A Life Less Ordinary

And a life story it is: Ipsita Roy Chakravarti describes her encounters with women of a sort of coven, those who practise witchcraft, her sense of belonging to an "other" world, or at least apprehending its secrets, her growing conviction about herself as she meets native Indians (unfortunately described, at least initially, as "Red" Indians), her apprenticeship in a chalet where she chooses to study the lore of wicca and later her growing reputation as a witch. In this journey she meets with Homi Bhabha (and recognises in him the descendancy of another famous scientist, Rudolph Heinrich Hertz), Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Elvis Presley and a host of others.

It's an enjoyable read-or perhaps one should say it's a fairly engrossing read. The author is gifted with a simple, clear style and she clearly has a feel for the different energies that flow around us; she seems to have a feel for the power of witchcraft, she links this sense with female energy and power and takes as her model a witch of yore. Much of what she describes has resonances with those who practise yoga, reiki or vipasana. In that sense, she is not unusual (although she sometimes seems to think otherwise). It is not, for example, so strange to feel the energy emanating from the earth or even simply from a rock if and when you are able to concentrate and focus your concentration on a particular object. That is the secret of much meditation and yoga.

What's perhaps missing is a more serious exploration of the possible dilemma of someone who chooses to be a witch, or feels she has been chosen, and then continues to lead what is called a "normal" life. We learn little about the tensions or otherwise that this process might create. Or of why and how the author feels that she has come to the end of a particular journey and is ready to embark on another. Is it just because the ancestry of women who initiated her into this process is now gone and scattered, or is there another, different reason? And at the end, there's a slight romanticism about the position of witches in India-it might be true of witches like Ipsita, but surely not the ones who are getting burnt at the stake in other parts of our country. So, for me, the book is interesting as much for what it says, as for what it doesn't. But perhaps all this is quite unnecessary for, as the author says at the end: "I was born with extraordinary powers and I have worked to enhance them. I have told you the story as it is: I neither ask you to believe it, nor do I fear your scepticism."