Quintessence Blogger

     “I don’t take his money, though. I steal something better.”, “I take his brightly colored storybook and make it mine.” says Lakshmi, the thirteen-year old protagonist of Sold by Patricia McCormick, who lived with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal, who was “sold” by her own father to a brothel house called the “Happiness House”, when one of the inmates, Harish or the David Beckham boy as she calls him, opens the world of books and letters for her. Upon reading the lines, one can discern the fervent yearning that emanates from this young girl's desire for education. Can a girl, who has been forced into prostitution after being “sold” by her stepfather, accomplish this goal?      “Happiness House”-see the irony? A place, where all her dreams were shattered, her body was seen as a mere commodity for sexual gratification, her “no hips” and “plain as porridge” appearance was cruelly treated by the men coming and going through the halls- named ...

     As John F. Kennedy says, “The right of everyman is diminished when the rights of one man is threatened.” Human rights is a commonly discussed matter. There are institutions like The National Human Rights Commission of India, National Commission for Women, National Commission for Minorities and so on. These work to ensure that people are not denied their rights anymore, but there is a category of people we often forget who are also denied their rights. They are the one who are behind the bars, the prisoners who are in under trial jails. Prisons are important as they as the ultimate tenderness, as the curtailment of liberty, it has a way for the state to isolate those actors which pose threat to society and performs its part of the social contract of maintaining security. Prison life is an open secret, everyone has a vague idea of what happens in a prison but no one is sure and there is hardly any conversation about it. The four walls of a prison today serve double pur...

                    Some characters have the power to stay in the mind of the reader even years after being published, no matter how the character appears in the fictional narrative- a hero or an anti-hero. Narratives have that power to even turn the worst characters into the favourites of the readers. It is fascinating how the author, with a swift move of their pen can create such a wonderful, lively being just from their imaginations. Most often it might be the protagonist that captures the reader’s interest. But at certain unpredictable situations, the anti-hero, the villain is the one that takes the readers off their feet.                 Recently the world has seen many representations, rewritings and reinterpretations of such anti-hero characters. It has become a recent trend that the antagonists are given prominence and their characters are being glorified. This...

          “Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now.” The story of the victims has always been the same, whichever category they may belong, as J.K. Rowling speaks, in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. Victims may be defined as a sufferer, the injured party or the prey. Victims of crime may be of any gender, age, race or ethnicity. Victimization may happen to an individual, family, group or community, and a crime itself maybe done on a person or property. The tales of the victims has always been so brutal. From ages back, people have been made victims and treated ferociously.              As readers, we have been moved for decades and even centuries with classic characters striving for change and not succumbing to victimization as an excuse for inaction: Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennett, Anna Karenina, Heathcliff, Emma Bovary, Captain Ahab, Charles Marlowe, Cinderella, etc...

          Have you ever observed people immersed in books during a journey—be it on a train or bus? Witnessed them entangled in the profound depths of a book, expressions changing as stories unfold? I can confidently say nothing quite equals the fervor of that experience. I Fell in Love with Hope is precisely such a book that captivated me during a train journey. A random find from a book street in Trivandrum, chosen out of curiosity sparked by its cover. Alongside other classic literary works, I Fell in Love with Hope found its place in my collection. It was to avoid the tediousness of the journey I started reading it on my way back home in that most beautiful train journey. I've never felt the urge to finish a book so swiftly, aware that my varied facial expressions piqued the curiosity of my fellow passengers.           Through this book, Lancali takes readers on a rollercoaster of emotions. The narrative revolves around t...