Book Review: Tantra by Adi

There are some books that you'll go to any lengths to lay your hands upon, and then there are those other books which land into your hands on their own, without your ever having wanted to read them. Of the second category, you aren't really sure whether it'll enthrall you, amuse you or just leave you cold and unmoved. And so you don't bother. But life has its own way of playing with you, and that it most religiously does.

Tantra by Adi, strangely as it has been titled, is one of those books that belonged to the second category for me. I had no idea even of its recent highly publicized launch. But it came by in the mail, thanks to BlogAdda as always, and I read it out of obligation. Only to be highly pleased that I did. Because, believe it or not, the book is quite the surprise package!

The book has been written by one 'Adi', apparently 'a graduate from Stanford and Harvard Universities' and author of a 'poetry book and a minor textbook', one who wishes he hadn't published the said poetry book at all. Interesting, but shrouded under an unnecessary veil of mystery, with no specifics, no details. Reading the short summary at the back, in addition to this supposed mystery looming around the writer and the offbeat (read: computer-generated graphics) cover illustration, sort of made me groan at the prospect of having to read a book that didn't seem at all my type. I imagined it to be yet another immature attempt by a fellow Indian at a fantasy/fiction novel to have his 15 seconds of fame. In hindsight, I'm glad I underestimated this book. It made the reading all the more enthralling and full of surprises.

So coming to the story - Tantra by Adi (is that really how one is supposed to refer to it?) follows the journey of Anu, a young, beautiful and fiery girl who fights vampires in the streets of New York by night, while bottling up her emotions and escaping life's realities and difficulties by day. In a cruel twist of fate, she is terribly wronged by a vampire who she soon finds out has moved to New Delhi, and thus that's where she finds herself heading in his pursuit. Once in India, she cannot help but fall into a warp of all the emotions, rituals, love and family ties that she has been guarding herself against all her life, and things get tangled up. Meanwhile she's caught in a nasty war involving power-thirsty Tantric-energy-wielding Baba Senaka, the city's cult of vampires and her own group of guardians, with the entire city and its people at stake. But she finds within herself the determination to take the Baba down, and works towards learning how to do that, albeit in the potent Indian spiritual way. In the process many of her presumptions and beliefs are broken, new ones are made, many a lesson is learned and she emerges as the true modern heroine, if you will.

The plot moves at a slow pace initially, and there are too many loose ends that make it seem like the plot is going to get nowhere with this. One may even feel like abandoning the book a couple of times, but hang on. The fun hasn't yet begun. It gets much faster and action-packed as the pages advance. The build-up may be vague, but as the loose ends get tied, the picture emerges and it is worth all that effort. The book provides, for dummies, a whole lot of knowledge about spirituality, energies and how we as people connect with the world and with other people by threads. I took time reading through the pages, comprehending any new information and absorbing it inside me so as to develop a feel for the story. Worked pretty well, I must say.

The way Delhi has been portrayed in the book is quite realistic, and Anu's character, as all of the others, has been painstakingly carved and described well in words. The characters literally speak out for themselves. Alas, if only more writers went for the no-character-descriptions, let-the-character's-behavior-and-words-speak-for-herself mantra of writing books. It is so much more mature and takes reading to an entirely different level. Tantra by Adi scores in that regard for me.

[Free advice to any aspiring/existing authors reading this: Try this mantra. Let your characters' conduct speak more for them than your words. You'll see the difference. It might cut down your everyday fan-mail inflow by about half, but it'll definitely make every second spent reading your books totally worth it.]

I'll give this book a 3 and a half stars, and would recommend it to those who like action-packed thrillers or a female superhero saving the day in a part-fantasy, part-reality world.

P.S. I went on a stalking spree of my own and unearthed more on the author, including how he looks, what else he does, and the books's launch and official video trailer as well. Check out here.

This review is a part of the biggest Book Review Program for Indian Bloggers. Participate now to get free books!

From Goldilocks to dreadlocks, and back again!

I've talked about my childhood here a number of times before. I was a happy kid. Happy with life, with school, with the cartoons on TV, and with everything else. But then again, I was a tad too lost as a kid - I knew not the first thing about keeping things around me organized, or presenting myself well, or oiling and caring for my hair or so much as even standing in front of the mirror and analyzing my looks. I was just happy to be. Though kids of today, I tell you - they're smartasses of the smartest kind. We weren't. Or at least I wasn't.

But thanks to the Almighty I was blessed with good health, an innate dressing sense and a mop of smooth and silken soft dark drown hair that I took almost for granted. I remember this time when I was probably 12 or 13 and my beloved mother would tie my medium-length hair up in a plait every morning before school while I was lost in my thoughts. Now on the ride back home on the school bus, this particular senior (one whom I was in awe of despite her patronizing ways), would sometimes sit behind me in the afternoon and taking my plait in her hands, play with it and coo to her friends, "OMG, look how silky her hair is!" And I absolutely do not exaggerate there. They did find my hair awe-inspiring, though I was as far from realizing that as could be. For me they were just, well, hair.

Curly, well oiled (thanks to MOM) but perfectly healthy - the hair that was. 

Then I changed schools and in the new, seemingly horrid place, we were supposed to tie our hair into two plaits and tie them up with ribbons!! My mother even insisted on oiling my hair before school, to which I protested a lot but had to eventually give in. It all felt like a nightmare. Maybe if I'd known what I was in for, in the future, it'd have felt much less horrible.

Gradually I began to develop a penchant for hair experiments and new hairdos. In ninth grade, I was known throughout the school as 'the girl with the sky-high ponytail'. I would just tie my somewhat-long-by-then hair up on the top of my head and feel it moving from side to side when I moved or talked. It was fun. Only, there was something not quite right. My hair seemed to have reduced in volume and the ends looked terribly jagged and unruly. The ponytail did not look as much fun as it had looked before. My hair would get tangled a lot, breaking in the process and thus thinning my mane. I started disliking my hair with each passing day, coming to a time when I really didn't give a damn about them anymore. And one fine day I went up to the salon and got them cut down to the shortest length possible. So within one year, I went from Little Miss High Ponytail to The Weird Blunt-Hair Girl. And it wasn't a good feeling.

Even when I left school some four years hence, with hair much longer and somewhat repaired, I was still not very proud of my hair. College did not help much, what with all those mean girls making sure to point out how limp your hair looked. And then I went ahead and got my hair streaked. Twice. Within three years, too. So yeah, that just worsened everything further, with my hair looking fantastic now but feeling more like dreadlocks than the silky soft hair I once used to have. My erstwhile happiness - emanating from having healthy, good looking hair - was almost all gone. I missed that time when I was a little kid lost in her thoughts while mother took good care of my beautiful hair. I so wanted my old hair back (without losing those streaks though!)

Damaged and frayed after getting those highlights done.

 
And then a new phase began - the one that I like to call the 'Dove Phase'. I believe my readers know me enough to also know I do not indulge in mindless publicity of stuff that I get for free from companies wanting us bloggers to promote them. I wasn't even a Dove loyalist till about two years ago. I didn't care much about the shampoo I used, and if I did, it was never Dove. But then IndiBlogger and Dove suddenly started flooding my mailbox with frequent Dove haircare hampers, and left me with no choice but to start using Dove on my hair. But I realized soon that my hair was actually getting better and healthier with its usage. One look at my shiny flowing (though not too long) tresses now, and you'd know the huge difference there has been.

Even my mother, who is dead against relying on cosmetic products (read: conditioners and shampoo) to strengthen hair, seems to be convinced now, to a certain extent, of how good my hair has been getting lately. No wonder when the latest Dove Split End Rescue System advertisement came on TV, my mother surprisingly said, "I hope they send you samples of this one too. It looks like you could use some repairing on those ghastly split ends of yours." And she was right, because no matter how great your hair is, it is always being subjected to a lot of wear, tear and damage as you travel and experiment with your hair. Split ends are thus sort of inevitable. And anything to help repair them - a most welcome product! So I was most happy to receive the Dove Split End Rescue system sample and to try it on. And I must say, I have been flaunting my soft and suddenly more manageable hair for the last one week, keeping it open most of the time, even at home (something I NEVER, EVER did before.) And the ends look better than ever!

And that's my plume now - majestic, full of shine and with perfect ends. Sigh.

Dove, as a hair care regimen, has thus grown on me (and my mother and sister) over time. From being a childhood Goldilocks with beautiful braids with the perfect ends, to being an almost-hippie with horrible dreadlocks, I've been there and done that. And I've found Dove, in the end, to be the ultimate hair solution.