous The Awkward Yeti, has taken it upon himself to simplify the human body with art. In this age of acute health care system and personal development and hyper awareness about body, some humans take their bodies for granted, they would have been happier had medical science stuck to the treatment of humours. Let’s face the easy facts, exercise is tough, giving upon on post-sunrise sleep is hardest. Our generation may be, has the perfect balance between health conscious crazy mode and hardcore lazy mode. Yes, we wish that our weight count would drop with each new ‘like’ increase on our Facebook post. Again the truth is, we have to drag our minds and butts too fix this lacuna in our mood swings. We might eat the street food, but we try to balance it out with green tea. Our generation is the dough that gets knea...

Photo Credit- To rightful Creator, I found it in google My fondness with dogs and other creature is a family heirloom that is encoded in my genes. The bag I carry to my university always has small packs of biscuits in it, I carry it thinking of possible what if situations- a long face, beady eyed creature comes wagging its tail at me? Or a hungry little puppy rolls at my legs, I choose to be prepared. Often at times those biscuits have even saved starving humans too after six hours of non-stop classes. Occasionally I have eye contacts with another species, the feline, they and I, we were match made in hell. They lock their eyes on mine and so do I on the marble eyes which they proudly flaunt when they are climbing up walls, running after birds or hiding behind the bush, we have our moments of mutual recognition and respect. The goats and the cows to seem to have found a spot in my heart, many a times I have chased them out of the garden with sticks for eating up the plants ...

Q-Why am I writing this post? A- To cheer up my dearest best friend who has been a weeping enough to flood her house and I want to end the chapter for her. (Ideas below are not mine own nor are the photographs) Right now I feel guilty, my match making skills are a gift from divine and so is my break up skills. Once up on a time my one sentence critique on love made girls break up with their lovers. I have stopped giving those careless criticisms now. But I do keep dabbling with making couples; the tendency to become Cupid has always been high in me. In my zeal, I bought two of my close friends together and things have unfortunately turned out sour. My oracle vision had only focused on the good parts but, I never saw past the honeymoon period. I believe in the honeymoon period and nothing after that. Yes an escapist view, but crucial for survival. Sadly people around me see beyond the honeymoon period and see too much of reality- Job, house, car, marriage, kids and death...

A month or two back I was entrapped by the capitalist regime of discounts. In happiness and excitement I had bought six books of certain writer. I have had heard so much about her that when she was selling herself on amazon I was seduced in moments. With ten books and fame for unorthodox life style, she had intrigued me for years. Yet I had never read her. Then on that particular day she was giggling on my cart, riding to my place. Kamala Markandaya sits on my bed in glorious colours and different names. The amount of pages she had bound in those paperbacks is worth a glance. I pick up her debut novel Nectar in a Sieve and the words of the only man whom I follow blindly pooped in my head. He calls her an average writer filled with irritating pathos. He had similar warning about Doris Lessing as well, he had warned me she was depressing in a twisted way and boy he was right!   Grass is Singing left me so depressed that I refused to touch any new book for a wee...