Skip to main content

Reba, the strong woman



Book Review


Title: Strong Woman: Reba Rakshit

Author: Ida Jo Pajunen

Publisher: Om Books International, 2024

Pages: 218

Reba Rakshit was a rare kind of entertainer. She could lift an elephant on her chest. She would lie on a mat and a huge plank would be placed on her chest. An elephant would walk on that plank. Reba could bear the weight of that elephant though for a few seconds.

Reba was born in what now is Bangladesh. She migrated with her sister to Calcutta (today Kolkata) to live with her uncle who promised them good education. That was a decade and a half before India became independent. A man named Bishnu Charan Gosh discovered Reba’s potential and trained her to become a performer. He was running a college of physical education in Calcutta where Reba became a trainee while she was also pursuing regular school studies. Eventually Ghosh made Reba capable of doing many things like breath control using yoga, weight-lifting, and mind control. Soon enough, Ghosh found her a coveted place in a few famous circuses that came to Calcutta. After Reba became famous with her elephant stunts, the circuses started taking her to faraway places too. Ghosh accompanied her. Reba was earning huge sums of money and Ghosh was her guru as well as manager.

This short biography throws ample light into Reba’s active life. The biography ends when Reba was young but she put an end to her career for health-related reasons.

The author of this book came across some writings of Reba and took interest in her. She collected as many details as she could about this woman who retreated from public life in her youth itself. We get to know how a performer of this sort manages her life. The book has little more to offer than that. The book is about the dedication and hard work of a young individual to achieve what she wanted to: success and fame. Was she happy after she achieved that in her youth itself and then retired? The book doesn’t answer that. Probably, nothing much is known about that part of Reba’s life. Reba died in 2010 at the age of 77.

The book could have become more engaging if the author could find more insights into the life of the person called Reba, like her later life and her views on her career which became extinct in her lifetime. As it is, the book remains a mere factual description of the life of a stunt-performer.

A page from the book

x

Labels:

Comments

  1. Liz A.February 25, 2025 at 8:32 AM

    It begs the question: was she happy performing or was she forced into it?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 25, 2025 at 9:53 AM

      She was not forced except maybe towards the end when she developed certain health issues.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 25, 2025 at 9:13 AM

    Hari Om
    ...so, a newspaper article extended beyond its word count? YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sintra blogueFebruary 26, 2025 at 12:05 AM

    "A man named Bishnu Charan Gosh discovered Reba’s potential and trained her to become a performer. He was running a college of physical education in Calcutta where Reba became a trainee while she was also pursuing regular school studies. Eventually Ghosh made Reba capable of doing many things like breath control using yoga, weight-lifting, and mind control." Indeed, as you mention, it's a pity that we don't know much about her later life, namely, how this training was helpful afterwards

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 27, 2025 at 8:50 PM

      Maybe, there's no literature available on those details.

      Delete
  4. peppylady (Dora)February 26, 2025 at 6:11 AM

    Never heard of her. One thing about blogging. Is what one can learn.

    ReplyDelete
  5. rupam sarmaFebruary 27, 2025 at 1:39 PM

    Great read about Reba Rakshit, Amazing

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...
11 comments
Read more

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...
14 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more

Egregious

·       Donald Trump terminated all trade negotiations with Canada “based on their egregious behaviour.” ·       Pakistan has an egregious record of assassinations among its leaders. ·       Benjamin Netanyahu’s egregious disregard for civilian suffering has drawn widespread international condemnation. Now, look at the following sentences. ·       Archias is an egregious and most excellent man. [Cicero’s speech in 62 BCE] ·       “An egregious captain and most valiant soldier.” [Roger Ascham in 1545] U p to about 16 th century, the word egregious had a positive meaning: excellent or outstanding . Cicero was defending Greek poet Aulus Licinius Archias’s request for Roman citizenship. Archias had left his country out of disgust for the corruption of its Seleucid rulers. Ascham was speaking about the qualities of valiant soldiers when he used the ...
6 comments
Read more