Author: binny22

An active blogger, a debutant Novelist , a passionate poet who loves to travel is what could sum me up. I love the internet and all that is connected to computers. I love to explore new areas of knowledge though I may not accept every piece of information.

Deceptive Shadows

It’s that time again—I’ve finally completed my fourth novel, Deceptive Shadows, and it is now in the process of being published. Though it took longer than I had anticipated, every moment has been worth the effort.

As an avid reader, I believe that everyone shares a love for books. It’s this belief that fuels my desire to contribute to the vast literary universe—adding another voice, another story, and perhaps, enhancing its ever-growing décor.

Writing is more than a creative outlet for me; it is a form of transcendence. Each time I write, I am transported to a world entirely of my own making. It is a world where I am omnipotent, where characters take shape under my guidance, and where their destinies unfold as I choose. With every word, I build a universe that is mine to control, yet one I constantly discover.

I delight in the delicate balance of revelation and concealment—offering readers tantalizing glimpses of my characters while carefully unveiling their truths over time. It is this slow unwrapping that I believe keeps the reader’s curiosity and engagement alive.

This parallel world of fiction, constructed with my thoughts and beliefs, brings me immense joy. It lifts me beyond the mundane into realms of adventure, excitement, and mystery—my favourite emotional spaces. Inspired by the Navarasas, the nine emotions of classical Indian aesthetics, I strive to infuse my work with as many of them as possible, enriching the tapestry of my storytelling.

Deceptive Shadows is a gripping tale of suspense that delves into the darkest corners of the human psyche and the enduring mysteries of life and death.

….For the love of a book

It’s been a hectic month so far! Lots have been happening…. I had been sitting on my third book for the last (which I must say has been topsy turvy!) year. I don’t want to go into details but safe to say that I have not stayed at home for a month at a stretch. Either I have been traveling to other cities or the hospital!

Well, I decided enough is enough and proceeded with my publisher to publish the book. “Weave Some More” my latest novel, has literally woven webs of confusion, distractions, and plenty of new learnings.

I learned how important it was to advertise the book, I also learned that I need to join like-minded groups, and also to keep my ear to the ground to hear the rumblings about the book.

Though I have used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to let the world know about the birth of my books, I have not used it methodically (So my publisher says). So I put myself into their expert hands to do the serious work and continued my amateur bumbling on Social Media!

I was soon flooded with a lot of requests from many groups who wanted to follow me or talk about my book or my writing process. It was flattering, to say the least, but it was a lot of work, nevertheless. One more pleasant surprise was how many of them wrote their own interpretations of the book and posted them on different platforms. I am grateful.

Facebook was filled with congratulatory messages from many of my friends and relatives. But I wonder how many of them did read the book. The best compliment a writer ever gets is when he realizes that his book has been read and critiqued (even if it is a bad one!) I am extremely grateful to the handful who made it a point to message me with their thoughts or wrote reviews on various platforms.

I do realize that in this day of the internet and video world, very few have the interest or the inclination to actually read a three-hundred-page book. Being a book lover I do not understand this trend, but then each to his own.

A book is like a living creature. Every time you read it, it throws out new ideas, nuances, and visions. A couple of people argue that what do we need with them? After all the internet is teeming with ideas and entertainment; why go through the pain of reading, exploring, and using your “noodle” to wallow in the pleasure of reading, processing, and creating your own world?

I have no arguments for or against the above theories. Only a book lover can really ‘feel’ the pleasure that seeps through him when he uses a writer’s words to create and travel through a world. The underlined word is ‘create’. It is true that the writer has created a world with his words but your vision of it is your own creation and thus you own it.

Whoever has the time to read this, please do answer the question, “which other entertainment path allows you to create and find fulfillment and gives you ownership of your reactions and emotions?

Lockdown Screen Time

Beyond the trillion Zoom conferences that dot my COVID-19 lockdown, I have another lot of activities that keep me so busy that I have fallen ill twice in the past sixty days!

The first week without the maid was fun. (I love cleaning) With ample help from a house-bound husband and daughter who took care of the heavy duty cleaning, I scrubbed corners, cleaned cupboard tops and used all the ‘You tube’ cleaning hacks possible.

The next week made me traverse the insides of each cupboard, the bookshelves (with lots of nostalgic swamping when I looked at my twenty year old self’s notations on the margins) and bathroom cleaning.

 The third week of course laid me low for three days (Every bone and sinew aching). I was warned by the whole family (specially the doctor via video chat) that I cannot and should not overexert myself. I nodded with pitiful affirmatives and resumed my duties slowly.

The week that followed the lockdown under the lockdown made me sit on my comfortable chair watching Netflix and Prime Video. All the games that I had downloaded on the I-Pad were begging me to indulge them, so my screen time increased from four hours to six hours (lots of admonishment from the lord and master!) then I had to indulge in my voyeurism- all the social media scrolling!

Facebook was of course filled with birthdays and anniversaries and the many stories which can be understood only by the one who posts them! It also had the occasional Instagram posts.

I prefer looking at the Instagram posts on its own app, so off I go, clicking on the link and moving to another world. Here I am offered a number of culinary delights. The world and his wife have taken to cooking the most delicious dishes on the face of the earth and posting them on Instagram. Even the videos posted are no longer dominated by Nature’s beauty, we see the most delicious samosas, casserole, cakes, puddings, rasgollas…. I really cannot tabulate all of them here! New channels have come up from wanna-be cooks and all the housewives who have husbands wielding the video camera! Sadly, the cooking channels that I follow have been relegated to the backseat. It is so much better to see the normal kitchen in the background rather than the uber-efficient ones of the celebrities.

Though not a great cook, I have been feeding my family for over thirty years, so I jumped onto the bandwagon and made my share of rasmalais, jelabis and even pedas. The usual panipuris, rava dosas, idlis and poha were put in attractive dishes, photos were taken with the right amount of lighting but after the deluge of foodography I decided wisely against putting up my pretty pictures.

But the cutest deluge has come from new mommies! I noticed a certain age group of my erstwhile students were turning into new mothers. Lots of cutie quotes (specially as Mother’s Day has just gone by), cuddly babies and adorable new grannies fought for space on my app. The ones without babies put up their doggie instas and successfully captured my attention.

Next of course is Twitter. What then are the birds doing these days? Well, we have the usual political bashers, the fight between the pros and antis. Then of course the statistics of Coronavirus- how many infected, how many dead, which countries and in India which states. Possibility of economic suicide versus own suicide! “My country is worse than yours”, “My leader  is worse than yours” and the best are the NRIs who live in their comfortable lives saying how wonderful India is notwithstanding the miserable level to which the poor have gone to! Here too, I do not dare to offer my own views in the fear of being arrested (One young man was thrown into jail for daring to criticize the All Mighty one (and I do not mean God))

I am not a member of TikTok so I cannot post my dancing videos (I can hear all of you sighing with relief). The news channels say the same thing and I was getting tired of being in front of a screen for almost all my waking hours. So what do I do next?

Feeling as strong as Hercules, I tossed caution to the winds and was back to all my naughty and secretive escapades, namely ‘cleaning spree’. The family members were busy doing their own things, so I got away unnoticed! My stove started sparkling, the kitchen counters were spick and span, all the stuff from the supermarket were put in their rightful places rather than lying about like abandoned puppies and the washer and drier sparkled with happiness with all the love and care I lavished on them.

It was not surprising that on a day when I chose to cook three whole meals, clean four bathrooms, and do the laundry, that my more than half a century old body collapsed, and I was back in bed!

Older and wiser, now I have decided not to trust my adrenalin spiked brain and do my work in moderation.

So two months of lockdown, two collapses, a million food videos, and a trying-to-be-sensible, old but young at heart person is looking forward to a COVID less world where she can do what she loves the most – Travel!

Que sera sera what will be will be…

Dare Me & Other Stories

Four friends, reunited after a decade, set out on a road trip near Jaipur. As they reminisced about the past, they find themselves accosted by a young shepherd boy and his mother in the middle of a desolate forest with an elusive lake on the horizon. The next twelve hours wreak havoc; with old love resurfacing while questioning the ‘justice’ served a decade ago.

Angela lived a quiet life in a Swiss convent until a rich benefactor, Herr Abraham, took her under his wings. While she found peace in  ‘conversing’ with her late mother, Angela’s life changes at an alarming pace when a nun is found murdered. 

An amnesic man found on the streets of New York is revealed to be a wealthy banker from New Orleans. As he tries to piece his life together, a missing puzzle is waiting to be discovered that links his car accident to the lack thereof his injuries.

Many family members experience the same dream. Is there an unfulfilled desire from the unknown, seeking to manifest itself in the real world?

In her collection of fifteen stories, Benita Patnaik leads you into a seemingly benign world; but soon, before long – the layers of normalcy peel away within mere seconds. Revenge, jealousy, greed laced with hatred and desire push each character to live their lives in a cycle of never ending existence. The greyness of the paranormal world leaves you cold with fear; prompting you to draw parallels of its surrealistic nature in your own life.

Hereafter, you would think twice before you ignore the stranger at the bus stop; the wedding anniversary gift sitting on your mantelpiece; a pigeon perched on your ledge every single day; the recurring dreams which have no meaning …today.

Would you dare?

SENSATION

Delightful sensations,

Gave birth to feelings,

And exhausted itself

To dry emotions.

The loving and the hating,

Limped on broken limbs…

And sensations of pleasure,

Were a bondage

Of the creeping pain.

–Benita Patnaik

Destined to win

Sunlight crept in stealthily,

Wrapped itself, round and around

Darkness.

Shadows tip-toed out softly,

Unraveled themselves, open and about

Light.

Memories, dusty shook themselves

Jumped, frolicked, out and outside

History.

Unhappiness paused for a moment,

Kicked discontentment over and inside

Now.

Feelings buckled again, kneeling,

Pleading, praying over and over, in

Circles.

Fate strutted out cocksure

Laughed, gibed, tickled and teased

Destiny.

Benita Patnaik

Dreams- a narrative tool or a distortion of reality?

“I was dressed in a red bridal sari. I walked with bowed head towards the mandap; the shehnai was loud and clear. I could see the pink turbaned head of all the men folk and the colourful saris glittering under the neon light. Suddenly, there was silence and I watched everyone turn in slow motion towards the entrance, which framed a wild looking, but beautiful girl dressed in pink – all in pink.

“Stop this marriage!”

The stunned pundit looked up enquiringly at a man (my father?).

I looked up and my veil fell off my bowed head.

From somewhere a shot rang out and the girl crumpled to her feet, clutching her heart.

I looked triumphantly at someone……………” – “Real Dreams”

The use of dreams in a narrative whether its fiction or real time, is a tool many writers have used over the ages. Dreams, we have been told is our subconscious mind trying to make sense of multiple experiences in our life. The mind simply takes episodes from life puts them, say into a glass jar and shakes them up (whether its random or not has not been proven!) and then pours it out into our sleeping mind in an absolutely new procession of thought.

I have used the dream sequences in my book “Real Dreams” to heighten the mystery surrounding the life of the protagonist and to give the readers a clue to what might have or will happen. As a tool it is sharp, straight and highly effective- instead of explaining things through a huge rigmarole, the short sharp narration tells us a lot, using minimum number of bytes.

“In the Freudian model, the dream gives expression to prior, unconscious dream thoughts (Freud [1900] 1953). From a neurobiological perspective, however, there is no further regression of meaning, because dreams arise from the activation of the forebrain by periodic neuronal activity in the brain stem (Hobson & McCarley 1977). “

We have a million pages on the internet about interpretation of dreams. How practical and cognitive they are is up to the reader’s own identification to what is happening around him. People tend to like, appreciate and believe in things with which they can find a comfortable parallel in their lives. So, what exactly are dreams and how do we find meaning for them?

Are they just chemicals in our brain playing around with our senses and creating holograms? Or are they divine manifestation of God conversing with us (sometimes warning us; sometimes auguring about good times to come)? Or just the tired brain regurgitating some memories to make place for new?

I feel they are all this and more. It is therefore not surprising that even in the epics of Mahabharata and Iliad we have multiple instances of dreams portending the future or using the past to explain certain events.

Films of course have used dreams exclusively for their visual pleasure; to explore the unknown and spiritual aspect of life. Thus, we have a number of horror movies based on dreams; many crime-based movies use dreams to psychoanalyze the perpetrator’s actions; even romantic movies delve into this parallel world to create softness, desire and longing.

What actually makes “dreams” such a flexible and attractive tool? It actually blurs reality and logic. We do not have to follow the dictates of science, logic or social rules, all because it is not supposed to be real! Using this, the creator can state events or thought process without having to cross the “Ts” and dot the “i s”. he can also mould the narrative to enhance the experience of using all our senses.

Dreams are mostly nonlinear narratives. They follow the ‘stream of consciousness’ model; sometimes our mind jumps like a monkey from one branch to other, seemingly without any connection. But if we were to research the dreams, we would find that there is one. A journey on a boat could take us to a bar and then unto a jump from a cliff. On the surface unconnected but look deep we have “Water-drink-suicide”, one could follow the other in a logical manner. I was thinking of the beautiful landscapes of England and then my mind took me to a trek that I had taken years ago and then on to a conversation on hot wine! Everything unrelated but very normal when you think of your thoughts in solitary experience. No wonder they say that “mind is faster than the speed of light!

It would be great to explore this tool in infinitesimal ways and use it to further a narrative, embellish the atmosphere or to simply paint the scenery in different hues. Imagine a world where dreams foretell or foreshadow and trick us into blurring the lines and enhance every moment of our existence!