In this delicately constructed memoir-in-essays, Reeta Gupta describes her experiences with unadorned prose that conveys a startling specificity. There is so much to admire in this brave, fierce and deeply intimate memoir. There is no flowery language here, no false flourishes designed to obscure or somehow extract beauty from the events she recollects with unflinching clarity. It’s a simple story which starts with a life-altering event by the author and what made her realise the lessons of life.
In the writer’s opaque understanding of herself, there are a series of incidents; For instance, her bewildering childhood, her father, whose presence fizzled to nothing before his premature death, her mother’s struggles, a home, in which almost everything was left unsaid for her and her sister, her scuffle with her in-laws and finally embarking onto the route of entrepreneurship with The Network.After the protagonist, it's her mother who makes you ponder over the character and stays with you even after you finish reading it. Sometimes you want to shake her out of her stupor; other times you feel desperately sorry for her. Her deafening silence sends chills down your spine and makes you wonder on how one could go longest without succumbing to the weakness of speaking.
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The reader can look out for the writer’s indigenous concepts like THECO (The Chosen One) and AIGE (Am I Good Enough) which delves into a whole new concept of introspection.The book is divided into 3 parts i.e. 'the why', 'the how' and 'the conclusion' but fails to follow the rule of ‘Chekov’s Gun’ and has some loose ends. For instance, in one chapter we know that the protagonist is very excited as her uncle is coming back from Muscat, you’re invested in the excitement level of the kid, but you don’t really know what happened next. The chronological order was also missing at certain points, in one scene there are incidents that occurred when she was 14 and in the other scene, she was 13. However, this can be excused as you’ll still be invested in the story.
With excerpts from Heena Sindhu, Kailash Satyarthi, Kapil Dev, Deepa Malik and Malini Agarwal, Re-Script your Life by Reeta Gupta is a perfect beginners guide for readers interested in the genre of self-help before delving into the contemporaries like The Alchemist, Dale Carnegie or Rhonda Byrne series. The fact that the first-print copies of this book were presented to members at the UNESCO office in Geneva and it is one of the few English books from India to be stocked at the Russian State Library of foreign literature makes it all the more compelling.
Bits Of Brilliance From The Book:
∼ I realised there was no pleasing those who gave themselves a reason to be displeased.
∼ Because the story that you tell yourself has to go beyond the labels that are given to you.
Book Details: Publisher- Rupa Publication | Genre- Non-fiction | Date of Release- June 2018 | Hardcover- 171 pages
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