Book Review: Truthfulness and Femininity by Sarat Chandra

The writer Sarat Chandra inaugurates a huge public library at Medinipur. Following the inauguration, people engage themselves into literature related conversation. One of the gentlemen asks the author why he treats truthfulness and femininity as two different aspects. To make the point understand clearly, the writer narrates a story about a woman whom he knows since childhood.

A twelve-year-old girl, who was married to an elderly man, becomes a widow prematurely. She returns to her parents’ house, in a village. By the time she is thirty two years old, she is left alone in the world, her parents no more alive. The author calls her Didi, sister. In fact the whole village calls her sister because she works at others home in all types of events or even in the times of contingency. Soon, in the village she becomes famous for her helping nature and people reckon her as a hardworking figure with unblemished character.

She lives in a hut which is covered from the mud walls from all sides, and beside one wall stands a huge tree of Jamun. The author, being a child, plans to play a prank on her. The child climbs on the tree and hides in the dense branches well before the evening. When the darkness surrounds the village, things go silent, there aren’t any cooking fires in the sky, people proceed for sleep, he shouts Didi…Didi…in a hoarse voice with an intention of scaring her. Soon after hearing the voice a fat man quickly gets up from the cot, lying in the courtyard, and hides beneath it.

Thus, the author clarifies that it is not necessary that a woman high on truthfulness is refraining from sexual desires. Both aspects are different and women are rarely bereft of femininity. In his view both are different because each quality passes through a different circumstance to prove its mettle.

Comments

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike. This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r

Kevein Books and Reviews

Search This Blog