Review: "A Time to Dance" by Padma Venkatraman

"The priest's laugh rumbles up into my ears. 'Place a hand on your chest. Can you feel Shiva's feet moving inside you?' I press on my chest. Feel bony ribs. Under them, thumping, faint echoes of a dance rhythm: thom thom thom. Shiva outside me, gleaming in the temple sanctum. Yet also leaping, hidden inside my body."

I regret, so often, that my own Time to Dance has passed. I learned the steps of ballet and tap when I was small, but due to my parents' unpleasant encounters with my dance instructor (the details of which I know little of), I was pulled from dance. I couldn't have been more than ten. Probably younger than even that.

I miss those times. I miss taking classes, and I wish I could go back, struggle a little more, so I could continue. Who knows what kind of person I would be now if I had?

I miss those times - but this book makes me miss them more.

Today, I'm reviewing A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman.

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I discovered this book by Diversity for YA's tumblr. I'm not entirely sure what drew me in at first - maybe the cover art. Actually, the cover art is definitely a part of it; I love the rich oranges that make up the background as well as the greens and reds of the sari the woman seems to wear. It's gorgeous, truly, and the perfect cover for a book like this. Even the cover's texture is absolutely amazing; it drags me in by the hands. It's certainly not the glossy cover you find on most hardcover books, and I'm grateful for that; it helps transform the book into an experience.

This book took me less than 24 hours to read, and I just finished it. I'll withhold any spoilers until the end, because I know there will be at least one - until then, keep reading. I'll keep it clean of spoilers for now.

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The main character, Veda, has her own unique voice, and she tells the story from her own unique perspective. Her voice is wonderful - it's graceful and full of emotion and passion. She doesn't hide her thoughts in her voice - she reveals them. And the tragedy that strikes her life doesn't stop her - she continues with that same passion, fighting for what she wants to do the most - dance.

The book is written entirely in a very poetic form. There are line breaks, clear structure - it's like a free versed poem. I do a very similar thing with my own poetry (you can trust me on that part), but Venkatraman takes it to a whole other level. While it's a bit disconcerting to follow at first, it becomes very easy to fall into a rhythm with it, and then it eases up and becomes a pure joy to follow in.

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I think another part of what made me pick it up was the plot. As I mentioned before, it was featured for being a diverse novel, and in fact, it's not the typical diverse novel I usually pick up - this one does not have to do with sexuality at all, but with ableism. The main character, Veda, is a dancer, and she feels confident and assured in her dancing at the beginning even with her mother's criticisms. However, an accident destroys her right leg from the knee down, and in order to save her, the doctors removed part of her leg and made her a below-the-knee amputee. However, she does not wallow in this - she decides to continue to pursue dance anyway, starting from the very beginning, knowing that she'll find a way to do it somehow.

What I really like is that her accident and "disability" (if you can even call it that - I think it's a touchy term . . .) are not the only parts of the story. There is so much about love and spirituality, to the point where I enjoyed reading every part of everything. It wasn't a "whine and complain about this and that" book - it goes from being about the catalyst, the accident and her "residual leg", to encompass her spirituality and the affection she feels for others.

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As I mentioned before, a lot of what this book tackled was about ableism. I am a very fortunate person - I have all of my limbs and appendages attached. I am not limited in what I can do because of any part of my body, and I am incredibly thankful for that. I can type at my computer and I can dance like a lame white girl (pardon the dip into nerd culture for that reference), and I've never had anything that truly hampered that.

Veda is different. She loses a leg - she deals with, on occasion, severe phantom pain. I never truly understood what phantom pain was like until I read about Veda's suffering from it. It left me in shock - how painful must it be to lose a limb yet still feel its pain? I remember one night, a few months ago, I'd been sitting at my computer and sitting in a strange way as I worked. When I got up, my right foot was entirely numb - I couldn't even feel the weight I left on it, and I stumbled so many times trying to walk until the feeling returned.

That was hard.

I can't imagine what that must be like for those who never get that feeling back, who don't have the real appendage to even feel with anymore.

A Time to Dance opened my eyes to all of this - how lucky and fortunate it is to have these abilities. But more than that, it also taught me that just because somebody has a prosthetic doesn't mean that they are "disabled" - that's not a fair word. In the book, Veda is referred to being "differently abled", but I'm not sure that's the case either. Because she is abled - she simply has some other, different restrictions in her way than other people, and that's not a bad thing.

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I'm trying to think if there's anything I didn't like about the book, but to be honest . . . I can't think of anything. Whoo! That being said, I want to start talking about some of the plot points of the book, so it's time for spoilers.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE.

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Paati was one of my favorite characters. She was obviously a very religious woman and a hardworking one, and I was amazed at her spirituality. Throughout the book, she seems to act as a spiritual guide for Veda, at least until Veda needs to find her own path. I was truly saddened and shocked by her death; I could see the signs of it coming, of course, but it hurt to see her die. Even more than that, I could empathize with Veda when Paati did die; I also had trouble shedding my tears when my own grandmother died. I know very well how she felt.

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For once, I loved the love triangle in the book! It doesn't last for many chapters, but it quickly ends when Veda's feelings slip past her lips. And not only that, but I love how there weren't bitter feelings within the love triangle at all - when it ended, there was some sadness on Veda's end, but then it moves into a more intimate relationship with her dance instructor, Govinda, and that's where the emotions come in. It's so rare for me to enjoy a love triangle. This was very well done.

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When Veda starts teaching, I had a lot of curiosity about Uma, and this is part of the reason I decided to review this book. Uma was always wearing a scarf around her face, careful never to let it fall. I was very curious about if it was a religious thing - why doesn't she say if she's religious? - but then Veda confronts her directly and gently, and the scarf falls.

And it turned out that Uma had a cleft lip.

My first thought: oh my GOD! I get it now!

The reason I understood Uma's fear so badly is because I had a cleft too - a cleft palate. Mine wasn't visible, or as visible, as a cleft lip would've been; mine was fixed when I was young, and besides some difficulties with speech (and a nasal quality to my voice that still seems to haunt me - ugh), I didn't have many problems with it. But Uma never had hers fixed, and Veda even mentions that it might've been that her family didn't have the money . . .

I understood, immediately, what Uma was feeling, and that tugged on such a personal note for me that I fell deeper in love with the book. And later, when Veda shows her own prosthetic and sees Uma's scarf fall, my heart sung with joy. Because I think I know how Uma must've felt, and I'm glad she was able to get past that, at least for a little while.

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SPOILERS END HERE.

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I'm going to go with the same system I used last time and stick with five points.

Use of Voice: 5/5. Veda's voice was strong and unique, and I loved reading it from her perspective. I could understand her pain; I could understand how she felt immediately. That's very rare in a book, I think, to touch so deeply like that.

Style: 4.5/5. It was difficult to get used to, but I think the style complimented the voice so perfectly. I only take off the half point for my struggle to adapt to it.

Plot: 5/5. Brilliant - just brilliant. The book is not just an issue book about ableism, it's also about spirituality. It looks at Veda as a person, not a disability.

Readability: 4.5/5. Again, challenging at first, but overall lovely.

Averaged: 4.75/5. Perfect score - and it would've maybe even made it higher!

OVERALL...this book was absolutely wonderful. It showed a deep story about a bright young lady losing her leg and having to adapt as well as covering her spiritual and emotional struggles. Normally, a book like that does not grip me, but this did. I'm definitely sliding this onto my shelf of favorite books!

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One more thing . . . the type of dance referred to in this book was Baratanatyam. I decided to look it up on Youtube and was not disappointed; check it out.