G... is for Gothic Fiction

I'm a big fan of gothic themes. I enjoy reading such novels immensely. One of the finest examples of gothic novels, in my opinion is Rebecca. What a tale! The second Mrs de Winter, nameless, faceless is constantly living under the shadow of the former Mrs de Winter, Rebecca. The primary gothic features are presented by Mrs Danvers, Rebecca's nanny and later housekeeper, whose sole aim in life is to preserve her child's presence, and to this end, she makes life at Manderley, dark, very dark.
Another stunning example of such a novel I read in recent times is Orkney, by Amy Sackville. This book has touched me in ways I have not thought possible. I was swept away by the passion in the story, terrified by its darkness, and it has refused to leave my head, even after a year after I read it. Read my review here.
For poems, Plath and Donne are magicians!
Oh, and do read both these books!

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This is the seventh post for the April A-to-Z Blogging Challenge 2014.
Previously, Archaism, British literature, Critical Analysis, Drama, Edinburgh, Faust

Q... is for Queen of Scots, Mary!

The history of civilisation is bloody and torturous. Death, murder, villainy, and tragedy... Mary's life, like the lives of many women before us, was difficult, and much more than what makes us complain. For one, she became Queen when she was 6 days old! What a joke... anyway, Scotland was ruled by regents while she grew up in France, married the french Dauphin, and came back to reign.
Imagine being 19 - 20, married, and expected to come and rule over a land that she was in for the first time! Anyway, when he died, she was heartbroken. But I don't think there was ever any place for personal emotions for Monarchs. She remarried, and soon after, that man died too or was murdered, but not before she bore him a son.
Following this, she made a mistake in marrying the prime accused of her ex-husband's murder. Two, he had divorced his earlier wife very recently. Three, he was Protestant! The Catholics were outraged, obviously! She was imprisoned and forced to give up her crown in favour of her one-year-old son. She escaped and fled to England, where she sought asylum from their Queen (her first cousin, once removed). But instead, her claim to the English throne politically meant that she was imprisoned, for 19 years! Finally, found guilty of plotting the assassination of the Queen, she was executed! Her son had her exhumed from her initial burial place, though, and re-interred in Westminster Abbey.

Edinburgh Castle: Entry to where the crown jewels of Scotland are kept

Phew! What a life to have led! Her story always makes me somber...

Born: Linlithgow Palace (to go),
Crowned: Stirling Castle (been!),
Gave birth to son: Edinburgh Castle (been!),
Recuperated from illness: Craigmillar Castle (to go),
Married both second and third husbands: Palace of Holyroodhouse (to go),
Imprisonment (Scotland): Loch Level Castle (seen),
Buried: Peterborough Cathedral (seen),
Re-interred: Westminster Abbey (been!)

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This post is part of the ongoing A-to-Z Challenge. Previously, Aye, Berwick, Cramond, Disability, Edinburgh, Forth Bridge, Glasgow, Hamish, Isle of Skye, John o' Groats, Kirk, Loch Lomond and Luss, Mogwai, Necropolis, Old Man of Storr, Portobello.

Liebster Award!

My lovely friend S, over at Failed Experiments & Experimental Failings, nominated me for the Liebster Award!
A couple of days later, Kathleen from Writing, Reading, and Life, nominated me again! I have only started reading her blog but the name, if you know me, is like a magnet and you should definitely stop by.
This is very special to me as this is the FIRST award this blog has won. Thank you, both of you!
This is a pay-it-forward award. It’s only for participants of the A-Z blogging challenge that began on April 1st... I understand that some of you might not 'do' blogging awards, so just take it as my appreciation for your work :)

The rules are:
1. Thank the person who nominated me and link back to their site
2. Post 11 random things about myself
3. Answer 11 questions that S has for me
4. Ask my nominees 11 questions of my own!


Here we go then:

11 things about myself:

1. I'd really like to be a travel writer. Being paid to travel and to write is my dream.
2. My friends are my life. As an only child, they have always been my support system.
3. I love Scotland! There is something simple and unpretentious about life here.
4. I have lived 23 years of my life in India and am not patriotic at all. Close friends say I was born in the wrong country :P
5. Poetry is a sublime form of life.
6. I believe in magic and fairies!
7. My favourite movie is Walt Disney's Cinderella; there is wayyyyy too much to learn from it.
8. I'm a huge pessimist when my feet are on the ground.
9. I love entering peoples' lives when they are messed up and then fixing them!
10. I get taken for granted by friends a lot, I hate it!
11. I am a Grammar Nazi.

Now to answer the questions S put up:

1. What does your name mean? Do you like your name? Have you ever wanted to change it?
It means 'the rising'. I do like my name. I am called Jhelum at home (most Bengali kids have two names lol), sometimes I wish I was called Udita at home and Jhelum formally.

2. Why did you start your blog?
This blog began on 18th Feb, 2007, the day I turned 18. I wrote my first post at 1800 hrs.

3. Tea or coffee?
Both

4. If you could revisit a  day or a certain period of your life, what would it be?
It would have to be my undergrad years, I loved it then, and I would like to relieve it again!

5. What’s your favourite thing about the internet?
Being able to read pretty much anything that I want to read

6. Do you think all this technology and social media has made us better or worse at being social?
Definitely worse! People can't even read real maps anymore!

7. What’s your favourite food?
I'm not fussy about food, anything goes. But I quite like my Gran's Mutton Curry :)

8. Are you a city person or a country-side person?
Oh I'm a countryside person through and through; I'm miserable in cities

9. If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you’d buy or spend on?
More books :) and travelling

10. Why did you decide to do the A-Z challenge this year?
It gave me a reason to put down in words all the thoughts I have in my head. Also, I wanted to catalogue Scotland the way I saw it.

11. Describe yourself in 4 words.
Imagination. Creativity. Free. Aquarius.

Now for Kathleen's questions:


1. Of the Three Stooges, which one are you most like: Larry, Curly, or Moe? Curly!

2. If you could take the place of any character in any book, who would it be and why?
Tough, maybe Alice, or Sophie... they're both curious :)

3. Mac or PC? PC

4. What is your favorite book cover of all time?
Don't know, maybe the old cover for The Bell Jar

5. What are the last 5 books you’ve read?
Leave of Absence
This Mobius Strip of Ifs
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
Leonardo’s Swans
... all of which i have written about at BookMark

6. If your life was a movie, who would you want to play your nemesis? (HA! Tricked you on that one!)
Liv Tyler

7. Vanilla or Chocolate? Vanilla :)

8. By some strange accident of fate, I’ve been stranded in your home town. Can I stay at your place?
Yes!

9. Are you sure? Yeah...

10. What was your favorite book as a child?
Moby Dick and Treasure Island

11. What is one word that describes your current MC?
MC?


So, here are the people I nominate. They are doing a great job in their spaces!
Life and Times of a Student
MAGICAL MYSTICAL MIMI
The Ruralhood
Paula's Place
Life on the Muskoka River
Crazy California Claire
Finding Eliza
Voices in my Head
Oh, Frog it!
Michael Abayomi
Phenomenal Lass

My questions for you are:

1. Do you know the meaning of the German word 'Liebster'?
2. One place on your must go list?
3. Do you believe in astrology? Why? Why not?
4. What is the most daredevil thing you've done?
5. What is your favourite book? If you don't read, movie?
6. What is your biggest weakness?
7. Do you believe in fairies?
8. Tea or Coffee?
9. Who is your best critic?
10. Life in five words?
11. One blogger you read everyday (doesn't matter if they aren't taking the challenge)

Enjoy!

V

V is for 'Valhalla'.
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie (from Old Norse valkyrja “chooser of the slain”) is one of a host of female figures who decide who will die in battle. Fascinating, yes?
Here, in Paulo Coelho's 'Valkyries', it is a group of women dressed in leather jackets and chunk, antique jewellery who ride on dirt motorbikes (I already have a very brazen image in my mind) and live a floating life, like a mirage. They meet and guide travelers, have cult rituals in abandoned caves, talk to the coyotes, and make love to strangers in the desert sands to satiate themselves. This book should have been as famous as the Alchemist, the imagery is beautiful…
Valhalla is one of these women, she is sort of like a leader. After she is done with the author an his wife, they feel like whatever they knew so far was not themselves at all. Her personality is magnetic and shifting, she is there but no really there. I love powerful women!

The battle, the final resting place...

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste, Kali, Long John Silver & Lisbeth, Miu, Nancy, Oliver, Piyali, Quentin, Rebecca, Scarlett, Tita, Ursula

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

U

U is for ‘Ursula’.
The mother in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, she is the wife of Colonel Buendia and along with her husband, the founder of Macondo. This book is so unreal that certain events are almost believable. Ursula oversees six out of the seven generations of Buendias covered in this book, she is over a hundred years of age.
I loved her devotion towards her old and senile husband and towards her many strange kids and grandkids. She was an intelligent woman, she found a way from Macondo to the outside world when no one else could. She took stray waif-like children in, she was kind. And like a lot of other characters in the book, she was quite a bit of magic. Ursula, although the name has an evil tone to it, was a woman of great strength; she reminds me of my Grandma.

The author and the book

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste, Kali, Long John Silver & Lisbeth, Miu, Nancy, Oliver, Piyali, Quentin, Rebecca, Scarlett, Tita

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

T

T is for ‘Tita’.
She is the protagonist of a book that should be better known, Like Water for Chocolate. It is a strange book with a strange name and an even stranger theme. The plot is simple, a man not allowed to marry his loved one Tita, marries her elder sister Rosaura so that he can be around the one he loves. I like themed books, the kinds that have a single theme running across all chapters, sort of like a spine to the book. In this case, the theme was Mexican cooking. Every chapter began with a list of ingredients for a dish and the events in that chapter somehow managed to give the entire recipe within it. Not once was there a disconnect, not once did the pace falter. Now that’s powerful writing.
Tita is obsessed with cooking and her dishes are delicious. There is a scene in which she is baking the cake for Rosaura’s wedding with her love, Pedro and her copious tears mix with the icing. Everyone that eats the cake is overcome with an eerie sense of infinite longing.
At times though, the magic realism foes into an overdrive and things are too strange to be true. I definitely recommend this book, not if you’re looking for classic magic realism; but more if you’re looking for a beautiful love story and a very unusual narrative. And of course, if you want to whip up some delicious Mexican!

From the movie, Tita, cooking

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste, Kali, Long John Silver & Lisbeth, Miu, Nancy, Oliver, Piyali, Quentin, Rebecca, Scarlett

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

S

S is for ‘Scarlett’.

What a girl, what a woman! She is the epitome of womanhood. A match of strength for every Rhett, a match of folly for every Ashley… This O’Hara is beautiful, brave, cruel, and brilliant. So what if Rhett left her (I do not think that the sequel to Gone with the Wind counts); she was no left weak. No when he played with her, not when he loved her. Bonnie’s death was Rhett’s fault. Period.

Scarlett needed a different man, she didn’t need a charmer, she didn’t need a fool. She was ahead of her times and men just couldn’t catch up with her. Ever since I’ve read the book five years ago, her words have given me strength on many a hopeless day. Whenever faced with trials and tribulations, judgment, loss, and despair; she always believed:
"After all... tomorrow is another day!"

Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste, Kali, Long John Silver & Lisbeth, Miu, Nancy, Oliver, Piyali, Quentin, Rebecca

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

R

R is for 'Rebecca'.
I never, even for a moment, felt that she was dead and gone. I identified with the second Mrs DeWinters, nameless, faceless. I shivered with her, I despaired with her… Du Maurier struck gold with her intense portrayal of Rebecca. Her presence, like an evil charm, hung on the reader’s head throughout the book. She haunted me right through it all. Manderley, oh Manderley, that fell prey to such dark, gothic forms! My heart bled for it.


I sympathized with Mrs Danvers, even when she was being villainous, at least she had a belief and an existence. The rest of us that the author dragged to Manderley, why we didn’t stand a chance against R at all!

She just overpowered all our senses and took over our lives from us. What a woman, what a book!

P

P is for 'Piyali'.
This girl is the heroine of The Hungry Tide, she studies cetaceans. An American of Indian origin, she comes to the Sundarbans to study them Irrawady dolphins. In a haunting tale of love, high and low tides, and shtrrange relationships that follows, the reader is led through a brilliant travelogue. The writer, Amitav Ghosh, has made a brilliant tale out of this one. The novel is well-researched. And the relationship of Piya and Fokir, her boatman, trancends time and space.
Love that has no words, love that has no name or meaning, perhaps it is not even love but a curious feeling that can exist only in the Gangetic swamps... This is the only contemporary Indian author I have true respect for. The way darkness and light have come together is beautiful, yet disturbing, a highly recommended read. I have written more about it here.

Irrawady Dolphin

M

M is for 'Miu'.
Have you read any Murakami? Have you? His books have changed me for life. They have crept up to me on eerie and dark nights, his words have haunted me on seemingly normal days, and his characters... his men and women, his cats and telephones, they'll be a part of me for as long as I live and think. Miu is one of the three major characters in Sputnik Sweetheart. Sumire, the other girl, falls for Miu. They spend time together, lots of time. Sumire is an aspiring writer and K, the narrator, is in love with her. It is a triangle.
But then... then Sumire disappears. And comes back. Strange... strange; I mumble to myself, reading in the glow of a red lamp, rain drenching Delhi. Whenever it rains, I turn to Murakami. Something happened to Miu. Something that cant be told about here. Sputnik, the satellites, Violet, cruel... the ferris wheel, carnival, cruel. You must go now, go away...

from http://booksandstories.tumblr.com

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste, Kali, Long John Silver & Lisbeth

  

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction, that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday... 

K

K is for ‘Kali’.

Kali is a form of Durga, a form of Parvati, from the Hindu mythology. She is said to be pitch black, aggressive, and ugly, terrifying. Her presence signifies death, carnage, and destruction. Even a vision of hers is considered ominous and her devotees worship her to pacify her.

The physical dynamics of the character has been retained in the seond book of the Shiva trilogy (The Secret of the Nagas) by Amish Tripathi. I’m not big on Indian authors; their English is at best halting and their vocabulary is limited. There are, of course, exceptions. But not this one. But that has been compensated for by the absolute hype created around religion and deities.

I’m not religious; but I liked Kali. She is ugly but is portrayed s a nice person. She is a Queen of a clan with a great personality and defined focus. She is deformed and has four hands and is dark; her clan is made of people with such and other deformities. And yet, I was attracted to her magnetic persona. Now the final book of the trilogy hasn’t released so I haven’t a clue if her character will turn out to be twisted. But I sure hope that doesn’t happen…

PS: This is a late post because K was a tough letter to draw out a character with.

Image courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/

So far: Atticus, Beth, Cassius, Dumbledore, Estella, Francesca, Gandalf, Humbert, Ishmael, Jean-Baptiste

I'm writing every day of April for the A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge 2012. I'm writing of characters of fiction, that are immortal and touch hundreds of lives everyday...

F

F is for 'Francesca'.
I have gushed about The Bridges of Madison County here. It is the only so-called cheesy story that has ever moved me to tears. Francesca's character is practical and poetic; a simple farm wife from Iowa has to be both. When she meets Kincaid (in my eyes he competes with Rhett!), her life goes upside-down. She is a true woman, loves with boundless passion and sacrifices without tears. She is strong not for herself, but for her family. She thinks less of her own self and stolidly bears love and pain. I think she must have been an Aquarian :P

Cedar Bridge, Madison County, Iowa

For those of you that read a lot will surely find some time to read this book. And even those don't read much will fin this a very easy read, that will not weigh down your mind. A word of caution though: Francesca might touch you in a way so that you may never be the same again. I have never been...

E

E is for 'Estella'.
She is a very strange girl. The heroine of 'Great Expectations' is a mightily strange girl. She's the protege of Miss Havisham, who stopped her clocks (and her life) when she was jilted by her fiance on her wedding day. Estella takes care of her and practically runs the house while Miss H sulks in her God-knows-how-old wedding dress.
So, Estella has been part of a mentally abusive and sick household. Understandably, she hates men. But her behaviour towards Pip (the protagonist) is decidedly bizarre! I am a huge Dickens fan, but I truly believe that Estella could've been a bit more normal. Marrying Pip's rival Bentley was seriously a little too much for me to take. She was beautiful and rich, why did she have to be so mean!?
Read more about the book here.

Miss Havisham & Estella

B

B is for 'Beth'.
She’s the second youngest of the March sisters in Louisa May Alcott’s ‘Little Women’. I was barely ten when I read this book and I was shocked by Beth’s character. She seemed so good and soft and all things nice. Then she died. It shook my faith in God-fearing and sensitive young girls. Beth, thirteen when the story starts, is described as shy, even-tempered and musical, and very close to her sister, Jo. Time goes by and she wonders what will become of her. When she suffers from scarlet fever, the whole family is scared stiff that she’d die. She lives, though, but is never healthy again.


When the family understands that Beth will not live much longer, they separate a room for her, filled with all the things she loves best: her kittens, piano, father's books, Amy's sketches, and her beloved dolls. Soon, Beth puts down her sewing needle, saying that it grew "so heavy", never to pick it up again.

Good things do not necessarily happen to good people. Life is not fair. And sometimes, it is much easier to let someone go if they are brash, vivacious, and full of spirit, like Jo. But not Beth, she wasn’t supposed to die.

I’ve written about the plot of the book here.

Elizabeth 'Beth' March

PS: I notice a pattern here. I think I’m going to be blogging about characters that pop into my head in April, as far as I can :)