As If They Have Control.

Ten Thousand Rupees = 1 Girl.

Sorry, that wasn't clear. Let me say it again.

Ten Thousand Rupees = 1 Girl.

Ten Thousand Rupees = 1 Person.

Ten Thousand Rupees = 1 Human Being

Ten Thousand Rupees, in what ever tragic, heart shattering world Lakshmi lives in, someone just like you, is worth

Ten Thousand Rupees.

I can't even bare to imagine selling a human.

A Human.

I could not be more serious.

I literally just tried to right this next part 6 times. I can't get the words out. I just can't seem to figure this out. I know this destruction of lives has no answer. I know that if you ever tried to help it and solve it would be like holding the wind.

You can't do it.

It's not a matter of how hard you try, it's the plain, boring, selfish, rude, and cold fact that you just can't.

Lakshmi lives in the mountains. And while no one's life is perfect, our lives seem to be compared to hers. But still. Her stepfather may lose all their money. A monsoon may have swept away her crops. Her only chance.

The fact is, while all these things in the mountains were going on, Lakshmi always had a little glisten a hope. Sometimes to be projected, sometimes not. But no matter what, there was always that sweet, short entry in the book Sold by Patricia McCormick that helped us understand that in Lakshmi's mind, there was a little dot of light. No one else could really see it, but it was always Lakshmi who was able to see things through not so dark, gloomy, hopeless eyes.

In the innocent movie Sky High, Will Stronghold and Warren Peace get into a fight in the cafeteria. Being a magical high school, the detention room is a room the takes away all ability to use your super powers. Once you leave the room, you are granted your powers back again.

I will return to this later, I promise.

While of the course of four days Lakshmi has had an aunt, an uncle, and a husband, there was always hope. There was always a speck of a smile hiding under her Sari, you just couldn't always see it. Once brought to the "Happiness House" described as by her Uncle Husband, Lakshmi realizes she has been sold into prostitution.

And may I bring to your attention once again, for Ten Thousand Rupees.

And while I don't want to take up 6 lines like I did before just repeating that one line, I feel as though I can't emphasize it enough.

Dear reader, this poor child has been sold to the broken life for Ten Thousand Rupees. And she doesn't even realize it until she's trying to run away.

Dear reader, with her Auntie and her Uncle Husband even though we couldn't see her hope, and even though it wasn't being described to us, it was still there.

This, reader, was the first time in 113 pages that I couldn't find her hope. The hope.

The only hope, ever.

Lakshmi didn't even know what this place was, and what she was going to do here until it was happening to her right then and there.

And you want to know why she was where she was?

Because she was sold for Ten. Thousand. Rupees.

And the thing that makes me want to scream more than anything is trying to accept the fact that it's not like she had any control what so ever.

As if she could say no to her stepfather for making her go the city.

As if she could get up and walk away from Uncle Husband.

As if she could turn to Auntie and say, "You know what, I don't want to."

As if she could tell her step father the truth, that he was ruining everything.

As if she could tell him he was the reason everything was falling apart.

As if she could tell him he was the reason she was going to the city in the first place.

As if.

As if she'll ever get out of the Happiness House, which really isn't that happy at all. In fact, it's nothing. It's like the detention at Sky High. Except for the fact that there, you can just get up and leave and everything will be back to normal.

But not in Lakshmi's world.

Oh no.

Because.

"...no matter how often I wash

and scrub

and wash

and scrub,

I cannot seem to rinse the men from my body." -Page 129

Coming Home.

I've been feeling kind of lost, like I forgot how to fall in love with reading again.

It's getting a bit fuzzy, like I don't know which book to read and I don't know how to love it like I did before.

Over the summer, I read The Glass Castle and I found myself reading it at every possible opportunity that was given to me to read. I literally never put it down.

When the school year started though, I was in a sort of doubt that the year was coming all over again and one of the many things I pushed away in anticipation was my love for reading. I don't know why that was one of the things I lost in the transition, but my goal until just yesterday had been to get my self back in the zone. To regain my life of reading and living in my reading like I always had.

I discovered that just like working your way up with something small and allowing it to get bigger and bigger until you've mastered it works with reading as well.

There was always that mysterious looking book with the torn cover sitting on the book shelf in my family room. It used to sit along side my mom's old, old, copy of Are You There God, It's Me Margaret. My mom's name was written in the cover, which I only discovered as I stared at the page I had just ripped out, I guess it was that old.

But not like the purple book that smelled like my grandparent's house and soon after my discovery became my favorite book of all times, stood the weird looking green book. It wasn't as appealing, it did not have a pretty girl on the cover, it had a young boy, something that I at the time I wasn't very interested in.

Then, I wanted to read about growing up, the journeys along the way, the steps you need to take to rise above. This boy did not seem to match my expectations.

But then again, don't judge a book by its cover.

Not like it even mattered, anytime I ever brought it up my mom told me to wait another year until I picked it up.

That went on for five years.

I actually forgot about it, up until a few days ago when my mother suggested that maybe I wasn't reading the way I used to? Maybe I needed to get "lost in my reading" once again? I asked her, what book she thought would be good to get me back on track.

She led me right to that book shelf.

The one that I had pushed away too many times in assumption my mom would just move me away from it, again.

But this time, she let me hold the book. She let me see beyond the cover and the mystery and she let me see and hear and feel the words.

No, I let myself see and hear and feel the words.

It was because I was reading a book that almost seemed familiar because I had seen it so many times that I'm now back on track.

I arrived at an activity early and instead of pulling out my cell phone I pulled out a book.

A book.

It was because I was starting out with something kind of home-y that I was able to return to my sanctuary of reading and loving reading.

So now I know, now I know that whenever I am feeling stuck, I should return to a book that I know will be comfortable and relaxing for me to read. That'll be my reminder, my wake up call to never stop loving the words on the page, whether they lie in front of you or not.

Nothing I could ever experience reading Harry Potter.

Scrambled Eggs

Don't worry, I'm almost done with Interpreter of Maladies, I just want to post one more thing about the gorgeous work of my favorite Jhumpa Lahiri.

I woke up one morning and my dad had his nose in about 5 different Indian cook books. My mom kept pulling out different ones saying things like, "If you like stuff like this, you'll love this book." And, "this book is great for these kinds of recipes."

In a way, I think she actually liked that he was so into it. My dad likes to cook, but we never saw him this into it. He was asking questions like, "What's egg curry?" And, "What spices do I need for this?"

My dad is super smart, and as naive as it sounds, he practically knows everything. I think my mom loved that fact that he was coming to her with questions that only she would know the answer to. I loved seeing the pride on her face when she knew the answer and the curiosity in his eyes when he learned something new.

If you read my post last week, you know that my sister Lois is one of the biggest readers I know. My dad on the other hand is never without a book. He also has a blog where he writes about Jewish text, every day life, and more everyday life. It's very important for my dad to always have a book next to him.

Oh gosh, I feel like such a dummy, I'm sure everyone's wondering why on earth this egg curry was such an important factor to one of the great summer days of 2010.

I found out later that day that the night before my mom had convinced my dad--just like she convinced me--to read Jhumpa Lahiri.

I'm realizing just writing this now, that before this happened, I had no intention of allowing Jhumpa's writing into my heart.

I was deprived of her creaminess.

I can't imagine a life without her words flowing through me. I saw that my dad was so mesmerized by her, and I saw that he was taken over by the one tiny, tiny micro idea that didn't even pop out to me the first time I read the last story in Interpreter of Maladies.

In the last story of the brilliant book our character has left his town of Calcutta and is living in a room that he rented out. The house in general is shared by others, but this one room is his.

Just like my mom says that when she lived in England after college the only thing she could afford were eggs, so did our character. Egg curry was his favorite.

As I think now, there is some sort of appeal to the mysterious egg curry.

What makes it so special? So easy? So affordable and cheap, yet so rich and plentiful?

I live for the micro ideas that you and only you can get something out of. I wait for them to come. Patiently, and not eagerly. But still, I long for their arrival.

I anticipate the pleasure of loving something only you could love for only reasons you can know of and understand.

What I'm trying to say is, is that while egg curry may be something that has absolutely no meaning to you, it has every bit of meaning to me.

I got to experience it physically and mentally, which not many readers can do.

I read of the egg curry and imagined it sliding down my own throat, creating a safe and easy barrier and shield for me.

Then, that night, egg curry was served. My dad made it special for us.

By then I realized I didn't have to imagine loving it and letting it slide down my throat.

I knew it.

And it was delicious.

Dear Mrs. Sen

To Mrs. Sen, who never got to drive the way she always wanted. To Mrs. Sen, who's vegetable cutting blade I envy, and to Elliot, who only got a little bit to have a Mrs. Sen.

A few days before summer vacation ended, I lay awake reflecting, as any other person would, on the year to come and the year that had ended. I feared what was to come, and as I looked at my sister, asleep in her bed, I longed to be back in the perfection of 2nd grade, or shall I just say, elementary school, where drawing a picture seemed to be a lot of work.

I saw that 8th grade was here and there were no more summer days to anticipate the arrival.

But then again, I hadn't touched my blog since August, and I did know that with a new year came new reading, and with new reading came new writing.

I was next to my sister Lois when my mom came up to me. It was about 11:00 and we were both reading. My sister is one of the biggest readers I know, I believe she read 15 books over the summer. As much of a committed reader as I am, I could never, ever do that. I was reading a Woody Allen book that was funny, but didn't quench my longing for a satisfying book to end the vacation. Over the summer I never stopped reading, but I did lose touch a bit, and I feel like I got caught up in a vacation mode that it wasn't as much of a reflex to pick up a book the minute I saw as it was before.

Throughout reading the Woody Allen book, my mom could also see, as well as me, that I wasn't loving it. For a while before then my mom kept trying to introduce me to a writer whose name I never could pronounce, thus I wasn't ever going to read it. Maybe the fact that I wasn't enjoying what was currently in my hands motivated me to try this mysterious author.

And now, Jhumpa Lahiri has come into my life. As I said while describing her writing to my English teacher Ms. Robbins at the beginning of the year, her words are so smooth and in a way give off a creamy factor. There's such a flow and in a way it's easy to read everything she has to say. Jhumpa, I feel , has the ability that not many authors have which is to be able to appeal to all audiences. And while my sister Minna would never be able to read Jhumpa Lahiri's book on her own, she sure could listen and I promise you she would like it.

Anyway, on the occasion of this fine day where I get to write my first blog entry of the year, I decided (obviously) to devote it to Jhumpa Lahiri, especially one of her short stories from the book Interpreter of Maladies, "Mrs. Sen."

I'm sorry, but I think Mrs. Sen is just the coolest person in the world. I can't get over it.

She does this thing where she sits on the floor, newspapers laid out everywhere, and she cuts vegetables. Sometimes, when she's done, she puts them in a pot and makes dinner, and sometimes she just throws them out.

And why would cutting vegetables be such an important element in my annotating of books? Well, Jhumpa, being Indian herself, incorporates very important craft moves intentionally. In Jhumpa Lahiri's stories, it's as if she's made a little stamp on each and every character; every character has left India so go live some where else. This cutting of vegetables just brings up the fact that this is one of the things that Mrs. Sen did back at home.

One of my favorite parts of the story is when Mrs. Sen is shares a story with Elliot, whom she babysits after school. Mrs. Sen tells Elliot of how, back in India, she and all of her friends and her mother and all of her friends you sit to around for hours gossiping, and yes, cutting vegetables.

Yesterday at the Bard Assessment I responded to a poem about shooting a basket while playing basketball. I had a hard time digging deep and I didn't find myself having as many annotations as I did for, say, Charlotte's Web; but I did find one thing that reminded me of the little idea of cutting vegetables becoming so much. I found a line in the poem that consisted of 3 words, but said so, so much. I read it thinking about how beautiful and hard I think it is as a writer to get across a bigger message is something so small.

Though maybe cutting vegetables isn't as much of a message as what I read in the poem, it still had more meaning to me then I thought it would the first time I read it. I also think it's such a treat when you rarely come across little crafts like that, and I hope that for the few occasions I do, I hope to soak up as much of its goodness as I possibly can.

Here's to another great year of blogging!
Audrey:)