Recent Read and Movie/TV

I have just finished reading two books. The first is The Museum of Innocence by Turkish Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk. The second book is Waiting for an Angel by Helon Habila. Waiting for an Angel was one of the literary works we had to read in my first year at the University, but back in the days we never read these books to really enjoy it, we only read just to pass our exams and most times do not even get to read them, once we get a review online.

Books

Musuem of Innocence

Synopsis

It is a perfect spring day in Istanbul. Kemal, a wealthy heir, is about to become engaged to the aristocratic Sibel when he encounters Fusun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation. As they break the taboo of virginity, a rift opens between Kemal and his lovingly described world of the westernized families of Istanbul with their opulent parties and clubs, society gossip, dining-room rituals, picnics, their mansions on the Bosphorus infused with the melancholy of decay.


For nine years Kemal will find excuses to visit the other Istanbul, a house in the impoverished backstreets that Füsun shares with her parents, enjoying the consolations of middle-class life at a dinner table in front of the television.  His love for his distant relative will take him to the seedy film circles of Istanbul, cheap bars, sad hotels, a society of small men with big dreams and bitter failures.

It will make Kemal a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his love story and his obsessive heart’s reactions: his anger and impatience, his remorse and humiliation, his miscalculated hopes of recovery, and his daydreams that transform his Istanbul into a city of signs and spectres of his beloved with whom he can only exchange meaning-laden glances, stolen kisses in cars, movie houses and park shadows.

All that will remain to him, certainly and eternally, is the museum he creates, a map of a society’s rituals and mores, and of one man’s broken heart.

Waiting for an Angel

Synopsis

Lomba is a young journalist living in Lagos under Nigeria’s brutal military regim. His mind is full of soul music and girls and the novel he is writing. Yet when his room-mate goes mad and is beaten up by soldiers, his first love is forced to marry a man she doesn’t want, and his neighbours decide to hold a demo that is bound to lead to a riot, Lomba realizes that he can no longer bury his head in the sand. It’s time to write the truth about the reign of terror.

Movie
Sparkle

I finally got to watch the movie Sparkle, starring the late Whitney Houston and Jordan Sparks.

Three soulful sisters rise out of Harlem to become music hottest singing group in this rags-to-riches tale of glitz, glamour and the high price of fame. Against the vibrant grooves of Curtis Mayfield, these divas explode onto the scene with off-the-hook harmonies and a sexy style that catapult them to superstardom-but not every fairytale has a happy ending. When success leads to excess, one sister’s star will fade, while another’s will sparkle.

TV
Chicagolicious

I am not really a fan of reality TV but I love Chicagolicious....it has got way more class and less drama than its sister show, Jerseylicious. I love everyone of them, my favorite of all is MaCray and the barber Howard is so hot.

♥ Lara

Italy: Snapshots of Bergamo

My last days in Europe, I took a trip to Italy.

Before my surgery, I got 5days off for leave and decided to pay my friend who works in the DHL office in Italy a visit. I must say before my visit, I had no idea about the city called Bergamo... The city is divided into two the upper and lower city, the upper city is connected to the lower city by a cable car.

Imagine yourself in a city with no tour guide, and finding no one who speaks English around you...that was my situation. I could not even get the guy in the bus-station to understand that I needed a city map...I found my way around the city by myself mostly on foot...I actually fell in love with Bergamo.

Città Bassa-The Lower city

Città alta-The Upper City

♥  Lara

A Blogger's wedding

So I attended  a blogger's wedding on Saturday. The blogger is Atoskin and we actually go way back.

The thing is I have known Tosin for 18 years now...yes, 18years oh...we attended the same secondary school and we were in the same set. 

Tosin is one of the few people from secondary school who I really admire...babe was one of the class of 01's sweetheart, I love her smile and she was always easy going not like wahala people like me.

Her wedding was one I knew I would not miss even though she only gave me two days notice.

Here is wishing her a happy married life

The beautiful bride, Atoskin

Reunion

♥  Lara 

LoL is 6

This blog is 6 years old today...

I cannot believe I am still blogging till today. 

That is a screenshot of my first post on this blog above.

It was a thankful post and I was grateful for the year 2006...

I actually heard about blogger in 2005 when I attended an AIESEC International conference but I was too busy to pay attention to the whole gist.

I remember the day when I actually created the blog account, I was having an online chat with a friend and the AIESEC mentor, Kenoma Agbamu and he convinced me to read other AIESECer’s blog and document my own AIESEC journey.

I recently read some of my old posts and I can’t help but notice the difference, the growth and the path this blog has taken over the years. I have grown just as this blog has grown.

I would like to say thank you to everyone of you who reads this blogs, for the comments and following...this blog is going no where anytime soon...so cheers to many more years of my ramblings.

♥  Lara 

The Rape of a nation

I was never a fan of the city of Delhi...I never got a chance to read any good news about that city...I was actually scared shit when I visited and I must say that is the only Indian city where I was so security conscious and always had to look behind me to know what is happening.

The only reason for my fear of the city was the countless rape incidences I kept reading about and watching on the television. It is the same city where I read about kids been raped, old women close to their grave were also not alone...anything with a vagina is raped in that city. Rape is no longer news in Delhi.

When I heard about the December 16th 2012, brutal gang-rape  and assault of the physiotherapy student who name has not been disclosed, I really did not pay much attention to it because I felt it was a normal dose of life in that city. I guess the brutality and public nature of this assault was too much for the Indian society to just overlook as a normal dose of life. For once the people are fed up and want the government to change its lackadaisical attitude towards the rape of their women. What caught my eye was the video of the protest I saw on CNN and then I thought maybe this is not a usual rape story. My heart bled when I read about the rape, the inhuman act of destroying her internal organs. I also recently read the recount of her male friend who was also attacked with her on the bus. I was angry at how the people just looked on and did not even lift a finger to help the victims. I was devastated when she finally succumbed to the horrific injuries she suffered in Singapore after days of fighting to live.

When everyone talks about how Indians are the next big deal, I shake my head. Because no matter the ground-breaking technology, the medical tourism, a large percentage of the Indian population still live in a century I cannot even describe. There are a lot of “konjified” boys as old as 30years who have no idea about sex roaming around the country. I once argued that the society needs to give the youth sex education and someone said that there are still rape capes in nations where sex education is taught, which I believe is not a yardstick for the lack of gender sensitive education these people lack.  I hear the government of Puducherry (a union state in India) believes covering up women in overcoat would protect them from the very many sexual predators in the society. There are also talks of segregation by providing special buses for the girl students. Rape victims most times commit suicide or are forced to marry their violator. Another gang rape victim in the same city who committed suicide was advised by the police to either marry one of her violator or simply drop the case.

The Indian society is misogynist and very much like the many Arab nations in the treatment of their women only that Arab nations hide behind religion to justify their actions.  I found in India the single act of casting a second glance at a guy who maybe whistles at you means you are interested in him. The government is forever trivializing the issue of rape and make the women accountable for the crimes of the animals in the society. I really don’t get why at this age, India is thinking about segregating and restricting its women in the name of their own safety instead of ensuring stringent penalty for perpetrators of this horrible crime.

India is a nation of great potential but until it treats its women right, until the women are safe and can fearlessly share the public space with the men without any repercussion then can this incredible nation truly be great.

♥  Lara

Review: In the Land of Invisible Women

First of all, Happy New Year to every body.
I know I am uber late with this review, but then enjoy

Review

I must say curiosity led me to buy my copy of “In the Land of Invisible Women”, I expected to learn so much about what it means to be a woman in Saudi Arabia; we have all read or heard about how women have little or rights in the Saudi Kingdom, women are said to be abused, mistreated, they are not allowed to drive and how women are not allowed to walk on the street or in a car without the company of a man from the family. The author being a muslim herself, I expected to read an unbiased account of her experience.

Qanta's pre-kingdom expectation was that her muslim background and multiple qualification would make her life easier in the Kingdom, but contrary to her expectations and dismay, life in the Kingdom is totally different from what she had imagined. Rather than be embraced, she was scorned and rejected and in the same place found honesty, humor, loyalty and love. Qanta’s first rude shock of the reality of life in the kingdom began the moment she landed at the King Khalid airport. Men stared unflinchingly at her unveiled “non-white” face. The gender segregation also began right at the airport. In the beginning, she found the hijab and abbayah, a symbol of oppression:

“This veiling was an anathema to me. Even with a deep understanding of Islam, I could not imagine mummification is what an enlightened, merciful God would ever have wished for half of all His creation. These shrouded, gagged silences rise into a shrieking register of muted laments for stillborn freedoms. Such enforced incarceration of womanhood is a form of female infanticide.”

In time, she saw this symbol not just as one of oppression and also one of liberation and feminism for the women. The shield of the abbayah was the only way many Saudi women could enter the public space and participate in the public life of the Kingdom:

“In some respects the abbayah was a powerful tool of women’s liberation from the clerical male misogyny. I would be reminded of the abbayah as a banner for feminism time and again as I encountered extraordinary Saudi women who would work alongside me.” (pg 48)

In the Land of Invisible Women is the memoir of a Pakistani, British-born, American trained doctor, Qanta Ahmed, who dared entered the Saudi Kingdom after her visa to remain in the USA was declined. The book asides from being about a personal journey of  Qanta’s struggles  in the male dominated society  which is caught between and often conflicting tradition and modernization. It also tells the stories of the struggles of “elite” women whom the author encounters in the Kingdom.

Each chapter of the Land of Invisible Women mirrors the world of the Kingdom ranging from divorce (Saudi style) to Hajj. She discusses the life women lead behind closed doors and out of the abbayah and eyes of the Mutawaeen (the religious police), which the people both male and female live in fear of. Regardless of religious affiliation, the women must adhere strictly to the Sharia dress code of any abbayah which must cover the body and hair. No woman, Saudi or not was permitted to move about town without a male companion.  The women were segregated from the men; couples were forced to always carry along with them their marriage certificate when in public to verify their relationship. She wrote about the racism against people of darker skin in the Kingdom, and how it rears its hideous head while on hajj. There was also the story of the “forbidden” innocent crush with one of her superiors and the story of the grieving parents who had just lost a child.

I was amazed like the writer to learn there had been a time before Saudi women were uncovered, no abbayahs or scarves and could go out alone without their husbands or male family member. A time before the menace of the Mutawaeen and the mandate of monolithic religion, that time was before 1979. Also unlike what we had with the Hajj this year (2012), women could perform the pilgrimage without a man accompanying them.

Also amazing to learn about is the Saudi style of divorce; never knew a woman could ask for divorce if the husband decides to take a second wife without the consent of the first wife. In fact the idea that the man has to seek the consent of the wife in the first instance is shocking.

I particularly did not like the writer’s depiction of the Indians she met during her time in the Kingdom. She assumed they were all Bengalis (a tribe in India) and her ignorance of the Indian race was well documented across the book. She finds “huge lines of impoverished Bengalis arriving to take up menial jobs. She imagines “a poor Bengali gardener”, there was also her description of the “South Indian check out boy who spoke in his native Hindi”.

Qanta also seems to have own bit of self esteem as she did not seem comfortable in her own skin among the “creamy” skinned and flawless Saudi women. Her gushing depiction of the individual beauty of each and every Saudi woman she met, the obsession and bid to outshine one another with brand names, grace and Jewellery.

The Saudi women are not particularly helpless despite the world’s view; the book shows how these women despite so many religious restrictions have grown to become strong and highly intelligent intellectuals contributing their bits to the development of the great Saudi Kingdom.

♥  Lara