– Middlesex, Jefferey Euginides
“Middlesex” is not just a name of a place in Michigan. It is about being in the intersection of two contrary grounds and trying to gain a foothold. It is a book that blurs the boundaries between two different cultures, the past and the present, and the male and the female. It follows the path mapped out for the quest of gender identity amidst sexual crisis. It tells the tale of pursuing the American Dream during the chaotic era of the Greco-Turkish war.[break]
This fiction is written in the form of a memoir. The protagonist, Calliope, is a hermaphrodite who comes from a family of incest. While she is still in the womb, it is predicted that the child is going to be a boy. But she is born as a girl. She has a sexual awakening only at the age of fourteen when she feels an intense physical attraction towards her female best friend, the Obscure Object. As a result of the interbreeding between her parents and grandparents, Calliope becomes a victim of 5α-Reductase Deficiency (5-ARD) Syndrome which is caused due to recessive genetic mutation. In order to escape the prospect of a reassignment surgery, Calliope flees and assumes a male identity. She hitchhikes across the country and reaches San Francisco, where she joins a peep show at Sixty-Niner’s.
Dipesh Shrestha
The novel makes the reader aware that hermaphrodite was first identified in Greek civilization. What I found amusing in the story is the name of the characters such as Desdemona, Tiresias, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Milton, Theodora, Gizmo, Chapter Eleven and the Obscure Object. The book follows the principle that people are molded before their death. The Stephanides siblings board a ship amid the Great Fire of Smyrna and sail for the United States. They gain a new identity and dream a new dream. But what happens to Calliope, their grandchild? The question is out in the open for the readers to answer. Owing to the language and style in which the author has chosen to write, I found Middlesex to be one of the most complex reads of my life. Nevertheless, it is so intriguing that abandoning it would be a huge loss indeed.
About Shah
Shah describes herself as a passionate reader and a book lover. She reminisces, “During the final year of my Master’s, our teacher asked us what we wanted to do after achieving the degree. Everybody wanted to teach. I was the only one who wanted to read.”
Her father was a national-level football player and her mother is a wonderful swimmer. She has always been an outdoor person with an exceptional zeal for adventure sports. She remembers this one incident when she almost lost her life during scuba diving. “It only wanted to make me swim deeper the next time,” she laughs. Skydiving is the next thing on her list.
She is currently teaching English literature at Dilli Bazaar Kanya Campus. She is also working as a French language teacher at Silver Mountain College. For her, teaching is not just about giving lectures, taking notes or passing exams; it also means being a student’s friend, mentor, parent and sometimes even a doctor. She enjoys being with her students and is immensely popular for her friendliness and humility. She feels that literature is all about aesthetics. But teaching a new language is completely different. One has to start from the scratch which is challenging as well as interesting.
Her affair with books started in 2007. She does not remember being much of a bookworm before that. And once she started reading, she wanted to talk about what she had read. She joined The Reader’s Club three years ago. Today, she is the executive member of the club and also the coordinator of regular book discussions.
Shah opines that “feminist” has become a cliché in today’s day and era. However, she does not think there is anything wrong in talking about oneself as a woman. A free spirit with an adventurous streak, she is not scared to try out anything in life. In future, she wishes to continue reading and pursue further studies and research on the third gender.
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
This is an aesthetically rich memoir of a woman who rebels against tyranny through the liberating power of censored literature. The book talks about living away from one’s homeland and the anguish of split identity. In the late 90s in Iran, Nafisi gathers a group of students to read and discuss such forbidden Western classics as Lolita, The Scarlet Letter, Madame Bovary, and The Great Gatsby. The author is currently a professor of literature and politics at John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington D.C.
Don’t Ask Any Old Bloke for Direction by PG Tenzing
It is a dark humor/memoir of IAS (Indian Administrative Services) officer Tenzing’s (the author) journey through India and Nepal on his Royal Enfield. Life on the road is full of potholes in more ways than one. Tenzing’s views on life, death, friendship and love are filled with dark humor. This book will always remain my favorite and I cannot thank my son enough for picking this up. He too has that traveler’s streak like me and wants to embark on a journey similar to Tenzing’s on his Enfield. I may do that myself.
Little Princess by Connor Grennan
Just before his exploratory trip around the world, twenty nine year old Irish American Connor Grennan decides to spend three months in Nepal, volunteering at the “Little Princes” in Godawari. In the three months that Connor spends in the country distraught with civil war, he gets to see a completely different world. Meanwhile, he also develops an attachment with the resilient children who would challenge and reward him with love and affection he had never dreamt of. Whenever we think of human trafficking, we only think of girls sold in brothels. But this book, written from a foreigner’s eyes, shows a stark reality of child trafficking in Nepal which is refreshing and depressing.
The Difficulty of being Good by Gurcharan Das
This book traces how, as rational beings, we are bound to interrogate conservatisms, ancestors, customs and consciousness. Set against the backdrop of the epic Mahabharata, the author draws comparisons to today’s worldly characters of uncertainty, malice, envy, greed and filthy politics. Das compares the sibling rivalry between the Ambani brothers to that of the Kauravas and the Pandavas and Draupadi’s question on the immortality of silence to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s silence regarding India’s President Pratibha Patel’s corruption charges. The book does not preach morality but discusses how difficult it becomes to keep one’s sanity unharmed in the world full of vices.
Samsara by David Abramski
I had never heard of this book before I started reading it. And initially, the only reason I decided to read it was because its author was a foreigner who spoke fluent Nepali. Samsara, according to the Buddhist ideology, means the wheel of suffering that every living being has to pass through. It is the never ending story of the human being’s eternal struggle to break free from the frequency of false facades and the reality of faces that remain underneath. The elements of the CIA and the Tibetan Freedom Fighters give a nice pace to the action that unfolds in the story.
As told to Nitya Pandey
Related story
'Lolita' actor Sue Lyon dies at 73
-1200x560-1781083488.webp)
