This is a guest post by Ron Davis. Rob’s been blogging since 2010 and is working as a content writer for various blogs. He is currently working for Dubaishortstay.com, where you can find information about Dubai Hotels and Dubai Apartments.
Dubai has some of the most luxurious places on earth and is considered a shopper’s paradise for shopaholics. If you get a chance to visit Dubai, you must surely go back home with some of the things Dubai is most famous for!
Best Buys
Perfumes (ittar) – Ittar is a traditional method of perfume making. These scents are pleasant smell and are very cheap compared to branded perfumes.
Dates –Arabic dates have high demand all over the world. Specially recommended are the seedless Arabic dates, which are not only tasty but also good for your health. If you’re look for some healthy gifts for your family, buy a few boxes of bateel dates.
Carpets – Dubai is the best place to buy the finest and most beautiful carpets, which come in a variety of colors and sizes. Dubai rugs are made from pure wool, which gives a rich look and smoothness compared to other carpets. The price may vary according to the amount of wool in carpets.
Jewellery –Dubai is sometimes called the “City of Gold.” You can be assured of the purity of the precious metal, and snap up some exquisite pieces with a traditional design influence.
Dubai shopping festival
Dubai shopping festival is very famous all over the world. It takes places between January and February for about 30-40 days. The main intention is to boost retail trade in Dubai and to attract tourist from all parts of the world. It’s a good idea to buy products during the festival as most merchants offer attractive discounts. Moreover, you can enjoy tax free shopping during the festival.
The Dubai shopping festival plays an important role in tourism; the main intention of this festival is to entertain tourists and to lure potential investors to the country.
Best time to shop
Of course, during the festival! Shopping malls in Dubai are open from around 10 am to 10 pm (about 12 hours daily). Most markets are closed on Friday up to 2 pm, as it is a day of worship for Muslims.
I think the information provided here should give you a little insight into the shopping culture of Dubai. If I’ve left something out or if you have anything to say, please leave a comment below.
There are times when we over-think things. Like introspection, or self reflection. I know I’m guilty of it. I’ve spent hours reading up on the right way to introspect. Wondering what questions to ask myself. If I was even asking the right questions.
Then, one day, I decided to just stop thinking about this whole thing. I was tired of trawling through websites and looking at lists of questions to ask myself. Some as inane as: “What are your favorite things (books, movies, stores, etc.)? Why ?”
So I just put the whole introspection thingajammy behind me and concentrated on doing different things. Things I’ve been putting off since a while. Like reorganizing my craft room. And then suddenly, one day, I just….introspected. No muss. No fuss.
And I realized there is one and only one thing that was holding me back and making me overanalyze this whole introspection thing: fear.
I was afraid of what I would find. The person I would come face to face with in the mirror. Once I let my guard down, I found that it wasn’t so hard after all. And the person I saw wasn’t all that much of an ogre. She was normal, with her strong points and weak, successes and failures, areas of confidence and insecurities.
So, if you’re having trouble getting in touch with you, ask yourself: What are you afraid of finding? Chances are, you’re blowing your fears out of proportion.
I’m going to let you in on another secret: it isn’t even necessary for you to answer that question. Just acknowledge that you’re afraid and leave it at that. And one day, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll rediscover yourself.
Huffington Post recently had a slideshow wherein its editors posted pictures of their most sacred place on earth. These images ranged fromnature to religious imagery, children and even a book! And got me to think about the meaning of the word “sacred”.
Dictionary.com defines Sacred as:
1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated.
2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy.
3. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object: a morning hour sacred to study.
4. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero.
But to me, sacred goes far beyond the boundaries of religion– it’s much more spiritual. It could be a moment, a thought, a feeling, a word…
Like a particularly spectacular sunrise (or sunset), when the sky lights up in multiple hues that can only leave you gasping at the utter brilliance of the Creator…
Or the breathtaking beauty of a flower…
I find the sacred in the time I spend crafting, or when I lose myself in my art or photography
In the corner of the couch when I curl up with my journal
In the lyrics to a song that seems to speak to me
The sacred isn’t merely religious– it’s personal. It’s a feeling of bliss, of connectedness, of peace.
Tons of ideas. Zero motivation. Image by orkboi via Flickr
This is the first post of this year. Almost a month into 2012. Over a month after my previous post.
After spending most of 2010 posting four times a week, week after week, I kinda dried out in 2011. I didn’t run out of ideas. I ran out of steam. Out of motivation.
That was my story for 2011. Not just for my blog – for my life. I slowed down. Despite myself. Notwithstanding all my good intentions. I just didn’t have the will to do anything. But I want to change that.
The world is going to end in 2012, or so the Mayans said. I don’t believe that means the doom and gloom that Hollywood would have us believe. It means the end of a cycle. And the end of a cycle heralds the beginning of a new one. So this year, I intend to start anew. To begin afresh.
Investing in me. Image via Flickr
I’m not in a hurry. I want to do things slow – and get them right. So I’m going to take my time. To analyze the year that was. To examine where I am and determine where I want to be. To plan. To take one step, and then another and another. To start the journey. Because that’s what’s important. The destination will come. Or it won’t.
What’s important is moving forward. Learning. Growing. Challenging yourself. Being fresh.
As I analyze, learn, and grow, I will share some of my insights with you, my wonderful readers. So if you find yourself stuck in a rut, or in need of some motivation, stay tuned. The best way to keep up with posts – through my RSS feed.
If you’ve been stuck in a rut and broken free – do share your advice in the comments. I’m on the lookout for all the help and inspiration I can find!
New York City is home to one of the most vibrant art scenes in the world. From the brilliant graffiti at SoHo to the many art galleries dotting Chelsea and the sheer number of museums across the city, art lovers are spoilt for choice. So when I was planning my trip, I knew I had to have some kind of a shortlist in place, or I’d probably go museum-happy!
First up was The Frick Collection. Founded by Pittsburgh coke and steel industrialist Henry Clay Frick, who bequeathed his New York residence and most of his art collection after his death, the museum has an excellent collection of early Italian gold-ground devotional paintings. Most of these are small panels depicting scenes from the Bible and from Jesus’ life, including Cimabue’s The Flagellation of Christ, Barna di Siena’s Christ Bearing the Cross, with a Dominican Friar and El Grecko’s Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple. Although some of these were quite interesting, and a lot were by painters I hadn’t even heard of, this style of paintings doesn’t interest me much. After a quick stroll through that room, I moved on to the Boucher Room.
This breathtaking room originally served as Mrs. Frick’s sitting room. Hanging on the walls are paintings by François Boucher, complemented with groupings of decorative art objects, including Vincennes and Sèvres porcelain, a writing table by Riesener and an elaborate dressing table by Carlin. And though this room was jaw-droopingly beautiful, I wonder just how comfortable it would have been in day-to-day usage. Surrounded by such exquisite works of art, wouldn’t you always be afraid of spilling or breaking something?
The other room that knocked the breath out of my lungs was the Fragonard Room. The dominant feature is The Progress of Love ensemble, which includes six floor-to-ceiling canvases — The Pursuit, The Meeting, The Lover Crowned, Love Letters, Love Triumphant and Reverie — four overdoors, and four slender panels of hollyhocks. For a while, I was dumb founded, my mind went blank, and my heart very nearly stopped beating. These were paintings that I had gazed at for hours in books. To imagine someone once having lived surrounded by these, and to be actually standing before the original canvases, was almost unbelievable.
The museum boasts other masterpieces such as Giovanni Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid, Degas’ The Rehearsal, and Monet’s Vétheuil in Winter; as well as a beautiful collection of sculpture, furniture and brick-a-brac. Overall, the best thing about visiting The Frick Collection is that it feels like you’re visiting someone’s tastefully done up private home with an excellent collection of artwork, sculpture and furniture that you can see in a couple of hours without getting overwhelmed.
Metroploitan Museum of Art
Contrast this with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arguably New York’s largest museum. Spread over more than 7 square miles and home to over 3 million works of art, you’ll need at least a week (if not more) to look at everything on offer. If you’re a tourist, and an international one at that, chances are you won’t have that kind of time. To squeeze everything into one day, the only piece of advice I can give you is this: plan beforehand.
Before I even booked my tickets to New York, I had started listing and refining the galleries that I absolutely had to see. I started with a list that was a mile long. But when I actually reached the Met and took in its sheer size, that list quickly dwindled to two, maybe three departments that I had to see or I would cry. These included the Egyptian collection and the famed Temple of Dendur, the European masters, and the impressionists.
Room from Hotel de Cabres, Grasse, recreated at the Metroploitan Museum of Art
Of course, I couldn’t just go directly to those areas. That would be sacrilege! I spent a lot of time gawking at the European and Greek sculpture and sighing over the gorgeous rooms – like the English State Bedroom, Wainscoting from the Chapel of the Château de La Bastie d’Urfé, and The Lansdowne Room – that have been recreated within the Met. I took a quick trot through the arms and armory section, ran through (yes, ran) the Japanese room. I also managed to squeeze in some Islamic art, American stained glass and pottery along the way.
I know there’s a lot at the Met that I did not see, but some of it was closed, and some of it was uninteresting for me. The opportunity to see canvases by some of my favorite painters, to walk through the Temple of Dendur, examine some fine Egyptian artifacts up close and personal…to just be at the Met, was enough. Of course, I’d better start making a list of the other galleries that I would love to see if I do go back to New York!
Guggenheim Museum
Speaking of European masters, the Solomon R. Guggenheim’s Tannhauser collection, which includes works by Pissaro, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet and Picasso, was the main deciding factor for its inclusion on my list of museums to visit. However, the collection is housed in one largish room and has only a limited number of paintings on view. Apparently, the Guggenheim never puts its entire collection on display, instead letting out most of its space to showcase the works of different artists.
During my visit to New York, most of the museum was given over to the Lee Ufran: Marking Infinity exhibit. Some of the pieces on display were interesting, but most of them left me unmoved. There were multiple canvases with one line painted either horizontally or vertically, in the middle of the canvas or on the side. It apparently shows the passage of time. But anyone – and I mean even my 5-year old niece – could have painted that line across a canvas and passed it off as the passage of time. I mean, really?
There were also numerous installations of boulders and metal sheets in different groupings and placements, boulders with cotton, with wire…I heard the audio commentaries on the pieces, but I still couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to pay good money to see something like this. Call me an ignoramus if you must, but I do not understand modern art. End of topic.
And so, when I came home after that visit, I moaned and groaned about the whole experience. And the wee sis made me strike MoMA off the list, saying that’s a lot more of the same stuff. I now think it might have been a mistake to not see MoMA, but I was running out of time, and didn’t want to waste money and time to go through another set of canvases and installations that I just wouldn’t get.
A sculpture flanking the entrance to the Museum of the American Indian, New York
Far removed from the heady world of classical paintings is The Museum of the American Indian. The museum is housed in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, which is rich in architectural detail and is one of the finest examples of Beaux Arts architecture in New York. At the main entrance are four huge sculptures of seated female figures representing America, Asia, Europe and Africa – the major trading partners of the US. Above the columns of the main facade are 12 statues representing the sea powers of Europe and the Mediterranean, while above the main-floor windows are sculptures representing the different races.
The exterior elegance does little to prepare you for the gorgeous interiors. The rotunda dome in the main lobby is decorated with two series of murals – one depicting early sea explorers and the other tracing the course of a ship entering the New York harbor. We scheduled our visit to coincide with the Building Tours (45 min.–1 hr. Monday & Friday: 1 PM; Tuesday : 3PM), which took us through the Collection room, where captains had to come in to pay taxes, and the gorgeous Collector’s Reception Room with oak-paneled walls and Tiffany lamps. This room is only opened up for this particular tour, which gives you a more in-depth understanding of the history and significance of the building.
The Collector's Room, US Customs House (now the Museum of the American Indian, New York)
During the time of my visit, the museum also had a special exhibition showcasing the work of internationally renowned glass artist Preston Singletary. Titled Echoes, Fire, and Shadows, the 54 glass objects displayed Preston’s interpretation of Tlingit myths and legends. There were some stunning samples of his work, including a huge glass scuplture titled Clan House, which shows the interior of a Tlinglit longhouse.
The other galleries in the museum showcase various objects of cultural, historical and aesthetic importance, such as tunics, chief blankets, headdresses, jewellery, shoes, and pottery. On weekdays, the Insider Tour (2–3 PM, except federal holidays) – an interactive session with a Cultural Interpreter – offers an insight into Native American life and crafts such as beading, music, textiles and traditional foods.
And finally, onto two completely different museums – Madame Tussauds and The Museum of Sex.
Waxwork at Madame Tussards, New York
Located in Times Square, Madame Tussauds brings you up close and personal with the who’s who of celebrities. The Opening Night Party and Gallery are incredible spaces, bringing you face-to-face with Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Robert Pattison, Julia Roberts and more. The Gallery features numerous historical and political figures, including The Oval Office Desk with President Obama and Michelle Obama standing attendance, and the White House press room. The Spirit of New York is the newest interactive exhibit celebrating everything, well, New York! From classic movie scenes to daily New York life, there’s a little bit of everything in this space.
Museum of Sex, New York
And finally, the Museum of Sex . Do I really need to say anything about what you can expect here? 😉 I’ll just tell you about two of the best exhibits I saw there: Action: Sex and the Moving Image – an audio-visual walk-through of the visual history of sex on the screen, from the first kiss caught on film through to the rise of the modern porn industry; and the Comics Stripped exhibit, which explores the limitless sexual imagination of comic artists from the 1930s through to the present using humor, scandal and fantasy.
Of course, there are so many, many more museums that you can explore in New York City. But if you’re pressed for time, these should certainly be on your must-see list!
Do you have a favorite New York (or other) museum not listed here? Let me know in the comments!
Recently, I wrote about how app papers are cannibalizing print newspapers, focusing on the US perspective on the newspaper industry and the monetization of digital content. At the back of my mind I was already wondering about the relevance of that trend in the Indian market.
I believe there are a few factors that set the Indian newspaper market apart. First is the low literacy level in the country, due to which newspaper penetration is low. But as literacy rates improve, so does the market potential. Tied to that is the fact that only a small percentage of Indians have access to technology. Case in point is internet penetration, which stands at just 6.9%, implying that a huge part of the Indian population is still reading the printed paper because they do not have access to an internet connection.
Second, unlike in the US, we don’t have to go to a newsstand to buy a copy of the paper every day – the paper is home delivered at no extra cost to subscribers. With that model, the number of people opting out of receiving a newspaper is limited. Moreover, newspapers are very cheap – the monthly bill for one newspaper rarely exceeds INR 200 (and that’s on the high side). It’s no wonder then that since the past few years, circulation figures of most Indian newspapers have grown by about 5% per year.
Further, the editorial integrity of print in India, and the trust that print brands are able to command vis-à-vis other media, is very high. India also has a large number of established print brands compared to the US America, where there are only really two big print brands.
Add to the mix the large number of regional languages spoken across the country, with newspapers available in all of these languages. In fact, according to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS), the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran has the highest average issue readership of 16,393,000, significantly more than the average readership of the top English-language newspaper Times of India, with 7,471,000 (figures for the second quarter of 2011).
Moreover, when it comes to the app story, just 10% of mobile phone users in India have a smartphone.
Even the recent introduction of 3G services is unlikely to make a major dent on the Indian newspaper industry due to all of the factors above. After all, with strong brands, high editorial integrity and nominal pricing, the likelihood of new media impacting core readership and threatening the value delivered is marginal.
Nevertheless, the industry cannot ignore the trends in the developed market, as it is sure to become reality in the years to come.
I for one am not likely to pay for access to news when there are so many free (and excellent) alternatives available out there.
What’s your take? Would you pay to access paid news content online?
This weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a book launch by of one of my favorite authors – Wilbur Smith, who was in India to launch his latest book Those In Peril.
The author related a number of interesting experiences from his visit to India, including the fact that he loves the traffic! Baffling, isn’t it? Until he delivered his next line: It is just like a video game; except here, if you lose, you die.”
Having visited the country numerous times, he says he thinks India as “almost a neighbor, with just a little sea between us!” When asked if he would set one of his books in the country, he referred to The Quest, one of his ancient Egyptian novels, in which his character Taita visits India to gain knowledge and wisdom. However, to weave a love affair with the country in print, the way he does with Africa, he says he’d have to “spend a lot of time here, at least 50 years, but I fear I’m running out of time”. That just explains how much research he undertakes for all of his novels.
Wilbur Smith signing copies of his books for fans Image via Wikipedia
Remember those bushmen that feature so prominently in some of his novels? He wrote them in after meeting them briefly during an excursion in the African jungle.
In answer to a question about how he manages to write so many novels (33 and counting) and if he’s ever faced writer’s block, he said that a writer’s life requires a lot of discipline as it’s easy to get distracted and do inconsequential things around the house. As for writer’s block, he said: “There’s no such thing as writer’s block. If someone says they’re suffering from writer’s block, it’s most likely cowardice.”
Very true, isn’t it? And it applies to most situations in life where we feel blocked – more often that not, we’re just scared of the unknown.
All-in-all, it was a lovely evening, spent listening to the anecdotes of an author whose fans span generations!
When I go back home on holiday, my morning routine is to fix myself a cup of tea and head down to the garden with a newspaper. I spend about an hour leisurely sipping a hot cuppa and reading the paper from cover to cover (well, almost!). Every time I return back, I promise myself that I will get up earlier so that I can read at least the headlines and a couple of stories before I rush off to work. But, I’m a late sleeper and a late riser, and reading the newspaper is something that I just cannot fit in to my morning rush to get to work. I used to try to get onto a newspaper website before I started the day at office so I was not totally oblivious to the world around me, but that didn’t always happen.
Then, I bought my iPhone and was initiated into the world of apps. The New York Times (NYT), Hindustan Times and NDTV were among the first few apps I downloaded. Of these, the NYT app is my absolute favorite. The headlines and the entire news story are downloaded when you start the app, and you can read them whenever you have a few moments to spare. I generally download the news as I run around getting ready, and then quickly scan through interesting news stories whenever I am stuck in traffic. You just gotta love technology, right?
Given our increasingly busy lifestyles and the proliferation of the internet and smartphones, it’s no wonder that newspapers (especially in the US) are seeing subscriber numbers fall. To deal with the loss of subscribers and declining ad sales, a few publishers are once again putting their online content behind a pay wall. The NYT has started asking users to pay up if they want unlimited access to digital content, and News Corp. put so much faith in the proliferation of content on tablets and on the success of Apple’s offering that it launched an iPad only subscription news magazine The Daily.
Are these moves warranted? Recent figures seem to say yes.
Paid subscriptions to read News Corp’s Wall Street Journal on tablets (Kindle, Nook, iPad and Android tablets) quadrupled to 200,000 in 2010 from about 50,000 a year ago. Though this may be a very small figure compared to the 1.6 million print copies that are circulated each day, it is a huge leap forward, and may well be the start of a brand new trend. Who knows, the day might come when people will have to go a museum to see what a printed newspaper looked like!
What’s your take? Do you prefer to read a newspaper the old fashioned way, or have you moved online?
Recently, I’ve been reading books and watching movies related to women’s rights (or lack thereof) and their suppression by the men in their family. It wasn’t a conscious choice, it’s just something that happened by chance. It started with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, in which she devotes almost an entire chapter to marriages of convenience in the 1930s. Such marriages were very prevalent in India even until a decade ago – and still are in a number of communities. These are marriages between families, where oftentimes the woman isn’t really given much choice in the matter. The men, of course, can choose – and that choice was almost always based on something as transient as looks. In Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, the main protagonist, Iris, was married off to industrialist Richard Griffin to save her family’s factories. The novel follows her disastrous marriage and the sexual abuse her sister suffered at the hands of her husband. Both of these books present the plight of the woman as a thing of the past, but not Bol. This is a bold movie to have come out of Pakistan recently, and highlights the plight of women, who are subjected to the tyranny of the male head of the house, in the present day. The movie deals with a number of important issues in that country – birth control, discrimination against gays, and the lack of choice for women. Some would think these issues are currently faced mainly by developing countries. They would be wrong.
As I read The Men Behind The War on Women on Huffington Post recently, I was shocked and enraged at the blatant disregard displayed by The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops with regard to women’s reproductive health.
“Over the past two years the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has launched one of the most extreme assaults on women’s choice the U.S. has seen in decades. Republicans voted twice to slash federal family planning funds for low-income women, moved to prevent women from using their own money to buy insurance plans that cover abortion, introduced legislation that would force women to have ultrasounds before receiving an abortion and, most recently, passed a bill that will allow hospitals to refuse to perform emergency abortions for women with life-threatening pregnancy complications. But the erosion of women’s rights didn’t begin with the GOP takeover…Lift the curtain, and behind the assault was the conference of bishops.”
Abortion stops a beating heart (Image by wht_wolf9653 via Flickr)
As if this weren’t enough, the Catholic Bishops have now launched a high-intensity campaign against birth control. Yes. Against.
I thought it was only the poor and uneducated lot who still thought that birth control was a direct affront to the heavens and that once married, women were supposed to set up a baby production factory. Apparently, I was wrong. The church, of course, has always been anti-abortion, but to take away choice from women, even in the case of rape, incest or complications and potential danger to the mother’s life, is barbaric.
The bishops are now lobbying against The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) insurance coverage guidelines stating that all health plans under the Affordable Care Act cover birth control at no cost for women. Although the rules offer religious exemption to churches, Catholic-affiliated organizations such as charities and hospitals would still have to cover birth control for their employees.
Arguing that the exemption is too narrow, the bishops want the Obama administration to either entirely remove the coverage of birth control or to offer an exemption to all Catholic organizations. This would mean that thousands of women who work for these organizations, even if they are not themselves Catholic, would be denied the preventative health coverage options available to most other women in the US.
HQ of the HHS
If you thought the bishops were lobbying for these measures only on religious grounds, you would be wrong. They’re fighting because of the large sums of money at stake. The HHS recently dropped the bishops from a five-year, $19 million contract to help victims of sexual trafficking. The bishops think they were dropped because they do not offer victims the full range of contraceptive and gynecological services, such as abortion referrals, birth control pills and condoms, provided by other agencies.
At the end of the day, then, it is the lure of money that is going to strip women of their rights and choice when it comes to their personal reproductive health and even their life.
Bishop William Lori defends the bishops’ actions thus: “We recognize that not everybody shares that teaching; nevertheless, it is a fundamental right for the church to stand by their convictions.” Doesn’t this reek of duplicity? By forcing legislation that will deny birth control and abortion to millions of women, the bishops are effectively imposing their views on the fundamental rights of individuals.
What’s probably worse, though, is that this isn’t the only legislation in question. Women across US states have lost major ground this year. Already, about 80 measures have been enacted to restrict access to abortion, all of which violate international human rights standards. These include Ohio’s ban on abortion once a heartbeat can be detected (6–10 weeks’ gestation); and a state ballot initiative in Mississippi, which if passed, would mandate personhood from the moment of fertilization. This could potentially outlaw the most popular forms of contraception; would treat destroyed eggs as murder victims, essentially making abortion illegal; and would prohibit scientists from destroying embryos created in laboratories, a process that is often required during in vitro fertilization and scientific research.
No matter what your individual stand on abortion might be, most of these measures go against a number of commonly accepted reproductive and human rights. Indeed, as the world moves towards decriminalizing abortion, one of the most developed nations is effectively muzzling women’s right to choice.
So begins The Storyteller of Marrakesh. This literary mystery is narrated by Hassan, who belongs to a family of traditional storytellers. He has set up his kilim (blanket) in the Jemma el Fna and is preparing to tell a story
…the like of which I promise you have never heard before. It is a love story, like all the best stories, but it is also a mystery, for it concerns the disappearance of one of the lovers or the other or perhaps both of them or neither.
And so Hassan begins weaving his tale, one which he feels compelled to retell once a year. The story revolves around Lucia, a half American half French woman and her Indian lover. It revolves around his brother Mustafa, who fell in love with Lucia, and then, a week after the disappearance of the tourists, turned himself in to the police in connection with their disappearance. It revolves around the day those tourists spent at the Jemma and around all of those who came in contact with them. It revolves around her beauty and the passions that it ignited in all the men who had the fortune, or misfortune, to meet her that day.
Jemma el Fna square by night Image via Wikipedia
There is a story within a story within a story, with all the listeners present invited to come forward and talk about their meeting with the foreigners that day. Through the collective memories of all who are gathered around Hassan, and all of whom were at the Jemma on that day, emerges a narrative of the various sightings of this mysterious couple. There are premonitions, superstitions, and men driven mad with desire for the girl. Through the stories, you get a glimpse of the Jemma, of the heady world of Marrakesh and an insight into traditional Islamic culture.
The many narratives weave together into an intricate mosaic, at the end of which you aren’t sure of Hassan’s role in the entire affair. Is his compulsion to repeat this story every year simply his effort to exonerate his brother, Mustafa, from the crime? Or is Hassan himself involved in the mystery?
In the true tradition of oral storytelling, there are as many questions as there are answers. As many loose ends as tied.
A storyteller at Marrakesh Image by theboybg via Flickr
One thing is for sure, Bhattacharya has a way with words. Although all of the action takes place around Hassan at the Jemma, and the entire novel is set during one evening of storytelling, you’ll be immersed in the sights and sounds of the “most storied city square in the word,” travel the Sahara, and hear the dolphins play in the ocean.
This is the first in a planned trilogy set in the Islamic world. I only hope that the rest of the novels don’t take this story forward. For though some things may be left open to interpretation, I think a trilogy would spoil the mystery of this novel and go against the form of storytelling Bhattacharya has employed here.
Overall, this is an interesting book that I found really hard to put down (and that, in part, made me determined to take the reading deprivation challenge). Highly recommended.
This weekend, I had an opportunity to attend a book launch by of one of my favorite authors – Wilbur Smith, who was in India to launch his latest book Those In Peril.
