Daffodils | Poetry by William Wordsworth | Narrated by Neha B.

Daffodils is a beautiful poem penned by William Wordsworth featuring a Quatrain-Couplet rhyme scheme pattern of A-B-A-B-C-C. The poetry is said to be themed on an experience in which Wordsworth was strolling through a hilltop valley when he came across a valley dazzling with streams of golden yellow daffodils. Metaphorically, he compares himself to a cloud who was wandering aimlessly in the sky until he caught the glimpse of the sight of golden daffodils, which seemed to fill his heart with the bliss of solitude, rejuvenating his poetic creative spirit at the same time. Read the full poem below! 

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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Animated Book Review: The Mistress of Spices

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Swaying and pulsating with pipey-hot spice descriptions, syrupy-emotive narrative, portrait-worthy characters and beautiful storytelling, The Mistress of Spices is a novel by Chitra Banerjee Divakurni, the Indian-American writer and poet. Tantalizing, enchanting, charming and bewitching, the novel is a work of fiction, most-appropriately falling into the category of magic realism fiction.

But apart from all things magic, the book also ripples with romance, and croons with the fragrance of feelings like courage, intuition and following one’s heart.

The novel, fundamentally is rooted in the connection that plays between human mind and the psychological healing power embodied in different Indian spices.

The Mistress of Spices is a novel depicting the story of a young woman who is born gifted with certain magical powers. The story takes the reader through a spectacular journey of how she navigates the discovery of her magical powers, stumbling and tripping into the rollercoaster of emotions that her gift brings to her, both pleasures and pitfalls.

The woman’s name is Tilo.

As a child, Tilo was kidnapped by a pirate gang, who destroyed her village and took her away in their ship. They thought that her magical power would bring them good luck.

Unaware still of her true magical power, Tilo escaped the ship when the pirates were asleep, and discovered herself on the shore of some mysterious land.

As she was lying half-unconscious on the sandy ground, she noticed that a motherly woman was examining her hand with utter curiosity.

Later on, she came to discover that this place was ‘The Island of Spices’ and this motherly woman was called by the names of ‘the Old One’ and ‘the First Mother’. The First Mother was a powerful witch who knew everything about the magical power of different spices. On this island, she taught and trained her students the craft of harnessing magic and how to cast spells with the magical power of spices.

Every spice has a meaning. Every spice can be used to cast a certain spell. Every spice carries a secret magical power which can be used to trigger both healing and destruction.

As time goes on, Tilo turned out to be one of the most intelligent students of the First Mother. The First Mother seemed happy about her, but at the same time she cautioned her for her future. Upon examining Tilo’s hands that day, the First Mother had told her that her hands were singing with spices, but they were also singing with danger and destruction. And Tilo must never deviate from the rules if she was to prevent this destruction from happening.

At the end of their training, the First Mother asked her students that now they’d need to pass a test. Each student would have to step into the Shampati’s fire. The fire would not burn them, but only take them to their respective destinies. In their new lives, they’d lose their youthful beauty and each student would be called as ‘The Mistress of Spices’.

She told them that a Mistress of Spices shall only use their magic to help other people, and never for themselves. They must never look at their reflection in a mirror. And they must always follow all these rules, or else, they’d lose their magical power.

The First Mother warned Tilo that even though she was as brilliant as a diamond, but she was a diamond with a crack, and it would be hard for her to resist the temptations of her desire. And following her desires would only bring her destruction.

Also, the First Mother told her a tale about her name’s origin, which features in the book as a story-within-a-story.

This is what she tells her.

The name ‘Tilo’ is based on the Hindi name (til) which refers to the sesame seed spice.

Furthermore, the spice name ‘til’ is derived from a Sanskrit word Tilottama. Tilottama was the name of a goddess in Indian mythology. Tilottama goddess was bejewelled with an enchanting, rapturous beauty. However, she was cursed that she could never fall in love. But once, she did fall in love. And true to her curse, her body became bent and twisted. Her beauty turned into ugliness. And she was evicted from the heaven of gods.

The First Mother warned Tilo, that just like Tilottama, a Mistress of Spice could not desire or fall in love, or else she’d lose her magical powers and bring great destruction to the world. She told her that,

“When a mistress of spices loves someone she should not love, then all the people she loves will be destroyed.”

Promising her that she’d follow all the rules of her magic training, Tilo stepped into the Shampati’s fire. Soon enough, her body was swallowed into the ocean of fire lolling with tongues of blazing flames.

The fire took Tilo to her destiny. In this new life, she found herself in the city of Oakland. She had lost her youthful beauty and now resembled a middle-aged woman, her face creased with wrinkles, even though in her heart she was still as young as before. Here she was a businesswoman operating a store named ‘Spice Bazaar’.

In her store, she sold an assortment of spice powders, pickles, tea powders, spice herbs, spice mixes and Indian spice snacks.

But this was no ordinary spice store. In every packet she packed for her customers, she also whispered words of magical healing spells.

Her purpose was to use the magical power of spices to help people. Throughout the day, many customers visited her store. They purchased spices, some of them got their palms read by her and others talked about their everyday life.

Among all these people, some of them were the regular shoppers in her store.

For instance,

One of her most regular customers was Lalita. Lalita was a middle-aged woman who had an abusive husband. Tilo gave her the spice packets of turmeric (haldi) for love and fennel (saunf) to strengthen her mind.

Her second regular customer was Haroun. Haroun was a taxi driver but he was often attacked by local Americans for his nationality. Tilo packed for him black cumin (kalo jiro) for protection against evil.

Kwesi, an African-American was another of the regular shoppers in her store. Kwesi ran a martial arts school and he would often visit Spice Bazaar store to buy packets of spice mixes to cook delicious Indian pakoras for his girlfriend.

Jagjit, a school boy, was another of the shoppers. Jagjit often visited her store alongwith his mother to buy sabu papads and other things. Jagjit was a traumatized child who was bullied at school and ignored by his parents. Tilo gave him a packet of cinnamon (dalchini) for friendship. However, a literal twist to her spell, he became friends but with a mischevous gang of violent drug-addicted boys in his school. To help and save him from bad company, Tilo gave him the spice packet of Indian Madder (manjishtha). She believed that this spice would bring calmness of mind to him. She also offered him a poster of Kwesi’s martial arts school, suggesting that there he’d be much better off with his friendships.

Besides these, another elderly man was the most frequent shopper in her store. He was the grandfather of a young woman named Geeta. While he visited the store to buy some spices, he told Tilo that his family was going through a disturbing scenario. His granddaughter Geeta wanted to marry a Mexican man but her parents Raamu and Sheela were against their marriage. And so, Geeta had left the home to live on her own.

Tilo gave his grandfather one of the most powerful spices – the thorn-herb (kantak) mixed with golden honey.

This is how Tilo spent the days of her life helping people with the magical power of spices she had learned.

After having helped many of these people by solving their problems and healing their sorrows, Tilo found herself slipping into the valley of forbidden love, as a young American man named Raven, also a frequent shopper, stepped into the store.

Raven seemed to display more interest towards Tilo than towards the spices he was there to buy. Tilo wanted to avoid him at any cost. At first, she thought of giving him a spice packet of asafetida (hing), which was the antidote for love. But all she could offer him was a packet of spicy papad snacks, spiced with black peppercorn (kalo mirch). The magical power of peppercorn spice caused Raven to feel open-hearted, candid and frank. Instead of running away from the shop, he started sharing his life-story with Tilo.

When she couldn’t muster the will to resist her desire for him, she set herself on the verge of breaking all the rules of her magic training, one after the other.

At first, she stepped out of the store to meet Geeta. Breaking the rule that a Mistress of Spice could not leave her spice store.

Next she broke the rule by using the magic of spice to get back her youthful beauty. She used the King of Spices (makaradwaj) to conquer time.

She even ordered a mirror for her store to look at her reflection.

But most of all, what happened was that, she made a packet of red chilli powder to deliver to Haroun, as he had been attacked by some Americans in a terrible accident. But red chilli was the ‘Spice of Anger’, ‘The Spice of Destruction’. The moment she realized this, she threw away the spice into an ocean but she knew that since a spell was already cast, it was too late.

That night, the ghost of the First Mother appeared and in a haunting appearance enraged at her that since she had broken the rules, she would now have to bear the punishment for the same and Shampati’s fire would soon arrive and take back Tilo to the Island of Spices. She ordered Tilo to close the store and to get ready for stepping into the fire.

As per the instructions of the First Mother, Tilo put up a heavy sale in her store, selling everything at big discounts and closing her store forever.

That night, she gathered all the leftover remains of the spices in her store, arranged them in a heap, whispered the prayers, and sat there waiting for the fire to take her back to the island.

The next morning, as she woke up, there was an earthquake in the city. Strangely enough, the fire had not taken her back.

Raven came to save her. Together they were about to leave the city which was in a massive rubble, and go in search of their paradise, Suddenly, Tilo stopped. And said to him that she had decided that she wouldn’t go. She would rather rebuild her spice store and help the people of the city. This, she told him, was the real paradise!

The story dances with a medley of spices, spices which are metaphors representating emotions…

Feelings and emotions are temporary,

just like the motley of spices

and just like the unique flavours they seem to exude as their effect;

All the magical power that may reside

in either these spices or the emotions that they trigger,

is fleeting too,

but the magic that resides, springs and bubbles within our hearts

is imperishable independent of the ingredients of our everyday life!

The story of Tilo is a flavoursome reminder that the real magic is within our heart. So, follow your heart and be magical!

Thank you & Wonderful day!

Neha

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40 Insightful Quotes About Fiction from Famous Writers-Storytellers!

A work of fiction, in writing or otherwise, is a creative concoction of characters, settings and scenarios which are all, but only illusory formations carved by the function of human mind called as ‘imagination’. Yet for most humans, storytelling forms the make-up of majority of our life’s time.

Stories!

These fabricated vistas, slapped with wodges of tremors, trepidations and sensations; trammeling with shams of ideas and waves of emotion lapping through…Stories are those quirks of tricks and lies, in the backdrop of which, lurks a still quietude of the emotional center that hums and rustles in the heartbeats of its truest readers and listeners.

Discover below, a collection dazzling with forty insightful quotations from some of the greatest writers-storytellers, on the topic of ‘fiction’. To read all of these in one go (with background music!) begin straight from the following video, or skip through this to read them one by one. Yowzers!

#1 Fiction is the truth inside the lie. – Stephen King

#2 Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't. – Neil Gaiman

#3 Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth. – Khaled Hosseini

#4 When I die, I'm leaving my body to science fiction. – Steven Wright

#5 Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

#6 What I’m looking for is nothing but a touch of verisimilitude, like the handful of spices you chuck into a good spaghetti sauce to really finish her off. That sense of reality is important in any work of fiction, but I think it is particularly important in a story dealing with the abnormal or paranormal. – Stephen King

#7 Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. – Albert Camus

#8 The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. - Tom Clancy

#9 This moment will just be another story someday. – Stephen Chbosky

#10 After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. – Philip Pullman

#11 The universe is made of stories, not of atoms. - Muriel Rukeyser

#12 The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. – Jean Jacques Rousseau

#13 Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible. - Francis Bacon

#14 Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable. ― Arthur Conan Doyle

#15 There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth. ― Doris May Lessing

#16 Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.” ― Patrick Ness

#17 Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream. ― John Cheever

#18 Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories. ― Hilary Mantel

#19 That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth. ― Tim O'Brien

#20 Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. – Haruki Murakami

#21 Fiction is the truth, fool! – John Waters

#22 A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth. ― Diane Setterfield

#23 Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. ― David Foster Wallace

#24 Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. ― Virginia Woolf

#25 Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale. ― Gabriel García Márquez

#26 If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. ― Richard Bach

#27 The point of stories is not that they are objectively true, but that the soul of the story is truer than reality. Those who mock fiction do so because they fear the truth. ― Cassandra Clare

#28 Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. – Neil Gaiman

#29 Escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. – Neil Gaiman

#30 I know there are people who don't read fiction at all, and I find it hard to understand how they can bear to be inside the same head all the time. ― Diane Setterfield

#31 Fiction should be a place of lollipops and escape. Real life is depressing enough--I, for one, don't want to read about make believe misery, too. ― Nicole Christie

#32 Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand. ― Michael Scott

#33 As soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency. ― Slavoj Žižek

#34 It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth. - Gao Xingjian

#35 Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. - Simone Weil

#36 Do what you will, this world's a fiction and is made up of contradiction. - William Blake

#37 It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense. Mark Twain

#38 Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us. – Paul Theroux

#39 Beyond the fiction of the reality, there is the reality of the fiction. ― Slavoj Žižek

#40 Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else. – George Orwell

Thank you & Good day!

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Animated Book Review: The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Is it possible for a human to travel through time?

The answer is unknown to most of us. Except only, that the character of ‘TIME-TRAVELLER’ in this book, says that this is possible!

THE TIME MACHINE BY H.G. WELLS
‘The Time Machine’ is a science fiction novella by H.G. Wells. In its storyline narrative, it elaborates the journey of a Time-traveller through various realms of time in past and future.

Dotted with generous descriptions and beautifully-crafted storytelling, the novel was the first in the series of the texts which introduced the concept of time-travel.

The book begins with the time-traveller demonstrating to his audience over dinner, his experimental time-machine that is made in brass and ivory. He attempts to explain to them that with the help of this machine, humans would be able to travel through time.

THE TIME-TRAVELLER’S DINNER DAY ONE
Taking the example of a 3D cube, he explains that what we call as geometry is based on the false notion that a cube is made only from the 3 coordinates – length, breadth and height.
He says that in order for a cube to appear, the fourth dimension of time must be included with the three coordinates.
For instance, a line of zero length is no line. Similarly, a cube requires a duration of time in order to exist as an appearance.
In addition to this, he says that time and space are not different. They are but two aspects of the one time-space matrix.

Flabbergasted though, the audience including the narrator, a man named Filby, a psychologist, a medical man, an editor, a silent man, a journalist among others, is not convinced that time-travel is possible.

He invites the audience again the following day.

THE TIME-TRAVELLER’S DINNER DAY TWO
The next day, the audience waits for the time-traveller but he is not to be seen anywhere. Then all of a sudden, he steps into the room with a limp in his leg and clothes soiled with dirt and green moss.

Returning to the dinner table in a short while, he eats with a voracious appetite, and starts telling his audience about his adventures in time-travel.

At first, his time-machine takes him to the time period of 802,701 A.D.

Here there are two kinds of creatures
Eloi and Morlocks
Eloi are tiny-sized fruit-eating humans, who are childlike both in terms of sensitivity and intellect

The other creatures are Morlocks. Morlocks are ape-like carnivorous creatures who are afraid of fire and light

While the Eloi people live on the surface, the Morlocks have fleed into the underground – called as the underworld – due to their sensitivity towards light and fire

INSIGHT: The insight that pops in my mind, when I read about these two creatures Elois and Morlocks, is that, they represent the duality of mind apparent in every human. Every human is part sensitive, hedonistic and fearful like Eloi people, and part predatory like the carnivorous, fear-representing Morlocks.

Moving ahead with the storyline,

From where the time-traveller had initiated his journey, there is a monumental structure which resembles a White Sphinx.

He has now lost his time-machine.

So, from the White Sphinx monument, he walks towards the Palace of Green Porcelain to have some rest and to recover his lost time-machine. Here he steps into the underground well.

He is accompanied by a tiny Eloi human named Weena.

The Palace of Green Porcelain is empty except that he finds some matchsticks there.

By the time he reaches in the underworld and all the matchsticks are depleted, he gets attacked by Morlocks. Since he has no more matchsticks to frighten the Morlocks, he escapes from the dark underworld and comes to the surface and starts running towards the White Sphinx monument again.
It is a rambling sight. Morlocks are biting into his flesh like tiny human bugs – He notices that these creatures are also attacking and killing Eloi people.
Suddenly a forest fire erupts from somewhere where he had ignited some of the matchsticks earlier.

Weena is lost. Morlocks flee away, scared from fire.

He discovers his time-machine and this time goes to the future, millions of years ahead in time, to witness the last moments of life on earth.
He reaches a deserted land covered in green moss and lichen; blood-red beaches; reddish crablike creatures chasing giant enormous butterflies; sun growing larger, redder and dimmer; earth’s rotation coming to an end; then finally he witnesses it all as the last of the earth’s life freezes to a stillness and all goes still and silent.
Thereupon, he returns to the present world flying over buildings and smoke-filled cities…

Audience still doesn’t find this believable but everybody seems to be listening quite attentively to his tales.


Curious to know more, one of the audiences, the narrator, returns to Time-traveller’s laboratory once again the next day. He sees that the time-traveller is there carrying a camera with him. The time-traveller asks the man to wait for a few hours, saying that he was going on another time-travelling trip, and he will return shortly. This time, he says, he would bring the evidence of his adventures with the help of his camera. And once again, he disappears.

At the end of the book, the narrator writes that,
“…its been three years since the time-traveller disappeared and he hasn’t returned this time!”

INSIGHT: If one could borrow some insights from this novella by Wells, one would probably point to the paradoxical duality apparent between the duality and non-duality. Yet no matter how rapscallion a human might be, it doesn’t prevent one from the mysterious line of destiny that is invisibly imprinted upon the time-space intelligence of life!

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