Magic Moments

When I watched the trailer of ‘The Handmaiden’, I had a picture of who is innocent, who is being tricked and the suspicious hints in the storyline. But what I found in the first half of the movie, was totally different from the impression that the trailer had had. A Korean girl from a con artists’ household travels to a rich Japanese home to play Miss Hideko’s personal maid, Tamako, with the mission of making her fall for The Count- another acquaintance who wants to get her inheritance for himself by marrying her. Things go out of the plan when Tamako feels for her missus- pity, love and remorse for the innocent being that she was and wants to prevent The Count from taking advantage of her and hurting her in the process of acquiring her treasures. Tamako herself is in dilemma, as she wants riches to fulfill her own dreams, but wants Hideko to be safe from their ploy. Lady Hideko is delicately beautiful. She was raised as a virtual prisoner by her uncle, the book collec...

Book Blurb: “Najin Han, the privileged daughter of a calligrapher, longs to choose her own destiny. When her traditional father seeks to marry her into an aristocratic family, her mother defies generations of obedient wives and instead sends Najin to serve in the King’s court as a companion to a young princess. But the King is soon assassinated, and the centuries-old dynastic culture comes to its end. Spanning thirty years, The Calligrapher’s Daughter is an exquisite novel about a country torn between ancient customs and modern possibilities, a family ultimately united by love, and a woman who never gives up her search for freedom.” Thoughts (First 100 pages): The title itself suggests that the story is of that daughter, whose identity is defined on the sole pretext of being her father’s daughter. She has no name. She wasn’t christened with one on the hundredth day of her birth, as the traditional Korean custom had it for the sons. There was no celebration, no festi...