The first book I read authored by Rani Manicka was the Rice Mother.. The book kept me gripped and I kept running back to it, between the rush of the morning preparations for work, at lunch time, as soon as I got a minute between the cooking in the evening!! just to read a few lines a few pages and finally the full book.. The narration, the description of the people leave me with the feeling that they are close to me and I knew them well from another time in my life, I cried with them, cheered with them and worried and prayed for them!!
Touching Earth, which I read in spite of the authors warning (of this dreadfully sordid world) the characters were as real and as close to me. There were many and I couldn't but admire and some that I couldnt but detest. Like the extremely calm, serene and beautiful Elisabeth. She and Bruce, the self made hair stylist, who live in the centre of this sordid world, emerge unscathed but not untouched. Love and sheer will can get one out of the darkest lives!! Nutan and Zeenat the Balinese beautiful and doll like twins who arrive in London from their idlyc home with swaying palms, calm beaches and ancient customs; only to see complete ruin and death at the hand of a cruel, selfish and unforgiving city! Woven into the story are artists with talents and and inner beauty, prostitutes untouched and unspoiled by the life and living, a wife who hopes against home that one day her husband will come back to her, who leaves home shattered adn slowly rebuilds her life with her kids... The paradoxical coexistance of the deepest friendships, selfish exploits, relentless survivals, dark alleys and beautiful mornings, prostitution and drugs, fine food and night life, dark death. This book kept me as gripped as the Rice Mother..
The title comes from the story of Buddha's enlightenment where he touches the earth gently "position of touching the earth" (bhumi-sparsha mudra). This attitude, refers to that great moment when, on the seat of enlightenment, he called the earth to testify that he had fulfilled all the requirements prerequisite to the attainment of illumination by practicing the highest virtues of self-abnegation throughout his career as a bodhisattva; and the earth, with a mighty roar, then testified that he had done so.
A good read, nice plot, but you wont be spared the ugliness of Heroin addiction and prostitution!! ...
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