All posts by Ekanika

Hi, I’m Ekanika Shah, an 16 year-old Indian. I am an author, blogger and poet. I am currently an intern at Eduindex.
Book Reviews, Education, English Literature

Top 5 books to read

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There are times when you need an escape from your life and your time frame. Books are the best escape, the best time travel and the best indulgence. The world right now is going through a lot, and it wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is the toughest time for the humanity. From being on the verge of several wars, burning forests and an almost wrecking virus, there are times when you need to get away. 

Here’s a list of top 5 books you should read—

  1. The Bell Jar

One of the most beautifully written novels, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath emerges as an absolute get-lost-into novel. The stories about confinement and trauma are shocking, the narrative of this book is so indulging that you fall for it being real and forget what’s outside.

2. Looking for Alaska

A young adult fiction, John Green’s books never disappoint you. The descriptive nature of the book portrays a real film in your mind. The book is hard to leave and harder to get over with. You just keep falling in love with it every day.

3. Mrs. Dalloway

Considered as one of the best works of Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway is a book about a woman in the post-war days in Britain. It covers the day-long schedule in the life of a woman. The realisation of time and society that the book leaves you with is incredible. 

4. War and Peace

Another classic novel by Leo Tolstoy, covers the Russia’s days with Napoleon. It is amazing to read how ordinary people deal with the extraordinary conditions they encounter in their daily lives due to the war. It is worth reading as it teaches how people dealt during a wartime, when the the society was rapidly changing. The book is a thick-read but it is worth the time.

5. The Kite-Runner

The kite-runner by Khaled is a story about a young boy Amir and his friend Hassan. 

The story is based in Afghanistan, a war-torn and landlocked country in Asia. The kite-fight tournaments, the friendship and the betrayal will have all of your heart.

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

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Book Reviews, Culture and History, Education, English Literature

Labourers and lockdown

Stained by hunger,

The splash of virus dried out to an insignificant dot on their white khadi

They can’t have more, their stomach is full— full of hunger

Their bodies are not driven by food,

Their legs tread hearing stomach’s rumble

The people crossed gutters, jumped over broken roads

The pits in the broken road are now cemented, 

Cemented by starvation,

Cemented by hopes,

Cemented by slippers that have lost the feet on which they were worn.

They who went out in the search of bread have lost their breaths

Their breathless bodies demand an answer,

An answer for their hunger

An answer for their treads,

And answer for which they had lost their breaths.

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Book Reviews, English Literature

Box of rosEs

She is a box of roses

Wrapped in coffee stained newspapers

That you press under cups

Every time they sail with the wind

To hide the stories of abuse they print.

Every word your mouth exhales is capsuled in hate.

That fill her pockets so heavily

That she drowned into nothingness.

She looks at the stars and wishes them to consume her

She looks at her reflection and is surrounded by

Filters to filter out 

what they reject to call beauty.

Those crystals of herself, strained and censored

Dangle like yellow autumn leaves separating from a tree

That descend to the ground, 

dusted with self doubt. 

But when the night shines

and the piercing city lights are dim,

I will show you the brightness you carry within.

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Education, English Literature

Father— poetry

Father, the fire is now gone
and your dreams, now extinguished
crippled under the ire of fire.
let alone the home, there isn’t even the house.
the words, they refuse to come out of my  mouth.
Get up father, 
your lolled head is where all my dreams are kept.
Look father, I’ve been a good girl.
Everyone’s here to meet you,
all the preparations done only for you!
For you is the ceremony, 
for you is the new house a bustling, and the people, soon disappearing.
Look father, father, father!
The fire, it melted my shield, 
My father does not hear me.
Hos breath quintened forever ,
His body stilled like never.
The unsolicited questioning eyes surround me,
Like waves in a sea
But I, I trudge to the crematory
Yet another but intentional fire giving a final end to his story.

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Book Reviews, Education, English Literature

Mothers Day poetry

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I walked into my garden

The soil appeared to be scraps of papers sewn together disproportionately,

Rain came in like delayed parcels

I noticed the rose, dripping water off it’s petals

drop by drop and then it all— like your love

The sky descended down to me,

Solid as a glass, blue as a sea

I wiped off the clouds,

and looked at heaven,

And oh, it looked like you.

-ekanika shah

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Education, English Literature

Her dreams— poetry

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She is a living art 

Too real to be called fiction,

Too fictitious to be called real.

Her dreams are shades of red,

Inside her body like 

blood sandwiched between flesh.

She talks to the polka-dotted curtains that hang in the lobby, 

like forgotten art, in a room decorated with false-ceilings.

She smells of flowers

Her soul— a basket full of baked stars,

Forgotten amidsts a sky, 

dotted with scraps of papers—

 that knit fibres of theories.

She carries her stories, 

While they carry legends of inventions and discoveries.

She is the boiling milk,

Taken off the stove,

And mixed with cinnamon

To loose it’s colour, forever.

-ekanika shah.

Reach out to me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Education, English Literature, Law and Order, Public Administration

Sushant singh rajput and bollywood

14 June, 2020. I write and underline this date in red.

It’s been a week and a day since we lost the great actor to suicide. While we flood social media with tributes to him and awareness about mental health, Sushant is probably flailing around and looking down at us through the smoky clouds. 

In this post, I’m not going to dove on about mental health, nor I am going lay flowers for him. This post isn’t a rant; this is serious and needs to be more talked about.

On the morning of 14th, the whole nation was left in a state of shock. It was the third death in Bollywood in the past two months, all of which were sudden and unexpected.

Since his death, a lot has been unraveled about the Bollywood, its dark side and the nepotism in the industry.

This is post is not to blame anyone, nor to praise anyone. It is about what we as an audience can do, with a slight concoction about the aforementioned topics.

  1. We need to be a vigilant and responsible audience, we need to watch and like the content, rather than the actors.

We have pedestalizedthe film workers so much that we forgot that they, too, like us are just at a job. A job which is as ordinary as ours, just that everyone and anyone under the sky can have access to it, acknowledge it or reject it.

  • We choose and make someone’s career, we need to watch their work and assess it and not just absorb anything that they show us.
  • While we blame the hierarchical paradigm of Bollywood and lash out the ones who are where they are because of blood, we must not start targeting everyone. Those at fault must be gripped but those who have done nothing wrong, shall not be targeted.
  • Bollywood is the nation’s industry just like BHEL or BSNL. Everyone shall have the opportunity to work in it, and this should not be regulated by the already established workers.

A government regulated systemic processes shall be incorporated that check the industry and recruit the workers.

Bollywood does not belong to star kids; it belongs to us, our nation and its common people.

Raise your voice before it’s too late and we are robbed of our own industry.

Reach out to me @ekanika_shah on instagram.

English Literature, Law and Order

For george floYd

How is it I trigger your vision so much

That you become a thunderstorm 

And press against my chest until I can’t breathe.

I dismantle into the soil 

and you rain upon me 

suffocating my pores.

I am not fierce but 

I resent with the subtle smell of petrichor.

Why is it you want me to dilute my skin

and pour myself into your white ceramic cups

when my earthen pots are just decorated enough.

How is it I am not a ‘ray’ of hope

But a tunnel of darkness.

I am the metaphors that rest upon your tongue

I want to be more— more than your diction

I want to be a human. 

Why is it you want me to become you

And forget everything we’ve been through.

I am the prequel, the story and the sequel

I was exhaled by the cosmos, 

I refuse to be altered by an inch.

–ekanika shah.

For more such content, follow me on instagram @ekanika_shah

Education

How to increase your productivity?

It isn’t rare that we often don’t cross the red ribbon of goals we set for ourselves everyday. Time management and making most out of a day tips have been all around the internet, which most often are motivational paragraphs rather than something that we really need. 

While you might be following all those tips, there’s still a very little habit that costs us large and everyone experiences it, but its yet to make to the list of things to do to increase productivity.

So here it is—

Learn to say no

How many times were you stuck in situation you don’t want to be in? How many times did you have to compromise your work and happiness just because you couldn’t say no to someone else’s work/proposal? 

It’s high time you start focusing on your self and your work.

First, why do you accept and say yes to everybody? Out of politeness, ‘cuz you don’t want to seem rude or harsh and hurt their emotions. 

According to a survey, you spend 5 years of your life doing favours for someone. 

The best thing you can do is to help others, no matter what.

But a wise man knows when it is a yes and it is a no.

Start figuring out and know when it is right to be kind. 

Reach out to me @ekanika_shah on instagram!

Research Paper

Perform marketing

Performance marketing is the latest marketing system in the present times. The term may feel unfamiliar and something that boggles your mind, but let us break that down for you. It’s simple, marketing based on performance. It’s a lot different from traditional marketing. 

This article should be a must-read if you are just exploring the field.

What is performance marketing?

Performance marketing is a relatively new term. The marketers doing it have twin objectives: 1) Brand marketing 2) Advertising

While traditional marketing only encompasses advertising, the retailer has no idea about the productivity/ un-productivity of the ad for which (s)he spent some big dollars. 

Performance marketers get paid only when a ‘performance’ is generated by them for the retailer.