Ritu Chowdhary's Blog: Shades of Life - Posts Tagged "scars-on-my-soul"

Kirkus review of Scars on my Soul-
"A perceptive portrayal of jealousy, but the reasons why anyone would be eager to heal Adie’s scars remain fuzzy."
"In Chowdhary’s (Facets of Love, 2014) novel, a handsome, successful Indian man suffers delusions of infidelity concerning the women in his life.
“God has made me a perfect man with hardly any scope for refinement!” crows Aadir “Adie” Chopra, 32, a director for an American bank living in India. But he’s also separated from his wife and lonely. How could this happen to a gem like Adie? His marriage to Presha, a heavy drinker, started off with them impulsively running away to Delhi. After a blissful year of married life, Adie celebrated by spending his life savings—$20,000—on renting an entire Indonesian resort for two nights: “for Presha, I could justify everything.” But there was trouble in paradise when Adie noticed Presha being friendly with a strange man, which he interpreted as “lecherous behavior.” He became morbidly obsessed with her alleged fidelity, despite having no evidence. He drunkenly bit off Presha’s earlobe; set a private investigator to follow her, who found nothing; and alienated his friends and co-workers. Then he brutally killed Presha’s pet rabbit in front of her. He finally lost his job, and Presha’s friends beat him up. His personal assistant, Nikki, helps him, and he repays her by becoming jealous and hitting her young son. At length, Adie consults a psychiatrist, who diagnoses a psychosis called “delusion of infidelity” and prescribes past-life regression therapy to remove the scars on his soul. The book’s depiction of morbid jealousy is psychologically acute. But however much readers accept the idea of past lives influencing psychiatric or character problems, Chowdhary never makes Adie—with his narcissism, grandiosity, selfishness, and cruelty—seem worth saving."

Human life is the most precious gift of GOD on this EARTH, and no matter what, every life is worth saving.
The other day, a friend called me up to give the review of the book, and I asked her if she could find out the reason for saving Adie. I also promptly added, was it not LOVE?
She said," LOVE is okay, but HUMANITY is the greatest reason to save someone.
TRULY AGREE!

It all started with Kirkus review of my novel ‘Scars on my Soul.’ In a comment, they said, “She misses an opportunity to locate Adie’s problem within a larger cultural pathology, as some 2,000 women are murdered every year in honor killings in India and Pakistan.”Kirkus is an esteemed reviewing agency, and their reviews are respected. However, my first reaction was that their comment reflects a perception of Western world towards Indian or Asian society, which is biased, as this part of the world is also developing, and not necessarily their issues are always related to their cultural background. Moreover, the story is a work of fiction, and it’s no white paper written on any psychiatric problem.

But then it took me to a different direction altogether, where I was thinking about the state of females in our society, today, and in the primitive times. It’s pathetic, as it is, and always was a male dominated society. I was eager to know more about it in other parts of the world. What I realized, shattered my dignity as a female. In the western world, it might not be an issue of ‘honor killing,' but a crime against females can't be ignored there too. Some stats can give a peep into the state of affairs in the Developed world:
1. Between 40 and 50 percent of women in European Union countries experience unwanted sexual advances, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at work.
2. In the United States, 83 percent of girls aged 12 to 16 experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools. (source: http://www.endvawnow.org/en/articles/...)

So, it’s a question of form, and intensity, females are suffering in every society. The World over, people are talking about equal rights for females, a lot being done too by introducing new laws, etc., but this is a much larger issue which needs an overhaul in male and female mentality. Firstly, men need to respect the dignity of females, as a human being, and then females also, need to respect their identity, even if it means sacrificing certain privileges given to them for being females.

How many of you know the opposite (without looking into Google) of ‘henpecked,’ term coined for husbands who are bullied or intimidated by their wives? And if you don’t know then consider yourself as one of those think that dominating a wife is a norm, and doesn’t require the attention of intellectuals.

The value system of every society needs a dose of ethics and humanity intelligence (and not artificial intelligence)to free it from the ventilator system, to save it from collapsing. When God made us all human beings, men have no right to term females as ‘weaker sex’ for their convenience.