Books

The Witch of Portobello

I would confess that this book disappointed me. Not because it is not good enough, but because after reading so many books of Paulo Coelho, I have started seeing a pattern. As things start getting repeated, they get boring too.

I would start with an interesting episode from the book. Please note that this is just a portion of the book, and it doesn’t represent the theme in totality.

Speak Up!

This is a story of a girl known as Athena, with a lot of twists in her life: she was born to a gypsy mother and a foreigner father in Romania, abandoned in an orphanage on birth, and adopted by a Lebanese couple which later settles in London. She finds a boyfriend at 19 and leaves her engineering midway when she suddenly decides to have a baby. So they get married at 19 and 21 respectively, boy gets thrown out of parental home because of marriage outside community, finds life too troublesome because of financial and other problems, while girl gets too much occupied with the baby boy and seems not to be caring about her husband at all. At this stage, boy thinks that the girl wanted him only to have a baby and had used him.

After many conflicts, one day the boy says: “I want a divorce”. She doesn’t say anything, as if she was ‘expecting’ it! He now is confirmed that she never loved him, and had just used him to satisfy his craving of having a baby. He still loved her as much as ever, but her cold attitude confirms him that she didn’t love him from the beginning.

They get separated, time passed, and one day he got enough courage to ask the girl: why did she react so calmly when he asked for separation? What she says is a shocking revelation: “Because all my life I’ve learned to suffer in silence”. And then she cries and sheds all her tears that she didn’t do on that day…

Message: Miss-communication can kill relationships. So ask a bit more and don’t get irritated if your partner asks you to clarify something again and again… it will make sure that there is no confusion… Plus, know your partner fully – beyond the level that s/he knows her/himself.

The Book and the Story

The book is written in a different style – it is a collection of memoirs of the people who knew Athena.

The girl used to see angels and other spirits in her childhood (I had written about this Coelho concept, of children seeing their guardian angels). She grows up and has failed relationships. She gets inclined into some strange beliefs and religious things which can be summed up in most simple terms as this: It is like Pagan worship, and the divine is feminine, the Mother to be precise. Method of worship or ritual is music and dancing. They dance on some special music to connect with their divine parts. And in those moments the lady gets into her state of a witch: here she holds her hair in her hands and answers others’ questions and foretells the future, while being occupied by some other divine soul named Hagia Sofia. She goes on to become a sensation, gets a lot of enemies who try to destroy her.

At the end, she had disappeared and people thought she was murdered by religious fanatics. They had reason to murder her – as she was said to be manifestation of The Mother and used to teach some practices (read dancing) which were shaking the conventional wisdom that Church showered on people. I read the entire book thinking that she was murdered. That is what I like most about the book – a happy ending. 

The Witch

Now this is exactly the plain superstition as present in the rural or otherwise India: we call them Mata (Paulo takes exactly the same name of Mother), or some call them Dayan in the wrong sense (here she is called Witch). She makes similar bodily movements to get into a state where she is occupied by someone else’s soul (exactly the way our own Hindi horror-shows describe).

The Mother

Now this is the most happening thing in the current literary world: Dan Brown did that perfectly. Enlightened writers like Paulo Coelho wants us to realise this, so they keep repeating it. They say something like God is feminine. They take inspiration from Pagan beliefs where forces of nature were worshiped. Do they say something new? We all know and wonder why in our Hinduism so many Devis are at the helm. Durga – the Goddess of Strength, Saraswati – the Goddess of Intellect, and Lakshmi – the Goddess of prosperity – they are all feminine. And we have called our ladies Lakshmi from eternity. Because of social corruptions we don’t treat our women as Goddesses, but that is another story.

Music and Dance to connect to the divine

This sounds interesting to me because of the extent to which the writer has jargonised the simple phenomenon. We have for long enjoyed the bhajans and kirtans. Many of our saints have danced and sung in the glory of the Ram or Krishna. Such a simple phenomenon made into a best seller: may be the book was never targeted to the Indians.

Some of my underlines:

~*~

No one manipulates anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they’re doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.

~*~

They say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts, and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contended and at ease with life they are.

~*~

If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it’s necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

~*~

People learn 25% from their teacher, 25% from listening to themselves, 25% from their friends, and 25% from time.

~*~

I have always been convinced that women have a supernatural ability to know what is going on in a man’s soul. They are all witches.

~*~

“It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked”: Khalil Gibran

~*~

Concentrate. If you can find nothing on which to focus your mind, concentrate on your breathing. The Mother’s river of light is flowing in through your nose.

~*~

“My temple is the park, the sky, the water in the lake and the streams that feeds it. My people are those who share my ideas and not those I’m bound to by bonds of blood”: Athena’s gipsy mother.

~*~

The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. According to etiquette this means: “She needs me to do this because she is fragile”, but in my soul is written: “I’m being treated like a goddess. I’m a queen.”

~*~

I am not here to work for the feminist cause, because both men and women are a manifestation of the Mother, the Divine Unity. No one can be greater than that.

~*~

That’s the main aim of life – revelation! You make yourself into a channel; you listen to yourself and are surprised at how capable you are.