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I’m a little in love with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, ‘The Thing Around Her Neck’, and her book-length essay, ‘We Should All Be Feminists’. On the other hand, I haven’t really connected with her novels on that level. It’s great writing but there is usually something about the story that feels a little off. Unrestrained by word-count, Adichie has a tendency to get carried away and that makes her novels a bit unstructured. Or maybe it’s just bad editing.

But I still enjoyed ‘Purple Hibiscus’, Adichie’s debut novel and winner of the 2005 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. It’s a coming of age story that unravels as a military regime comes to power in Nigeria. Set against the backdrop of a coup, it is as much about the struggles of a politically troubled Nigeria as it is about a seemingly normal Nigerian family governed by abuse and control.

Narrated in the first person by 15-year-old Kambili Achike, living in an affluent household with her brother, Jaja; her mother, Beatrice; and her father, Eugene, Purple Hibiscus will have you contemplating about life and your beliefs while reinforcing the fact that abuse is never acceptable and that it can’t ever be a sign of love.

To the world, Eugene is a good man. He is the publisher of the newspaper ‘Standard’ in Enugu, goes to mass regularly, and doesn’t hesitate to help others, often without taking any credit for it. But at home, it’s a different matter altogether. Kambili and Jaja live in constant fear of his beatings, which Eugene views as “lessons” on becoming more pious Catholics. Beatrice has had many miscarriages because of Eugene’s violent nature but she never stands up to him. Instead, she is always trying to please him, and she ends up at the hospital when she can’t do that.

But the family doesn’t know any other way of life and thinks whatever is happening is all for their benefit. Eugene’s actions are never met with any resistance. However, things change when Kambili and Jaja go to visit their aunt, Ifeoma, who is a university professor in Nsukka. Here, in a house way smaller than theirs, the siblings encounter a new way of life that allows them to speak, laugh, and not worry about being punished because of someone’s mood swings. For the first time, Kambili realizes that she is free to have opinions and ideas of her own.

Purple Hibiscus is a beautiful story of a girl blossoming and coming into her own, though the narrative is a tad slow at times. The story also heartbreaking and beautifully captures the tension between oppression and our innate desire to be free. The only problem I had with Purple Hibiscus is that there are many things happening but they all feel a bit underdeveloped. That’s perhaps why none of the characters stay with you when you are done. I would still recommend it to those in want of an introspective read, for it definitely gives you some food for thought.

Fiction

Purple Hibiscus

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Published: 2004

Publisher: 4th Estate

Language: English

Pages: 307, Paperback

“Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai” is literally a metaphor about the power of money to put a gag on someone’s life. Money troubles choke the best of people from every walk of life. Bearing the brunt of monetary pressure in the film is a lower-middle class family from Mumbai. At the same time, the whole of India is choked by the 2106 Indian banknote demonetization. If only metaphors and symbolisms could make a movie interesting, Anurag Kashyap’s “Choked” would have taken home the cake.

“Choked” was a great opportunity to document an event that is guaranteed to make it into history books. Featuring a lower-middle class family, its lower-middle class neighborhood, and a lower-middle class society, the film could have used them to showcase the chaos created by the sudden demonetization. But overemphasis on establishing characters strangles life out of the film.

Sarita (Saiyami Kher) and Sushant Pillai (Roshan Mathew) live with their pre-teen son Sameer (Parthvir Shukla) in a crowded Mumbai neighborhood. Sarita is a teller at a government bank while Sushant, a former musician, has given up music and is currently unemployed after switching between multiple jobs and failed attempts at different careers. For a family of three, survival on the meager salary of a bank teller is difficult in expensive Mumbai. Making things worse, the couple does not share a healthy relationship, as a past incident keeps coming between them.

The family struggles to live respectably on Sarita’s income when, one day, by sheer luck, she comes across plastic-wrapped bundles of bank notes in the clogged drain of her kitchen sink. Apparently the tenant above her flat is laundering money for a politician. The event is repeated again and again, as the money keeps flowing. Sarita’s conscience is getting corrupted by the day as well. 

Then, suddenly, everything and everyone is thrown into a frenzy when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces that bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations would be invalid from the very next day. Sarita’s life is turned upside down as she starts being blackmailed by a goon, her husband starts doubting her, and work stress more than doubles for Sarita as people start piling in to have their notes exchanged.

To justify its name, panic and chaos should have been at the heart of Choked, but they are rare and thus the movie’s tempo is never raised. Director Kashyap spends much time establishing Sarita’s character. The pressure felt by the wife of an unemployed man who does not even help at home and is instead making things difficult for her is definitely strangling Sarita. Along with this, she also has to deal with bad memories from an incident that keeps gnawing on her mental health. But all this takes too much time to establish and by the time we see the bigger scheme of things, we start believing the film is about Sarita and everything else is sideshow.

This is probably one reason the film feels much longer than its 1hr 54mins runtime. And despite generous screen-time, the screenplay lags in the first half, and then whirlwinds into a climax. The film wastes too time creating symbolisms around Sarita. Many scenes with ominous music and quirky montages around Sarita never escalate into anything.

Kashyap delivers a film that is uncharacteristic of his passionate filmmaking. But the lead actors do benefit from time in front of camera. Roshan Matthew, who has already made is mark in Malayalam movies, now gets the attention of Bollywood. And Saiyami Kher, who suffered one of the biggest duds in 2016, starring in the fantasy “Mirzya” opposite Harshvardhan Kapoor, now benefits from all the added attention her character gets. Showing more maturity in her acting, Saiyami finally makes a mark in as an actor who could survive in the industry.

Ratings: 2.5 stars

Director: Anurag Kashyap

Actors: Saiyami Kher, Roshan Matthews

Genre: Drama

Run time: 1hr 54mins

Short stories might not be as popular as long novels, one of the arguments being that there’s not much room for character development and thus you are never very invested in them. But for me, stories don’t always need a clear beginning, middle, and an end. Sometimes it can be just a chapter in someone’s life or talk about a particularly difficult or humorous situation. And it’s quite fun to let these little nuggets occupy your mind, especially during stressful times like these. Here I recommend three of my favorite short story collections if you want to dip into this wonderful world.

‘Revenge’ by Yoko Ogawa

Revenge is more of a Japanese literary short novel, with its stories interconnecting in overt and covert ways that remind you of Haruki Murakami. I could read Revenge by Yoko Ogawa a hundred times over and still not be bored. The book was initially published in 1998 but its popularity soared after its English edition came out. Translated by Stephen Snyder, the 11 dark tales in Revenge are macabre at their best.

The writing is simple yet gripping and the stories are eerily good. There’s a story where a woman buys strawberry cake for her son on her birthday, but he’s been dead for years. In another, the neighbor of a struggling novelist discovers a carrot in the shape of a human hand before her ex-husband’s handless body turns up in the same garden. Then there’s a bag maker who designs intricate bags for a woman whose heart is outside her chest. Revenge is full of these odd characters that send a chill down your spine.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I love the way Adichie writes. There’s something very raw and real about the emotions of her characters. I really enjoyed ‘Purple Hibiscus’, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, and ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ and ‘Americanah’. But it is her short story collection, ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’, that is my all-time Adichie favorite.

A collection of 12 short stories, The Thing Around Your Neck focuses mainly on the lives and experiences of Nigerian women caught up in political or religious violence. Only one story has a male narrator.

In ‘The American Embassy’, a woman applies for asylum but can’t bring herself to talk about her son’s murder during the visa process. In ‘Tomorrow Is Too Far’, a woman reveals the secrets behind her brother’s death. Then there’s ‘On Monday of Last Week’ where a university educated Nigerian woman is forced to work as a house help in America to make ends meet.

These brilliant stories of women coping with change, loneliness and longing, and learning to survive the odds, are about what binds us as friends, lovers, and families. They are also, in trademark Adichie style, heavy with social and political comments that make you think.

‘The Awakening and Other Stories’ by Kate Chopin

Kate Chopin was one of the very few 19^th century American writers whose work explored new and startling territory. The Awakening caused much outrage and then went out of print for decades when it was first published in 1899.

Edna Pontellier is on holiday with her husband and two young children when she is pursued by the charming and unmarried Robert Lebrun. It leads to an affair that has Edna wanting to break away from her passionless marriage.

The story about a woman defying societal norms is among the boldest and earliest works of feminist fiction and regarded as a proto-feminist masterpiece today. Laced with humor but ultimately heartbreaking, Chopin’s transformative stories that emphasize women’s roles in society were all ahead of their times, but raise vital questions and concerns even today.

Strictly for children because an adult who’s used to watching multiple genres of films might find “Pahuna: The Little Visitors” a touch boring. Not just because it’s a children’s film. We’ve watched and enjoyed numerous children’s movies before, but Pahuna, even with all its effort, lacks that charm to hold adult attention. At the same time, from children’s perspective, it could be a cute little film that also gives them a few handy moral lessons along the way.

A family fleeing violence in a hilly border area of Nepal makes tries to cross over to Sikkim in India. They join other villagers in the process and on their way, the children—Amrita, Pranay, and Bishal—get separated from their parents. The film does not give any timeline but from a few references in the dialogues, we can assume the date is right after the 2001 royal massacre in Nepal. The ages of the children are also never mentioned; perhaps the eldest Amrita (Ishika Gurung) as well as her younger brother Pranay (Anmoul Limboo) is around 10-12, with a couple of years between them. Bishal, the youngest, is an infant.

After the children get separated from their family, they join the villagers making their way to a church in Peling, Sikkim, seeking refuge. The group includes a know-it-all old man called Rai Budo (Mahendra Bajgai) who spins tales laced with false information about Christianity. The young children take his stories seriously and are instilled with deep fear of Christians, specially the church priest. Not wanting to risk their lives with Christians at the church, the children run way from the group and find themselves living in an abandoned bus in the jungle.

The story of Pahuna, even though it sometimes places children in rather harrowing situations, is a feel-good account of how children learn from their environment and adapt to it. Left alone with no adults to take care of them, Amrita and Pranay take on the role of breadwinners as well as caretakers for infant Bishal. They face conflicting situations as the film progresses and despite their young age, come up with solutions that will keep their family together. Young children become adults in Pahuna and display earnestness, accountability and dependability in a way that could inspire other children watching the movie.

Produced by successful Indian actress Priyanka Chopra’s Purple Pebble Pictures, and written and directed by Paakhi A. Tyrewala, the 1hr 28mins drama has all the characteristics of a Bollywood feature film. The background score is lively, the original soundtracks melodious, and the cinematography able to capture the essence of the hills. The overall packaging is simple, organic, yet commercially sellable.

The dialogues of Biswas Timshina are the only let down. It is evident that the film has used mostly non-actors in all roles and acting coach Veena Mehta has done a decent job of grooming them to express themselves on screen.

But Timshina’s dialogues are so uninspiring, they take away the spark of the characters. Timshina seems to be trying too hard to suppress the Sikkimese Nepali argot. The need to represent a region with a sizable Nepali-speaking community is lost in Timshina’s efforts to make all conversations sound formal. As a result, in some scenes, the characters seem to be reading out of a Nepali textbook. In all fairness, it might be a deliberate move to make dialogues more comprehensible, but again, the dialogues do alienate the characters from their settings, which is a definite no-no.

Who should watch it?

Children should, and learn a few things maybe. Adults can definitely accompany them and guide them through the proceedings, as well as explain the situations that might be confusing for the young ones.

Rating:

2.5 stars

Pahuna

Genre: Drama

Actors: Ishika Gurung, Anmoul Limboo, Mahendra Bajgai

Director: Paakhi A. Tyrewala

Run time: 1hr 28 mins