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Thursday, June 19, 2014

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.



 My request to authors: Please don't use names for your book, that might affect the sentiment of a certain religion. I was truly offended when I read all these after the cover containing the words Sita's curse. Maybe if i was not misguided by the title and the expectation the words love and respect had set in me, I would have (I doubt) enjoyed the book. 


This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

1 Scribbles:

  1. I'm, too, carried away by the title. But after reading the review, I doubt, if I will read this one.

    Someone is Special

    ReplyDelete

Thank You for taking pains, commenting :)

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