Poornima Manco

Author

art

Guest blog month

by

I find people endlessly fascinating. Perhaps, that is why my stories centre around people, their motivations and compulsions. However, one does not always need fiction to experience alternate realities. Another person’s life: his journey, her passion, his hobbies, her escape, are all equally intriguing and provide enough fodder for the imagination.

In the spirit of that sentiment, I once again give my blog over to some very engaging people and their stories. The next few weeks will hopefully bring you some interesting insights into what constitutes an alternate lifestyle, being true to oneself and one’s passions, and how sometimes, the only journey one needs to undertake is the one that reconnects you to yourself.

As a blogger, I am always happy to be approached to showcase another person’s work. If you are a blogger who would like a slightly different audience for a change, or if you just like penning random musings, or if you feel strongly about something and need a platform to voice those thoughts, feel free to reach out to me with a sample of your writing, and maybe I could include you in future guest blog months. Comment below with your details and I will get back to you.

I truly believe that the writing community needs to be supportive and nurturing of one another. Our stories may be universal, but our experiences are deeply personal. In sharing them with our readers we attempt to create a bridge of understanding. However, in sharing them amongst ourselves and on our multiple and varied platforms, we start to understand the nuances and subtleties of that which is removed from our own actuality. In our myriad life realities, there is above all, a desire to understand and be understood.

I hope that the stories and articles that follow will take you on their unique journeys and you will come away with a renewed understanding and empathy for your fellow being.

 

Why reviews matter & what’s stopping you?

by

Ok, hands up… this is the first time I’m blogging from the WordPress app on my phone and from a sick bed. I am, currently, feeling extremely sorry for myself. I have been sick for five days and the luxury of lying in bed and binge watching ‘Homeland’ has lost its allure. So, I’ve taken to trawling through reviews of my second book… except there aren’t that many to trawl through.

Is it the law of diminishing returns? Or, can most readers simply not be arsed to put in a review? I’ll come to the third possibility later.

Firstly, please understand, to an Indie writer your reviews are IMPORTANT. You know why? Because, even if you say, “hey, I didn’t really care for this book”, it’s showing that YOU, a real, live person picked up the book and read it. It’s life affirming stuff for someone who has beavered over it for the better part of a year!

Secondly, no one is judging your review. No one is checking your grammar, syntax and flow. You’re not writing the novel, you’re just reviewing it. So, if it’s fear of your own command over the language that’s putting you off, don’t let it. You are helping multiple other readers see what they may or may not like about a particular book.

The third possibility is that you have really, REALLY hated the book. You’ve read a story or two and decided that this book really isn’t for you. In that case, there isn’t much point appealing to you. We are clearly a mismatch in terms of writer and reader, and I wish you well in your reading journey with other, more compatible writers. 😊

Finally, an important lesson I’ve learnt in my Indie journey is that Amazon really doesn’t want friends and family reviewing books. So, my apologies to those of you who took the time to read and review the book, only to find it taken down by the great Zon. Please don’t forget, you can still post that review on Goodreads with no such repercussions.

For the people who have written to me or told me in person how much they loved the second book, please do pass the word on. AND get others to review the book. People who I don’t know and people who will not give me a favourable review because of my extremely charming personality.😉

Right, that’s it for now folks! The sick bed blogging has its benefits but I don’t think I’ll be making it a regular feature anytime soon.

For your copy visit:

getbook.at/Damage

Love and Loss

by

I trace the network of lines on my stomach. A grid of loss. The lives this womb has held and squandered. Each time, unable to fulfil its biological vocation. Layers upon layers of hope and despair that show up on my face, in my hair, in my eyes… The first one came unbidden, unwanted, and was rid off just as quickly. Youth and drugs and unprotected mating. Then, years of trying and failing, and trying again. Too old to try now. Yet. An instinct to love, to cherish, to protect and to nourish finds no outlet. I swim in a morass of anguish and melancholy.

Till, like a sliver of sunshine, you enter my life.You are not of my womb. You are not of my culture. You are not of my colour. Yet. My life is coloured with the joy of your dimples and my heart overflows with the milk of love that my bosom could not offer.

You are you. And you are mine.

 

***

20160418_181601

Description of the work:

Untitled
Oil on canvas
30″ x 40″
2015
Copyright – Preeti Varma.

This painting is an original work of art by Preeti Varma who is a New York based visual artist. Preeti explores inter-disciplinary genres like painting, mixed-media, photography and installations in her art practice. To see more of her works, please visit her website at
www.Preetivarma.com

 

 

The Man in the Mirror

by

Here’s a conundrum: is it possible to divorce art from it’s creator?

It is universally acknowledged that great art be it in music or literature or movies transports you to a higher realm. Personal though the experience may be (and subjective too), truly sublime art cannot fail to move the observer. Yet, at what point does the creator’s life, personality or debaucheries start to influence how you view their creation?

From Wagner’s anti-Semitism to Dickens’ neglect of his own brood to Hemingway’s fractured family to more lately, Woody Allen’s decidedly creepy personal life, Michael Jackson’s (unproven) abuse claims to Rolf Harris’ proven ones- all have been artists/artistes par excellence.

Is it possible then to delineate one from the other?

I, for one, cannot forget that shortly after the child abuse allegations had first surfaced against Michael Jackson, he performed the “Earth Song” with pre pubescent children, with him dressed as Christ, in a ludicrous attempt to varnish his rapidly cracking facade. Jarvis Cocker of Pulp fame, famously wrecked that performance by storming the stage. Rightly so. Yet, there is no denying the fact that Jackson produced and sang some amazing tracks that have withstood the test of time.

Similarly with Allen’s earlier films, and some of his later ones too, it’s impossible to dismiss his genius, his quirky Manhattan world view, his unconventional protagonists. Yet one’s loathing of the man colours any subsequent viewings of his movies.

And what of Roman Polanski? Can one ignore that he raped a 13 year old just because he made wonderful films like “The Pianist” or “Chinatown”?

There is no black and white here. Talent can reside in the humblest, the meanest, the most perverse, just as it can within the noblest, the purest, the most enlightened. As an audience to it, we must judge them separately from one another. I can love a piece of art by Picasso, while not necessarily caring for the man himself (a serial adulterer and psychological bully). I can be transported by “The Ride of the Valkyries” by Wagner, while denouncing his anti- Semitic views.

Nowhere in the mythical Artists handbook is there a mention of a code of conduct. Yes, I would love all my artists to be wonderful, warm, caring, altruistic, loyal human beings. How naive that would be. Just as our world is an imperfect one, so are we.