To be a mistress or not

MISTRESS!!!!!!!!
The word instantly pops an image of a vivacious, voluptuous and very charming woman in sharp contrast to the nagging, bickering and bossy wife. The pleasant experience of reading Anita Nair’s Mistress led me to mull over the concept.
Who is a mistress?
A mistress is a woman who has physical relationship with a married man.
If a married woman has a relationship with a bachelor, will she be called a mistress?
Is she an ersatz compared to the wife, even if she loves the man more?
Anita Nair’s style is effortlessly effusive and adheres to the feminine sensibility. She draws her characters with intimacy and insight which makes her stand apart among her peers. Anita starts her book with the theme of "sringaram'
which plays an in important role in this ordinary triangle love story, set on the banks of the lovely Nila.
'Radha', the sensuous and intelligent (a rare combination, makes the woman all the more difficult to please) heroine who wears the expression "the woes of the world are on me."

Like all intelligent and independent woman is not satisfied in her marriage and her woes are exacerbated by the actions of an insecure, over protective husband. The husband Shyam’s picture is coloured using more sober hues in comparison with the wife but in the end it is he who wins our sympathy. Though a parvenu, he is constant in his
love and so justified in his actions. The ever dashing lover boy Chris arrives with a cello in his hand and jeopardizes the lives of Radha, Shyam and their uncle Koman. Radha falls madly and hopelessly in love with Chris throwing the eternal verities of marriage into the gentle breeze coming from the Nila.
Anita invades the lives of the characters mercilessly and exposes them uninhibited, so that each character
stands on their own and has a distinctive place in the story. Like all relationships which starts on a thrust of passion and ends when the pangs of hunger are satiated, this affair also ends abruptly leaving the pregnant woman alone to put together the remnants of shattered emotions and bruised
ego. The story ends with a new hope which comes with a new birth and a new role.
The take home message is that human emotions are transient in nature and is constantly evolving
till the end.

Aamen, Sister Jesme and confessions

The other day after a leisurely evening walk, my friend asked me in a hushed tone whether I'd be interested in reading Sister Jesme's Aamen'!

What intrigued me most was the tone she used while asking the question. But even after reading the whole book, I am still unable to find out the reason for that tone and the funny expression on her face!
As a former student, and a favourite, I was excited to read the controversial book but was disappointed to find it lifeless and craft-less. I respect the Sister's courage and candidness to reveal the things which were not shocking to me who had spent good many years in convents but may surprise a common man to whom nuns and nunneries are still an enigma covered in black and white.
Even when Jesme was teaching us we were able to trace an intelligent and slightly eccentric character beating behind that cover ready to come out and explode, to shock the world from its slumber, to take it by the storm. Aamen appeared to me as a verbal diarrhea of someone who is the wronged one and a victim and needs to justify her actions in desperation.

As a literary work it lacks the finesse and the beauty expected from a woman of Sister’s calibre. It was written in haste so as to encash upon the curiosity poked by her resignation from the college and the order.

For those people who know about the life in convents, the revelations about the 'pairs' or about the internal politics and relationships, there is nothing new and exciting in the book. Men and women are men and women with all the feelings and emotions (like love, jealousy, greed, etc) and nuns and priests are not spared. (They are not procreated especially for this purpose!)
I don’t think that God expects people to control their basic instincts and stifle their personalities.
The Sister is capable of more and I won’t be surprised to hear from her soon. A highly intelligent woman like Jesme with a strong, independent mind cannot be confined to the rigid rules of an institution whether it is nunnery or marriage.

Minds such as Jesme’s will always be striving for perfection and freedom of expression beyond the limits of ordinary world.

What happens when two beauties meet?

There is no contest more pleasing to a woman other than outsmarting and outwitting another of her own tribe -- someone quite similar in background, and hailing from similar environment.

I, too, have been part of such jousts in the past where a knowing look can flatten your guileful rival-cum-relative.

Only a few weeks ago, I found myself unwittingly in the middle of a battle of glances, and assessment tests by someone close to me.

I have replayed the incident many times and it had me in splits till tears rolled down in straight lines to the corners of my mouth and got mixed with the saliva producing a concoction which tastes exactly like our own 'pulinchy' which is sweet and sour at the same time.
If you do not find what I’m going to tell you funny, don’t blame me, because then you got the sour taste of my feeling.
What happens when two beauties meet?

Fireworks and crackers. But all through gestures, glances and body language.
Imagine the situation if they are brought together by kinship and share the same 'status and vital statistics'! Well, I happen to be the one of that beauties (Here, I see raised eyebrows and curved lips, blame my magic mirror!)
My co-sister and I look alike, and who is more beautiful is a matter of conjecture among our relatives, dividing them neatly into two groups, one supporting her, and the other me.
Two weeks ago, we were put together in a car which is a tight situation which I usually avoid getting into, but caught unaware as soon as I entered and sat next to her I flashed my pearlies brightly (don’t get any idea, I do this even to beggars in a self-patronising way). She returned the courtesy.

Then, the drama began.
I sat upright looking straight at my husband’s head as if it was a piece of great artwork and started counting the white hairs which would keep me engaged. All the while I could feel the heat of her gaze assessing me. First my face, counting the pimples and feeling happy comparing it to her flawless skin, then to the chocker, moving to my well manicured, coral colored nails, lingered there as if to burn it with envy, squinting to get a clear view of my new watch.

And I did a favour by raising my hand to pat my hair. But it was a wrong move from my part as it brought her attention
to my long hair. A vulnerable spot, compared to her thin lifeless curls.
Till now, we haven’t uttered even a single word. The air in the car became thick with the unspoken dialogues. My husband was urging me to make the first move silently through telepathy which he often does, and accounts for the small round, bald patch at the back of his head.
I refused to give in to the bait, and cut these messages
midway successfully like an Arjuna intercepting the arrows of his enemies. Then a deliberate move from my brother-in-law shook the car violently that she fell flat on her face on my lap.
That 'touch' (the most powerful tool of emotions) brought my tender feelings into action and I started making her comfortable, soon chatting like old friends.
And my question to you people is -- Did I lose the game or win it?

What is love?

Love is something to which one devoted one's entire being
at the risk of everything. But this happens only once in a
lifetime.—Kemal

What is love?
Some people mistake lust for love.
But, then, is there love without lust?
When love happens between a man and a woman in their prime of youth, and if the woman is as beautiful and enchanting as Fusun, lust is bound to be there, shaking the person's entire being, penetrating into his very soul and capturing his world, making him a slave of his passion.
With alluring descriptions about the minute details of the setting and milieu, the writer invites us to embark upon the love story of the protagonist, Kemal, heir to one of the wealthiest families of Istanbul in 1975, who is about to become engaged to Sibel from another aristocratic
family. Then, he encounters Fusun, a shopgirl and a distant relation, and felt “his heart in his throat with the force of an immense wave about to crash against the shore.”
From then onwards his life changes into a turbulent 'motorboat' caught in the ebb and flow of stormy waves of passion and grief.
In this intricately woven romantic saga, Pamuk depicts explicit scenes of the world of westernised families of Istanbul with their opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, dining room rituals, picnics, their mansions on the Bosphorus, infused with the melancholy of decay.
There are two elements in this book which make it exemplary and unique in its approach. One is the suspense and intrigue as to whether Kemal would be able to win his sweetheart, which acts as a catalyst to keep the interest of the reader going through, sometimes dragging but the otherwise touching narrative of the mental agony and physical torture felt by the protagonist.
There are moments when we merge and become one with him and experience his agony with nerve-racking intensity which leaves us drained and shattered.
Second is the relentless pursuit of the protagonist which will make him an obsessive compulsive collector of objects which manifests his love story and the nine-year journey of patience and perseverance.
It is endearing but at the same time alarming to witness how 'love', the most powerful emotion transforms a normal, healthy and exuberant young man into a drunkard and an ailing psycho with delusions and hallucinations.
In the end all that will remain to him is the museum he creates which exhibits rituals of the half modern and half traditional Istanbul and of his broken heart redolent with Fusun's lipstick.
”The museum of innocence will be forever open to lovers who can’t find another place to kiss in Istanbul.”
And we should keep our hearts open to the arrow of light which will strike us any day, any moment.
Indeed, it is better to have loved and lost than never to love!

Paying a big price for small talk

Only a few weeks ago I was charmed by the energy and ethereal love of a couple from Istanbul. Well, the Lakshman Rekha around me does not let me stray into too many alien terrains. I traveled through Turkey and Istanbul while feverishly flipping through the pages of Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence.

That museum of innocence now lies disfigured and defiled in my mind when I read the news report from the same Pamuk’s Turkey just the other day. In what is described as an enlightened Turkey, eager to join European Union, a 16-year-old girl was buried alive by her folks.
Her crime--- talking to boys.

The report, published in The Guardian and elsewhere in the English media, says it was an incident of honour killing. Whose honour were they defending by torturing and killing a girl who was yet to know about the ways of the world?

Can such a thing happen in Turkey which lost its virginity of morality way back in 1970s by imbibing wholeheartedly the western culture of nightclubs, opulent parties and dating?

The girl was found in a sitting position with large amount of mud in her lungs and stomach indicating that she was
alive and conscious when buried. The cruelty of the deed is intensified by the fact that it is the same people
who are supposed to protect her from any danger are responsible for this.

What is beyond the fathom of my reasoning power is that how can the father and mother live (eat, mate and sleep) knowing that their daughter is eating mud to death.
This is a sheer violation of human rights and one of the most atrocious things a man can do to a fellow human being. And I think if we measure the incident on a scale of human suffering it will put to shame the notorious Nazi concentration camps. (May be this is a woman's, or more of a mother's wounded sensibility reacting strongly).

And what is most ironic about the whole situation is that while the girl is being punished, her counterpart in this 'crime', the boy, is spared from the sword of moral police which consists of, mostly, and is partial to the male egoists.
For a 16-year-old girl, 'mingling and mumbling' with boys is the 'coolest' and most 'awesome' thing to do.

This is the part of growing up phase which contribute greatly to the grooming of her personality.

Well, as a mother of a teenage girl, I’m worried about the freedom of choices offered in this world of 'Unwanted seventy two and I-Pills’. We, however, cannot bind and suffocate the minds of young girls and boys and shrink them like the tiny Japanese feet. Instead, we can let them be free individuals capable of making right decisions by inculcating in them a sense of duty, right and responsibility ---responsible to themselves and also to the society.

The incident in Turkey drags me down memory lane. It compels me to introspect about the confusion I had faced as a 17-year-old living in a village in Kerala. Talking to boys was considered an outrageous thing which was condemned publicly and admired and even envied privately by the giggling bunch of girls studying in a convent run by the scorn-faced nuns who considered even uttering the name of a boy an unpardonable sin.
And then going to a co-ed college where you are forced (amiably and charmingly) to talk, tease and flirt with boys. After reluctantly persuaded into these sessions by eager classmates, I would go home with a vague feeling of guilt of having committed a crime unintentionally. And let out a big sigh of relief when in the second year I returned to the familiar and assuring chants of prayers and the ever enfolding warmth typical of an all-women territory.
There were and still are some questions left unanswered in my mind -- will talking to a man make a woman wanton and characterless?
Can’t a man and a woman share a purely platonic relationship and still be soul mates?

As a friend tells me, may be, all answers are within us.