Subhadra > Recent Status Updates

"Marriage precipitates may well be a splendid new identity, but its price is the supplantation of "I.""
This is a succinct way to sum up what marriage truly is. It is the loss of a certain identity and becoming of another.

A love letter of a daugher to her father, she talks about great parents, who can overwhelm the child with love by such banal occurences as turning a newspaper or talking to the shopkeeper.

"The boy that he was would never know me, certainly, but more to the point, I would never know him."
This is about how the author came to realise that her father, was a different human being to her, with his own past and memories. Those memories made him what he was today and neither she nor her father would ever be able to know each other from their perspectives.

Finding it hard to proceed. Too many factual mistakes. Unacceptable from a historian.

There are too many thoughts swirling in my head to pen them down meaningfully. Suffice to say, it is a book that has left a dent in my heart. Everyone of us should read it once in our life, because after all, "all stories are one".

Making progress. One page at a time. This is such a hard read. I am being plagued by self-doubts. Perhaps I am not intelligent enough to understand this!

Taken up reading this one after a very long time. Iris Chase is intriguing and the style of the writing is so unique that there is a sense of something dark lurking in the shadows of a seemingly straightforward and normal life. There is this constant 'looking behind your shoulder' feeling. I am waiting for something to be revealed...

"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." The first sentence itself is so captivating. So much was said in such few words. I am hooked from the word go!
Atwood brushes this momentous event aside, after hinting at a possibilitty of suicide, like it is an everyday occurence; leaving the reader gasping for air and breathless in anticipation. Brilliant!

Wonderful story about how things are intricately linked to lives of people. It reminds of Appadurai's 'social life of things' and Pink's Home Truths.

Wonderful story about how things are intricately linked to lives of people. It reminds of Appadurai's 'social life of things'.

Return of Boris and brings int s wake, innumerable alscohol-drenched, cocaine cloud-hazy, and weed smoky scenes. So hard to relate to. I don't think I have ever loathed a character as much as I loathe Boris, the Ukrainian.

The language continues to grip me and pull me in. The story is long-winded and Theo is getting on my nerves sometimes but one cannot help but marvel at how Donna Tartt is able to write about a male protagonist! I think that deserves a standing ovation. Her Pulitzer is well-deserved.

Things are getting really interesting now. I'm becoming hopeful about Theo. I want him to pull himself out of the canyon of despair that he has fallen into. I was very disturbed by his experiments with all those different kinds of drugs with Boris. So, now that he's in NYC and getting into the early college programme, after working hard on the exams, my middle class values see a faint glimmer of hope.

I absolutely loved the part where Theo goes on this long Greyhound ride from Las Vegas to NYC. It just reminded me of my personal experiences on the Greyhound. The US highways and the transit pit-stops are quintessentially American, I think.
There are detailed descriptions of the effects of several drugs such as cocaine and acid. They are scary when you put them in context of the 15 year old. Things are shaking up.

So far so good. It started with this tremendous high about this painting and somewhere in the middle it got lost with Theo, the main character's journey...

End of Scene II. This has been the most difficult read of the play so far. Admittedly, I did not quite understand the intricacies of the text. Although I did get the gist of it.

This one is taking me much more time than I had imagined. I just finished Act 2 with the words "...the play 's the thing/wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king".
Things are getting interesting now...

Goodness me! It feels as if the book has gripped my heart and in its iron-fist, I am writhing and turning and trying to free myself and with every twist for my freedom, I am coiling further into the agonies of the soul. This is a brilliant piece of writing about the human condition, about emotions that are brought forth by the innocence or the precociousness of an impending youth.

The underlying tension in the writing, with a sense of doom, like something is lurking around the corner, makes it for a very intriguing read! I absolutely love McEwan's style of writing. I don't know why I have not read him before.

Too early to say anything in this mammoth of a book, but I am getting pretty excited about the characters. Also, looking forward to getting an insight into the 1970's Calcutta of the Naxalites.

Peter Pan has tremendous power over the kids. Not a leave moves without his approval in Neverland. The children too, take his word as the last and never question his authority. He comes across as arrogant and flippant and selfish. In the chapter "Wendy's Story", he shows some tenderness towards Wendy but he does not know what emotions he is experiencing. In this sense, he is a child.

I am thoroughly uncomfortable with Wendy playing the 'mother' of the Lost Boys. Barrie is possibly alluding to little girls 'playing house' but it is disturbing to see her washing and cooking and cleaning and sewing and being a nurse to the boys when they are getting hurt. It is disconcerting, and disturbing, to say the least.

I only got hooked to the book after I soldiered on with Part I. This is most definitely a hard read in terms of the language. But once you immerse yourself in the life and times of Jim Hawkins, (because it is a hard time and place to imagine), you will be sucked into his adventures and misadventures. And it is then that it becomes unputdownable!

Very Lewis Carrol-like in the way the story is written. It is an interesting read, but I keep wondering where this is going. But then again, like the author says, "being lost is never a matter of not knowing where you are; it's a matter of not knowing where you are--and I don't care at all about where I'm not". Profound and perhaps, a lesson for us all to remember.

Re-reading this all-time classic is such a treat!! Everything they say about books telling you different stories (in the Italo Calvino tradition) every time you read it, is completely true! I am seeing the characters in a completely new light this time around!

Loads of things here that can be helpful for children to grasp the injustices of war while keeping their innocence intact.

I do not remember after how long a story has knocked my socks off!! It is shocking in its content, it is nerve-racking, but it is also deeply intellectually stimulating. How Orwell is able to achieve this through words has left me numb and yet, yearning for more!!

Two words come to mind. It's pertinent! 1984, like any classic literature, has made its mark in the sands of Time by being and remaining pertinent and relevant even today! Only the names have changed. The mechanisms of 'governing' the masses and the power struggles; which one would argue, are actually not struggles but just pretensions of struggles; have remained unchanged.

Winston's 18-hour day where he returns to his desk, "sticky-eyed and aching" and "gelatinous with fatigue" is the best description I have ever come across of being completely overcome with tiredness. It is also strangely reminiscent of days before deadlines in college and in office, in later life. So, aren't we all living in Orwellian (I've been dying to use that adjective) 1984?