Poornima Manco

Author

experience

What’s the point?

by

Every author, regardless of the genre they write in, has some kind of message in their writing. Whether that is good overcomes evil, soulmates exist, happily ever afters are possible, crime doesn’t pay, etc, etc. You get my drift. Now, these messages aren’t necessarily emblazoned on their covers or blurbs. In fact, sometimes, the messages are so deeply buried within the writing that a reader would be hard pressed to vocalise them if asked. But they are there, even in the fluffiest romcom, the bloodiest crime caper, the most nerve-tingling thriller. Search and you will find.

However, sometimes, there is a disconnect between the message sent and the message received. What an author may be trying to say is open to hundreds of interpretations and misinterpretations. It depends on the reader, their mood, their provenance, their cultural history, their upbringing, their exposure to the world and many such factors. That can make for a jarring experience, both for the reader, and also for the author when they read a scathing review of their work. “That wasn’t what I was saying!” An author might cry out in the privacy of their home.

Whose fault is the misunderstanding? The author’s or the reader’s?

Now, having been both, I can tell you that the answer is complex and nuanced. As an author who is trying to put a point across, I want to be subtle. I want to layer my message within the story, the dialogues, the actions of the protagonists and the consequences of those actions. Do I want to beat the reader over the head with my message repeatedly? No! That is the most basic and worst kind of didactic writing there is. Yet, within all of this lies the risk of being misunderstood.

Let’s take the last novel I wrote and released back in 2022: Intersections. Most of the reviews I received were wonderful. Haunting, complex, emotional and compelling were some adjectives used to describe the story. So far, so good. But any writer worth their salt knows that it’s the negative reviews that stick in one’s head. I know of many authors who refuse to read their reviews, content if their works have a high star rating. I, sadly, am not amongst those. I enjoy reading my reviews because I see it as a learning ground. Somewhere I can find out firsthand what my readers are thinking, what I did well and what I could do better.

This one review had me baffled. The reviewer said she found the book was very well written, that I, as the author, had tackled an intricate plot with four alternating viewpoints and kept her engaged throughout. She then went on to talk about the story and finally ended with saying that the reason she wasn’t giving the novel a full five stars, despite having enjoyed it, was because the book didn’t seem to have a point or a higher message. Therefore, she felt it would not endure.

Picture a knife to the heart. That is how gutted I was to read this review. You see, my point had escaped her completely. This novel about four young women from very different walks of life who become friends in childhood, only for their friendship to splinter in their teenage years, for them to go their separate ways and reunite in their forties, had a point and a higher message. I wanted to show how random life can be. How those we perceive to be more fortunate and more blessed than us are subject to the same vagaries of fate as anyone else. Being born into a higher social and economic strata does not ensure happiness nor is it a guarantee of success, while conversely, coming from the lower end of society is not a predictor of misery and failure. Life is messy and unpredictable. Our spheres of control are limited and the sooner we accept that, the quicker we will adapt to and thrive in changed circumstances.

Perhaps it was my fault that my message wasn’t clear enough. Maybe the novel, which begins with an accident, and ends with the reason the accident occurred and the consequences of that fateful evening, felt jarring to this reader because it was too arbitrary to come to terms with. Unfortunately, many a time, life is that way, too.

As I’m working on my next novel, this criticism keeps me wondering whether I’m doing enough to convey my point. This book deals with the circularity of life, of how what goes around comes right back around. Do I keep it understated as I would like to? Or will that be too obscure and unfathomable to a potential reader? I could choose to ignore this reviewer and write what I want to write. That would be at my peril. You see, every reader is precious to me, and their criticism is a part of my growth as a writer.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to work on my craft and deliver a reading experience that is consistent with my philosophy, my convictions, and my worldview. Hoping these will be understood and will align with those of the reader, too.

That, after all, is the point.

 

 

All of Her

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Somewhere within her there is a little girl of eight. She waits for her mother to return from work, scared of the scolding her report card will beget, yet secure in the love and forgiveness that will inevitably follow. She listens to her father at the dinner table as he talks of his clients and their problems, the gentle wisdom he imparts daily underlined by the kindness flowing through his veins. At night, she weaves dreams around amorphous futures before falling deeply and heavily into slumber’s arms.

Somewhere within her, there is a rebellious teenager of sixteen. She curses her parents under her breath, planning elaborate schemes to hoodwink them and following through with none. Her friends are her life and she spends hours on the phone with them, talking about everything and nothing, all at once. She nurses a crush on the neighbourhood boy, watching him covertly as he walks his dog in the evening. She ignores him on the street when he smiles at her, because “good girls” don’t return male attention. But she is quietly devastated when he finds himself a pretty girlfriend, someone far prettier than her.

Somewhere within her is a young woman of twenty-one. She stands on the threshold of her adult life, ready to embark upon an adventure. Excited, nervous, unprepared, she is sad to leave home but wondrous at the possibilities ahead of her. “This,“ she whispers to herself, “is when I can truly begin to live on my own terms.” It’s not until much later that she realises that with freedom comes responsibility. And bills. Lots and lots of bills.

Somewhere within her is a thirty-year-old new mother, cradling her month-old baby, who doesn’t stop crying. Exhausted, she cries alongside. Surrounded by men – husband, father, father-in-law – who are no good to her at a time like this, she yearns for a woman’s touch, someone who will reassure her that this too shall pass, that childbearing and rearing isn’t an impossible task. There is no one who can replace her mother, who is long gone. She misses her desperately, the hollowness inside threatening to engulf her. Friends step in, clumsily, but they comfort her far more than the men can.

Somewhere within her is a forty-year-old who still looks young and alluring. No longer in love with her husband, she enjoys the attention that other men give her. She flirts – coy and cooing, revelling in the excitement and danger of uncharted terrain. In the dying embers of her youth, she feels alive again. No longer strait-jacketed by society’s mores and values, she wants to soar above the labels of wife and mother. She wants to forge ahead in her career, eager to shed the ties that hold her back – friends and family who caution and counsel her. She wants to define herself as someone important, someone worth knowing, someone others aspire to emulate.

Somewhere within her is a fifty-year-old divorcee who doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her husband has left, the children have moved away; the once dazzling career has fizzled; the paramours have melted away, and no, she isn’t someone important or worth knowing. She is just another anonymous woman living an anonymous life, searching for love on the internet. Her single status has left her friendless, a scarlet letter invisibly tattooed on her person declaring that she might poach on other women’s territories. She is afraid of loneliness, of old age, of dying.

Somewhere within her is a sixty-five-year-old grey-haired granny who is slightly hard of hearing. She, who had made peace with her singlehood before finding love with her husband again. They have both wandered and returned, this time to a quieter, more sedate love, one that will last the distance. Suddenly, her life is full to the brim with children, her children’s children and the school runs and coffee mornings that she missed out on the first time round chasing a career. She marvels at life’s bounty, crossing her fingers daily, praying that her luck doesn’t run out again.

Somewhere within her is a seventy-two-year-old widow, crying over wasted years, bloated egos and stupid, ridiculous, futile arguments. She misses everything about him, even his habit of leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. Her children rally around her, reminding her of the good times, of what she still has, of what they created together. She wonders how her own father managed for two decades without her mother, how he carried on being a parent while putting a full-stop to being a spouse? She knows that the world still turns and she must turn with it, as others before her have done.

Somewhere within her is an eighty-five-year-old woman with arthritis, a heart condition and two hip replacements. She no longer cares she isn’t someone important, because she knows that in her own small way, she is. There aren’t many of her peers left, but those that are still meet monthly for a long and leisurely lunch. They discuss their families, the state of the planet, their misspent youths and laugh as only the young or the very old can – uninhibited and unashamed. They don’t understand the world anymore, feeling out of touch with everything, but they don’t care what anyone thinks of them, either. They sit comfortably in their wrinkled skins, free from the shackles of youth and vanity.

Somewhere within her is a ninety-year-old woman ready to give up her mortal coil. Life is a drag, and the only thing she looks forward to now are the rare visits from her great-grandchildren. Adults bore her while children delight her. In their innocence, she sees the only remaining purity in an increasingly depraved and insane world. Every morning, she wakes up and sighs that she is still alive. She prays for death; she invites it into her dreams, hoping it will step out of them and into her life someday soon. She waits and waits and waits, her hands crossed in her lap, her coffee cooling on the table beside her.

Scar Tissue

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Back in February, I had an accident. I tripped over a metal grate abandoned on the pavement and went flying, landed heavily on my front and while my coat, my sunglasses and my gloves protected most of my body and face, my knees, which were only covered by a pair of workout leggings took the brunt. The right knee was grazed superficially, but the left knee had an enormous gash which required seven stitches.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, just the other day I was looking at the massive scar tissue that’s built up over that wound. It’s ugly, large and raised; puckered in places and dark enough to stand out in sharp contrast to the skin of my knee. It has also taken nearly four months to heal properly because of how deep the wound was. It still twinges occasionally, and bending at my knees is quite uncomfortable.

My body is a repository of scars. With a tendency for keloids (those ugly raised overgrowths of scar tissue), I can trace my history of accidents, injuries and surgeries through all the lumpy, knotty cicatrix on my skin. There is a thin spindly one on the middle finger of my left hand. A dog bite that involved a tussle over a pencil with my angry pet. The horizontal lump on my chest that was a collision with the handbrake of an old-fashioned bicycle. The one behind my right knee that I can’t for the life of me remember how I obtained. And the one just below my tummy, when my distressed infant was cut out of my womb in an emergency C-Section. Each scar has a memory attached to it; each scar is a little bit of me.

But what of the scar tissue that isn’t visible? What of the wounds that run so deep that no amount of time can overlay the pain?

There is the loss of my mother – the deepest cut of all. A reality that no one can escape from, but given time, can come to terms with. Losing her at twenty-seven meant that I never had the years that would have made her loss a bit more bearable. Those years when we could have grown together, when she could have guided me in my marriage, been there for me when I became a mother; when I could have understood her more fully as a woman and when I could have taken care of her as an old lady. That was denied to me through a combination of ill-health (hers) and circumstances (mine).

That loss feels all the more poignant today as I remember her in the week of her birthday. Had she lived, she would have been eighty-one. Maybe losing her in her eighties wouldn’t have hurt as much. Or maybe it would have. Maybe loss is loss, no matter when it happens. And those scars, the ones that stay hidden from sight, are the keloids on my soul.

The month of June has seen bad news come in from so many quarters, it’s been overwhelming. From losing a school friend through Covid, to a colleague through pancreatitis, a family acquaintance through a heart attack and the twenty-year-old son of my husband’s former boss unexpectedly, it has been a tsunami of devastation. These are gaping wounds that refuse to fill. There is grief, anger and shock. There is also an acute realisation of how fragile life really is, and how nothing and nobody can be taken for granted.

My pain is once removed, but what of those who are in its immediate vicinity? What of the wife who has lost her husband, the mother who has lost her son, the son who has lost the only parent he knew, the company that has lost their visionary leader? How long will it take for the scar tissue to build there? And will it stay – ugly, raised and twisted – revealing the depth of those wounds?

Life is pain because pain comes from attachment and love. No one is immune to it, and nor should we be. How arid it would be to live in a world devoid of any feeling. Each wound, each scar, is a testament to our time spent in this world, loving and living.

And those keloids on our souls? That’s where our loved ones reside.

 

Rage

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Aren’t we living in the 21st century? Haven’t we made several strides in the last hundred years towards women’s empowerment and emancipation? Why then does a movie like ‘Promising Young Woman’ hit a nerve? I’ll tell you why. Because it reveals an unpalatable truth.

For those of you who haven’t seen this powerful, shocking, brilliant film scroll away now because I am going to be talking a LOT about it. About what it means, how relevant it is to our times and also, why the rage that permeates the film is a good thing.

Let’s look around ourselves for a moment. How do you think we’re doing, as women? Are we free to go where we want, do what we want, be who we want? You think yes? Scratch a little beneath the surface and you will discover no. I’m going to take the example of three countries, the three that I have the most to do with.

Let’s begin with India, my birthplace. If the many instances of patriarchy and misogyny aren’t bad enough, how’s this for some additional disgust: A 43-year-old woman, a coronavirus patient, was raped in the hospital by a male nurse while awaiting treatment. She died within 24 hours.

Read the article here.

How about the UK, where I reside: Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old, vanished as she walked home in Clapham, south London. Her body was found a week later near Ashford, Kent. PC Couzens pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape and accepted responsibility for killing her.

Read the article here.

 

And finally, the US, where I work: In 2016 the Stanford Rape Case made headlines when two male Stanford graduate students riding their bikes spotted a man on top of a woman near a dumpster. The woman did not appear to be moving. When they approached the man, he fled. He was later identified as Brock Turner, an “All-American swimmer,” while the victim was relegated to a ten-syllable description of an “unconscious intoxicated woman”. The judge in the case, Aaron Persky, gave Turner a six-month sentence despite the prosecutors pushing for a six-year sentence.

Read the article here.

Notice any similarities? These people (aside from Turner) were meant to protect, care for and safeguard women. Instead, they failed them, and how!

‘Promising Young Woman’ begins with the premise that a lone, intoxicated woman is fair-game to predators, even the wolves who parade around in sheep’s clothing. Because, after all, she put herself in that position, didn’t she? Shouldn’t she have gotten home at a decent hour, dressed less provocatively and been tucked up safely in bed? If then, she is taken advantage of, it’s her own fault, isn’t it?

To dismiss this film as a revenge drama would seriously undermine the hugely important message it is trying to convey. When Cassie, a medical-school dropout, entices “nice” men to take an apparently blind-drunk woman back to their homes to ensure her safety, she has an interesting little surprise in store for them – her sobriety. Cassie confronts that part of the male ego that has long shouted #NotAllMen in response to the #MeToo movement. Not all men will attack a vulnerable woman, but given the right circumstances, can you be sure?

More importantly though, it’s what happens after an attack such as this which is spine-tingling. As in the Brock Turner case, a man can get away with a slap on the wrist, because, after all, there was alcohol and opportunity, plus the bonus of a woman’s ‘stupidity’.

Angry yet?

Emerald Fennell’s astonishing indictment of what it means to be a woman today is meant to provoke rage. It’s a feminist manifesto that urges us to stand up to the status quo, to defend our freedoms and to question what consent means. The title itself is a play on the long touted expression that many of these graduates (Brock Turner included) are promising young men whose future lives and careers can be ruined because of “twenty minutes of action” or some such expression reducing sexual assault to a banality. As for the woman, well, she was “asking for it”, wasn’t she? Her promise, her future, her health and her identity don’t matter a jot. It’s a man’s world, after all!

Which begs the question that when a woman is unimpeachably behaved and still gets raped or assaulted thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time (Sarah Everard) then who is to blame? What about date rape? Or the rape of minors?

Fact of the matter is that rape is less to do with sexual fulfilment and everything to do with power dynamics. In the western world, which considers itself far ahead of the more ‘backward’ countries, where men feel emasculated by their female peers, this power struggle takes on an even more insidious nature. On the face of it there is outrage, but behind the scenes, there is the locker-room talk, the upholding of male entitlement and an unspoken understanding that women’s rights can be trampled all over by men placed in a position to do so.

Which is why watching Cassie deliver vigilante justice is so damn fulfilling! Yes, it’s just a movie, and yes, there’s a lot that’s far-fetched in it, but my goodness, do we need to identify with the rage that underpins it? Yes, by golly gosh we do!

None of us go out looking for trouble. None of us want to be assaulted. But if it does happen, what we want is that the perpetrators are given a punishment commensurate with the crime. What we want is that it’s their character, their motives and their actions that are questioned, not ours! As women – wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters, mothers, grandmothers – we deserve the same rights to the same freedoms that our male counterparts enjoy.

Ultimately, Cassie’s sociopathic behaviour ends in a fitting denouement. She is unable to move on from the incident that led her life to devolve into a vendetta. There is no ‘out’ for her as there is for the people who committed the crime. This story is symptomatic of a larger malaise that plagues society – patriarchy and internalised misogyny – which allows men to get away with words, deeds and actions that betray the fact that ultimately, it still considers women to be the inferior sex.

Watch ‘Promising Young Woman’ and be angry. Be very, very angry indeed.

Filling the well

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Exhaustion is a common complaint amongst writers. We are inveterate over-thinkers, tinkering with ideas, analysing themes, past failures and successes, grappling with the imposter syndrome, and never giving our minds the rest they deserve.

This month has been particularly trying for me. Having just released my novel, I’ve worried over it like a fledgling. Will it survive? Will it be well received? What if all that time and effort was for nothing? What if everyone just hates it? Needless to say, it’s doing fine. But I’m so wrung out, I just can’t seem to move forward. Deadlines are looming, but I’m languishing in a state of motionless ennui.

Not all of it is book related. Covid is rampaging through India once again, and I agonize over the state of the country and my near and dear ones. My father, who is still a practicing GP, is older and vulnerable and not very well right now. I think the worst, then check myself. No amount of doom-scrolling or imagining the worst-case-scenario will help, so I try to think positively, praying for the best possible outcome. As do so many of us at a time like this.

Another thing that gnaws at me is book related. It’s silly, but sometimes the people you expect to get whole-hearted support from (friends or family members) are indifferent to your efforts. Aside from a breezy “Oh, good job!” they have barely acknowledged that for me, this is a big deal! But hey ho. On the flip side, I’ve had the most unexpected people step forward and celebrate me. Makes me realise the adage is true – when a door closes, a window opens elsewhere.

In all of this, I’ve felt very depleted… unable to focus on writing with my mind gnawing over all sorts. I feel like giving myself a kick up the a**e! However, I know also that once I’ve finished wallowing, I’ll get back up and get back to the writing. From listening to many writer podcasts, I’ve realised that I’m not alone in feeling alone on this journey. At least I have a handful of people who have supported me through thick and thin. They may not be the ones I expected, but I’m so grateful they exist! So many writers carry on in the face of opposition and indifference and barely any support. My little family, my small group of avid readers and the few friends who have stood like rocks by my side, are more than most people get.

Yet, this listlessness overpowers me.

I’m unable to concentrate on reading, picking up and abandoning books carelessly. To refill that well of inspiration, I’ve watched many movies. One that caught my fancy was ‘Ajeeb Daastaans’. Four vignettes, four stories that show the various aspects of India, each of these tales had a little twist at the end. To me, it felt like I was watching one of my stories on screen. The response they evoked in me was the very response I’ve wanted from my reader. A sense of awe, of disbelief, of “how did I not see that coming?”

Yes, watching this on Netflix has lit a tiny spark within me. I need to get back to writing, just for the pure joy of it. What does it matter if no one reads it? Who cares if they think this a passing fancy, or I’m some kind of fraud parading around as an author? I know how much I love creating these worlds and these characters, and surely that’s all the recompense I need?

Last week I was invited to judge a poetry competition at my school in India via a Zoom call. Reticent to begin with, I finally agreed, remembering what I was like at age 16, and how, back then, I dreamt I would one day be sitting in a judge’s seat. To a teenager, that seemed like an immense honour. Naturally, age and experience have taught me that judging someone’s work is an incredibly arduous task. I tried to be fair and comprehensive. These young teens had poured so much of themselves into their poems, that it seemed almost cruel having to grade them. When I read out the results online the following day, I resorted to that old chestnut – “To me, you are all winners”. In truth, they all were. Perceptive, evocative and compelling, their creativity shamed me into acknowledging my own lack of drive. In my analysis of their work, I hope they took away some valuable lessons. But I took away far more.

Finally, even as I contended with my unproductive and spent state, a conversation about aging produced an incredibly poignant poem from my daughter. The context was how we view aging in physical terms – the wrinkles, the grey hair, the slowing down of the body. But a lot of it is about losing that vibrancy of youth, of the light within us slowly dimming until it eventually flickers out.

Surrounded by all this creativity, I have no excuses to fall back upon. I need to get back to my writing.

Here is the poem. I hope you enjoy it.

FLOWERS

I love you so much, I’m

so scared to see you grow

watch my vision of you

fade away, the petals

of your personality

starting to wilt

the vibrancy in your

eyes, dim

it’s all beautiful, but

that doesn’t make it

easy

call me selfish, I want

you to stay as you are,

always

with me

(MM)

 

The value of self-esteem

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I’ve often talked about the ill effects of social media – the addiction, the need for outside validation, the mental health issues, the ‘all that glitters isn’t gold’ aspect etc. But recently I stumbled upon yet another disturbing trend. Young girls filming/photographing themselves in their underwear/bikinis purportedly to support a body-positive movement.

Now, I’m a strong advocate of women of all ages and sizes being comfortable in their own skin, and I will shout it from rooftops if need be. I believe that every woman should have the right to wear what she wants, as long as she is comfortable with the sort of attention it attracts. However, flaunting one’s body on a public platform to elicit the approval of strangers, is where I draw the line.

Firstly, there is the safety aspect of it. How can one monitor who is watching/downloading these pictures? Where are these pictures being circulated? How are they being perceived? Secondly, there is the sleaze factor. To a young woman, body acceptance by way of photographing herself may seem to be progressive and life-enhancing, to the two-bit scumbag salivating over them, it’s just another way to jerk off. Sorry about the imagery! But there is no other way to spell it out clearly.

What has happened to our social fabric where it has become perfectly acceptable to derive one’s self-worth from the most shallow of sources? Yes, it’s wonderful to be young and beautiful and to enjoy the spring of one’s lifetime. But if acceptance of one’s self hinges on what other people think, then what happens when that body changes through life, childbirth, disease, accident or ageing?

Isn’t it time that we taught our children that self-worth and self-esteem need stronger roots than just body acceptance? Values such as humility, charity, empathy and forgiveness, character traits such as determination, resilience, patience and fortitude, are purer sources of self-love than any amount of pouting and preening before a camera lens can be.

Healthy self-esteem needs a healthy wellspring, and that can only come from working upon what lies inside. Yes, outside packaging matters, but only up to a point. If you unwrap a beautiful parcel and find it filled with junk, what are you likely to do?

The pitfalls of social media are well documented, but the insidious nature of its erosion of our children’s values and self-worth will have far-reaching consequences unless we start to combat it now. But first, we need to turn that mirror towards ourselves and look at where we are investing our time and teachings. It isn’t too late to steer our children away from conversations about their bodies, to conversations about their minds and souls. Perhaps then, they will realise that the value of self-esteem is far greater than the cost of self-doubt.