Scarecrow - Flash fiction

 

The Road Not Taken - Short Story #storytelling

 

Mystery of the repeating sign

 

Radiation-eating vampire

 

The green-stone necklace

 

Overwhelm - Short inner monologue film

 

I entered my room and slouched on the bed. I grabbed the folded blanket kept on my side, wrung it loose, and flopped it over my legs. It was cold and I needed warmth. The blanket trembled like non-circular ripples and long ribbons someone’s shaking from a stick. I sat there and started thinking about a feeling I was feeling in that moment. I couldn’t find a word from my memory to describe this feeling. I kept thinking, and meanwhile, turned my head to stare on an untidy pile of notebooks that lay on the bed and on the side table and all around me. My head was buzzing with thoughts and I needed to quieten their restless voices by giving them shelter in a notebook. But then I started thinking which notebook should I choose to do this task. It was a huge and laborious task. First, I needed to organize these voices in different categories and in the second step, I needed to see which notebook was to be assigned to thoughts of a particular category. So, now I was thinking about two things. One, finding a word to describe the feeling that I was feeling and second, which notebook should I select from the heaps to write down the thoughts spinning in my head. Both steps. I was still jostling with these two tasks when a third one popped up. A question that left me curious and terrified at the same time. Do I have all the words I need in my memory to describe everything I want, now or in the future? If not, then it’s a crisis. The thought jolted me in a bad cognitive dissonance. The emotion of insecurity gripped me. And envy. What if the other writer, who I despise, knows some words that I don’t? I clenched my fists. My fingers were sweaty and my elbows were quivering. My eyes became glassy with an intrusive pang of fear, the fear of impending doom, doom of my writing career. And before I could overcome this fear, I remembered that I still hadn’t found the word to describe the feeling that I was feeling a few moments ago and I hadn’t even selected a notebook for putting down my restless thoughts. I sat there, inside the warm blanket, frozen. And glassy eyed. After thinking some more for a while, I ditched the heap of notebooks. I regretted and mourned the loss of my ability to retrieve a suitable word to describe that feeling. And I apologized to my restless thoughts because since I hadn’t selected a notebook, I couldn’t do anything about them. After all these cathartic, therapeutic, and healing rituals, I pulled my laptop and wrote down all the things I had just did ever since I started feeling that feeling. I wrote everything down. And then suddenly, I realized, that I could describe that feeling with the word “overwhelm.”

 

And the moment I wrote this word, the restless thoughts quietened down and I no longer needed a notebook to write them down. Now caught red-handed for the feeling they were trying to evoke within me, they settled down, crankily on my shoulders, around my ears, and inside my fingers, well-mannered but frantic, like crowds of refugees in a shelter camp or drops of dew on a tree. And then I took the lead and started calling them one by one. One by one they could come to me and report their stories and questions and worries and I could write these down.

“Fear of losing my identity”

Okay, next. “How to deal with the feeling of overwhelm?”

Well, you write it down.

Hero’s Journey, khichdi, and that little gremlin called “Story”

Life is not a pleasant place. Far from being safe and cool as the castles of Disney princesses, life is harsh, and brutal. Especially for those who dare to dream. Blunders happen. Fears take you over, and you freeze like an iceberg. To blend in with the world, you start walking around with a face of ice and eyes left glassed out with numbed emotion.

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Huh, huh, huh, humans!

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

And then, there are humans. The world is rumbling with humans who try to pull you down each time you struggle to rise and fulfil your life’s greatest purpose, something that not only makes you happy but is also the best and the most right thing for you. They will pick on your self-doubts, greatest fears, insecurities, hesitations, conflicts and confusions, and use these as hooks to pull you into their own mind matrix, something you didn’t subscribe to. In disguise of “inspiration,” people will often attempt to spoil the little joys, sometimes going all the way to disrupt your life path with barriers that you could have easily avoided. Those that were just a waste of time.

 

The great hoggy-poggy soup (khichdi)

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

All these blunders, pricking humans, voices of your mind, fears, insecurities, envies, and failures blend together to form a hoggy-poggy soup (khichdi!) that slowly drowns you, so you forget the real purpose of why you are doing what you are doing.

But wait, there’s good news. Simmering and bubbling within the depths of this khichdi is a little gremlin creative writers call “story.”

 

That little gremlin called “Story”

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Story, this little animal, is the journey a hero navigates to overcome the obstacles, barriers, and challenges laid out by the villain. For a hero, villain is an “angel in disguise.” He is the messenger and catalyst that cooks up this khichdi for you and then drowns you in and then highlights to you “obstacles” that will help you find a way out of this khichdi. 

Writers, there’s a bonus!

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

If you happen to be a writer, this entire khichdi episode turns out to be a “bonus,” because once you start noticing this tug-of-war happening between the hero and the villain within your mind, you put yourself on the seat of a storyteller. If you are attentive enough, you’ll end up receiving the bonus of a story (although it might take another few years for you to learn how to put it out in your notebook!).

 

Hero and Villain: The Great Devastating Combo of Story

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

The moment a villain pops up into the picture, the hero has to emerge. And the moment both of them materialize on the canvas of your mind, what happens then is called a “story.”

 

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Now the villain will do his best to hinder the hero’s pathway with obstacles, barriers, and challenges. Drama will unfold, event after event, scene after scene. The journey that the hero will traverse to overcome the challenges posed by the villain will become the story. His journey, both inner and outer, will make up the skeleton of the story.

Now, a story doesn’t imply a hero, but a hero and/or a villain always implies a story.

 

Listening to the gremlin

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

In my own writing journey, I’ve come across zillions of obstacles, both in the inner world and the outer world, that have fueled my interest in this little gremlin called “story.” From feeling depressed after noticing beginner writers churning out thick novels in their first attempt to creeping out at my bizarre writing struggles to loathing at my gigantic lack of pure talent, I have traversed a long way. And all the while, this little gremlin has stayed with me, following me like a shadow, hovering above my shoulders, trying to tell me something, in hush whispers and tranquil bleats. Sometimes, terrifying screams.

For long, I dismissed its screams. But then, I decided, to listen. To shut my mouth, roll my sleeves, and just listen.

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

When I gaze into the abyss of mind and listen to what this tiny gremlin has to say, I realize how fascinating this hero-villain story archetype is. It is the type of a story every human can relate to. The human mind, in itself, is a background for the hero and its corresponding evil twin, the villain.

 

Mechanism of a Hero-Villain Story Archetype

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Google says that this hero-villain story archetype is “one of the most fundamental and enduring structures in narrative across all forms of literature, myth, and film.” The core mechanism, according to Google, of this story type is based on two factors: “polarized conflict” and “mutual definition.” To put it from a spiritual perspective, this type of story stems from the feature of human mind called “duality.” In this case, this is the duality of the hero (light) and the villain (shadow).

 

The Hero (The Protagonist)

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

The Hero is a character who functions and operates on the “good,” “conscious,” or the “positive” side of life. He rises to the challenge posed by the villain to restore the balance or improve the world. His journey often involves “inner transformation” alongside external battles. Sometimes, the role of the hero might be to protect or sustain a code, or return to a state of normalcy or order, or achieve a greater goal.

 

The Villain/Shadow (The Antagonist)

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

The Villain, in contrast to The Hero, is his “shadow.” He represents the duality of life. He indicates all the weirdness and darkness that lurks beneath the positive/good façade of the hero, the mud that makes the hero, the hero. Without the existence of this villain, the hero wouldn’t exist. They are two sides of the same coin. He represents all the unobserved fears, desires, hatreds, anxieties, and hatreds that secretly boil within the deepest trenches of the hero’s mind.

 

So while he reveals them to the hero, the agitated hero undergoes annihilation while traversing a journey of transformation. Joseph Campbell named this process “Hero’s Journey.”

 

Hero’s Journey

According to Joseph Campbell’s concept of Hero’s Journey, outlined in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this hero-villain story is constructed in three main stages: stages—departure, initiation, and return, collectively called “monomyth.” The hero receives a “call to adventure” that beckons him to leave their familiar world. They may refuse the call, but then they cross the “threshold” and this marks their initiation on the “road of trials.” Aided by allies and catalysts, they confront their greatest fears and challenges, ultimately returning to the ordinary world with a gift or bonus that will restore the balance of the world.

 

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

The Hero represents the human ego striving for self-actualization and integrating the conscious and unconscious. The Hero’s existence is the very threat to the identity of the villain, something that forces the conflict.

 

Villain: Mirror of the Hero

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

In the words of Carl Jung, the villain represents the “shadow” aspects of a hero’s personality. He manifests as the “mirror or the distorted reflection of the hero.” Disguised as power play, revenge seeking, chaos, and a twisted sense of justice, a villain actually proves to be the greatest “motivation” for a Hero to navigate his journey and arrive at the goal. The Villain actively attempts to thwart the Hero's quest, often forcing the Hero to face their greatest fears or moral limits.

 

The Hero-Villain Dynamic: Conflict and Mutual Definition

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

The relationship between a hero and a villain is symbiotic, where each character defines the other. Unless the hero integrates and assimilates the shadow of their denied and unlived potentials, depicted by the villain, the journey will continue to unfold. And this little gremlin called “story” will continue to scream and bellow in the  writer’s ears.

 

The Matrix of Morals

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Another element of this dynamic is “moral ambiguity.” In Moby Dick, for instance, Captain Ahab is driven by an obsessive, destructive quest for revenge, which challenges the moral position of the protagonist. The villain could also be an impersonal character, or the destructive force, like the Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984. In this case, the hero isn’t fighting against one particular character, but an entire system or matrix.

 

Credit goes to Gemini pundit

Personally, I have never written a story based on this hero-villain story archetype, but as I jot down these thoughts, on a blissed-out Saturday evening, my writing muscles are already clenching with the desire for writing one. (In this case, the writing muscles are the hero and the procrastination is the villain. Let’s see who wins!)

Read more writings on the topic of "Craft of Writing"

Be Alive! - The Story of the Black Hole | Podcast #17 by Neha's Notebook

Once upon a time there was a gigantic black hole in the cosmic wild. The black hole knew the address of an aperture to another universe, a passageway to the Wonderland. But there was no one who the black hole could tell this address to, because whatever came near the black hole got ripped apart to particles and lost forever. The black hole could form no friendships, could not let anyone come near it. A star came near it, it got lost. A planet came near it, it got lost.

Over time, the black hole became sad and embarrassed about its own gravitational power. As the sadness grew more and more, it caused stirrings in the heart of the black hole. The sadness started drawing portraits of anguish with black crayons, the wax of which was dripping with sorrow and grief, grief over an invisible feeling, a feeling of missing something, missing someone who could last forever till its lifetime. The black hole after all could hold on to nothing due to its endless deep dark abyss.

The sadness of the black hole dreamed of a yellow golden sunlit land with sparkle-shooting butterflies and glittering green grasses but each time it opened its eyes, all it could see was only black darkness.

Then the sadness cried a tear which created a sea. Marrying the rolling waves, the sadness got lost and dissolved into the black hole. The portraits of anguish that the sadness had created now spewed hot black tar and lava. If a human could see this lava spewing from the mouth of the black hole, they would imagine lots of black ink smudging a novel, a novel telling the black fiction of slaughterhouses, wrath and wildfires. But since it was a black hole, no one was there to witness this black lava spewing inside the black hole. So, the lava exhaled black gas and like a thought, got lost and dissolved back into the black hole. Whatever was created inside a black hole also got dissolved into the black hole. What happened inside the black hole remained in the black hole.

With nothing to communicate its feelings, the black hole felt lonely. Snaking through the passes of thoughts and emotions, the black hole wrote poems, crafted chunky art journals and painted flowers. Leaping and hopping like frogs, waving like boatflags, it moved around the Milky Way galaxy trying to find a place to stay.

It finally chose the center point of the galaxy as its home. From the center of the Milky Way galaxy, it looked down upon a blue-green ball. On this blue-green ball were many jelly-like dolls moving hither-tither and casting a mumbo-jumbo throughout the space of the ball.

In tiny mudhouses, tiny coffeecups clinked and clanked. Tiny tinkle bells jingled and jangled. There were tree symbols in the landscapes. There were tiny dream books in which there were the stories of jinx and magic stars and fantasy. Stories were getting penned over open lunch boxes and tiny-tiny stairs, tiny dolls sitting with their tiny doll friends. As the black hole listened with its high frequency ears, the tiny dolls were talking about a black hole which resided at the center of the galaxy. Hearing which, the black hole became wonderstruck. These tiny jelly-dolls were all talking about it. The black hole became happy and with utter happiness it ballooned into an even more gigantic size. Wanting to tell the dolls on the blue-green ball that it was feeling alive despite its gravitation.

So, if some days you feel like a black hole, never be embarrassed of your powers. Never be embarrassed of being alive. Being alive means continuous change and movement and evolution. Being alive means not holding onto anything. Being alive means not saving your feelings for the future.

Don’t save cakes and joy and love and laughter for special occasions, joy which arrives so subtly, like the murmuration of stars and like the warm glow of galaxies.

And remember that the most serious and exquisite things in the world are those that can be comprehended and grasped by a child’s heart.

So, stop being too serious. just be a child, be alive!

Subscribe: Neha's Notebook | My Little library | Raindrop Stories

Book Review: The Mystery at Lilac Inn

The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene

Of all the mysteries that Nancy has come across, this one causes her to land into ‘Lilac Inn’, a remotely-situated colonial-style resort. Abundant greens and dense sprinkles of lilac trees paint the portrait of this inn’s generous property. The picturesque space is revealed to be dotted with a number of elegant cottage huts, one dining hall and also, a public restaurant. Some itsy-bitsy renovations are in process.

The inn is owned by Nancy’s friend Emily, who has purchased it very recently, and also, who is going to host her wedding cermony in the inn before opening its cottages for the tourists. Nancy and their common friend Helen, are going to be Emily’s bridesmaids. And so, the two of them, Nancy and Helen, pack up their suitcases to have a wondersome stay in the beautiful inn; totally unaware of what awaits them there!

To everyone’s utter bewilderment, the inn seems to be shadowed by some bizarre occurrences. Also living alongside Emily, her elderly aunt Hazel is becoming low-spirited and heart-sick day after day, agonized over what horror is going to unfold next and engulf them.

A waitress reports seeing a ghostly phantom, and flees away from the inn without notice. Tools go missing from the garden toolbox. Electric power spookily fluctuates on and off, while the cause for it remains unidentified.

But most of all, what scares them all, is the theft of Emily’s diamonds. These were the diamonds that Emily’s late mother had bequested to her before her death. The gems were to be handed over to Emily on her eighteenth birthday by her aunt.

Withal, the very moment when her aunt is presenting this pouch of diamonds to her on her birthday dinner, the lights shut off abruptly and by the time it is back, the diamonds are gone!

Before Nancy can dig deeper into the mystery, she is shoved off with yet another riddle to solve. Apparently, as she takes back-to-back sleuthing trips from the inn to her house, riding in her boat, Nancy comes across a shocking discovery that a girl is impersonating her.

While she’s home, the people at the inn report seeing her, complaining of her weird behaviour, and while she’s away from her home, at the inn, the people in her hometown blame her for causing troubles to them.

Nancy is puzzled, but more than that, she is determined to catch the culprit and bring her into light. But guess what, the unfolding events only pull her deeper and deeper into the spiralling well of questions.

Determined that she is, but at the same time, she feels disheartened to be unable to distinguish real from unreal. Anyone and everyone appears to be the suspect to her binocular eyes. Sometimes, her attention shifts towards a gardener named Gill, while sometimes to Maud Potter, the social director of the inn. But, still and all, she doesn’t seem to arrive at any conclusion.

On top of that, the inn itself seems to her as a never-ending piece of puzzle. Despite having monitored every nook and corner of the inn, she is unsure whether she has seen it all. While she is tiptoeing through the inn following the diamond theft, she discovers a panel hidden behind one of the walls of the room from where the diamonds were stolen. The panel further reveals several other panels leading the way to the outside of inn’s quarters. She also discovers, in the garden, some mysterious typewritten notes, each one containing an unusual code-word.

Meanwhile, Helen too reports seeing a ghost during the night, as Nancy finds her unconscious under a tree. The cottages, where Nancy and Helen are staying are burned to ashes while they are taking a walk in the garden. The culprits don’t leave them even while they are relaxing by skin-diving in the river. While they’re swimming, they are hit and struck by something what resembles a shark-like object.

Before Nancy herself could connect the dots, a phone call arrives, informing her that a theft has taken place in her home. Her identity card has been stolen and is being misused by the girl who is posing as her impersonator.

Nancy is clueless as her mind is racing in a thousand different directions, all at the same time.

Albeit, she rides back to her hometown, informs Chief McGinnis, the head of police, a dear friend of her father, and makes several visits to the list of suspicions she has – the old waitress’ house, the house of the former employer of this waitress, and the jewelry showroom where her identity card was misused…

Gathering several clues, Nancy locks herself in her room, and concentrates all her nerves to connect the pieces of mystery. At last, her mind causes her to craft a secret plan which, though, could risk her life, but would enable her to catch the mischief-making culprit. Nancy rides back to the inn without telling anyone about it, and secretly hides inside an empty cottage to avoid any attention that might alarm the suspects.

Successful at last, she comes across the girl who is not only revealed to be her mirroring impersonator, but also the ghost of the inn!

But wait, Nancy’s troubles aren’t over yet…

Before she can catch this girl, she is hit on her head from behind, only to faint and find herself rope-tied inside an underwater boat’s cabin.

Further events reveal shocking bits and pieces. The girl is nobody but a Broadway actress who, is switching her roles between becoming a waitress and an actress. Emily’s stolen diamonds too, are found to be hidden inside the girl’s lipstick case. There are other suspects in her gang too, some of whom, Nancy had suspected, quite early in the mystery.

As Nancy tries to absorb it all, the boat suddenly catches fire. The gang of culprits leave her all alone, gagged and locked in the burning, sinking boat. Nancy’s only hope is God. And the help does appear, in the form of his father who seems to be riding in a boat alongside Chief McGinnis. Spotting the smoky fumes rising from an underwater boat, they rescue Nancy just before the boat explodes and spurts into shattered metallic chunks.

Like other novels of this mystery series, The Mystery of Lilac Inn, too, is a stupendous and immersive plot to read through. The storyline mentioned is just a speck of the many interesting tiny details patched into the mystery. So, yes, a Nancy Drew fan if you are, you’re going to read the book, and totally love it too!

Neha
Read all my reviews!

Connect with me on Goodreads!

Book Review: Brothers At War + Humayun's Story

Brothers At War by Alex Rutherford

“Ambition corrupts wisdom.”

Shakespeare used to say…

No one knows whether this is true or not, in a general sense, however, in the life-story of Humayun, this saying could be witnessed in a chunk of reality absolutely crystalline.

Typically and mostly, in the history’s narratives, Humayun is depicted to be a spoilt ruler, who brought much downfall to the Mughal dynasty due to his carelessness, addictions and over-sensitivity of emotion.

Well, this is true; only partly however.

While his father, Babur, built the fledgling Mughal empire from scratch, on the other side, Humayun was born mollycoddled in the silken chambers of the royal; already dolled up in glittering gems from head to toe and feasting on the delicacies of the shahi rasoi of the sun-baked sandstoned Agra Fort. Also, this is true on the account that Humayun had an obsession with stargazing and cosmic symbolism. He even had a time period in his life, when he would wear dresses according to the colour which, he believed, was most suited to a specific day; specific colours for specific days of the week.

And he divided his court’s departments as well as his royal officers according to the elements, namely the ‘Office of Fire’, ‘Office of Water’, ‘Office of Earth’ and ‘Office of Air’. He had a special carpet embroidered too, with circles of the solar system featuring in its design, and each time someone would have to say something in his court, the officer had to stand in a specific circle according to the planet most relevant to their communication.

Things like that.

Though very fascinating an organization, however, this arrangement crumbled away soon enough and didn’t last very long, because his court officials had started to mock him behind his back. Also his warriorlike Moghul aunt, Khanzada Begum reprimanded him, saying that, his obsession with these symbols was causing him to lose his grip over reality, thereupon, weakening their grip over the newly gained lands of Hindustan. And so, Humayun had to give it all up, until, atleast, his later years.

Post the death of his father Babur in the Agra Fort, Humayun spent the initial days of his life as a voracious womanizer, droopy with the red wine of Ghazni and laced with opium, pondering over dreamlike hallucinations, attempting to discover the answers of questions that agitated his soul and willing to connect his mind with the mystical world, with particularly little, if no, interest in the matters of the court. It was, perhaps, too much for a mere boy to fully comprehend and grasp this new, vastly and strange empire of Hindustan, all alone.

However, this is merely one part of Humayun’s story. The rest of it demonstrates a catastrophic fragment of Humayun’s life story; a cluster of knotty conflicts; a snarl of devious betrayals; a cross-sword of heart and mind; and a tangle of grapples with his own flesh and blood….

Brothers At War is the second book in the Empire of the Moghul series by Alex Rutherford. In line, it depicts the story of the second Mughal emperor Humayun.

Humayun was born to Babur, in the kingdom of Kabul. He was also the first Mughal prince to accompany his father in their conquest of Hindustan.

During the ‘First Battle of Panipat’, he, still in his boyhood, fought side-by-side with his father Babur. Upon their victory over Sultan Ibrahim Lodi of Delhi, he brought him the magnificent Koh-i-noor diamond, that, an elderly royal woman had gifted to him for bestowing courtesy to her Hindustani women, who were his captors in defeat.

However, not long before he could strengthen his stronghold over the Hindustani lands, he was tossed away by Sher Shah Suri, back to the northern mountains and he found himself as vulnerable as a footstep atop a shard of old ice, that could melt and crack anytime beneath.

There is especially a chunk in history which outlines Humayun’s journey through the death-engulfing deserts. It is said that there were some days when he and his family had to survive on spiceless horsemeat extracted by killing one of their horses, and boiled inside the steel helmet of one of the soldiers in their cavalry. Not only this, Humayun even had to dig a grave for his aunt Khanzada, midway through the deserts of Rann of Kutch, as she lost her breath to a gushing whirlpool of sandstorm.

Encapsulated amidst the sweltering heat, Humayun took shelter in the fortress of Marwar (present-day Jodhpur), only to secretly retreat away from the fortress one morning, on account, that he came to know, that the Raja of Marwar, Rao Maldeo Rathore, had joined hands with Sher Shah Suri and together they were plotting to warp away his armies. Betrayed and powerless, Humayun charged his enemies through the blistering Thar Desert; alongwith his eight-month pregnant wife Hamida Bano Begum; all men and women starved and parched as crunchy dead leaves.

It is only during these tough times that Akbar was born to Humayun and Hamida, in the desert near a small village called Umarkot. And it is only there that this little prince was kidnapped from the queen’s sleeping tent, by Humayun’s half-brother Kamran.

Just like Babur, Humayun too had to underpass the suffering of being a king without a throne. And just like Babur, he too had to learn it the hard way, not to trust others so easily and readily – not even his own flesh and blood.

Having said that, unlike his father Babur, while he didn’t have to deal much with the uncertainty of external enemities, however, his greatest challenge was posed by his internal enemies which mainly included his half-brothers Kamran and Askari, as well as his stepmother Gulrukh.

Whilst his stepmother Gulrukh adopted a quiet means to destroy him by making him addicted to her specially-crafted brew of wine and opium pellets; on the other side, his brother Kamran, the green-eyed prince, crossed every perimeter of deception, betrayal, plotting and trickery…

Driven by a deep sense of resentment and grudgery, Kamran even kidnapped Humayun’s baby prince Akbar, holding him captive in the fortress of Kabul and demanding that Humayun leave his empire or lose his only heir.

Traversing the deathly, sun-bleached deserts of Rajasthan that seemed to stretch across everwhere, and other times, pushing their sweat-trimmed horses to the steepy slopes flaked with slippy glassy wet snowlands, Humayun moved his cavalry from place to place, city to city; his younger half-sister Gulbadan and his beloved wife Hamida Bano Begum by his side yet all of them stricken with melancholy and fear over his separated son Akbar.

Throughout most of his lifetime, Humayun’s mind was agonized over the butchery and betrayal of his half-brothers. Unable to concentrate either his mind or his forces towards a bigger conquest, Humayun was, at all times, walking on eggshells, to survive and to protect his family from the sudden attacks plotted by his brothers. Withal, he always pursed his lips at a promise that he had given to his late father in his last moments; that is, to be always merciful and loving towards his brothers despite whatever.

Despite the incident that his brother Kamran bribed his men against him and, kidnapped his son Akbar, Humayun forgave him and let him go, only to be betrayed again as, another time, Kamran plotted to kill him and take his throne. At last, he had the eyes of Kamran removed by his hakims and half-heartedly had him sent to Mecca for pilgrimage.

It was only after that all of his half-brothers had ceased to torment his soul and his kingship, was that, he began re-establishing his empire in Hindustan and planning the conquests.

Nevertheless, the lessons learned over these years and his strong will reflected in his kingship when, in his late forties, Humayun discovered himself to be a handsome king, shining bright with grace. He had re-cultivated his charm with the might of his strong will, abstaining totally of all wine and opium, and re-establishing his conquest over Hindustan, this time, relinquishing the traces of his last few enemies and setting up a reorganized and vaster empire for the Mughal generations to come.

Whilst sitting on the throne of Delhi after his victory over his last enemy Sekunder Shah, Humayun renovated the Purana Qila and brought up many plans of city’s improvement.

However, unfortunately, one of the octagonal buildings that he had got constructed as his library and observatory, turned out to be his last exploration. When on one evening, he was walking down the staircase of his observatory’s towering balcony called as the Sher Mandal, he tripped his foot, and rolling from stair to stair, slipped down straight into heavens.

The life story of Humayun, just like his father Babur’s, is inspirational and oozing with a pastiche of deep insights. Unmatched in his skills of astrology and mathematics, Humayun also loved painting and wrote poetry. In fact, as it turns out, the reveries of Humayun’s youth only conferred much depth, contemplation, patience, kindness, generosity, inquisitiveness and stillness to Humayun’s overall personality. This mystical personality made Humayun not only the second great Mughal emperor, but also, the one who was an epitome of a great artist, a romantic lover and a soft-hearted compassionate human being.

This novel by Rutherford is based on the writings of Humayun in his diary as well as on the historical details jotted down in the documents of Humayunnama, the diary of his half-sister Gulbadan – the rosebodied Mughal princess.

Drama and treachery; wars and victories; feasts and famines; rise and fall; the book presents all these emotions interwoven into a stimulating piece of written historical fiction. A fine read, overall!

You may like to read the book as an independent volume however, my recommendation is that the storyline will be better grasped if you read the book in accordance to the number of the hexalogy series, that is, after reading the first part titled as “Raiders from the North”.

View all my reviews

Review: Those Pricey Thakur Girls

Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

The sponge of my emotional mind is still soaked in the tipplings and blottos of its chocolate-box-style scenes and my belly is still pulsating in the babalaas of sentimental maudlins encased & perfectly tucked in this novel through the wrappings of word embellishments.

I was recommended this book via a reading list provided to us in the creative writing class I was attending at SACAC, Hauz Khas. And I have read it twice till now. But the review is of the second time I have read it.

Part rom-com, part suspense-thriller and all in all, a sweetly honey-dipped love story, “Those Pricey Thakur Girls” is written by Ms. Anuja Chauhan, who is the author who has also penned some of the record-breaking taglines for colas, chips & chocolates.

As the Wikipedia also describes, she is the brain behind Pepsi’s “Oye Bubbly, Bubbly Oye” & “Yeh Dil Maange More” jingles, Kurkure’s “Tedha Hai Par Mera Hai” tagline, Lays’ “Be a Little Dillogical” campaign, Kitkat’s “Kitkat Break Banta Hai”, Mountain Dew’s “Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai” and more! She is also widely known in the Indian advertising, television and even film industry. Her novel “The Zoya Factor” has been formed into a Bollywood movie. And as I came to know only later on after reading this book, that there is even a TV serial based on this novel. It is titled as ‘Dilli Waali Thakur Gurls’ and it airs on &TV.

Anyhow. Let’s get straight into the novel…

Settled across a posh cream-and-maroon bungalow located in Delhi’s Connaught Place area, the novel’s main storyline features a family comprising of a retired justice man named Laxmi Narayan Thakur, his wife Mamta and their five alphabetically-named daughters.

When it comes to the plot setting and descriptions, the book is a total treat for a desi-Indian reader; a treat ranging from the metaphorical street-style cotton candy to a fine Wenger’s pastry.

Especially if you’re a Delhi-ite, you’d catch while reading that the book presents a potpourri of peppery detailings of the typical Delhi lifestyle. From daily morning trips to the local general store to buy milk, eggs & bread, to eating chaat in the Bengali market, chatting over soup & chowpsey in CP’s Berco’s, pondering about important matters over a cup of coffee in United Coffee House and snacking over pastries at Wenger’s; from street dogs and their little potty-balls scattered all around on the streets, to the enthusiastic rush of the high-school farewell parties; from DU’s students boasting everywhere of their college, to even the common slang-ish words & phrases that people appear to use here on the rambling streets and jammed traffic trails; the book offers a loaded palatte of delicious Delhi-flavours crafted in a medley of Hinglish overtones.

In addition to the exquisite Delhi-belly flavours, the book comprises of several tangy ingredients exclusive to a typical Indian household - A girl reaching the age of marriage & getting consistently flooded by questions-and-suggestions from relatives all over the place telling her parents to get her married & inquiring about her career, her age, her makeup skills, her communication skills, her preferences for the boy & crazy things like that - The various emotional & psychological stages that the girls pass through alone as a consequence of this culture - Parents concerned about their teenage daughter staying hooked on phone all day and turning their fears into suspicions that she might have a secret boyfriend at school - The evil superstitions that form in the minds of the married ladies towards their husbands and their children and their in-laws and about their maids and about everybody – The overmature attitude, tantrums & mischiefs of narcissistic kids causing their elders to frown at them - The usual gossips of aunts & uncles that happen during parties, family functions, & ballrooms.

However above and beyond all of these spicy flavours that the novel makes us taste, the sweetest of them is the love story unfolding between the fourth daughter of this family, Debjani, and a man named Dylan, who is a writer.

This is the era of 1980s in Delhi. A period when people in houses wake up to the mellowish retro-style tunes of DD’s News & Chitrahaar flashing in their antenna-studded old-fashioned television sets. Debjani a.k.a. Dabbu has just joined DD’s Mandi House office as a newsreader. While her character is depicted to be a shy, sensitive, caring & all-by-herself person, her younger sister & the fifth in the family, Eshwari, who is also a high-school student at the Modern School located in Barakhamba road, is depicted to be more of a masculine, aggressive & chuckly kind.

Debjani meets Dylan on the account that her father is a close friend of Dylan’s Brigadier father. The character of Dylan falls in the kind of a playboy, a ladies’ man and a Bollywood-style sentimental-plus-witty hero category. The two of them together with their respective fathers, meet every day to play the game of kot-piece, sip tea and relish the bowls of Maggi noodles topped with fried onions and peas.

Then those Indian-style sharmeela ladka-ladki moments happen; their eyelids playing hide-and-seek; looking in the eyes of each other and then looking away. To the boy looking at the girl, she is a total embodiment of goddess with her creamy skin, Pears soap eyes, winged collarbones, ladybird-shaped silver ring and what not about her.

While initiating with this perfectly snapshotted filmy romance scenario, the love story later has to go through a jumble of conflicts, misunderstandings and a total break-up, until, ultimately reaching the congruence of the two lovers finally getting ready to marry each other, which, when you’d complete the book will certainly cause some raindrops to roll down from your eyes till your cheeks.

Withal, their temporary period of separation causes the novel to shift gears into the mode of a suspense and thriller. While Debjani is gaining fame for her newsreading countrywide, Dylan is set-up for becoming the target of a dirty conspiracy plotted by one of his colleagues and a fraud minister Motla who’s involved in a mass assassination riot.

D for Dylan ends up in jail with no evidence to prove his side of things. But as they say, love is love. And so, D for Dabbu risks her countrywide fame and even her job to do something which not only saves Dylan but brings this long-held conspiracy to its closure.

These bits of politics, thrill & conspiracy make the novel only more immersive than it already is. And, as you move forward cover-to-cover into the novel, it grips you in, stronger and stronger so as you won’t be able to put this 388-page-volume down till the end.

Spotlighting a bumblebee-hued cover design with legs cladded in beady flipflops and a cat by the side, the novel represents an interesting tangle of relationships, a sneak peak into the misuse of political & authoritarian powers, crime-bribery-thrill & of course, happy endings…

In the end, as patties, pastries & campa cola is being served in the housewarming party of Dabbu’s Chacha-Chachi’s renovated house next door from their house, Dylan hastily leaves a dosa-idli brunch with his newspaper’s director and drives off in his Maruti 800 to reach there just on time to save Dabbu’s Chachiji falling from the sixth floor. Thereupon, proposing Debjani to marry him, which, is an obvious guess, that, the girl can’t say no to!

My review for Those Pricey Thakur Girls wraps up like this - T for Toe-Curlingly Flirtatious, P for Palpably Delicious, T for Tadka-romance & G for Goosebumpily Gigglesome.

So, do get this book, my friend and relish an entertaining chic-lit read!


View all my reviews

#12 The Story of Purple Buffalo & The Pure Matter in the Alchemy of Human Life ⚗️

There was once a buffalo.

 

It fell into a puddle of purple colour liquid and thus, turned into a purple buffalo.

 

Thereupon, the buffalo steps into a brookside and splashes water on itself, thereby, washing away the purple colour off its body and returning to its original state.

 

If you look at all the scenarios of this story, you’d realize that here there are mainly five elements in function.

 

#1  The Buffalo before falling in the puddle, the one with the original color

#2  The Buffalo after falling in the puddle and getting coloured in a false color

#3 The Puddle of Purple Color Liquid

#4  The Force of Nature Causing The Buffalo To First Fall In the Puddle and then to get the puddle color washed off it by brook’s water

#5 The Watcher or the Observer of all the three states of Buffalo’s life

 

Now, this story is not really about some buffalo, but the very reality of our human life.

 

If you’d look at the story through a magnifying glass, then you’d be able to recognize that here, the buffalo is a metaphor for our mind; the purple puddle is the metaphor for the outside world; the force of nature causing the buffalo to move hither-tither is our emotions, shadows & all of our mind’s innate tendencies programmed in it from our life experiences & DNA. Then there is the one known as the self; which quietly observes all the states and scenarios that our mind goes through during the span of our lifetime.

 

This self, a.k.a. ‘pure matter’ is the highest available observer in our mind in a given moment.This ‘pure matter’ is going to be the primary topic of this particular video show.

Watch the full video and subscribe to my channel for upcoming videos! :)

Thank you & Goodbye!