Poornima Manco

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My favourite books on friendship

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Anyone who has spent time in my pages knows that I keep circling back to the charged territory of where, how, and when friendship is forged. Friends are the family circumstance did not appoint, yet the heart insists upon. My own Friendship Collection charts that conviction through five very different stories:

The Intimacy of Loss
Grief binds a circle of childhood friends into a quiet pact, teaching them to shoulder life’s worst storms together.

A Quiet Dissonance
An immigrant mother struggles to find her voice in a new country, transforming loneliness into a fierce, steady strength.

Intersections: A Novel
Four estranged friends converge on a single night, forty years after their first meeting, to confront secrets that refuse to stay buried.

Our Liminal Spaces
A mosaic of threshold moments where imminent friendship, unexpected love, and looming betrayal shift the ground beneath every step.

Luke & Lara
Lifelong confidants test the boundaries of adulthood, exchanging revelations that remake their shared past and uncertain future.

Of course, every writer is also a reader. Certain books first handed me the compass for mapping friendship and they have stayed with me like talismans. Here are the ones I return to whenever inspiration threatens to run dry:

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Most readers remember the burning of Atlanta or the tempestuous love/hate dance between Scarlett and Rhett, yet the beating heart of the novel is the bond between Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Wilkes. Obligatory at first, their friendship survives starvation, shelling, and the slow erosion of their world. Melanie’s steady faith invites Scarlett to become her best self. When Melanie’s light goes out, Scarlett finally sees what unconditional love looks like, and how empty life will feel without it.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Scout, Jem, and Dill roam Maycomb’s dusty streets inventing games, but innocence cannot shelter them from the trial of Tom Robinson. As Atticus Finch stands in the courtroom, the children in the balcony confront an adult universe of hatred and fear. Their small alliance is a lantern in the gathering dark, showing how friendship can seed moral courage long before the law catches up.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Set in Kabul from the Soviet invasion through the rise of the Taliban, this novel centres on Mariam and Laila, two women forced into the same brutal marriage. What begins as bitter rivalry transforms into a sisterhood that defies violence, poverty, and the dictates of oppressive tradition. Their shared cooking, whispered jokes, and silent acts of protection form a rebellion stronger than the gunfire outside their door.

One Day by David Nicholls

Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet on the night of their university graduation, 15 July 1988. Each chapter revisits them on that same date across twenty years as careers soar or crash and romances bloom or fade. The chatty, exasperating friendship that links every scene proves that the most ordinary day can carry the weight of a lifetime.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Sam Masur and Sadie Green reconnect in a hospital game room and soon code their way into video-game stardom. Success, jealousy, disability, and grief complicate their partnership, yet the creative spark between them keeps reigniting. Zevin uses pixels and polygons to ask an ancient question: how can friends stay close when the world keeps pressing reset?

These stories taught me that friendship is an engine, not an accessory. It drives people through war zones, courtrooms, arranged marriages, hangovers, hospital wards, and the blank glare of a computer screen. It can be ridiculous or prophetic, tender or ferocious, but it never leaves its characters unchanged.

Which literary friendship has stayed with you long after the final page? I would love to hear!

Fatal Attraction

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Last night I watched ‘Fatal Attraction’ after nearly forty years. It was leaving Netflix at the end of July, and I figured, why not? I wanted to see how the movie had aged in the interim.

Well, it has aged and how!

Now, honestly, I still enjoyed the film. The acting was stellar, and even though I knew the story, it still kept me on tenterhooks throughout. The infamous “bunny boiler” scene, the glint of madness in Glenn Close’s eyes, the bath scene with the steam clearing to reveal her standing behind the wife with the steak knife – all still made me jump.

What has not aged well is the misrepresentation of mental health, the casual acceptance of infidelity, and the portrayal of women as either a femme fatale or a dutiful wife.

Let’s look at these one by one, beginning with how very patriarchal and misogynist the lense was back in 1987 when these characters were conceived. Alex Cross, the woman that Michael Douglas’ character, Dan, willingly gets involved with, was independent, sexually liberated and apparently quite happy to have a brief fling with a married man. Except that she wasn’t. She clearly had mental health issues, possibly issues with abandonment and betrayal, and traumas that linked to the premature death of her father and/or her miscarriage. None of these were explored with any compassion. Instead, what we got was a linear voyeuristic representation of a woman in a downward spiral. She became the villain because she refused to go quietly or accept her fate as the one-night-stand.

Conversely, the movie was manipulated for us to sympathise with Douglas’ character, who, from the very start, revealed himself to be a heel of a human. Flirting with someone while his wife is at the same party? Okay, that could be forgiven. But then, choosing to have his fun while his wife and kid are out of town, lying about it constantly, wanting the problem of Alex to go away by offering to pay for an abortion, ignoring her phone calls, breaking into her apartment etc etc. Wow! Here was someone to root for! And yet, audiences back then did. Some perhaps still do.

Meanwhile, the wife had to put up with the trauma of being stalked, her child’s pet being killed, her child being abducted, her nearly dying at the hands of her husband’s lover, and still forgive him?

What constitutes a happy ending? The fact that the monster is dead, and the sanctity of the family is restored?

In reality, the monster is alive and well in the appetites of men who use and discard women as playthings. Dan Gallagher and men of his ilk are the monsters, not women like Alex Cross who fight against the status quo, and not even women like Beth (Ann Gallagher) who accept the status quo because they don’t know any different.

We have come a long way since 1987 and yet this narrative still reigns supreme in many places. At the time, apparently, the only good to come out of this portrayal was that a lot of men became fearful of casual hook ups, because, what if, she turned out to be a “bunny boiler”? Nowhere was the issue of moral compunctions explored.

It’s just a movie, someone might say. And so it is. But movies are a barometer of their times. And what times we lived in back then!

What do our movies say about us today? And how will we be judged forty years from now?

 

What’s the point?

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Every author, regardless of the genre they write in, has some kind of message in their writing. Whether that is good overcomes evil, soulmates exist, happily ever afters are possible, crime doesn’t pay, etc, etc. You get my drift. Now, these messages aren’t necessarily emblazoned on their covers or blurbs. In fact, sometimes, the messages are so deeply buried within the writing that a reader would be hard pressed to vocalise them if asked. But they are there, even in the fluffiest romcom, the bloodiest crime caper, the most nerve-tingling thriller. Search and you will find.

However, sometimes, there is a disconnect between the message sent and the message received. What an author may be trying to say is open to hundreds of interpretations and misinterpretations. It depends on the reader, their mood, their provenance, their cultural history, their upbringing, their exposure to the world and many such factors. That can make for a jarring experience, both for the reader, and also for the author when they read a scathing review of their work. “That wasn’t what I was saying!” An author might cry out in the privacy of their home.

Whose fault is the misunderstanding? The author’s or the reader’s?

Now, having been both, I can tell you that the answer is complex and nuanced. As an author who is trying to put a point across, I want to be subtle. I want to layer my message within the story, the dialogues, the actions of the protagonists and the consequences of those actions. Do I want to beat the reader over the head with my message repeatedly? No! That is the most basic and worst kind of didactic writing there is. Yet, within all of this lies the risk of being misunderstood.

Let’s take the last novel I wrote and released back in 2022: Intersections. Most of the reviews I received were wonderful. Haunting, complex, emotional and compelling were some adjectives used to describe the story. So far, so good. But any writer worth their salt knows that it’s the negative reviews that stick in one’s head. I know of many authors who refuse to read their reviews, content if their works have a high star rating. I, sadly, am not amongst those. I enjoy reading my reviews because I see it as a learning ground. Somewhere I can find out firsthand what my readers are thinking, what I did well and what I could do better.

This one review had me baffled. The reviewer said she found the book was very well written, that I, as the author, had tackled an intricate plot with four alternating viewpoints and kept her engaged throughout. She then went on to talk about the story and finally ended with saying that the reason she wasn’t giving the novel a full five stars, despite having enjoyed it, was because the book didn’t seem to have a point or a higher message. Therefore, she felt it would not endure.

Picture a knife to the heart. That is how gutted I was to read this review. You see, my point had escaped her completely. This novel about four young women from very different walks of life who become friends in childhood, only for their friendship to splinter in their teenage years, for them to go their separate ways and reunite in their forties, had a point and a higher message. I wanted to show how random life can be. How those we perceive to be more fortunate and more blessed than us are subject to the same vagaries of fate as anyone else. Being born into a higher social and economic strata does not ensure happiness nor is it a guarantee of success, while conversely, coming from the lower end of society is not a predictor of misery and failure. Life is messy and unpredictable. Our spheres of control are limited and the sooner we accept that, the quicker we will adapt to and thrive in changed circumstances.

Perhaps it was my fault that my message wasn’t clear enough. Maybe the novel, which begins with an accident, and ends with the reason the accident occurred and the consequences of that fateful evening, felt jarring to this reader because it was too arbitrary to come to terms with. Unfortunately, many a time, life is that way, too.

As I’m working on my next novel, this criticism keeps me wondering whether I’m doing enough to convey my point. This book deals with the circularity of life, of how what goes around comes right back around. Do I keep it understated as I would like to? Or will that be too obscure and unfathomable to a potential reader? I could choose to ignore this reviewer and write what I want to write. That would be at my peril. You see, every reader is precious to me, and their criticism is a part of my growth as a writer.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon me to work on my craft and deliver a reading experience that is consistent with my philosophy, my convictions, and my worldview. Hoping these will be understood and will align with those of the reader, too.

That, after all, is the point.

 

 

Basic Instinct

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First off, this is not a movie review. I haven’t watched the film I will write about and have no intention of watching it, now or ever. What this is, is a question.

Why are we here in the twenty-first century?

Maybe it should be more than just one question.

How are movies like these being celebrated? Why are women coming out of cinema theatres applauding this film? What is wrong with our society if toxic masculinity seems to garner this much praise?

‘Animal’, an Indian (Hindi) movie from the stable of Sandeep Reddy Vanga, has just been released. Within its opening weekend, it has become a blockbuster hit. People can’t get enough of the blood, the gratuitous violence or the misogyny on display. All this under the garb of a tortured hero with daddy issues. This is from the same director who came out with the equally vile ‘Kabir Singh’, a paean to neanderthal behaviour and attitudes.

What is it about movies like these that sets the box office on fire?

Is it a backlash against women’s increased independence and success? Has all the progress we have made (in India) only been surface-level?

Actually, why only India? Let’s talk about the world. Influencers like Andrew Tate talk about women as chattel, to possess and control, and he is lauded, his followers increase, and there is an outcry when he is arrested. Statesmen publicly boast about harassing women with impunity, and they win elections. Roe v Wade is overturned.

Where are we headed?

Setting aside this issue, let’s look at the increasing levels of violence in the movies. What justifies this? If films reflect what’s happening in the world, then the world also learns from what is being portrayed on the screen. Isn’t there enough war and bloodshed in reality without it being served up to us as entertainment, too?

The India I grew up in was a vastly different landscape from the one that exists today. However, there was a modicum of respect towards women, even if it came cloaked in patriarchy. This was reflected in our movies, too. Today, while most men have happily hopped on the bandwagon of discarding ‘old-fashioned values’ of opening doors or offering seats for/to women, because “aren’t we their equals?”, they have taken on the more sinister and subversive mantra of cutting women down to size through intimidation, disrespect, and mockery.

It is a worrying trend, not just for young women but also for young men, who imitate these behaviours, imbibe these messages and internalise this gross misogyny. Filmmakers like Vanga revel in controversy, bait their critics and rake in the moolah, all the while upping the ante with each release. The only answer to them is to talk with your feet. Walk away from movies like these. Don’t give them your money. Don’t yield to your curiosity and don’t react to the controversy.

Why then, you may ask, am I writing a blog post about this then?

Honestly, I am enraged, and for me, writing is catharsis. It’s the only way I can work through my dread, my anger and my helplessness in the face of this monstrosity of a film.

The effects of toxic masculinity and extreme violence exist all around us. Movies like these only add fuel to the fire. The trouble is that most civilised people will see this for what it is: pandering to the lowest common denominator. But doesn’t money talk? There will be countless imitators now who will joust for similar success at the box-office. Countless imitators who will take it even further than a scene asking the woman to lick the hero’s shoes to prove her love.

Where will it end?

Isn’t it funny that behaving like an animal is meant to convey some sort of nadir of human conduct? Look at the animal kingdom. They display far more respect for one another and the planet than we ever have.

 

 

 

Custodian

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What am I

But a custodian?

 

You take root in me

My body nourishes yours

You grow

 

For nine months

I house you

Protect you

Nurture you

 

Then you emerge

An infant

Bawling

Suckling

Sleeping

 

I care for you 

As a mother

An attendant

A guardian

A protector

A custodian

 

The time seems long

But really

It is short

Moments turning to minutes

Hours to days

Days to months

Months to years

 

Suddenly

You are grown

 

You have your own mind

Your own ideas

Your own thoughts

 

Your destiny is yours alone

I dare not question it

Or debate it

For who am I?

 

Just a mother

A guardian

An attendant

A protector

A custodian

 

I am of a different time

You tell me

Out of touch

Out of step

Out of line

 

I step back

Hurt

Confused

Pained

Startled

By your anger and resentment

 

Your words 

Your eyes

Your actions

Blame me

And me alone

 

I am at fault

A mother who has failed

 

What am I, then?

If I am no longer your custodian?

 

You fly away

Far away

So far from me

 

I cannot reach you anymore

Not through words

Or actions

Or love

 

You are making your life

In a different land

With a different plan

Than the one 

I had envisaged for you

 

But that is okay

As long as you are happy,

And if you are happy

That is all 

I have ever wanted

For you

 

When you return

It is a surprise

A welcome one

Even if 

you return with 

Tears in your eyes

And a swollen belly

 

You are home

I am your mother

 

Someday soon

You

Will be a mother too

 

That is when

You will understand

That

You have to be

Everything I was

 

And more

 

For

What are we

But

Guardians and attendants

Protectors and custodians

 

For those

Who come after us

Forevermore…

THE END

An I for an I

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I am a puzzle.

Parts of me are jagged; they do not fit. Parts of me are missing; I don’t know how to find them. 

All my life I have tried putting myself together. Sometimes to fit the world I’m in, sometimes to understand what I am exactly.

Born in a land that was enslaved for hundreds of years, perhaps I carry those shackles in my blood. I look westwards for my future. I revel in the words of a foreign language, eschewing my mother tongue. I believe erroneously that the white man is superior, in experience and knowledge, in wisdom and intelligence. 

I am a child of separation. A land cleaved into two and a marriage turned toxic. Father is a remote symbol, a picture on the wall. He is the father of the nation, but he died long before I was born. I sing his paeans in school assemblies, conditioned into mute acceptance.

Where is my own father, though? Amputated out of our lives, a stranger to me forever. It isn’t until I am in my sixth decade that I seek the answers only he could have given. 

Answers for the half of me I do not understand. A body that sickens in an alien way, a mind that reacts unnaturally. Is this him? Is this the bit that lives on much after he has gone?

I am a child of a contradictory country. Rich, poor, spiritual, dissolute, innocent, corrupt, ancient, nascent. It is a land that defies description.

Caught between it all, I yearn for simplicity.

* * *

I am a woman.

Fertile, precious, yet infinitely vulnerable. Besieged for being the weaker sex in a country that prays to goddesses and burns its brides. Groped, catcalled and abused even before awareness of femininity has arrived.

My colour is a dilemma. Dark brown isn’t pretty in my town. My people worship the fair, conflating colour with virtue, assigning it supremacy, degrading all other skin tones.

I wish to flee the confines of this existence.

Escape comes in books. It comes in stories of women in faraway lands living faraway lives. Surely they are free? Freer than me, surely? They are not answerable to their families, their communities, their societies; to misogyny or patriarchy. They have to please no one but themselves. Such freedom is a dream.

I try to toe an invisible line that keeps shifting and changing. I want to belong. If belonging is a feeling, then I am six yards away from it. 

Like the six yards of a sari that my mother drapes on her body. Saris made from the softest mulmul and the glossiest silks. Her only token to convention. She doesn’t belong, either. Strong, brave and outspoken women rarely do. 

Perhaps my estrangement is generational. A desire to fit in when every atom of our beings conflicts with conformity. 

* * *

I am a foreigner.

In the land of our former oppressors, I think I belong. In the language, the liberties, the modernity, I feel I am free. Until the same demons ambush me.

My colour, my language, my body are once again in an alien landscape. Micro aggressions show me I do not belong. How dare I believe I am an equal? How dare I try to escape the clichés of my origins?

I am an alien. I am incomprehensible. I babble, Babel-like. Babble babble in a tongue I thought was mine. Only to be met by blank faces and polite indifference. 

“Excuse me?”, “Could you repeat that, luv?”, “It’s the accent, dear!”

Retreat. Isolate. Repeat.

My existence is confined to the walls of my apartment, to the walls of my office, and back again.

I am a loner. A piece of a puzzle long separated from the main. My edges are blunted and I no longer try to fit in.

Small kindnesses and friendly overtures send me into a tailspin. People who approach are confounded by my overreactions. Too much, they think, and they recoil.

Too much, too little, not enough.

Am I destined never to belong? To be adrift in an ocean of humanity and never have a safe harbour of my own?

I am muted. Automaton-like, I function, but inside I am dying inch by inch. Community, connection, cognisance, is all I desire. But it is out of reach for someone like me.

* * *

I am still alive.

There is that.

Little by little, I have settled into this little life. Everything is surface level here. No one cares enough to encroach on my freedom. I am free to live or die, as I please. And I do a bit of both each day.

Lovers come and go, friends meander through my life, family keeps its distance. Mother gone, father never found. I am an orphan, a foundling, a wanderer in search of the elusive.

I write, bleeding onto pages. I write my grief, my loneliness, my ache, my desires. This is my release; it’s my catharsis.

Slowly, I come together. 

I belong here amongst words that tap out of my fingers like birds flying off branches. Amongst sentences that weave together like rivers converging. Inside paragraphs that are deep and mysterious, like the oceans of the world.

I find myself in stories. I discover myself through sentences. I create myself through characters. I mould, I shape, I scrub out. I recreate. I procreate.  

This is where I belong. A place where my colour does not matter, my shape is irrelevant, my gender inconsequential, my heritage mine alone. This is where all my languages come out to play. This is where my mother tongue and my adopted tongue walk hand-in-hand. This is my release, my liberation, my homecoming.

At last, a place I can call my own.

I am a child of this earth, and I will return to her womb someday. Until then, I will live amongst books. Mine and others. For, at long last, I have found my peace, my home.

This is where I belong.

***

(This is a work of fiction)