Joyce Job's Blog, page 5
December 25, 2022
The Blue Rabbit
Book Title: The Blue RabbitSwapna Peri’s thoughts on my book ‘The Blue Rabbit.’
Author: Joyce Job
No.of pages: 96
About the book
This book contains poems that are very inspirational, thoughtful, heartwarming & hope-giving. Also, some poems are about the beauty of nature, mind, self & relations. The language used is simple but with deep meanings. There are poems where rich vocabulary is used. The book title itself is abstract and thoughtful.
About the author
Joyce Job, a writer on various online platforms, writes under the pen name Lirio Machito. Poems, short stories, book reviews and blogs are her interests. She writes in Malayalam and English languages. She hails from God’s own country, Kerala, where there is no shortage of art. Readers can find her writings at http://www.liriomachito.com. This book of poems comes from her ever-searching mind and concerned thoughts about the world, environment and nature.
My thoughts:
Poetry is the art form where a…
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October 18, 2022
The Blue Rabbit by Joyce Job
Review of my first book, The Blue Rabbit, by Haritha Sundar.
The BLUE Rabbit by Joyce Job
A world of emotions, thoughts to reflect upon, and emotions and feelings.
Haven’t we all fancied colouring our worlds a little bit different, like those toddlers who never felt any discomfort in expressing themselves through all the ways. The Blue rabbit is one such poem. A little girl named Keli with all the joy in the world, bursts in to sit next to the author. She shows us what it is like to colour the world with one’s own choice. She paints the rabbit in her sketchbook with a blue crayon. The author had brilliantly chosen the wording here,
It’s a rabbit that needs colours now;
wonder if she knows what colour they come in,
‘coz she picks a little blue crayon swiftly
and starts scraping it all over the shocked rabbit.
The choice to make the rabbit shocked is just how we might…
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September 19, 2022
Book Review: A Kind Wish by Jashan Sidhu
“Nothing hypes me up like kindness these days.”
When you have lived a considerable number of years in this world, 29 in my case, it’s natural to feel a bit lethargic or numb to most of the external stimuli or ideas around you. We read so much negativity in our news and witness too much hate on social media every day that we have become too tolerant of them. When I was in my teenage years, I used to feel so charged up and angry when I heard a misogynistic sentence or conversation at my home, school or in my neighbourhood. In my early 20s, corruption, scams, and cases of domestic violence or sexual abuse used to boil my blood so much that I felt the need to react to them in some way. Cut to 29; am I really the same person who used to rebel about the things she hated every day?
I’ve gotten used to the idea that we live in an unfair, imperfect world. I know good movies always have grey characters instead of black and white ones because real life only has grey characters. We are all grey. We have all done something we are not proud of. Something that makes us feel disappointed about ourselves. Hurting a friend with our words, letting down our family at a moment when they needed us a lot, not loving enough, hesitating on truth or delaying a just act; we’ve all done something we wish we could correct. I look back at many past moments in my life and reexamine the things I believe I had done right and wonder: I wish I had focused more on being kind instead of being right.
I recently read the book ‘A Kind Wish’ by Jashan Sidhu published by Papertowns, India. I would classify it under the genres like ‘Children’s books’ and ‘Fantasy’. It is a book that focuses on the theme of kindness. It has characters with both light and darkness. But the characters like the protagonist Dave or his love interest, Elaine, are people who always know the right thing to do in even the most difficult moments. They always choose love and kindness, despite the hardships that they have to endure for it.
King Arthur and Queen Svanne of the Kingdom Blestaire had huge hopes for the Servotum or the magical awakening ceremony of their firstborn child, Prince Dave. But crushing an entire kingdom’s hope, Dave became the first person to be born in Blestaire without magic. His parents abandoned him. A maid was assigned the task of bringing up him as her child. The people in the kingdom were warned not to talk about the incidents. If they did, they were burned to death.
As a man without magic, the whole kingdom disrespected and hated him, except the kids and his invisible, comical friend Ling. Despite a life of hardship, Dave has only love and kindness in his heart for others. But he isn’t always too kind to himself. He dreams of creating a world without hatred. But the sorrow and pain inside him surrounded him like a cold winter of loneliness. That is when Elaine enters his life like cherry blossoms on snow, like a beautiful spring. The events that ensue their encounter change their lives around. If I had to sum up this book in one line I would say – in a tale with magic and monsters, love and hate, poetry and prose, kindness takes centre stage.
The story reminded me so much of the barbie stories I watched as a kid. A kingdom, an abandoned child, a magical friend, a love interest, an evil villain, monsters – the book has all the tropes of a Cinderella story. The picturisation of the scenes within the story reminded me so much of Japanese, Chinese or Korean movies I’ve watched; maybe because of the mountains, the spring, the forest, the trees, flowers, and the cherry blossoms on the snow. The narration that uses both poetry and prose hints at a skilled craftsman behind the pages.
As adults who think negativity and darkness are the reality, the idea that kindness can triumph over evil might seem so idealistic or fairytale-ish. But I think the kids will love reading it. As I already hinted at the beginning of this write-up, nothing hypes me up like kindness these days. So even though this is a black-and-white, dream-like, far-from-reality-ish story, I loved reading it.
The book is full of long but quotable quotes. I also enjoyed the quotes about kindness from other authors added at the beginning of each chapter. I couldn’t help but notice issues in areas like punctuation that could be solved by one more round of proofreading. Eg: double punctuation – ,.
Overall it was a refreshing, positive, short read for me with just 59 pages. My rating is 3.5/5.
“In the core of their hearts, all people are kind. It’s just that sometimes the world gets to them faster than the beats of their heart, and they forget all about kindness. It just goes on to show that they have not witnessed the kind of magic that slows down the world around you and makes you appreciate the wonders and genius that have always been around them.”
September 7, 2022
Poem: Books Don’t Leave
Books don’t leave;
they don’t abandon;
they don’t walk away;
they don’t give up.
They stay on shelves all their lives,
waiting for the right reader.
Even when their pages are torn
and papers turn yellow,
when they’re touched by dirty fingers
or licked and turned,
when their spine breaks
or binding gives away,
when ink drops blotch them
or people scribble ruthlessly,
when silverfishes slither in
or termites bore through them,
they stay…
Even in wrong rooms
and wrong hands,
in the dusty bookshelves of
second-hand bookstores and libraries,
the neglected sections of book sales,
they wait for those readers
who will get them truly…
Sometimes they wait untouched,
or once read and forgotten,
or abandoned in resales,
or given up midway,
just before the climax
or right after a few pages…
They wait, bearing
the names and scribbles and love notes
of their ex-readers, ex-owners, and ex-lovers,
never abandoning the possibility of that one true reader.
Unlike the authors who give them away to their readers
for money and profit,
and fame and recognition,
and the high of being understood and loved,
and unlike the ex-readers who gave up on them
for guilty-pleasures,
they wait.
Even in other hands,
dog-eared, scribbled,
torn, discarded,
they yearn for you,
the ones who can delve into her depths,
won’t give up at the shallows.
They stay yours
bearing your name, your signature,
your thoughts, your scribbles,
as lines you once underlined for your loved ones,
they stay.
Books have a way of coming back to you
in memories, in thoughts, in dreams, in ideas
with deep pangs and longing
maybe you are too immature to understand
or appreciate fully, even now.
Is it a one-sided love,
a toxic relationship,
the one between a book
and the right reader?
I wonder sometimes.
Maybe books need a break, too.
They deserve better.
Maybe books should walk away
from dark places
where they are unappreciated,
run straight to the arms of the right reader
and ask them out on a date.
August 18, 2022
Brevity: Love & False Hope
What a false sense of hope
When you walk into the room
What a giant leap of faith
When you hold me with your eyes
May 1, 2022
Poem: Caterpillar-feet
Is that all that we will ever have:
Our sorrows
Buried by
Greater sorrows?
Our losses
Trivialized by
Greater tragedies?
Our betrayal
Shadowed by
Greater injustices?
One followed by another
Like train-wheels,
caterpillar-feet,
ants on a sugar-rally…
Life is but a pointless attempt
at significance
by a narcissist,
to be loved, claimed, valued…
to feel relevant, to belong
But is it really worth all the hype?
In the end
Isn’t it just an absurd play:
a waiting-for-godots,
the blind leading the blindest,
the weak leading the weakest…
You wake up,
Laugh at yourself,
Laugh at the world
And go on…
Just shadows falling on faces
The moon faces
The swells and the ebbs
Life is a tragedy, a comedy,
a thriller, a crime, even a fantasy…
We are all looking for a lover, a killer, a fairy
Who doesn’t want to be found
We are all victims
We are all culprits
None of us deserves redemption
None of us deserves to be saved
But we wait…
Like kings and queens
Gardened in luxury,
Slithering with entitlement…
Caterpillar-feet
Is that all that we will ever have:
Our sorrows
Buried by
Greater sorrows?
Our losses
Trivialized by
Greater tragedies?
Our betrayal
Shadowed by
Greater injustices?
One followed by another
Like train-wheels,
caterpillar-feet,
ants on a sugar-rally…
Life is but a pointless attempt
at significance
by a narcissist,
to be loved, claimed, valued…
to feel relevant, to belong
But is it really worth all the hype?
In the end
Isn’t it just an absurd play:
a waiting-for-godots,
the blind leading the blindest,
the weak leading the weakest…
You wake up,
Laugh at yourself,
Laugh at the world
And go on…
Just shadows falling on faces
The moon faces
The swells and the ebbs
Life is a tragedy, a comedy,
a thriller, a crime, even a fantasy…
We are all looking for a lover, a killer, a fairy
Who doesn’t want to be found
We are all victims
We are all culprits
None of us deserves redemption
None of us deserves to be saved
But we wait…
Like kings and queens
Gardened in luxury,
Slithering with entitlement…
April 15, 2022
Book Review: The Blue Rabbit – by Joyce Job
Book Blurb:
Review:
51 poems spread over 3 sections: People, Love and Search.
Teaser
Two Lives
Craving to write a simple “love” or “mirage”
in a piece of code.
Typing out of a desire
then deleting out of necessity;
“aroma” or “drizzle” or “rainbows”.
In an infinite maze of “ifs” and “elses”
I stand broken, my emotions wrecked.
Poetry lost in logical dilemmas,
stories buried in broken thoughts,
characters strangled to meet deadlines,
plots caught in the catastrophes of demands.
Here I am a lost writer,
writing programs for a living.
The same 26 letters of the English alphabet,
plus some numbers and symbols –
the narrow strait connecting
my two lives.
I have always been critical of poem collections by newer poets. I guess, I tend to compare them with the greatest of poems that I have admired since childhood. Having said that, I consciously try to avoid…
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March 28, 2022
Blog: Advice to My Teen-Self
Recently, on LinkedIn, the chief editor of a prominent Indian magazine for teenagers asked me if I would be interested in writing articles for them. I was flattered(to say the least). It’s an honour to contribute articles to a magazine, right? Usually, my friends and family only ask me to prepare their resumes or to suggest captions for their social media posts. Not that it’s any less honourable. I feel happy that my loved ones value my opinion in these areas, even though I rarely update my resume or social media accounts. (Nope, being lazy and outdated is not an ideal to aspire for.)
Anyway, I readily agreed to the chief editor’s request. As soon as I replied, he shared his email id and WhatsApp number for future correspondence. Fair disclaimer: I haven’t turned in any articles yet. However, for the last few days, I kept observing the teenagers(and their parents) around me, searching for an apt topic to start my series of articles. Mobile phones & video games, friendship & romance, exams & grades, movies, music, cartoons, celebrities, food & health, corona, impact of the pandemic on teenagers, online & offline classes, indoor/outdoor games, teenage leaders, activists and their global movements against social injustices and environmental degradation, impact of wars and migration on teenagers and children — there were scores of topics to choose from.
Instead of selecting a topic and starting the work on the article right away, I indulged in a bit of ‘nostalgic reminiscence of my teenage days.’ As a teenager, I didn’t have access to smartphones or video games. I was ignorant about cars, gadgets, makeup and fashion. I didn’t watch the news or read newspapers regularly; I wasn’t fully aware of my surroundings or the people around me. I didn’t fully understand puberty or the changes in my body and mind during that period. Nobody talked to me about sex or sexual abuse. The first time I heard about ‘good touch and bad touch’ was during Aamir Khan’s Satyamev Jayate’s episode on ‘Child Sexual Abuse.’ Falling in love was treated like a sin at home. So, I learned to hide my feelings. But in turn, ended up slacking in other areas of my life like studies, social interaction, communication, self-confidence etc I wasted time on Orkut and daydreaming. I made blind career choices based on what was available/expected from me instead of what I liked.
While pondering through these thoughts, memories and regrets, I felt a sudden urge to write a list of info/advice that could have helped me make better decisions as a teenager and reduce my present regrets. Here goes:
Focus on your studiesEat well(a balanced diet) – Don’t skip mealsExercise/ Go outside and play with friends/family every daySleep early, wake up earlyRead newspaper/Watch news dailyReduce the time spent on TV/Orkut/Facebook(For this generation – reduce time spent on mobile phones, TV and internet)Visit new places, meet new peopleRead more books(across various genres)Watch good movies(say, one movie per weekend)Write diary entriesIdentify your areas of interest(both in studies and hobbies)Learn to communicate effectively(With family, friends, teachers, etc). It is crucial in both personal and professional life, to take care of both your personal and professional relationships. Express your feelings and thoughts. Make mistakes and learn from them.Identify what you like and dislike in peopleEducate yourself about puberty/Sex education from healthy sourcesTry new things(like a new hobby, learning to play a musical instrument, or participating in a new sport, dance, yoga, etc) Also learn basic skills like cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, gardening, swimming, cycling, driving etc(without any gender bias). It’s okay to have a crush on someone. It’s okay to fall in love with someone. If your choices in love don’t follow the conventions, there is nothing to worry about. Educate yourself about the LGBTQIA+ community. Talk to your parents/family members and friends. Learn to express your feelings. Be sensitive to the emotions of other people also.It’s okay to get rejected in love. It’s okay for your first/nth love to be a disaster; it’s not the end of the world. People have different tastes and preferences. It is not about whether you are good enough for them or not. It’s about compatibility. Eg: Some people like perfumes made of Lavender, while others prefer perfumes made of Roses or Jasmine. None of them is wrong. They have the right to choose. Lavenders, roses and jasmines don’t get offended; neither should you. You also have the right to choose, the right to walk away from toxic/incompatible people and relationships. Don’t compare yourself to others(whether it’s your grades, physical appearance, tastes, background or abilities). You shouldn’t judge yourself or your body based on society’s standards. Don’t try to impress anyone/society. Only try to be the best version of yourself.It’s okay to fail – Failure is inevitable. You cannot avoid it. Learn to live through failures. Make plans for failure situations also. i.e. Imagine you took a lottery ticket. You will have ‘n’ plans to do if you win the lottery. You should also have a plan for the scenario where you don’t win the lottery.(Life is not ‘do or die.’ It is not hit or miss. You shouldn’t indulge too much in success and failures. Life is a leveller. It is full of ups and downs. Life is not fair; it doesn’t owe you anything. Just do what you enjoy; enjoy what you do.
In the real world, you will find that champions are not people who constantly win or never fail; they are people who work consistently and make outstanding comebacks despite their failures.)The real world is not black and white; real people are not good or bad. They are grey. They have flaws; they make mistakes. Sometimes they make a promise and don’t keep it. Sometimes they disappoint us; they leave us. Being flawed is humane. Know that you are flawed too. Be compassionate and kind to people. Nobody is perfect. You don’t know what they are going through. Love others. Be empathetic to their emotions.Learn time management. Also, learn to spend time and money wisely. Practise self-love. Nurture self-confidence.Learn to live with people of different opinions, backgrounds, beliefs, etc. You don’t have to accept/follow their views or beliefs, but you have to learn to respect others and their choices. Different people should learn to live harmoniously with each other. You don’t have to tolerate racism, gender inequality, bullying or any such social injustices. But you should avoid prejudices, hatred, generalizations, etc towards different people and communities.Take care of nature. Be compassionate to animals. Don’t live in the past or worry too much about the future. Be fully present in your todays’ and nows.’ Pray/Meditate daily.Be grateful.Find joy in the little things.If required, never hesitate – Ask for help. It’s okay to not be okay.
This list can go on and on. If I’ve missed any important points or if you wish to add more points, please let me know in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Good day! 
December 26, 2021
To the prince-not-so-charming
To think that the little bird waited
all these years
for a prince-not-so-charming
In the end
Is such a relief to know
To let go
To fly away
Freed
By the absence of love and care
Freed
By the absence of warmth and truth
She looks back longingly at her chains
(His smile and those eyes)
Institutionalized
Love and romance
Isn’t it too overromanticized by books and movies?
Isn’t it too overrated?
What’s all the hype about?
What do I know?
Just that, true love shouldn’t hurt so bad
Just that, true love shouldn’t make someone feel so empty
Just that, once your conversation is over, the tears that trickle down your cheeks shouldn’t burn and fume
It’s over, I say and smile
In the end, the only arms that held me
Belonged to my friends and family.
And it’s such a relief that on my worst days
words still don’t abandon me
poetry never fails to soothe
fellow poets never stop from listening
Nothing special, dear ones
Just that, I got my closure, at last
Just that, I realised, closure wasn’t what my heart wanted
I bent down to write about hate
But all I could jot down is the longing
Pablo Neruda’s longing… ‘but how I loved her.’
I wish to say that I hate you
that I love you… but those words have abandoned me
Instead, let me just jot down narcissistically
I miss being understood
I miss the possibility of love
I miss sharing my grand plans with you
But never again
never again
never again
will I ever come begging
My heart is yet to get used to it.
But it’s the truth – it’s over.
You and I will never be us again.
