Rahul Writes

By RK Narayan

Nelson publication 

The Bachelor of Arts (1937) by RK Narayan is another masterpiece which I feel lucky to have read. RK Narayan is one of the few writers who truly represent India and Indian ethos in his writings. Characters in his books are real - they can be from any one of us. The places in his book (from much celebrated fictitious Malgudi) are for real - they can be from any state, in any part of India. This is why if you have to name one Indian author writing in English to your friends abroad, you can safely recommend RK Narayan. Also, after reading his books which were written decades ago, we get amazed that the soul of India in his books is still intact in the 21^st century. Thanks God that we had brilliant writers like RK Narayan to capture it.  

The Bachelor of Arts is the story of a young man and his journey through academics, social obligations, dilemmas, infatuations and learning. It is the story of a man who possessed Bachelor of Arts and the learning that life teaches him and takes him from fantasy to reality and maturity. The story is set in Malgudy. It is sheer pleasure to read any of the books of RK Narayan, including The Bachelor of Arts.  

- Rahul

Father Sergius is a wonderful story of human dilemmas in front of divine expectations. It is the story of an ordinary man on which greatness and sainthood was thrust upon. He continuously faced dilemmas of life, also because he had a genuine and pure heart which always did introspection. At the end, he found the true peace in most unexpected place and way, which he never got in the Church. During the course of the story, the book details what is wrong with the Church, and also with the organised religion in general.  

When I finished reading the book for the second time, I wondered if Leo Tolstoy was inspired by Hindu philosophy. The crux of this story can be summed up in what Father Sergius realises in the end. He realises that one small act done without selfish intent is far better than prayers. “One good deed — a cup of water given without thought of reward — is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people (by praying for them)” This is exactly what Bhagawat Gita teaches us. Also, there is a comment which tells God is within us. “The less importance he attached to the opinion of men the more did he feel the presence of God within him.” Now this is Hindu philosophy which tells us not to seek God outside but within us. That we need not worship or believe in those who claim to be God’s only son, or real prophets, but each one of us have God inside us, waiting to be realised by our own efforts.   

Some excerpts: 

“But as soon as he left the church the crowd of people rushed to him soliciting his blessing, his advice and his help. There were pilgrims who constantly tramped from one holy place to another and from one ‘starets’ to another, and were always entranced by every shrine and every ‘starets’. Father Sergius knew this common, cold, conventional, and most irreligious type. There were pilgrims, for the most part discharged soldiers, unaccustomed to a settled life, poverty-stricken, and many of them drunken old men, who tramped from monastery to monastery merely to be fed. And there were rough peasants and peasant-women who had come with their selfish requirements, seeking cures or to have doubts about quite practical affairs solved for them: about marrying off a daughter, or hiring a shop, or buying a bit of land, or how to atone for having overlaid a child or having an illegitimate one.” 

“So that is what my dream meant! Pashenka is what I ought to have been but failed to be. I lived for men on the pretext of living for God, while she lives for God imagining that she lives for men. Yes, one good deed — a cup of water given without thought of reward — is worth more than any benefit I imagined I was bestowing on people. But after all was there not some share of sincere desire to serve God?” he asked himself, and the answer was: Yes, there was, but it was all soiled and overgrown by desire for human praise. Yes, there is no God for the man who lives, as I did, for human praise. I will now seek Him!”

Reap as you sow

Books

The Zahir

Zahir means: Someone or something which once we have come into contact with, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either as a state of holiness, or madness.

As I started reading this book, I started hating Paulo Coelho. Why? You will know as we move on.

The main character of the book is based on the author himself, though it is not declared so. In the first scene, author's wife has left him and gone missing. He is questioned about where he was on the night she left.

One of the lady friends of his wife came forward and informed the police that the author was with her on that night. Police inspector asks if his wife left because he was having an affair with his wife's friend. He answers, "It wasn't an affair; it came about simply because we had nothing else to do. It had been a bit of a dull day, neither of us had any pressing engagements after lunch, and the game of seduction always adds a little zest to life, which is why we ended up in bed together."

Inspector asks, "You go to bed with someone just because it is a bit of a dull day?"

He replies, "Sometimes, yes. There's nothing else very interesting to do, the woman is looking for excitement, I'm looking for adventure, and that's that. The next day, you both pretend that nothing happened, and life goes on.'

The inspector says that in his world, things aren't quite like that. Naturally, boredom and tedium exist, as does the desire to go to bed with someone, but everything is much more controlled, and no one ever acts on their thoughts or desires.

As if this incident was not enough, the author says that in Madrid he was enjoying the Madrid that was killing him, and how? :"the discotheques that open at 10 in the morning, the bullfights, the endless conversations about the same old topics, the alcohol, the women, more bullfights, more alcohol, more women, and absolutely no timetable."

So women counted in life along with alcohol and bullfights! I can't stop hating him more.

He also tells that in their marriage, he and his wife had one pact: that no one would ask or enquire about the other's extra-marital affairs. What a good way of living an enlightened life!

The book was interesting and I wanted to see its end. It came at 4 in the morning. This is what happened as I read through:

After his wife left him without a clue about where and why, he gets into relationship with an actress and lives with her. In the mean time, since she had left without giving him a reason, he starts thinking about her ' and realises that he can't live without her. He searches for her and along with that, he searches himself, where did he go wrong. In between, a lot of philosophical things happen, if I speak lightly, and he meets with her new boyfriend who again takes him into a new world of 'divine things', read dancing, living like a nomad and all that is against the conventions of the society.

His wife's boyfriend reveals to him that she had left him because he was not giving her enough respect and thought only about himself. She was on a stage where 'she had everything, but still had a sense of emptiness'. So she had migrated to a small country in central Asia and lived her life making carpets and teaching French to people. Interesting?

He goes restless about meeting his wife again and asking her why she left him. That is what is called Zahir ' the single thought to see her again occupies his mind and soul. In the end, he reaches his wife, this is a really interesting episode.

When he reaches that remote village and enters the house where his wife lived, he finds her reading out his own new book to children and ladies. Of course he gets the biggest flattery of his life: her wife who was away from him for 2 years was reading out his book to others! She tells him that she was waiting for him. Sounds good? Here is more:

She tells him that she had fallen in love with a local painter. Shocked? There is more. He is still having his wonderful time when she says, "I am pregnant". It was as if his world had 'fallen over him'. He asks if it was by the painter. She replies, "No. It was someone who stayed for a while and then left again." The authors laughs, even though his 'heart was breaking'.

The two of them chat, laugh, and then they went on to return back to their old world in France  

~!~

Do I still hate the author? Lesser than before. Because he got what he had reaped.

He claimed to get to know the truth, connect to the Divine, and a lot of philosophical stuff, which as he must be thinking, common people don't care about and live their same life day in and day out. What any common man on the road could see that his lifestyle with 'alcohol, women and bullfights' all equated with the stuff that gave him 'pleasure' was responsible for his misery.

His 'lookout for adventure' was necessary because he was leading a worthless life, and the sense of emptiness that his wife was feeling was because of their marriage of convenience where they maintained the rule of not asking about the extra-marital affair of the partner! All in the name of not following the norms of the 'less-fortunate' society, they were themselves following their own rules, without realising it.

And how would they find the 'truth' and connect with their 'divine' part? To go to some obscure village in Central Asia, live with nomads, live on Vodka for days, dance as a prayer, and get a feel that they were working so hard to find the ultimate truth. While the ultimate truth lied in simple things that still existed in the lives of simple people.

Do I still hate him? I can't. But I hate his demeanour. I don't want to lead his way of life J

Books

The Witch of Portobello

I would confess that this book disappointed me. Not because it is not good enough, but because after reading so many books of Paulo Coelho, I have started seeing a pattern. As things start getting repeated, they get boring too.

I would start with an interesting episode from the book. Please note that this is just a portion of the book, and it doesn't represent the theme in totality.

Speak Up!

This is a story of a girl known as Athena, with a lot of twists in her life: she was born to a gypsy mother and a foreigner father in Romania, abandoned in an orphanage on birth, and adopted by a Lebanese couple which later settles in London. She finds a boyfriend at 19 and leaves her engineering midway when she suddenly decides to have a baby. So they get married at 19 and 21 respectively, boy gets thrown out of parental home because of marriage outside community, finds life too troublesome because of financial and other problems, while girl gets too much occupied with the baby boy and seems not to be caring about her husband at all. At this stage, boy thinks that the girl wanted him only to have a baby and had used him.

After many conflicts, one day the boy says: "I want a divorce". She doesn't say anything, as if she was 'expecting' it! He now is confirmed that she never loved him, and had just used him to satisfy his craving of having a baby. He still loved her as much as ever, but her cold attitude confirms him that she didn't love him from the beginning.

They get separated, time passed, and one day he got enough courage to ask the girl: why did she react so calmly when he asked for separation? What she says is a shocking revelation: "Because all my life I've learned to suffer in silence". And then she cries and sheds all her tears that she didn't do on that day

Message: Miss-communication can kill relationships. So ask a bit more and don't get irritated if your partner asks you to clarify something again and again it will make sure that there is no confusion Plus, know your partner fully ' beyond the level that s/he knows her/himself.

The Book and the Story

The book is written in a different style ' it is a collection of memoirs of the people who knew Athena.

The girl used to see angels and other spirits in her childhood (I had written about this Coelho concept, of children seeing their guardian angels). She grows up and has failed relationships. She gets inclined into some strange beliefs and religious things which can be summed up in most simple terms as this: It is like Pagan worship, and the divine is feminine, the Mother to be precise. Method of worship or ritual is music and dancing. They dance on some special music to connect with their divine parts. And in those moments the lady gets into her state of a witch: here she holds her hair in her hands and answers others' questions and foretells the future, while being occupied by some other divine soul named Hagia Sofia. She goes on to become a sensation, gets a lot of enemies who try to destroy her.

At the end, she had disappeared and people thought she was murdered by religious fanatics. They had reason to murder her ' as she was said to be manifestation of The Mother and used to teach some practices (read dancing) which were shaking the conventional wisdom that Church showered on people. I read the entire book thinking that she was murdered. That is what I like most about the book ' a happy ending. 

The Witch

Now this is exactly the plain superstition as present in the rural or otherwise India: we call them Mata (Paulo takes exactly the same name of Mother), or some call them Dayan in the wrong sense (here she is called Witch). She makes similar bodily movements to get into a state where she is occupied by someone else's soul (exactly the way our own Hindi horror-shows describe).

The Mother

Now this is the most happening thing in the current literary world: Dan Brown did that perfectly. Enlightened writers like Paulo Coelho wants us to realise this, so they keep repeating it. They say something like God is feminine. They take inspiration from Pagan beliefs where forces of nature were worshiped. Do they say something new? We all know and wonder why in our Hinduism so many Devis are at the helm. Durga ' the Goddess of Strength, Saraswati ' the Goddess of Intellect, and Lakshmi ' the Goddess of prosperity ' they are all feminine. And we have called our ladies Lakshmi from eternity. Because of social corruptions we don't treat our women as Goddesses, but that is another story.

Music and Dance to connect to the divine

This sounds interesting to me because of the extent to which the writer has jargonised the simple phenomenon. We have for long enjoyed the bhajans and kirtans. Many of our saints have danced and sung in the glory of the Ram or Krishna. Such a simple phenomenon made into a best seller: may be the book was never targeted to the Indians.

Some of my underlines:

~*~

No one manipulates anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.

~*~

They say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts, and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contended and at ease with life they are.

~*~

If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

~*~

People learn 25% from their teacher, 25% from listening to themselves, 25% from their friends, and 25% from time.

~*~

I have always been convinced that women have a supernatural ability to know what is going on in a man's soul. They are all witches.

~*~

"It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked": Khalil Gibran

~*~

Concentrate. If you can find nothing on which to focus your mind, concentrate on your breathing. The Mother's river of light is flowing in through your nose.

~*~

"My temple is the park, the sky, the water in the lake and the streams that feeds it. My people are those who share my ideas and not those I'm bound to by bonds of blood": Athena's gipsy mother.

~*~

The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. According to etiquette this means: "She needs me to do this because she is fragile", but in my soul is written: "I'm being treated like a goddess. I'm a queen."

~*~

I am not here to work for the feminist cause, because both men and women are a manifestation of the Mother, the Divine Unity. No one can be greater than that.

~*~

That's the main aim of life ' revelation! You make yourself into a channel; you listen to yourself and are surprised at how capable you are.

Books

The Fifth Mountain

Quoting from the back cover of the book: "Fleeing his home from persecution, 23 year old Elijah takes refuge with a young widow and her son in the beautiful town of Akbar. Already struggling to maintain his sanity in a chaotic world of tyranny and war, he is now forced to choose between his new found love and his overwhelming sense of duty.

Evoking all the drama and intrigue of the colourful, chaotic Middle East, Paulo Coelho turns the trials of Elijha into an inspiring story of how faith and love can ultimately triumph over suffering. A gripping and moving story of how one man can surmount tragedy and inspire a war torn city to rebuild itself."

In my last review of "The Valkyris", I wrote about how I have found Paulo Coelho's philosophies revolving about core of Hinduism. In this book too, I couldn't contain myself to see the design. Some times we have questions for which we never get to get proper answers. And then we see the answers at some most unexpected places. I am quoting down some points, taken directly from this book. These are answers to some of the questions in my as well as your mind. I hope you would return back enlightened. My comments are in blue font.

"It is a difficult choice; it demands that I accept the death of one people to save another." (Recall Arjuna telling Krishna his dilemma )

"Even more difficult is defining a path for oneself. He who makes no choice is dead in the eyes of the Lord, though he goes on breathing and walking in the streets.

Moreover, no one dies. The arms of eternity open for every soul, and each one will carry on his task. There is a reason for everything under the sun."

"Why does He who made the world prefer to use tragedy to write the book of fate?" (We complain why disasters and wrong things happen to innocent people )

"You don't know what you speak. There is no tragedy, only the unavoidable. Everything has its reason for being: you only need to distinguish between what is temporary and what is lasting.

What is temporary?

The unavoidable.

And what is lasting?

The lessons of the unavoidable."

"Why did you attack at night? Don't you know that wars are fought by day?" (Pandavas used 'unfair' means in the war against Kauravas )

"We didn't break the law: there is no custom that forbids it. All of you were so preoccupied with custom that you forgot that times change…"

"Can God be evil?" (Accusations that Krishna did 'bad' things )

"God is all-powerful. He can do anything, and nothing is forbidden to Him, for if it were, there would exist someone more powerful than He, to prevent His doing certain things. In that case, I should prefer to worship and revere that more powerful someone.

Still, because of His infinite power, He chose to do only Good. If we reach the end of our story, we shall see that often good is disguised as Evil, but it goes on being the Good, and is part of the plan that He created for humanity."

"The lord often has his prophets climb mountains to converse with Him. I always wondered why He did that?" (Why do we worship our Gods in remote places like the Amarnath Caves? Why should we go there amidst so much difficulties?)

"When we are on high, we can see everything else as small.

Our glory and our sadness lose their importance. Whatever we conquered or lost remains there below. From the heights of the mountain, you see how large the world is, and how wide its horizons."

Books

The Valkyries

I found this as one of the most complex books from Paulo Coelho. First, this is his real account. Second, this is full of mystery. The back cover says:

————-

Why is that we destroy the things we love most? This is the question Paulo Coelho faces in this story of his confrontation with his past. The Valkyris is a compelling account of his journey, as Paulo Coelho and his wife embark on a 40 day quest into the searching heat of Mojave Desert, where they encounter the Valkyries, strange warrior women who travel the desert on motorcycles.

This is not only a modern-day adventure, it is also an explanation of one man's battle with self-doubt and fear, as well as a true story of two people striving to understand one another through adversity. Ultimately, the book delivers a powerful message about forgiving our past and believing in our future.

————-

But after going finishing the book, I can say that this introduction is basically the editor's idea to make the book sound like an interesting stuff. In fact, this is too mystical, spiritual, and unbelievably (given that this was a real account) adventurous.

I also see how close Paulo's conclusions come to the core Hindu beliefs. Almost all that he learns through his quests are well known facts in our Hindu philosophy. The list starts from the ideas about spirit and soul, and goes on and on.

Also, Paulo makes use of the basic human psychology to make readers wonder, as if he said something really wonderful. For example, he says that everyone has a 'guardian angel'! Now to prove that, he asks us don't we feel at times that someone is watching us? Some times while no one is around us, still we feel someone is. That is our guardian angel! He goes one step further, and asks why children laugh and giggle while they are too young to understand anything worldly or to find anything really amusing? Why do they say something and speak out even if no one is around? Paulo says this is because they talk to their guardian angels! Wow! He says that guardian angels protect us and give us messages whenever there is a danger. If each one of us has a guardian angel, then why do we get hurt, murdered, molested, or raped? Why doesn't our guardian angel protect us? To this he says that while we are kids, we are pure and we trust our guardian angels; but as we grow old, we don't believe on the angels, we ignore them, and think we are masters of our own life. Therefore, our guardian angels go away from us, leaving us unsafe! Despite being a die-hard fan of Paulo, I don't blindly agree with him here. Though I don't have the experience or the learning to challenge him, I feel this is fictitious and it based on the basic human psychology only! What do you say?

Some of the lines that I underlined:

————-

Anything that occurs once can never occur again. But, should it happen twice, it will surely happen a third time.

————-

And each man kills the thing he loves,

By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword.

————-

Angels are love in motion. They never rest, they struggle to grow, and they are beyond good and evil. Love that consumes all, that destroys all, that forgives all. Angels are made of that love, and are at the same time its messengers.

————-

What are the three conditions for conversing with one's angel? "Break a pact. Accept forgiveness. And make a bet. And, in addition to those three things, courage is needed. A woman's courage, not a man's.

————-

God is in the words, and the devil as well.

————-

That is what infatuation is: the creation of an image of someone, without advising that someone as to what the image is But it was different from love. Love was worth everything, and couldn't be exchanged for anything.

————-

Books

Psychology

Born to Win

When I read Games people play, some one suggested me to read 'Born to Win'. The same day, I got it from our library. Tomorrow being the last of the 10 days to return the book, I finished it today. And what a wonderful experience it was! I am quoting some portions of the book:

I will put the epilogue first:

It takes courage to be a real winner ' not a winner in the sense of beating out someone else by always insisting on coming out on top ' but a winner at responding to life. It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and direct encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and indeed, courage to be the very unique person you really are. New ways are often uncertain and, as Robert Frost expressed it, "courage is the human virtue that counts most ' courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That is all any of us have."

Again addressing the question whether we can be free from our biases and prejudices ingrained in us because of our upbringing, here is a quote from Viktor Frankl:

As for inheritance, research on heredity has shown how high is the degree of human freedom in the face of predisposition. For example, twins may build different lives on the basis of identical predispositions. Of a pair of identical twins, one became a cunning criminal, while his brother became an equally cunning criminologist

As for the environment, we know that it doesn't make man, but that everything depends on what man makes of it, on his attitude towards it.

Everyone likes to feel the presence of others. Here is something on the 'human hunger for strokes':

Every person has the need to be touched and to be recognised by other people, and every person has the need to do something with the time in between birth and death. These are biological and psychological needs that Berne calls "hungers".

The hungers for touch and recognition can be appeased with strokes, which are "any act implying recognition of another's presence". Strokes can be given in the form of actual physical touch or by some symbolic form of recognition such as a look, a word, a gesture, or any act that says "I know you're there."

People's hunger for strokes often determines what they do with their time. They may, for example, spend minutes, hours, or a lifetime trying to get strokes in many ways, including playing psychological games. They may spend minutes, hours, or a lifetime trying to avoid strokes by withdrawing.

Here, the three ego states are described:

Structural analysis offers one way of answering the questions: Who am I? Why do I ac the way I do? How did I get this way? It is a method of analyzing a person's thoughts, feelings, and behaviour, based on the phenomena of ego states.

Ego states are colloquially termed Parent, Adult and Child.

When first born, the infant's awareness is centered on personal needs and comforts. The baby seeks to avoid painful experiences and responds at the feeling level. Almost immediately the infant's unique Child ego state emerges.

The Parent ego state develops next. It is often first observed when the young child plays at parenting, imitating parental behaviour. Some times it is a shock for parents to see themselves being played back. Sometimes they are very pleased.

The adult ego state develops as the child tries to make sense out of the world and figures out that other people can be manipulated. The child may ask, "Why do I have to eat when I'm not hungry?" and may try to manipulate others by faking a stomach ache in order to avoid eating.

On transactional analysis:

Modern people wear many masks and have many forms of armour that keep their reality confined and unknown, even to themselves. The possibility of encountering one's reality ' learning about one's self ' can be frightening and frustrating. Many people expect to discover the worst. A hidden fear lies in the fact that they may also discover the best

Transactional analysis is a tool you can use to know yourself, to know how you relate to others, and to discover the dramatic course your life is taking. The unit of personality structure is the ego state. By becoming aware of your ego states, you can distinguish between your various sources of thoughts, feelings, and behaviour patterns. You can discover where there is discord and where there is agreement within your personality. You can be more aware of the options available to you.

And then something interesting can happens ' our ego states may become 'rigid' or 'constant'. Hence there are the constant parent, the constant adult, and the constant child states. Here is what the author says about the Constant Adult:

The person who primarily operates as Constant Adult is consistently objective, uninvolved, and concerned primarily with facts and data processing. This person may appear unfeeling and unsympathetic, may not empathize with someone who has a headache, and may be a bore at a party. These people may seek jobs that are object-oriented rather than people-oriented. They may select vocations in which abstract thinking devoid of emotions is valued. They may be attracted, for example, to accounting, computer programming, engineering, chemistry, physics, or mathematics.

This book really helped me to understand something about me and also about others around me. Even before reading this, though I could understand many things, the book helped in properly structuring the thought process.

PS: If you could find a soft copy of this book, it would be a great thing to share

Book: Born to Win, transactional analysis with Gestalt Experiments,

by Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward

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Books

Psychology

Games people play

Games people play by Dr. Eric Berne, first time published in 1962, is one of the most famous books in the field of psychology and interpersonal relationships. I had heard about this book from my business communication teacher, and when I laid hands on it yesterday, it had to be finished today. But I accept that I found to difficult, specially the initial chapters. Also, there was a feeling of disbelief: after all, for a non-gamer like me, the world becomes difficult if I start looking out for the games people play J

"People tend to live their lives by consistently playing certain 'games' in their interpersonal relationships. They play these games for a variety of reasons: to avoid confronting reality, to conceal ulterior motives, to rationalise their activities, or to avoid actual participation. These games ' except when they are destructive ' are both desirable and necessary.

The book covers 36 games which are categorised under 7 headings: Life games, which transcend a specific mode of response in a given situation and pervade the player's every action; marital games, which two people may use in order to sustain a frustrating or unrewarding life; sexual games, in which someone provokes sexual reactions in another person and then, as in the game called 'Rapo', acts as though he or she were the innocent victim; party games, which by definition are social and move from the perpetual gossip to the chronic complainer; underworld games, such as 'cops and robbers' which are most often played for material games but can also aim at psychological advantages; consulting room games, which can be played by a patient with a doctor to avoid getting cured."

For example, I would quote a marital game, called 'If it weren't for you' (lady folks, this is just one game and is not a generalisationJ)

"Briefly, a woman marries a domineering man so that he will restrict her activities and thus keep her from getting into situations which frighten her. If this were a simple operation, she might express her gratitude when he performed this service for her. In the game of IWFY, however, her reaction is quite the opposite: she takes advantage of the situation to complain about the restrictions, which makes her spouse feel uneasy and gives her all sorts of advantages. This game is the internal social advantage. The external social advantage is the derivative pastime 'If it weren't for him', which she plays with her congenial lady friends."

Note: Sentences in brown font are quoted from the book.

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Books

Veronika Decides to Die

Some times we read strange stories. And some times we reach strange conclusions. While reading this Paulo Coelho book, this feeling of strangeness was persistent.

Veronika is a young lady, who has got every thing in her life that 'normal' people expect ' health, loving parents, house, job, boyfriends, etc. And then she finds that her each day was the same and there was nothing worth interesting left in her life. She got bored with her life, because in her life, every thing was 'normal', on a straight line. So she decides to die.

Her attempted suicide leaves her in a mental hospital, where the chief doctor does an experiment on her. He tells her that she won't survive that week-end. And he observes how she behaves, and how she lives from that point onwards. In the constant 'awareness of life', she lives her life fully. She goes back to piano, loves a new man, and does all that her heart tells her to do. In this state of 'being alive', with each second passing, she discovers what was wrong with her past life.

Message: "Every moment of our life is special and precious".

Paulo is very critical of our general tendency to be 'perfect' and 'acceptable' to the people around us. Because of this, we give up or sacrifice our own individuality and take comfort in being part of the society. From our childhood, our parents guide us about the way we should behave, the things we should eat, and the type of cloths we should wear. We give up our passions ' to what our parents think is the right vocation for us. We give up our love because it doesn't confirm to what the society expects from us. We get up at fixed time, take lunch and dinners at fixed times, in fact we have accepted things without questioning anything. This has gone the extent that if anyone turns to be different than us, we call them 'mad'.

Doesn't this take a toll on us? That happened with Veronika. When she had achieved almost everything in life, she had reached the conclusion that her existence had no meaning, because every day was the same. And she had decided to die. This may not happen with us ' perhaps we are not that sensitive, or we don't think that much about ourselves. But somewhere, someone is getting affected by this. There is a Veronika in all of us. And we should stop being that, the earliest, the better.

Though the book provides many points to ponder, I present here one of them: Astral travel. As we know, many religions don't believe in anything like this phenomenon. And many of us even don't believe in whatever Sahiti writes. But we should at least read this, it comes from Paulo Coelho:

Astral Travel

Zedka was making an astral journey, something that had been a surprise during her first experience of insulin shock. If she started telling them that she had left her body, they would think she was madder. However, as soon as she returned to her body, she began reading up on both subjects: insulin shock and that strange feeling of floating in space. She concluded that there was no relationship between insulin and the feeling that her consciousness was leaving her body.

She started researching into the existence of soul, read a few books on occultism, and then one day, she stumbled on a vast literature that described exactly what was she experiencing: it was called astral travel and many people had already had the same experience. Some had merely set out to describe what they had felt, while others had developed techniques to provoke it. Zedka now knew those techniques by heart and she used them every night to go wherever she wished.

The descriptions of those experiences and visions varied, but they all had certain points in common: the strange, irritating noise that preceded the separation of the body from the spirit, followed by a shock, a rapid loss of consciousness, and then the peace and joy of floating in the air, attached to the body by a silvery cord, a cord that could be stretched indefinitely, although there were legends that said the person would die if they allowed that silver thread to break. Her experience however showed that she could go as far as she wanted and the cord never broke.

Unlike the routes followed by planes ' which leave from one place and fly the necessary distance to reach another ' an astral journey was made through mysterious tunnels. You imagined yourself in a place, you entered the appropriate tunnel at a terrifying speed, and the other place would appear.

Today there was no one else in the ward, but the first time she had left her body, she had found a lot of people watching her, amused by her look of surprise. Her first reaction was to assume that these were dead people, ghosts haunting the hospital. Then, with the help of books and her own experience, she realised that, although there were a few disembodied spirits wandering about there, amongst them were people as alive as she was, who had either developed the techniques of leaving their bodies, or who were not even aware of what was happening to them because, in some part of the world, they were sleeping deeply, while their spirits roamed freely abroad

Books

The Devil and Miss Prym

Paulo Coelho is a great story teller. But the philosopher in him makes all his books invariably touch a part of the eternal Truth. In this book, which I finished at 4 am tonight, he reaches out to one question: "are human beings, in essence, good or evil?"

A stranger arrives in a small village, and he offers huge reward to the villagers in the form of eleven gold bars, if some of them murdered some one in the village. This was because in the village, every one was 'good' and 'honest'. He wanted to find out if they remained that good, under all circumstances? He believed: "given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil."

And there is Miss Prym, one among the villagers, who helps the stranger to carry out his plans. In strange turn of events, the villagers get ready to kill one of them. But in the end, it was she who makes the whole village see the reality, and not to fall evil.

The answer to the question is not very straight forward. But what I can get from the book is that there is always an eternal fight between good and evil inside all of us. Good and evil are two sides of the same thing. It was all a matter of control and choice.

One incident is of particular interest. This is the meeting between Ahab (a powerful criminal) and St. Savin (a priest).

One night, St. Savin came to Ahab's house and said he wanted to spend a night there. Ahab decided that he would kill the saint that night.

Even though Ahab had begun to sharpen his knife the moment the saint set foot in his house, safe in the knowledge that the world was a reflection of himself, he was determined to challenge the saint and so he asked him:

"If, tonight, the most beautiful prostitute in the village came in here, would you be able to see her as neither beautiful not seductive?"

"No, but I would be able to control myself", the saint replied.

"And if I offered you a pile of gold coins to leave your cave in the mountain and come in and join us, would you be able to look on that gold and see only pebbles?"

"No, but I would be able to control myself."

"And if you were sought by two brothers, one of whom hated you, and the other who saw you as a saint, would you be able to feel the same towards them both?"

"It would be very hard, but I would be able to control myself sufficiently to treat both the same."

Savin and Ahab had the same instincts ' Good and Evil struggled in both of them, just as it did in every soul on the face of the earth. When Ahab realised that Savin was the same as him, he realised too that he was the same as Savin.

It was all a matter of control. And choice.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Books

"The Goal" of manufacturing

I read the book "The Goal" by Edi Goldratt some days back. It was made compulsory for our operations management class. If you haven't read the book yet, I would recommend it to you. It is a novel which is called "Love story of manufacturing" and is based on the theme of Theory of Constraints (TOC).

I have worked in the cement industry. Though the process described in the book is different from the cement industry in terms of (batch) manufacturing, still there are methods and insights which can be replicated. I just thought some ideas for the cement plants, but won't comment before I read some more on the subject. Immediate recall would be like importance of and how to reduce inventories, how to handle bottlenecks and exploit them, and culture change by promoting ideas from workers.

I remember when our works manager asked them to prepare a make-shift bridge to reach the inside of the kiln at SCP, one which could be removed and inserted much faster, he was actually practicing the right way to treat the 'bottleneck'. Kiln is our bottleneck most of the time. As the book says, an hour lost on the 'bottleneck' is an hour lost for the entire system.

I came to know that many companies overseas which have made reading "The Goal" compulsory for their entire staff. I recommend this book to all in the manufacturing sector.

Title:               The Goal

Author:           Edi Goldratt

Publisher:       Productivity and Quality Publishing, Chennai

Rs:                  395

ISBN: 81-85984-13-1

Books

The art and science of "11 Minutes"

At 2 AM today, I finished reading 11 minutes. Was it worth the hours? Well, I don't know that if it wasn't then how I could carry it on to the end

I have read Paulo Coelho, through three of his other masterpieces: The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, and Like the flowing river. How was 11 minutes? At times frightening, at times shocking, at times interesting and most of the time daring. It is the story of Maria, a young Brazilian girl who doesn't believe in any boundaries, bindings, standards or societal norms. She believes in going to the extreme, and taking all her decisions herself. A boy she liked in her school tried to talk to her and she refused. And then she never saw her love again. Life taught and she commanded her life, her personal diary was a witness to all. She loved each slice of adventure, and then she chose to become a prostitute in a country far from her own, and gets to understand the psyche of men, women, sex, suffering and the truths of life. In the end, a painter falls in her love and she makes a decision to go with him ' I love the happy ending stories. The book covers her moments of truth very well. The book has gone lengths on the 'how to' stuff, but that is not something that we would remember about it minutes after we finish it.

Some parts that I underlined:

On women:

o Beauty, my dear, doesn't last.

o Original sin was not the apple that Eve ate, it was her belief that Adam needed to share precisely the thing she tasted.

On men:

o The most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage.

o She began to put clients into three categories: the Examiners, the Pretty Women type, and the Godfathers.

On relations:

o I made my first mistake when I was eleven years old, when that boy asked me if I could lend him a pencil; since then, I have realised that some times you get no second chance and that it's best to accept the gifts that world offers you.

o If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.

o Now, though, I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.

On her profession:

o She discovered, to her surprise that one in every five clients didn't want her in order to have sex, but simply to talk a little.

o When she realised that releasing tension in the soul could be as lucrative as releasing tension in the body, if not more lucrative, she started going to the library again.

o For a prostitute, the kiss was sacred. Nyah (her colleague) had taught her to keep her kisses for the love of her life, just like the story of sleeping beauty.

On history of prostitution:

o Prostitutes appear in classical texts, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Sumerian writings, in the Old and New Testament. But the profession only started to become organised in the sixth century BC, when a Greek legislator, Solon, set up state controlled brothels and began imposing taxes on the skin trade.

o The Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote of Babylonia: "They have a strange custom here, by which every woman born in Sumaria is obliged, at least once in her lifetime, to go to the temple of the goddess Ishtar and give her body to a stranger, as a symbol of hospitality and for a symbolic price."

On loneliness:

o Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings. Like her, these men, and the many others who sought her company, were all tormented by the same destructive feeling, the sense that no one else on the planet cared about them.

Art of gift giving:

o She placed the pen gently in his hand. "Instead of buying something that you would like to have, I am giving you something that is mine, a gift. A sign of respect for the person before me, asking him to understand how important it is to be by his side. Now he has a small part of me with him, which I gave him with my free, spontaneous will.

When she decides to leave her profession:

o I don't care whether it was once sacred or not, I HATE WHAT I DO. Its destroying my soul, making me lose touch with myself, teaching me that pain is a reward, that money buys everything and justifies everything.

No one around me is happy; the clients know they are paying for something that should be free, and that's depressing. The women know that they have to they have to sell something they would like to give out of pleasure and affection, and that is destructive.

Pain for pleasure or peace..

o You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced it today and found peace. That's why I am feeling you get used to it, because it is very easy to become habituated: it is very powerful drug Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it is seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self denial. Or cowardice. However we may reject it, we human beings always fid a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.

Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife want to show her husband how she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfilment there? No, he is giving his sweet and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love.

Book: Eleven Minutes

Author: Paulo Coelho

Rs: 295

ISBN: 81-7223-563-3

Books

The Kite Runner / Drinking - a sin? / Fathers' desires?

About the Book:

The Kite Runner is a beautiful yet scary novel by Khaled Hosseini. It is the story of Afghanistan. It covers the good and the tough times of the country; right from when it was independent, then under the Russians and finally when under Taliban. It is the story of a young boy and his servant who ran as a kite runner. It is a tale of how reality bites, how relationships change, and how sometimes, we don't change at all. The most touching part of the novel are the horrifying experiences which the characters go through. The biggest causality in Afghanistan was the lost childhood. Message is clear: the level of destruction that wars and the religious fundamentalism can bring to us is scary.

One warning: don't go after the title. The novel has excessive violence, sex and politics, the things that childhood should remain untouched with. I would recommend this book for adults only.

Is drinking a sin? Baba answers.

Amir asks his father whether drinking is a sin, as taught to him in the class by his religious teacher Mullah Fatiullah Khan. Baba says: (text abridged)

Baba: "First understand this and understand it now, Amir: You never learn anything of value form those bearded idiots."

Amir: "You mean Mullah Fatiullah Khan?"

Baba: "I mean all of them. Piss on the beards of all those self-righteous monkeys. They do nothing but thumb their prayer beads and recite a book written in a tongue they don't even understand. God help us all if Afghanistan ever falls into their hands."

Amir: "But Mullah Fatiullah Khan seems nice"

Baba: "So did Genghis Khan; but enough about that. You asked about sin and I want to tell you."

"I mean to speak to you man to man. No matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. Do you understand that?"

Amir: "No, Baba jan"

Baba: "When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband; rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?"

"There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir. A man who takes what's not his to take, be it a life or a loaf of naan I spit on such a man. And if I ever cross paths with him, God help him."

"If there is a God out there, then I would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch."

That is the bottom line: God has more important things to attend to than your drinking scotch. Quite a realisation for me. (Though I still won't go for it..)

Can you explain?

At one point in the book, it is described that the kite-runner liked a particular story: the story about a father who killed a young man, only to realise later that he was his own son. But Amir didn't sympathise and said:

"After all, didn't all fathers in their secret hearts harbour a desire to kill their sons?"

Do you have any idea, what does the author mean by this? Why do all father, 'in their secret hearts' harbour', desire to kill their sons? I have come across this idea for the first time, and am not able to understand. The most I can guess is that fathers may think that because of their sons, their 'male dominance' in the family would get challenged But I am not sure. What do you think?

18 Oct. 07, 00:03

"India Remembered" by Pamela Mountbatten

Kumar Rahul Tiwary

Pamela Mountbatten, 78, the younger daughter of the Mountbattens (Louis and wife Edwina), has co-authored a book titled “India Remembered.” Pamela accompanied her parents to India at the age of 17 and spent 15 months here. This book is her personal memoir of the time she had in India, in the corridor of power. The co-author of the book is Pamela's daughter named India Hicks (Interesting first name!) Ms. Hicks is an ex-model and author of two other books.

India Remembered

Category:       Non-Fiction 

Author:           Pamela Mountbatten, India Hicks 

Publisher:       Roli Books 

Price:              Rs 1495 

ISBN :             9781862057593

To purchase:  [Link]

�        The book is extracted out of the personal diary that Pamela maintained.

�        It includes some letters by prominent leaders like Gandhiji and Clement Atlee.

�        It includes her father' deliberations of the Indian leaders and kings.

�        Pamela writes that although her mothers had many lovers, her affair with Nehru had no physical dimensions.

�        The book projects her mother Edwina a heroine and describes how she loved India and helped Indians during partition riots.

Excerpt from the back cover of the book:

India Remembered is a pure evocation of this key period of India and Pakistan’s history. Using diary entries and extracts from the meticulously kept family photo albums as documentary evidence, this book is a brilliantly informative read and a chance to witness first hand a generation of characters whose actions were to change the fate of two nations.

Some interesting facts which I came across:

1. Title of the Book:

There is another book with the same title. ‘India Remembered’: an account written in 1982 by Barbara Donaldson of her life in the UP, first as a child and later as the wife of an I.C.S. Officer (J.C. Donaldson, C.I.E., M.C.). [Ref]

2. Pamela’s views about Gandhi, Nehru and Patel:

"Gandhiji was such a marvellous person that the moment you met him, he had such a twinkle but he was so simple with people that you know one was just delighted to meet him."

"When Nehru, the urbane idealist, would go off at a passionate tangent, Patel would say, 'don't go ahead of the people so far; come back, take them with you.'"

3. The way the Mountbattens died:

Lady Mountbatten died at age of 58 on February 21, 1960, while in sleep. She had just returned from a visit to India. To the surprise of many, a packet of letters from Nehru was found by her bedside!!!

Lord Mountbatten was holidaying at his summer home in Republic of Ireland. Members of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) were aware of Mountbatten’s movements. Despite security warnings, on 27 August 1979, Mountbatten decided to go sailing in his pleasure craft. The IRA had earlier fitted a radio controlled bomb which was detonated, killing Luis and some other family members; a sad end to an eventful life.

Some references: Amazon [Link], Indian Express Review [Link], NDTV Review [Link], etc.

[Mumbai, 03 August 2007]