Book Review: Musings Of A Wanderer, By Shreya Chatterjee

I laid hands on Shreya Chatterjee’s  ‘Musings Of A Wanderer’ when I was very busy with life. Poetry books are not meant to be read when you are busy. We can read books like Dan Brown’s ‘The Lost Symbol’ even when making love, but not poetry. I am quite familiar with Shreya’s poetry through her blog, A journey called……. , so out of curiosity I opened the book to see whether it had some of my favorite poems from her blog included in the book. Yes, my favorite poem, ‘A Perfect Elopement’ was there. As I kept reading I found more poems from her blog printed in the book. There is a special pleasure in holding the book in my hand and reading the poetry, which is never found by reading those exact lines online. I flipped through the pages and read a few lines and then went on to read more and more until my daughter walked in from school.

What kept me going through the book for 2 hours were the short and crisp lines of the poems. Most of them were like crispy snacks; you don’t feel fulfilled but feel like eating some more.  I have to say that the author has done a good job with the creation of poems, as the readers are not going to put it down, thinking of picking it up when they have more leisure. Lengthy, complicated and confusing lines which needs a dictionary and reference handy to read, are great put offs when you read a poem; so the author has taken off that hurdle from the paths of readers.

As an ardent reader of poems since my childhood, I cannot lie by saying that, ‘This collection of poems is excellent’, but for the first book from a young poet, it can be rated good. Shreya Chattejee has lot of depth and passion in her words. The verses are her feelings taking form of words, and she feels about most of the things that touches her life. There is rain, love, relationships, the city of joy, friendships, social evils, acquaintances, nature, shocking events, and life in general seeping in through her poems. 

I would like to mention few of the poems that impressed me.

‘The lost roads’ – reminds me of Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ where the author decides to take less travelled path and carves a way for himself.

‘Two cups of coffee’ is again a simple and philosophical kind of poem which speaks volumes. A good read which doesn’t stress your mind

‘Queen Of Our Land’ is the poignant poem depicting the horrifying picture of the girl child. This is my special favorite in this collection. Not very often do poems wring tears from me. The plight of a woman who suffered for bearing three girls, comes vividly in front of our eyes when we read this poem. The ending lines hits out at our prejudiced society very strongly.

‘Breaking’ gives us an insight into the minds of a man and woman who have broken up. Only if they could read each other’s thoughts! Unspoken words are harmful to a relationship.

‘The New Born Nation’ is a short a crisp poem where the poet hits out hard with her words. Good enough to chase away creeping sleep and awaken our consciousness.

The rain poems are all quite nice and cute. At times you can sense the drizzle flowing through the words. With the monsoon breathing down heavily on my neck for past two months it was tough to appreciate Shreya’s love for rains, but I had to.

The poet is wanderer, wondering philosophically over the topics she is exposed to in her unfocused restless venture.

Excluding the introduction, there are all together 84 poems in this 95 pages soft bound book. It is quite easy to find the ones suiting your taste of topic considering the wide array of topics covered through the poetic words.

Off course I am not going to be all sweet to new poetess, as there are some issues she needs to pay attention to. She cannot say In Pursuit Of Happyness. Mistakes, like such are to be avoided and if it is printing errors she needs to talk to the publishers to get them corrected in re-prints. There are mistakes that need her attention.

I had seen the cover earlier and did not feel anything special about it earlier through the pictures; neither did I feel anything special about it when I held the book in my hand. I feel there was place for more color there, considering the myriad of topics covered by the poems.

Some poems were a bit confusing. For example while reading about Infant murdered in mosque, where the crisis is depicted so well, I could not relate it to any event. Actually I do not blame the poetess for this, as there are so many violence related incidents happening around us every day we can easily get confused one with another or maybe I am ignorant to certain incident which may have caught public attention.   

I could wander through the book with satisfaction; I say that because I did not read the poems in order. These poems are not going to revolutionize the society, but they are good enough to entertain one, especially when sipping hot coffee, while watching the rain.

I am looking forward for more deep and poignant poetry from Shreya in future. All the best to you!

More Information

Author: Shreya Chatterjee

Book: Musings Of A Wanderer

Editor: Joyita Chatterjee

ISBN number: 978-93-81205-00-6

Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Power Publishers
Language: English

Available from: www.Power-Publishers.com

                           www.Flipkart.com

                           www.uRead.com

                           www.Infibeam.com                          

Price : ₹100

Blogs: http://wanderer-onestep.blogspot.com/

           http://wizardmeetsvagabond.blogspot.com/

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Basic Information about the Author in her own words:

About Shreya  "The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become."---is it same for a woman!!! wondering

"Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."

I am a writer by profession and a poet at will- (well, this is how I started defining myself from one fine November morning).

I have been writing since my school and college days, and have been a ardent member of poemhunter.com, since my college days.

Musings of a Wanderer" is my debut book- a collection of poems I have penned down within a span of a year or more.

I have got two active blogs. a journey called... contains personal poems, articles, serious social articles, reviews, a bit about my hobbies, videos created by me, lyrics of songs I love the most and all such things that serve as perfect definition of a wanderer. It also houses some of my favourite moments with "Coffee". You will also find collaborated posts- the images are provided by several of the fellow bloggers and the poems are written by me. Footprints on... is rather a dormant blog, which contains a growing draft of a novel I have been writing since a couple of years. The thought was within me since my middle school days...

Source of basic information: Facebook, of course!

Happy Birthday to My Son

Meet Rayyan… The teenager, who passed through the teen years, without even knowing that it was the most troublesome period of his life.

I cannot believe Rayyan is already a young man. He was just a kid few months ago. I think he is a kid even now, what do you expect from my child. I haven’t grown up yet ;).  

I really have a good laugh at my Mom whenever I see Rayyan. I was a naughty kid and she said, “As per the rule of nature, you are going to deal with all the problems I have dealt with -> because of you. You will realize my struggle when you will have your own kids”.

Even as an Infant, Rayyan disappointed my mother by going against her rule of nature. Though she loved him the most, she was very upset that he did not do unto me what I did unto her. LOL

He has passed through his teen’s years quite smoothly. I wonder how he could not worry about those pimples, girls, clothes, hair style, friends or any other teen related problems.  Another surprising fact about my amazing son is his openness about happenings in his life. He never tries to keep secrets. I have never discovered any of his secrets so far, so either he could be a extra smart person that his secrets are so well kept that I have no clue he is hiding anything from me. He appears so crystal clear, that I never worry about him at all.

He handles every relationship in a way that I feel, if he had been there earlier in my life, I would have had better life from the one I have now.

May be people will not believe that he has not used foul language or his fists even once so far. I was quite generous with both of them as a kid and wonder how is he dealing with his problems. He says those kind of situations never arise in his life.

May be he has cursed the power cut when it took away his hard work on computer at times..but I don’t hear it out loud. I don’t see him getting angry towards living or non-living things.

He has a matured and balanced attitude towards Farheena. He has never allowed our love for her to spoil her. He reminds her often to get her exercises, be independent as much as she can and finds innovative ways of teaching her. If not for him, I would have never realized she could handle smart phones and computers as well as she is doing now. He takes out time to be with her and reminds me to do the same.

He is an amazing brother, son, grandson, nephew, student and friend to the people in life. I am proud to have known such a wonderful person in my life.. leave alone the part that I am a very happy Mom.

 Wish you all the happiness in your life dear Rayyan. May God Bless You

Some pictures from his journey through life..

Disney world

Tarpon Springs

With friends in water park

After football game

cool huh?

                                             

Loves cars and bikes

Loves roller blades and skate boarding

Sleeping on the grass he mowed.. 

     

BMX stunts

The school Project Work

With Class mates from first school

Winning Accolades

On the beach 

With Cousins Manal and Shuraim

With Grandpa

Learning can be FUN and with Intel Appups It can be FREE too

Screen shot of Solar System Download. 

I have entered quite a few contests on Indiblogger , fortunately winning some of them. Never have I felt happier to blog about a contest, as I feel today, writing about the Intel Appups. Installing the Intel Appups setup opened a world of trial applications for free; something I have always been looking for.

As a mother and a teacher, the Intel Appups of Back to School are blessing for me. I love the smile on the face of the children and would not want learning to be a stressful activity for them. Contrary to general belief that children hate learning, they love to learn about new things. It is the boring methods adapted that makes it difficult for us to teach children. When one adapts colourful and interactive methods, the children show more enthusiasm in learning than we can actually cope with.

Some of the attractive kids learning apps I found for free on the Intel Appups are:

• My little artist a simple art creator which even toddlers can handle
• Dinosaurs , A-Z facts about the extinct reptiles in form of pictures, videos and excellent articles in addition to puzzles, magic square, brush off, memory match and quiz.It is fun and entertaining to explore the fascinating world of dinosaurs through this interactive educational app. The life and times of dozens of different dinosaurs, their evolution and ultimate extinction are covered while in an interactive fun way. The map tool shows where fossils were discovered. Children can imagine and play archaeologist by brushing virtual sand off the fossils. I loved this. 
• Word learner, Alphabet Kits and Learn Alphabets will make the learning activity creative and fun for children, making them fall in love with words
• Vedic Math lite for a budding mathematical genius
• Zoomumba is the fun way to introduce children to animal world
• A wide range of action, adventure, role play, racing, arcade and other amazing games. The old game of flipping pages to play cricket in school is also available here
• The popular games of Angry birds and Fruit Ninja which works fine on PC

Brief Review of the App Britannica Kids Solar System

I have to make special mention about the Britannica Kids Solar System. With this amazing application we can explore the amazing world of our Solar System with some entertaining games like Memory Match, Jigsaw Puzzles and the Magic Squares. For a person who aspired to be an Astrophysicist (me), this is very attention grabbing, as I find it a perfect app for exploring the secrets of the Solar System in a fun and engaging way with the children. The application is filled with the beautiful breathtaking images which will easily attract the attention of children No wonder I can say Britannica Encyclopedia has done a good job of providing information on the sun, planets, moon, asteroids and comets. This must-have application which would cost normally around $4.99 is available for free for new registrations along with the Dinosaurs. It has been created keeping the age group of 8-12 yrs old school children in mind.

The topics covered by the application are :

• Makeup of the Solar System
• The Sun
• The Planets
• The Moon
• Asteroids and Comets
• Formation of the Solar System
• Studying the Solar System
• Gravity and Space
• Exploring the Solar System

All the important facts about the 8 planets are covered up exclusively. Children will become very familiar with all the eight planets in no time.

There is lot of fun with the Jigsaw Puzzles, created from beautiful images of the Solar System. Though the puzzles appear easy, they take considerable imagination to be pieced together.

The Magic Square game allows you to scramble the images and throws a challenge to re-arrange the squares again.

The memory match games allows us to test our short term memory by matching up pairs of images of solar system.

 The comprehensive Quiz feature allows one to test their knowledge about the Solar System.The most attractive feature is that it allows us to tweet the answers or share the results on facebook.

Screen shots of Britannica Kids: Solar System

    

     

The list of attractive Intel Appups would be unending, as there are tons of applications available on the site along with the Britannica Back to School Bundle for free. The above mentioned apps are only the few I explored in a day.  


There are also wide array of books on topics ranging from e-content to Gitanjali. The essential apps and organizational apps are very useful for those who spend a lot of time working on computers.

The contents available are categorized for the convenience into:

Books

Education

Finance

Health and Fitness

Maps and Navigation

News

Productivity

Shopping

Sports

Utilities

Business

Entertainment

Games

Lifestyle

Music and Audio

Photo and Video

Reference

Social

Travel

Weather

There is further option of choosing the OS of the computer and pricing option to refine the results. I am hooked or precisely the child in me is hooked to the Appups for time being.
The History of my Love of Multimedia 

I am a proud teacher and parent who don’t have to resort to the cane for the sake of either success or discipline, because I am a firm believer in “Learn with a smile” concept. I have been educating children in different schools and also privately at home for more than 20 years. I have stood by my principles of making learning fun and never compromised on it for success. Initially I used to find models, picture books, maps and other such accessories to make teaching simple. My son learnt alphabets through the snacks I used to make for him. He would eat words like hen, dog, eagle, rose, and other such general things around him to learn them.

No wonder it was implemented to teach Farheena few things too. A special needs child will require visual and auditory help if they have to learn without stress. I had to hunt around and shell quite few rupees to find some good educational computer applications for her. Today, surfing the Intel Appups, I was so delighted that there are quite a number of wonderful applications available for free downloads. It is not even complicated process. I already have quite few of the applications running on my computer, entertaining and educating us.

Two and a half years ago, I faced the challenge of getting the children of my school to talk in English and improve their General Knowledge. What is the challenge in it? Anyone would ask that. I grew up speaking English, even more than my own mother tongue. But to the children belonging to rural India, where they have no one to talk to other than in their local dialect, speaking English is not normal. They are afraid to be made fun of when they make mistakes.

Initially I got only giggles and blank smiley stares from the students when I spoke to them. When they did not understand what I said to them in English, I explained it to them in English in much simpler terms, with pictures or actions but stuck to the language. I tried introducing new GK books but the words did not make much sense either.

We teachers had the facility of multimedia to coach children, through a projector, which was seldom used. I took advantage of this and downloaded few programs and videos available on net to bring the children out of their shells. Also I made use of the software I already had with me for coaching Farheena to educate the children. As the rhymes and videos started to brighten them up, they wanted to know more and they had to speak in English because communication in no other language was allowed. That is how it started and everything else was smooth after that. Few months ago my son came home and told me that he met a boy from my school, who spoke to him in English for a long time. He wasn’t fluent but he was confident and did not feel shy to speak in English. My goal was achieved and my trust in the principle was strengthened once again. Learning can be much easier through visual aids. Even to this day, I refer to the Multimedia I can access, to learn about something, as it gives me visual and auditory help to understand a topic. The Multimedia stimulates more than one sense in a person, because it has audio, visual and text clues.

Having fun with My Little Artist

The apps work fine on any Win7 or WinXP, though surprisingly many are misled to believe that it can be used only on netbooks. Educators who have computers with  Windows OS should take advantage of the opportunity and get access to this great educational content.

Screen shot of the Dinosaurs Application

This blog is an entry to the "My Favorite PC App" contest. Check out numerous apps for PC/Netbooks available at the Intel AppUp Center. If you are looking for an opportunity to build and monetize your applications, check out the the Intel® Atom™ Developer Program.

A View from the Eye of Ege

After Susan White from Ottawa, now I have the honor of presenting another person, Ege from Bergen, Norway. She goes ahead fighting bravely the obstacles thrown her way and makes the day best for herself. Today with this post she is going to do the same for us.

I decided it was time for me to come out in open with my own experience. I have just read your post about how people behave when it comes to Farheena. I had to tell, I recognise how people have behaved to me during my years here on earth, when I read your post. 

When I was 7 year old, there was hearing-test in school. There it was discovered that I had hearing impairment in both ears. They gave me hearing aid; at that time some big ones, and a big help speaker to wear, so I could hear what my teacher said. It was awful.

Everyone at school changed their behaviour towards me. I didn’t get friends. I was just someone not important. In the gym, I was last choice. As a friend, I was good enough only when the others were pissed off with each other. 

I can’t remember that I didn’t hear well. I remember I was daydreaming a lot. Because of my hearing, I was given special class in speech, and it was ok, but not so fun to discover that the rest of my class had had fun with creating things when I had to practice my speech.

People have been looking at me like I had a brain damage. One man told me some years ago, that he wondered about my speech; whether it was because of a brain damage or maybe my tongue had some damage. When I told him I was hearing impaired, he said: “oh so that’s what it is... `cause when we talk I understood there was nothing wrong with your brain...”

People just don’t know how to handle their own feelings when they discover others have a difficulty or disability, whatever it is. And when they can see someone is different, they get more troubled inside. They fight hard to say or do what they think is the right thing to do, because they are afraid to let you know they want to run away and not know about people that are different.

I can still feel the pain of how unfair I felt life was, and when I was 13, I prayed every night that I could just die when I sleep.. That was the first time I wanted to die. 

Even to this day, I can see people get uncomfortable when they hear me speak. Not so much as back then, but it still happens. Some says they never notice it. They say that I sound like I`m from some other country. Some loves my way of speech. And some are very uncomfortable with it. 

My mother has hearing impairment too, but she got it after being sick when she was grownup. She often tells me how people behave, with loud voice and talking to others instead of her, and I tell her, yes I know about it. I know what that’s like. 

And I often get the same reactions when I tell that I have:

Tinnitius

Trigeminal Neuralgia

Rheumatism

Atriose in my lower back

People get like: oh how awful, what can you do, what medicine do you use, can you get well again, can the doctors do anything.... 

Doctors give me medicine, I try not to use so much. But that’s it. That’s just the way it is. I don’t want to fight about it with my doctors, or to explain those stupid people who ask me this. 

I told a family member:  I don’t care why I got it. I don’t go thinking: poooooor me... Because all I can do, is to make my day the best for me. 

They simply just can’t get it. And my sister said: They don’t understand because they don’t have it, that’s why they behave like this. And that’s true.

A lot of people like others to think about them: Look at me, I am a big man or woman, I`m sooo gooood with people that are different, can’t you see meee??

But I, that have seen falseness all my life, see when people are acting. 

And so will Fahreena. 

Tell Fahreena not to be afraid to do what she wants. I remember how shocked my classmates were when I came back to school the day after been to a music-contest... Yes I did sing, and some people told me I was good too. So I believe I can do things that others see as impossible. 

And Fahreena, she can do a lot of things, just have fun, and give a shit about stupid people. I know, easy to say...

I remember I use to think I was 2 persons, one at school, and one at home. And when I finally set myself free, and being myself at school, do you know what a school mate said?

She said: This is not you; you are not the one I know. I don’t like it. 

I was thinking: well, you never really knew me, you just don’t see it..

So, people are very very stupid at times. 

Yes Ege, People can be stupid at times but tough people are known to survive stupidity. You are the tough one…