Skip to main content

My Book Review of 'Kintsugi' by Anukrti Upadhyay

According to Wikipedia, “Kintsugi ("golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi ("golden repair") is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, a method similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.”

Kinstsugi – A novel by Anukrti Upadhyay tells the stories of women who have fractured relationships and try to make something beautiful out of the fragments of their lives. The first chapter is about Haruko, a part-Japanese, part-Korean woman who comes to India to learn traditional meenakari enamel work after completing her program at a design school abroad. She is an apprentice to Madanji, a fourth-generation goldsmith who takes her on as a favour to someone and is unaware of her gender until she arrives. 




“Everyone knew that women were not allowed to learn the craft of goldsmiths and artisans”. Haruko defies the traditional order by learning a craft that is reserved for menfolk. During her stay, she meets with an accident and injures herself, which leads her to meet a doctor who is engaged to someone in Japan. The chapter tells us about the fragility of relationships and the art of finding beauty in broken things. As she puts it “Not all vessels are meant to hold water, some are for allowing water to seep away.” “Broken things are precious, too.”

The second chapter ‘Meena’ explores the damaged relationship between Yuri and her mother, which leads Yuri to make unconventional choices in her life and exert an influence on Meena’s life.

The third chapter, ‘Leela’ picks up where ‘Haruko’ leaves off. It involves some of the same characters from the first chapter and Leela, one of them, inspired by Haruko before her,  learns the art of “thewa”. Tayaji offers to teach her since she sees “the soul of beauty in damaged ornaments”. Tayaji says “your biradari does not allow a girl to be taught these things. My own clan does not involve daughters or daughters-in-law in our art.” Madanji has a problem with Leela making and selling “ornaments like a common sunar of the bazaar”. How she finds her own independence and returns “home on winged feet” forms the rest of the chapter. In a way, her story arc so far is similar to Haruko’s. 

The stories of Yuri, Prakash and Hajime form the rest of the novel. Set in Japan and Jaipur, Kintsugi follows the lives of these characters as they break and join again in unexpected ways.

Classified under literary fiction, this novel is written by Anukrti Upadhyay who is the author of Dhaura and Bhaunri ( 2019). The novel has a streak of feminism running through it. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Book Review of 'Bitch Goddess for Dummies'

Recently, I attended a zoom session on chick lit by the Chennai Lockdown Literary Festival (CLLF). In the session, one of the speakers was Maya Sharma Sriram. I was so impressed with the way she conducted the session and answered the questions that I decided to pick up her chick lit novel, ‘Bitch Goddess for Dummies’ brought out by Rupa Publications in 2012. And I was not disappointed. I’m not sure if I was biased toward the book by the personality I had seen on zoom or not, but I quite enjoy chick lit and have read several chick lit novels in my thirties.   So the novel is about a 27-year-old woman Mira Iyer who decides to transform her personality from good girl to ‘bitch goddess’ to deal with the people in her life. Her mom who is constantly trying to fix her up with some eligible guy so that she can get married and Sanya, the real office bitch who is always cosying up to their bosses and vying for a promotion, are just two of the people in her life causing her angst. So it’s goodby

Audiobook review “The Anger Management Workbook for Women: A 5-Step Guide to Managing Your Emotions and Breaking the Cycle of Anger.”

Why is it that when a woman gets angry, so many people have a problem with it while the stereotype of “the angry young man” is accepted?     Julie Catalano MSW LICSW has explored women’s anger in her audiobook “ The Anger Management Workbook for Women: A 5-Step Guide to Managing Your Emotions and Breaking the Cycle of Anger .” It is narrated by Gabra Zackman .   Julie Catalano provides evidence-based tools to handle anger and tries to remove the taboo around women’s anger.  Women often tend to feel ashamed of themselves after an angry outburst. The audiobook explores the idea that women no longer need to meet “the feminine ideal.”   The causes of anger are explored: disrespectful treatment, unjust situations and unfairness. If you swallow your anger or suppress your anger, you get psychosomatic illnesses. The author references other books like ‘Women and anger’ written in 1993 and ‘The dance of anger’ in 1985, which were groundbreaking in the field.   Stories of women’s anger are stor

Blogging with a Purpose - Theme Post

I’ve loved books since I was a child. I vaguely recall the 'Ladybird' series of books that I read as a child, but the first novel I remember reading was ‘The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage’ by Enid Blyton that my mom brought home for me to read from the library when I was in Class 4. I then finished the children’s books section in library after library in my neighbourhood. Reading has served me well since I now work as an editor. Reading was what filled my hours as a child and kept loneliness at bay. Reading is what helped me find myself at age 40 when I got back to the habit after several years of reading sporadically. I now average about 25 books a year that I track on Goodreads .  I’ve had the opportunity to interact with quite a few authors online and offline. My cause for the Blogchatter #BloggingWithAPurpose campaign is "promoting authors." There is a popular joke in the publishing industry these days that there are more authors than readers. Authors a