Shantaram

I will never be able to thank Adwait enough for encouraging me to read this one. By far the best book I have read yet. It does take a lot of patience to finish it, but once you start reading you know you will have to finish it.

This book is about a lot of things. Essentially it is about an escaped prisoner from Australia who seeks refuge in a recently Independent India. He spends most of his time in India in Mumbai… Then called Bombay… and falls in love with the city and it’s original flavour (known only to others who have lived in that city). From living in the zhopadpatti (slums) to being incorporated in the mafia, and traveling to Afghanistan to fight against the Russians ; to acting in Bollywood movies, this is a book about a mans journey through life and India, and the lessons it teaches him.

What makes this book even more special is the thoughts that have been put across so well at every step; on every page, and how much sense they make to me as an individual striving trough the usual ups and downs of life.

The book is full of beautiful thought provoking quotes. Here are the ones that most liked.

“The past reflects eternally between two mirrors -the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of things we didn’t do or say”

“The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There’s nowhere else in the world where that’s quite so true. I didn’t know that then, as I closed my eyes in the dark and breathing silence on that first night in Bombay. I was running on instinct, and pushing my luck. I didn’t know that I’d already given my heart to the woman, and the city. And knowing none of it, I fell, before the smile faded from my lips, into a dreamless, gentle sleep.”

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears”

It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive.

Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom they give to us, even those dreaded and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be.

Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.

Men reveal what they think when they look away, and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it’s the other way around.

At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread instead is that we won’t stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone.

 

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Had not read something intriguing for a long time, life can be really really busy if you know how to make every moment worthwhile ( a new lesson that I learned recently, while I was organizing a tech-fest for my college) . And a few days ago sheer boredom forced me to borrow something form a friend. And I am so glad I took the time to read this one, and I am going to buy myself a copy as soon as possible.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini is the beautiful and yet heart-wrenchingly tragic story of two women from Afghanistan. Reading this book really made me wonder why I sob and mourn about my own problems. Recently Ive come to realize that the words my problems are very relative and really hard to explain. Just like pain and pleasure cannot be measured and set up against a  standard scale, problems is something you cant really measure. You never really know whether others face the same situations, go through the same emotions, or react to reality in the same way as you do. You never really know whether the grass is greener on the other side or not. But this book changed that notion of mine just a tad bit. Some problems and circumstances are beyond comparison with anything on the earth.

I don’t want to waste time explaining the plot here. The beauty with which the scenes unfold cannot be recreated, you have to actually read the book and marvel at it. But as usually happens in my case, the plot and story are not so important. What I really liked (and always do like about books like these) are the words; certain phrases and observations that you read again and again and they show a new meaning everytime. This book is full of such words.

So here are a few of them:

——

You are afraid, Nana, that i might find the happiness you never had. And you don’t want me to be happy. You don’t want a good life for me. You are the one with the wretched heart. If she could articulate this she would have said these words to Nana. That she was tired of being an instrument, of being lied to, laid claim to, used. That she was sick of Nana twisting the truths of their lives and making her another of her grievances against the world.

——

It was a dark maroon silk shawl with beaded fringes, and edges embroidered with gold thread.
“Do you like it?”
Mariam looked up. Rasheed did a touching thing then. He blinked and averted his gaze.
Mariam thought of Jalil. His empathic, jovial way with which he had pushed his jewelery at her, the overpowering cheerfulness that left no room for response but meek gratitude. Nana had been right about Jalils gifts. They had been half hearted tokens of penance, insincere, corrupt gestures, meant more for his appeasement than for hers. This shawl, Mariam saw, was a true gift.
“It is beautiful”,she said.

——-

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions. She would never leave a mark on Mammy’s heart the way her brothers had, because Mammys heart was like a pallid beach where Lailas footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed.

——-

Often it happened at dinner, when she and Babi were at the table. When it started, their heads snapped up. They listened to the whistling, forks in mid air, un-chewed food in their mouths. Laila saw the reflections of their half-lit faces on the pitch black windows, their shadows unmoving on the walls. The whistling. Then the blast, blissfully elsewhere, followed by the expulsion of breath and the knowledge that they had been spared for now, and somewhere else, amid cries and choking clouds of smoke, there was a scrambling, a bare-handed frenzy of digging, of pulling from the debris, what remained of a sister, a brother, or  a grandchild.

But the flip-side of being spared was the agony of wondering who hadn’t. After every rocket balst, Laila raced to the street, stammering a prayer that this time, surely this time, it was Tariq, they would find buried beneath the rubble and smoke.

———

 

The witch of portobello

Finished reading it long back, felt like writing about it today. I’m afraid this will be another post about feminism, but I don’t want to spark off more debates, and so I’ll not be expressing any views of my own, but just telling what the book is about.

This is the story of Athena(as she named herself) or Sherine(as her adoptive parents named her) or Hagia Sophia(as she found her true self). As all Paulo Coelho books, this one too immerses you in spiritual discussions and one feels like reading it only when one has the time and mood to get absorbed into that world. For me, this is not a book to be read  at the end of a busy day..it is to be read on a Sunday afternoon with juice and sandwiches. Instead of concentrating on the details of the story and the plot, the reader gets to decide which part of the story he/she can associate with and learn from. The story is told in a very different fashion, one that I have not seen yet. It has been told in the form of interviews…all the people who came close to knowing Athena in her lifetime have recounted what they saw her going through and what hey felt about it. The accounts given by different people, take the reader through her life and the various events that took place in it.

How many people are successful in finding out who they really are? How many are certain of what their purpose is? When is one happy? This is basically the story of a woman who is different, who discovers that she is years ahead of society with respect to her way of thinking, her knowledge of her own self, and her will to be free of all norms. It is about her self-discovery, the questions she asks herself and the answers that she finds.  It ends with a series of events that lead to a brutal murder. As always, I found the quotes, the musings and the thought provoking statements (especially those about relationships) more interesting that the spirituality and the actual plot of the story. Here are a few:

“NO one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they are doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.”

“Women always identify with one of the four classic archetypes:
The Virgin, whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is a fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.
The martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, surrender and suffering.
The Saint, find her true reason for living in unconditional love and her ability to give without her asking anything in return.
The witch justifies her existence by going in search of complete and limitless pleasure.”

“People who return from battle are either dead or stronger in spite of or because of their scars.It’s better that way; I’ve lived on a battlefield since I was born, but I’m still alive and I don’t need anyone to protect me.”

 

marley and me

Books and Dogs : two of my favourite things in the world. How could i resist?? I had already been told its a very good book by my aunt who is a dog lover herself. So when i saw it on the bestseller stand in a book store, i couldn’t resist myself.

This is one of the most heart-warming books I’ve read recently. Although the end is sad, you are left with a contented feeling that the dog lived a satisfying and fun filled life. This is a story of a newly wed couple who decides to get a dog; because they want a baby, but have misgivings about whether they can nourish a living thing in their household. After a failed attempt to grow a pot plant, they decide on a puppy. Since both of them have had dogs in the family throughout childhood, they already know that sooner or later their household would have a dog lying at their feet. So why not get one. So Marley comes into their life as a parcel of mild surprises first, and then a whirlwind of a personality

The gamboling lovable pup soon presents them with love and affection and a lot of extra expenses. They soon find out that he can scratch his way through cement and wood when he is terrified of the thunderstorms, and sometimes he is not aware of his own strength as he manages to floor everyone whom he jumps on lovingly. They find out that he has a habit of scooping up anything and everything in his mouth and is smugly happy when he manages to scoop up something that interests him: an activity that can be detected by an increase in mischievous scampering and wiggling.

Soon a baby is on they way, and the family is growing. They realize they they have a full grown dog, but his brain is still a puppy’s . Marley absolutely refuses to get himself trained and they are thrown out of obedience school, but with the baby coming and the family growing, Marley gets used to playing second fiddle, and doesn’t mind in the least as long he is allowed to continue the madness. When there is a stabbing in front of their gate though, they find out that Marley is not just an affable and slightly ( ) misbehaved dog, but he is also their protector, and he can rely on his instincts and behave in ways they cannot normally expect from him. Two more kids and a house-shift later, Marley is still the steamroller experience, but a mellowed one, one, which is on it’s way to retirement.

Throughout the book, they author leads the reader through the joyous havoc that Marley wreaks throughout his life-time. But he is an unconditional love-giver. And reading the book can only be a happy experience. Since the author is actually a journalist, the language used is also simple, entertaining and humorous. I’m in love with Marley, and so will u be if u read this book:-)

The end, though sad, doesn’t leave you complaining. As the author says in his foreword: “Dogs are great. bad dogs, if we can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all”

For dog lovers..http://marleyandme.com will be a delight.

For info on the movie, http://imdb.com/title/tt0822832/

I especially loved going through this one: http://marleyandme.com/scrapbook.html