Sita’s Curse REVIEW
My first thought:
“Sita’s curse? Is it a story
related to Ramayana?” These questions obviously rose in my mind as there is an
increasing number of books about Gods in the recent times. The cover had me
wondering why a book about Godess Sita has someone’s navel as the cover.
What I understood from back cover:
Then I turned the book to read
the gist. It says that the book is about Meera, a typical Indian woman, growing
up in a conservative family. Women in India are never let to lead but are asked
to grow up, marry and serve their husband loyally. And Meera breaks free after
a certain point in her life. Her desire to get love, respect and sex made her
break the rules. This is what I understood from the back cover. The title
supported my understanding in a way, ‘Sita’ was alone in the forest to fight
the talks of people about her purity. It was in a way a marital fight. So, I had
expected a story about a strong woman, something like the movie queen. With
this expectation and understanding I opened the book.
What I read?
Meera is brought up in a
conservative middle class family. The story begins with the introduction of
Meera and her twin brother and how they start discovering the difference in
their genders. I thought it was an intelligent and less picked plot. At this
point, we get curious to read how kids understand in the difference in their
gender and the opposite. But the way the book threads events together to bring
out this understanding of gender difference between the cousins is little
disgusting. How many of us will want to read a sister, at a very young age,
putting her hands into the twin brother’s trousers and ask what’s that snake
inside? Not my taste of reading, sorry. Could be an erotica but doesn’t have to
divert the imagination of readers to someone’s private parts so often. Erotica
is something that should make us feel the connection between love and lust and
not pure sex and disgust. Some places are handled well by the author- scenes
where the girl is asked to wear a bra and she finds it hard to handle. The twin
brother gives her an idea to just get rid of it and wear it when at home to
fool their mother. These could be the beautiful presentation of the innocence
of the kids. But places where the author talks about the guy touching the girl’s
period blood just make us feel too uncomfortable to proceed.
Meera starts to develop a liking
towards her dance master and the romace between them is well brought out. This
part is one that I liked reading. There is love and lust in the relationship
between the two of them and was convincingly executed in the book. Then Meera
loses her brother and gets married to a stranger in Mumbai.
The biggest positive of this book
is that it address the importance of fulfillment of sex needs of a normal
Indian woman. But love and respect as promised in the gist is nowhere brought
out in the entire story. The book questions just about the sexual needs and
some more odd questions like what if a husband can’t give a baby.
Why should two people, be it girls
or guys, touch her at odd places all the time? A friend of hers stay with her
and she also brushes her breast. Her teen brother also touches her at wrong
places and questions about odd things. Her dance master touches her at wrong
places. Does erotica include such stuffs? IF so, sorry I am not used to this
genre. This is the first book in this genre and I had picked it with the
expectation that it would be more like Queen or highway where the girls break
free.
Over all, read the book if all
you want is imagining a girl being touched in all way by all the people she
meets in life.
I'm, too, carried away by the title. But after reading the review, I doubt, if I will read this one.
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