Hawk's Eye Reivews



Review of 'THE GREETING CARD' - A Short story by Nada Rajan

Reviewed by Sidharth 


The story starts with the arrival of birthday greeting to a girl. It was from her college crush. Then she revisits her memory lane where she first met him, how she felt for him, how she never talked to him, and always regretted it, and then back to the present , there was letter attached to the card, it turns out he too feels the same way, regretting. He asked her to meet him, and she was waiting in café wondering whether all this are real.

Story is narrated with the girl's view, very neatly written clean story, the phrase "Topsy turvy " doesn't with the character's attitude, just a minor one, i m not sure whether the author has a sense of humour or not, but the lines "seniors welcomed me" "asked to perform entertainment programs" felt funny description of ragging.

One of the thing, that i liked about this story, there was no name mentioned in the story, even the pronouns are little vague, i assumed the lead character as girl, of-course it's obvious but the story still can be coming of age gay story. Either way is fun to read. Also i liked the phrase "yours and wanting to ever remain so". I’m gonna use it in my letters, if letters still exists in future.

On an emotional level, the story felt true, reminded me of my college crush with whom I never spoke to, well that's for another day. A good feel light story, all the best to the author.







Childhood of Jesus: A Story with a Difference

-Arshad Ahammad A


J M Coetzee always surprises his readers with mysterious and multi-dimensional stories. His latest novel Childhood of Jesus (March 2013) relates the wonderful tale of an old man and a small boy. Both of them lack identity and memories of their past, and are immigrated to a new land which is also unknown. In the new place, they are given the names Simon and David respectively. Everything about the two and their new place is quite interesting and mysterious. In the new land, they speak Spanish but this does not suggest that this land is Spain. Another interesting thing is that the boy is not the son of the old man and there is no relationship between the two. They call each other ‘friend’. 

Simon always tells that his duty is to help David to find his mother. During his journey he accidentally saw the boy who missed a letter which mentions the details about his mother. It is understood that their new place is a refugee camp where the immigrants are given jobs as well as rooms or flats for dwelling. The old man and the boy start to live in that unknown land. There they met two women. There starts the twist....

Their new town is called Novilla. Simon’s duty is to find David’s mother. He strongly believes that he can recognise David’s mother at the very first glance even though he never saw her in life. He calls this belief ‘conviction’, not magic, not even intuition. Simon and David meet a woman and her son. The names of the woman and her son are Elena and Fidel respectively. The two boys become friends. One day, Simon happens to see a woman (Ines) playing tennis with her sullen brothers in La Residencia, a place near Novilla. Simon believes that she is the mother of David. Without any hesitation, he directly approaches Ines and asks her whether she is ready to come as the mother of David. She does not show any shock or wonder hearing this strange request, but simply refuses the proposal.

Although she refuses Simon’s proposal first, Ines comes to the apartment of Simon and David to become David’s mother. Simon hands over his apartment to Ines and David and spends his nights in tents near his workplace. Ines soon discourages David from having friendship with Fidel and stops his violin class taught by Elena. She does not ‘act’, but ‘live’ as David’s mother. Sometimes she does not even allow Simon to see David when David is asleep, and cruelly closes the door!

Ines has no interest in sending David to school as she believes that a normal school life is not effective for a child like David. Instead, she herself teaches him. David has so any doubts regarding all the things he sees or hears or perceives. Ines says that she and Simon have great patience to clear all his doubts. But in a classroom where so many students are engaged at a time, David’s doubts will remain unanswered.

Elena and Alvaro (Simon’s friend in the workplace) scold and criticise Simon for bringing Ines in between David and himself and mock at his claim that he can recognize faces from the past though he arrives at Novilla with no memories. But Simon has no repentance in doing this. He says, “It is true. I have no memories. But images still persist, shades of images. Something deeper persists too, which I call the memory of having a memory”.

In the meantime, David is sent to school as the rules of Novilla demands the schooling of every child.... But his official education is not so effective as foreseen by Ines. The school authorities summon Ines and Simon and ask them to send David to another school situated far away. But that attempt is also a failure in David’s case. David meets a strange man named Daga who, for David, is a magician. He gives David a gift which can help him to be invisible.

Finally Ines and Simon decide to quit the place. They start their peregrination. During the journey David shows abnormal behaviour... He claims himself as invisible. He asks Ines and Simon whether they can see him or not. The boy has an accident with his eyes. They think that his eyes are in danger. In Esperanza they meet a doctor for a consultation. The doctor examines him in detail and tells that he is ok with his eyes. Surprisingly David invites the doctor too to go with them to Estrellita, another city, for a new life like that in Novilla. David has such a strange character.

They all are going to Estrellita (seems to be another Novilla) and will find a Relocation Centre. There they will say, “Good morning, we are new arrivals, and we are looking for somewhere to stay” (the same words they have said at the Relocation centre at Novilla at the beginning of the novel).... to start a new life with new names, having no memories of the gone days at all...... Coetzee may store the rest of the story for another time.

Critics differently opine on the significations of the extraordinary story of David. Though the novel starts as a simple, easy readable narrative, it begins to pass through convoluted stages. Lucid dialogues become instances of philosophic discussions. The conversations between Simon and Daga, between Simon and Alvaro and between Simon and Ines are often noetic disquisitions. Novilla, the strange relocation land is yet another Macondo (the magic land of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude) which is not there before or after the reading of the novel. The same is the case of the characters as they disappear or change their identity in each city they enter. Also the leading characters have no memory of their past life as in the case of the people of Macondo....







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‘Paradise (is Better) Lost’: In Defense of the Fall
- Arshad Ahammad A







Jayakumar, Gayathri. 'Paradise Is Better Lost.' Blossoms In The Mist . Bloomington: Partridge, 2014. Print.


Through the poem ‘Paradise is Better Lost’ the poet attempts a secular realization of the religious myth of Adam and Eve. Manifestations of the story of the Great ancestors have been enriched literature since time out of mind. Here the young poet too exploits the most discussed tale of the Fall of Man from Paradise which instigates her wild imagination to burst out into a fine piece of verse. 

The poem is in the form of a dialogue between Adam and Eve after they were suspended from Heaven for disobeying God’s command by eating the forbidden fruit. They have been tempted by a serpent to do so. Adam, who is terribly grieved and frustrated by the ‘Lost’, speaks first. He laments by commemorating the unaltered life they have experienced in the Paradise. But Eve has a different view. She prefers to the new world where seasons change. Blooming of flowers, withering of leaves, decaying of fallen fruits and the fall of snow and rain from the sky amuse and enthrall her. Above all she thrills at her power to produce the ‘miniature copies’ of them. Enraptured by Eve’s ability, Adam wants her to create more little ones of them all over the world. He calculates that by doing this, they can make God jealous of them and He may call them back to Heaven from where He ousted them for a silly crime they have committed. 

To Adam, Eve has committed a folly, not a sin. Here the poet juxtaposes folly with illness. Adam defines such an illness as Evil – ‘Eve’s ill’ and the serpent that persuaded such an ill should be called ‘devil’. Here the poet artistically and skillfully questions and decries a strong belief preached by the religion about sin and its inception from Eve. 

The first couple wonder when Eve delivers a baby who looks like both of them. And the baby’s face evokes in Eve the strong motherly emotions and she feels a passion to breastfeed the infant. First instance of such a thing in human history! It is an unequal reward to all mothers when the poet, through the tongue of Adam, asks Eve about her capacity to sustain the mankind:

‘What power do you hold Eve that you can create the likes of us?’ 

Adam tells Eve that they should not behave like God when their children commit mistakes. They (their children) should not be denied any place or thing on Earth like God forbade the fruit to them. 

Eve does not want to go back to Paradise. To her, heaven was ‘such a monotonous place’ where freedom is vetoed, even if whatever else is permitted. It is a place where nothing changes. Unlike Heaven, this earth is filled with different sorts of things. Nature deposits several wonders for them in every time. On Earth, both of them experience a strange passion towards each other which they haven’t felt at paradise. When they had eaten the fruit an insane love evoked in them. They have become charged with sexual desire. Eve realizes at last; “The fruit was truth! And we realized our position”. It is that fruit which help Adam to find Eve’s charm, their mutual love and the meaning of their life. 

Constancy is the icon of paradise; movement and difference are of Earth. Both of them understand that they have lost only a pretty place about which they no longer need to lament. Instead, it is better and wiser to live happily whereto they have been exported. 

The poem powerfully upholds the freewill of man (of course, woman too) about which Adam and Eve taught their children. Humans become different from other creatures when they apply this freewill. Unlike the Adam and Eve introduced by the religious scriptures, here they possess identity, a good philosophical taste and rational thought. Gayathri’s Eve is an obstinate woman with an individualistic spirit, is an icon of female resistance against the patriarchal absolutism. Both Adam and Eve are rebellious to the tyrannical nature of their Creator and decide to live their life according to self-developed ideals with respect to the ways of Earth, not to the rules of Heaven.

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