Leaving: How I Set Myself Free from an Abusive Marriage

 By Kanchan Bhaskar

She Writes Press    2023

249 pages     Memoir

Kanchan Bhaskar was born and raised in New Delhi, but she has lived in the United States since the early 2000s, currently in Chicago. Encouraged by a therapist to write down her inspiring journey, Kanchan Bhaskar has written a memoir of life in an arranged marriage and how she escaped to live a productive life in the United States.

Kanchan was raised in an Indian family, where her parents cared for each other and spread that love to their children. Her mother was an educated, career-minded woman, and her father loved her and their children deeply. Kanchan, then, had very little understanding about how badly a wife and mother could be treated in the more patriarchal Indian society into which she married—in an arranged marriage, of course.

 The new husband, Vijay, was attractive and charming, but narcissistic and an alcoholic. Very early in the marriage he began hitting and abusing her, begging her forgiveness each time he sobered up. It was absolutely more than she could bear, and she plotted how she could escape this abuse with her three children. She knew that this could not happen in India, so her freedom from Vijay would not be possible until she arrived in the United States.

 Kanchan says at one point that she would not become the “frog trapped inside the well.” Several times she escaped to her parents’ home, always encouraged by Vijay to return—that next time it would be different. Of course, as we read her story, we know that next time will not be different.  When she exerts her freedom ultimately, we cheer that she has developed a clear sense of her self and her soul. She has developed an incredible power to achieve her freedom and tell her story.

Leaving  is difficult to read while at the same time restorative. Kanchan suggests that a woman must gather her innate strength and her inner spirituality in order to become the woman she was meant to be. I can see why her therapist suggested that she tell her story so that other women stuck in abusive relationships can learn to grow and thrive. I was so impressed how she learned to get in touch with her soul and pass on her strength to her children. One of the most touching aspects of this memoir is the dedication written by her daughter. The daughter suggests that she and her brothers were not important enough to their father for him to make any effort to change. She concludes, “Thankfully, we were—and are—important enough to our mother, who left him for the sanity of us all.”

Here is an outstanding You Tube video of an interview with Kanchan Bhaskar. I received the memoir from the author’s publicist. I believe that Leaving will be valuable for therapists to use with women suffering through abusive relationships, as well as for women wanting to read stories of feminist empowerment. The memoir is published this week.

Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow

By Rashi Rohatgi

Galaxy Galloper     2020

270 pages    Historical Fiction

The Shortlist

Here is the book summary:

“It's 1905, and the Japanese victory over the Russians has shocked the British and their imperial subjects. Sixteen-year-old Leela and her younger sister, Maya, are spurred on to wear homespun to show the British that the Indians won't be oppressed for much longer, either, but when Leela's betrothed, Nash, asks her to circulate a petition amongst her classmates to desegregate the girls' school in Chandrapur, she's wary. She needs to remind Maya that the old ways are not all bad, for soon Maya will have to join her own betrothed and his family in their quiet village. When she discovers that Maya has embarked on a forbidden romance, Leela's response shocks her family, her town, and her country firmly into the new century.”

India in the early 1900s is a part of history that I knew very little about, other than a couple of movies—Gandhi, and A Passage to India. I had a vague understanding of the conflict between the Hindu and Muslim cultures of India and Pakistan, a subject dealt with extensively in the book. The two young women are attempting to negotiate life during a volatile time in Indian history. I enjoyed reading about the role of women and how Maya and Leela were attempting to alter history.

I found the novelized history of that time to be fascinating, knowing that the Hindu-Muslim conflict continues in the region. The Kirkus reviewer says, “The novel does an excellent job of placing readers directly into the politics of the time, highlighting the clash between old and new and between the region’s various subcultures.”

I am even more fascinated by the biography of the author Rashi Rohalgi, Wow! I would really like to meet her! She has studied marginalized peoples and lesser-known histories and is a professor of world literature in Norway. You will need to read her biography on her website to get the full picture of her incredible life journey. Here, also, is an interview with her as the book Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow was released earlier this week.

Beautiful characters. Beautiful cover. Fans of historical fiction will really enjoy this book.

Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy

by Acharya Shunya

Sounds True    2017

376 Pages     Health/Wellness

I would like to share with you this morning a very insightful and useful book that came across my desk from a publicist. It is available today.

Ayurveda is a health system that believes that true health is everyone's birthright, and that each of us is a self-healing entity who can use nature's abundance to restore and renew ourselves. The practitioner and author, Acharya Shunya, was born in northern India, where her formative years were spent learning the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda from her guru, who was her grandfather (or Baba). He was a spiritual teacher and practitioner of this ancient wisdom. 

Shunya now is a practitioner herself, in California, and her book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom, is the result of her years of work teaching people how to understand, use, and practice the Ayurveda philosophy. Acharya Shunya presents a narrative-based guidebook that meticulously covers the how-to's of morning and evening self-care, daily contemplations, self-massage and skin care, cooking (including recipes), beauty rituals, and more. It also talks a great deal about yoga.

She writes "To rid ourselves of the suffering that afflicts the body, mind, and soul, what we need is an affirmative knowledge of life and how to live it in alignment with nature."

I loved the stories that begin each section. In them she relates the enormous influence her Baba had on her by giving examples of conversations she had with him as a child and the wisdom he imparted to her.

This is truly a unique book. It certainly can't be digested in one sitting, but it looks to me that someone seeking its wisdom needs to work on it, one step at a time.

Here  are some steps that every reader can do.

  Wake up early each morning at a set time. 

  Have an altar in your room and put fresh flowers on it every day. 

  Every morning meditate to your healing for fifteen minutes. 

  Stop eating (or minimize your consumption of) harmful foods - which foods are harmful, and which foods are best eaten at certain times of the day and the year are discussed throughout the book 

  Eat beneficial foods - there is a big section toward the end of the book that discusses food and includes recipes.

Here is a review in a blog about health and wellness.

Here is Acharya Shunya's website.

Embrace the Chaos: How India taught me to stop overthinking and start living

by Bob Miglani

 Barrett-Kuehner   2013

130 pages     Spiritual

The Shortlist

Bob Miglani was born in India but raised in the United States. In Embrace the Chaos, he describes the contrast between life in the United States and life in India--life in a place where all is controlled chaos and life in a place where there is no attempt to control the chaos. The introduction tells it all: "You have less control than you think. Get over it." Miglani is a businessman, and the book is his philosophical look at India and is his attempt to relate what he has learned from Indian life to over-programmed Americans.

The book is divided into two parts: Accept and Don't Overthink.  Each section is filled with short vignettes that tell the truths of life from an Indian perspective. Miglani intersperses each story with pithy sayings and observations. The stories are charming. There is a delightful story about a disrupted plane ride, another about a simple, but joyful birthday party, and another about a crazy Indian wedding. In each story, Miglani relates the truth that he found from that experience, a truth that will work to calm and enlighten driven Americans. He says, for example: "Worrying about what's coming next will make you miss the best times of your life." The message of another story is: "I realized that although parts of India's landscape may appear changed on the surface, its citizens' deep reservoir of acceptance for the imperfections of life hadn't changed."

This is a charming little book that I would not have known about if the publicist hadn't sent it to me. We have all heard the messages of Embrace the Chaos at other times and in other formats. It was a pleasure to read the messages once again connected to such delightful stories. It made me want to go to India and try out some of that chaos. 

I'm about to read another  bit of Indian philosophy in the new book The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri . It is one of this year's most anticipated books. 

Bob Miglani's blog and website: http://www.embracethechaos.com/

The Folded Earth

By Anuradha Roy

New York, Free Press, 2011

259 pages    Fiction

The Folded Earth is Anuradha Roy’s second novel, and it was with great anticipation that I embraced it. I had read An Atlas of ImpossibleLonging last year and absolutely loved it. Does this one match it? Not sure. Does it make me want to go to India? You bet.

While the setting of Atlas was India in older times, The Folded Earth is set in modern times, in a village high in the Himalayas. (In actuality, the village is where Roy and her husband live.) There is quite a bit of the older India at play in the book, including English-style cottages, old military men, and a mystery regarding the romance between Nehru and the wife of the Earl of Mountbatten. I was not aware of the term Raj Fiction, but apparently this is the term for nostalgic fiction of the British time in India. 

The book is divided into two parts—the first moves leisurely, much like one would imagine life in a Himalayan village. The second part moves more rapidly to a stunning conclusion. The plot takes too long to establish itself, but the writing is so good that the reader is willing to forgive Roy that indulgence.

Maya (my granddaughter’s name, by the way) is a young Hindu woman, widowed before the age of 20 by a mountaineering accident that claimed her husband, Michael’s life. She is estranged from her family because Michael was a Christian. Having nowhere to turn, she takes an opportunity to teach at a Christian school in the mountains, so she can be nearer the spot where her husband died. The first section of the book sets the scene and introduces us to a unique group of characters, including a nobleman who lets her live on his estate, where she edits a book he is writing about the adventurer, Jim Corbett. She defines her purpose in life thus: “I would not look into the future. My life had been too cruelly overturned once before for me to think of anything but the present moment. I would negotiate each day as if I were riding a leaf in a flowing stream: enough to stay afloat. I would not ask for more.”

Maya develops great affection for Diwan Sahib, the nobleman, and the people around the estate. She teaches a young woman to read so she can carry on a long-distance romance with a young cook in Delhi. She falls for Diwan Sahib’s nephew, Veer, who also is a mountaineer. The plot meanders a bit, but we get a very clear picture of village life, the summer heat, the monsoons, the ever-present mountains. Here is one of the beautiful passages that gives us a picture of mountain living:: “In winter, the air is clear enough to drink, and your eyes can travel many hundreds of miles until they reach the green of the near hills, the blue-gray beyond them, and then the snow peaks far away, which rise in the sky with the sun, and remain suspended there, higher than imaginable, changing color and shape through the day.”

The second part of the book moves a little faster as the carefully crafted life Maya has established starts to unravel, beginning with the decline of Diwan Sahib’s health until his eventual death. The reader develops a great deal of affection for Maya because her narration is mostly gentle and kind to those around her. She is like a wounded animal and the reader wants to make life better for her. The final events in the narration comes as much a blow to the reader as to Maya. The reader awakens rather abruptly from the dream-like state the beautiful words have thrust us into. 

Reviewers speak to the strength of Roy’s writing: “Roy's talent lies in her ability to infuse hard bits of social and political reality into a narrative that would otherwise have assumed the soft tinctures of light reading.” Another says: “. . . a poem to the natural world and its relentless displacement by the developed one.”

Roy calls upon the reader to embrace the slow pace of The Folded Earth, to savor the words and the character development, to feel Maya’s pain, and to discover a life that is unknown to her American audience. Although not as remarkable as An Atlas of Impossible Longing, The Folded Earth is worth reading for its own strengths and its own beauty.

Here is my review of An Atlas of Impossible Longing.

The review in the British newspaper, The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-folded-earth-by-anuradha-roy-2218075.html

Anuradha Roy’s blog: http://anuradharoy.blogspot.com/

An Atlas of Impossible Longing

by Anuradha Roy
New York, Free Press, 2008
305 p.   Fiction

An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy tells an intricate story of families, houses, time,and memory in India from the early 1900s to the years following the partition, about 1950.

First it is the story of several families over three generations beginning with a business man Amulya and his wife Kanabala, who settle in a small town, Songarth, where he becomes a prosperous businessman. He builds a large multigenerational home for his older son and wife, his younger son and daughter, and a young widow who takes care of Bakul, the granddaughter.

Second it is the story of two houses, Amulya’s house in Songarth and Bakul’s grandfather’s house in Manoharpur. The houses take on personality much like the people; they nurture the families they house, and then, like the inhabitants, the houses age and decline.

It is also the story of Mukunda, a caste-less orphan, who is raised in the house at Songarth. His story ties all the other stories together.

There is also a tumultuous river, symbolic in many ways. One review indicates: “The striking aspect of the novel is the intricate paradox of stillness as visualized in the description of the picture (the scene) and the onward movement of the river that symbolizes the volatile story enacted along the border of West Bengal.” It would appear that nothing much is going on in this quiet countryside, but indeed a very great deal is going on, including insanity, murder, unrequited love, teenage angst, and grief.

Even though things seem to be at a standstill, time is passing, and Roy shows the passage of time in very imaginative ways. The Independent of London describes the passage of time thus: “Several strata make themselves apparent. There are the huge ideas of geological time evoked in the image of the mounds behind the ruined fort; there are the humdrum indications of change such as the marks of decay affecting the house; and there are, powerfully present in the landscape, the descriptions of the movements of the river in Manoharpur as it advances upon "the drowned house," in which Bakul's mother had died while giving birth and which she now inherits - the house in constant danger before the shifting and rising water. Behind Roy's novel must surely be the words of TS Eliot: "In succession/ Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,/ Are removed, destroyed, restored."

I was immensely intrigued by the title, An Atlas of Impossible Longing. I understood the concept of longing, because longing permeates the book. It wasn’t until page 199 that the reason for the title comes clear. The third section of the book tells the story of Mukunda, the orphan boy, now a businessman, on his way to becoming successful. At one point he visits an astrologer, who looks at his palm and says: “Your palm is nothing but an atlas of impossible longings.” Ah, I thought, now I get it!

Although the story line is interesting and intriguing, what makes this book unique and compelling is the mood that permeates every pore of the book, much like the heat that permeates every pore of the characters. One reviewer calls it “a quality that can only be described as grace.” One of my favorite acts of grace in the novel occurs when the businessman, Amulya, realizes that his wife, Kanabala, is going mad. Up until this time, he has virtually ignored his wife, which probably has contributed to her madness. He begins to spend his evenings in the garden with her, talking to her, helping her walk, and tenderly taking care of her.

The book is quite beautifully written. Descriptive passages abound, like this one: “The rushes had stopped nodding, the breeze had stopped blowing through our hair, the stream had stopped flowing, the curdled clouds had stopped drifting overhead, the bird had stopped its call, the two children on the opposite bank had frozen in mid-gesture. . .”

Roy invokes the India of the past in somewhat nostalgic terms, but we are given a glimmer of the India that is to come. Nothing moves very rapidly in Roy’s India, but the undercurrent is there, much like the undercurrent monsoon river that floods the house of Bakul’s grandfather.

Anuradha Roy is a book publisher in Delhi. An Atlas of Impossible Longing is her first novel.

This review in the Hindu, an Indian magazine, gives a perspective totally different from the Western papers that reviewed the book:

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/08/10/stories/2008081050240500.htm

Here is a review in a British newspaper. It includes an outline of the plot:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/an-atlas-of-impossible-longing-by-anuradha-roy-859390.html

I received this book as a review copy from the publisher.