Sita's Curse by Sreemoyee Piu Kundu

Title: Sita’s Curse
Author: Sreemoyee Piu Kundu
Genre: Feminist Erotic Literature
ISBN: 9789350097809
Publisher: Hachette India
Price: INR 350

Picture Credit: http://www.thehindu.com/books/books-authors/a-womans desire/article5706149.ece



Indian women don't talk of sex. Except in their bedrooms. And with their husbands, and sometimes with their girlfriends. To write a piece of erotica in this part of the planet, needs nerves of steel. Sreemoyee tried to liberate the Indian woman from these shackles imposed on her body, by patriarchy. She has used sex as an instrument to expose the religious and social hypocrisy and questioned the Indian arranged marriages by vividly wording the insatiable desires that were never fulfilled in the protagonist's marriage to Mohan. 
Meera, is in tune with her sensuality and the pristine pleasures the body seeks, right from the time she hits adolescence. She sets out on a journey to find a conduit for these carnal cravings. Her first encounters with her twin brother are venerated in poetic language, most of which didn't go down too well with me. All throughout the story, Kartik her brother is shown as that first person who gave wings to her desires and as her most trusted confidante, but what is disappointing is his portrayal as an empty suit, who is made to die too soon. What also left me flabbergasted was her encounter with Binal that made me wonder. Was Meera a nymphomaniac? And which way was her swing? This rendezvous leaves the reader with a distaste in the mouth.

22nd September 2013/ AIIMS metro station #Vote4Children

It was lazy evening in September. I had boarded the metro from DU North campus to AIIMS. I was tired and my legs were breaking into pieces. I was hurrying up to be at home. The music had filled my ears and I wasn't bothered about the humdrum of events around me. I slowly paced up the elevator and was taking the dirty streets lining the Vardhaman Mahavir college. As I was treading down, I saw a crowd of people. I was expecting an accident there and hurried up to check. 
What I saw after that left me scared witless. A man in his middle age, was slapping a young boy who may have been not more than 11 or 12. The boy I believe was the employee at this man's tea stall. He was dressed in a torn shirt and pants and  very shabby slippers.
What amused me the most was that everyone was watching the show with no one offering a hand of help to the boy. The blows got nastier with the passage of time. And the police people deployed at the other end of the road, were also only by-standers. Sadly for quite sometime, even I was murmuring under my breath, a quiet prayer for the young boy. I was alone and had no one to support, and even if I would have jumped into the scene, I was sure that no one would have braced themselves up to me. All the boy did was cry with folded hands.

Kya Dilli Kya Lahore- Movie Review

This isn't your commercial pot boiler of a film, that speaks of our barbed borders. It doesn't have a heroine running around the trees with a hero (playing an army man), both of who are eagerly waiting to hear the wedding bells ring. It doesn't have tanks treading around the war paths, or bombs creating a light and sound effect that will bombard your ears with a real time feel of the war rigged borders.


It is a simple story that is told by four characters. The story opens with a thirsty Vishwajeet Pradhan, a pakistani officer begging for a little water and a visibly shaken Vijay Raaz helping him with his bottle of water. As he is forced to hop over the border in search of a file, he comes face to face, with the realities of life. Across the other end, he meets a timid cook, Manu Rishi who is holed in a log cabin, as the other members of his team have been shot dead. All he has for company is a radio, that is dispelling his fears by playing him spirited messages, and a rifle and few bullets, and of course potatoes and wheat for the bloated belly.