From the Dragon's Mouth: 10 True Stories that Unveil the Real China

Source: Shweta's Phone

Title: From the Dragon's Mouth

Language: English

Genre: Non-fiction

Pages: 288

Rating: 4/5

Excerpt:

Fuentes spent a few years living and working in China as an international journalist. The 10 short stories are portraits of citizens of the country she met during her stay. The book is a panoramic view into the psyche of the people, circumventing censoring authorities, about Chinese culture, history since the Chinese Cultural Revolution, etc. The book project began with a series of interviews with the locals Fuentes takes on. They talk about family, power, and the rest of the world; what makes them who they are; why they live in a dictatorship & why they are anarchic.

My Thoughts :

The book is an eye-opener to a world unknown to us, proving how fact reads better than fiction, claiming my attention for reading non-fiction yet another time. The book is an intimate sneak peek into China through the eyes of its people, voices of everyday people victims of all the ill fate. It a book unlike any other I have read thus far.

I found it interesting to read such differing accounts of life in China from rich, poor, migrants, journalist, an entrepreneur, a taxi driver and much more. The book captures the lives of different classes of people thriving there. For anyone interested in China or for anyone who just like well-written non-fiction, this book is for you.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Off the Traveler's Track

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

In the time before Great Pandemic in 2020, I was a frequent traveller. I received my first passport stamp back in 2016 To Europe and before 2016 my travel dominated in exploring my country in domestic travel. 

I recently finished reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. It was a trip down the memory lane on how it felt like to travel endlessly. Much of the book is an insight & fact-based research on trying to make sense of marriage while on exile from her own country with her lover Filipe. They lived as a nomad moving from one hotel to another, one city to another. They did miss their real life, in a home, a stationary home. Travel and real-life give rise to a potent realization. The book is good, insightful & heavy on research than personal essays. 

I took thousands of pictures in varying locales over the years. It is a bliss, a ticket to the past, as I was conjuring up potent remembrances. Yet countless other photos are mere background noise, long expunged from memory, a placeholder of life on the move.

Then, the pandemic put a stop to most travel around the world. During the mandatory lockdown, I only went outside for essentials & food, not even for exercise. I’ve spent countless hours in video calls with family & friends. I embraced my hobby to keep the creativity flowing, started experimenting with colours & dabbling with brushes more than ever before, and read books rather voraciously. Kindle came to my rescue during the complete lock-down! I could buy ebooks since the shipping services had all come to a halt. 

How we all miss travelling, going around making memories. Even stepping out to a cafe. Seeing new places & learning about a new culture. And that’s the beauty of travel — it forces us outside our comfort zones & pushes us into the unknown sphere of our lives. Our lives are ceaselessly unspooling stories. How we make sense of them tells us about ourselves. Humans are eternal explorers, endlessly curious about life around them. On an eternal quest to look forward to keep moving. 

Much has changed, while other things remain the same in our lives. We can no longer hop on a flight or train to a new place without being fearful. We can no longer plan our vacations we grew up thinking — One day, I’m sure I’ll visit this place for the requisite sightseeing and explore a new side of life. In our hearts, we are so eager to go someplace new, beyond the grocery stores or workout, for mere entertainment. Feels like the 2020 pandemic has pushed us back in time before the world had so many different sources of entertainment, not to forget, we still have our internet keeping us connected. 

As I go through the old pictures, taking me back to the places I once visited, surfacing in my thoughts ever so fresh, like it was the only yesterday. 

I wonder when will it be next?

Droplets of Magic - A poem

Photo by Philippe Tarbouriech on Unsplash

The speedy winds

Whistling through the leaves

There is no echo but only 

Psithurism and nothing before it rains

Thick dark clouds blanket the

Light blue sky

Waiting to weigh down on us

Spurt out nothing but rain

Sitting by the door, with a book in my hands

Smelling the petrichor come through

Pages soaking up the mist sprayed

Curling in nothing by natures love upon us

As it continues to rain, the nature bellows

Making us verve & dreamy, comfortable & gleamy

Seeking coverture in the comfort of homes 

As we wait for the tumid clouds to pour love upon us! 

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert — Book Review

Source

              Title: Committed By Elizabeth Gilbert
Language: English
Genre: Research-backed Memoir
Pages: 320
Rating: 3/5

Excerpt:

This book captures the writer's life after she sets off her life after the "Eat Pray Love" comes to an end, the solo journey she took to find herself. Towards the end of this self-reflecting journey, she meets a Brazilain man, Felipe, she falls in love with & they have their seismic rhythms all tuned in to the frequency that works for both of them. But their rhythm was soon hit by turmoil. The American government Department of Homeland Security officer detains Felipe for violating the visa rules. The book captures the "exile" and uses the experience as a point of departure for delving on different aspects of marriage. the time and great detail of socio-historical aspects of "Marriage" in various cultures & of also the journey they both lived as they figure out an arrangement that is satisfactory to the government & themselves.

My Thoughts :

As I picked up this book, I believed it will be deep dive into the psyche and interpretation of marriage from Gilbert's point of you. But no! The writer has shared personal experiences here and there between a lot of research-based insights into marriage in various cultures and plunged into the history of marriage. With her sharp, witty writing the book was engaging enough & also to make you feel she's talking just to you. Like having a one to one conversation. The book even though it was too meandering moved me with insights & details of research rather than her own personal essays. The research insights running parallel with personal anecdotes are all in her voice as if she was convincing herself to marry for the second time & why. It was aptly pointed out that the book is "rather chatty and personal to be so heavy on research, but it’s rather researched to be so chatty and personal" by the NY Times.


Decent read! A book to read for anyone who wants to understand various cultural aspects and nuances of marriage or closely witness a clear-eyed celebration of love with all its consequences of surviving, in the real world, actually entails.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

A Decade Gone by — A Short Story

Photo by Brad Fickeisen on Unsplash

There was a house at the end of a road, it was an abandoned old house. The house was small by the local standards; two rooms and two bathrooms, a single entrance, with two doors opening inwards. This is what spooked people the most. Any space with one entrance also means only one exit.

The overgrown branches of the trees planted at the entrance covered the door as if it was warning me to stay out. I passed the streets, I wasn’t heading for home, but for an old place, everyone believed haunted. I felt drawn to it, to explore the place. So I pulled the branches without sweat and made way into the old house. I opened the door. It made creaking noise as every abandoned house did and then slammed shut behind me. I tried to convince myself it was “the wind”.

The windows of the empty house were oversize. The glass panes divided into many parts like the many compartments in a beehive. Tales handed down from various generations in this town spread across neighbouring towns and cities. Tales about people staying here, vanishing, experiencing bad omens and terror.

The people could not help but notice, that the doors and windows stay shut most of the time. Every Sunday a newspaper got delivered to the gate and by the next day, it was gone. There were rumours of it being a dope house or a gangsters den to keep his hostages. Some have heard the rattle of chains through the dead of the night.

A foul stench invaded my nose. I look around to see where it came from and fainted at the sight of a half-decayed body, nibbled by the rats and maggots. It spied over me, staring straight through me. Those eaten eyes, the eye sockets staring in the open.

My mind was starting to fail, like an engine that turns over never kicking into action. I couldn’t formulate a thought. Everything looked intense and I could not think of a way out of this house. I glanced at the floor, no trap door. My eyes went to the walls, the windows. When I look outside, it was night now.

I walk around and I see there was a fire in the hearth. A chill runs through me. I decide to leave. As I turn around to leave the house and turn the doorknob, I heard someone.

“Don’t go.” said an echoing voice, “we can be such good friends”

I try to turn the doorknob and say “ Can I come tomorrow, my mother will be frantic”

The voice replies “Don’t you remember how long you have been here?”

“An hour?”

“How about, try years? Ten years? The neighbourhood plastered your pictures of you going missing. Your mom and dad split, your brother is in rehab. You left quite a hole in their lives.”

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved