The Body Myth by Rheea Mukherjee

Title: The Body Myth
Author: Rheea Mukherjee
Publisher: The Unnamed Press
ISBN: 978-1944700843
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 234
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars

There are some books that hit you unexpectedly. You don’t expect anything out of them, maybe because you don’t know what to expect which then turns out to be great, when a certain threshold is met. This is what happened to me while I was reading The Body Myth by Rheea Mukherjee. It is a book about love and love that knows no boundaries or limits. The kind that we all want to experience and yet are afraid of what will happen to us when we do. It is all-consuming and will just not let you be till you are a part of it.

The Body Myth is about Mira – a teacher living in the heart of a fictional city called Suryam in India. It is the place where the Rasagura fruit grows. The only place as a matter of fact. Mira lives by herself and leads a quiet life. She is recently widowed and is trying to cope with loss and loneliness. One fine day she comes across Sara, who suffers from a seizure in the park, and Mira but obviously tends to her. Thereon she meets Rahil, Sara’s husband and before she knows it, her life is on a course of an emotional rollercoaster ride – filled with angst, love, loneliness, and desire.

Mukherjee’s writing is to the point. She doesn’t extend herself without reason. There are of course a lot of metaphors ascribed to the Rasagura (a fictional fruit by the way) – its sweet and sour nature and how it is meant to be full of mysticism (really need to read the book to understand this at a deeper level). The relationship between Mira and Sara is astounding – how it is so much more without stating the obvious and how Rahil then is a part of it all or not. Mukherjee’s characters are willing to change and embrace it even though sudden. What starts off as a friendship between Sara and Mira, and then becomes this triad of a relationship with Rahil in the fray as well is a thing to experience while reading.

The Body Myth is a book about relationships that aren’t easy to define. They just are. While people may judge and do what they do best, the relationship continues. I loved how the three of them were discussing, loving, figuring out the dynamics, and just being. I also think that one must read this book with an open mind and heart, or it will just not sink in. The end is inevitable but the book leaves you with a lot of questions about the body, and how we think we know ourselves, but do we really? The tone of the book is just perfect, and you actually also get a holistic view of the situation. The Body Myth might make a lot of people uncomfortable, however, it is a book of our times and Mukherjee definitely knows how to address emotions and thoughts we all feel and think, but do not say them out loud.