Brothers Sen Gogh by - Manik Bal

 

Brothers Sen Gogh

The story revolves around the life of two brothers, Soubhik and Sourav. Their story seems to be inspired by the legendary Van Gogh brothers, Theo and Vincent. Sourav is the younger brother and is practical unlike his brother, an idealist musician, who was pampered and inspired to be idealistic by their father. 

What I liked the most about this book is the strong based characterisation. Where you can actually understand the person, identify with and relate to. This combined with a powerful story has made the book a complete piece according to me. 

The struggles of a creative and talented artists, complexities of relationships, middle class misfortunes, inevitabilities of certain decisions in life are all cocktailed up perfectly in this musical journey of brothers who are tested time and again by their fate and society. 

The sensitivity of Soubhik’s personality touched me the most because I have read and have been attracted to read similar characters. Sourav’s knack of handling conversations, Nethra’s courage to speak the truth which most people would avoid, Indrani’s smart and caring nature, Suresh’s admiration, all of them were most relatable characters. 

I like how the story unfolds, hooks you up from beginning till end, doesn’t bore you at all at any point. Storyline is great. Sometimes makes you wonder if this is a real story because it reaches every corner of the society and brings you the unfortunate facts. 

Now I must say Prashanth was a weirdo here and the base for his character could have been made stronger like, more detail on his physical description, more depth to his personality and a few of his life incidents for his genuinity. It was hard connecting to him and upon that his weirdness. Also Soubhik’s character is a very sensitive, deep and a difficult fort to penetrate, so he could have been described further or some more insights from his perspective would have been even better. It’s a difficult category of character to build.

All in all it was an entertaining read. Book gets 4/5 

Ageless Body Timeless Mind - by Deepak Chopra

Ageless body and Timeless mind - A practical alternative to growing old!

This book is an angel to me. I say this because for me an angel means that which comes to you by itself at the right time, right place and precisely when you do not know what exactly you are looking for. My major question about life is, if you’ve read my blogs you’d know, as human species we have taken care of all the things related to survival but we are failing at taking care of disease, old-age and death. By taking care I do not mean escaping them, but just handling them as gracefully as possible. 

So this book talks about exactly the same things. It answers all possible questions that can come to you when you give a thought on it. It opens your mind about what exactly the body and mind is. I’ve always looked upto Deepak Chopra for scientific explanations for the traditional mystic solutions and he has never failed. 

He provides the two lists of paradigms in the beginning of the book and goes on to explain/prove them. The first is the old paradigms that are ingrained in our minds from generations on end about our reality, which are now old, worn out, inapplicable, and irrelevant. The second is the new paradigms list which needs immediate installation in our minds to erase the old and build our new, relevant, proper and real reality. After which we will no longer need assumptions or paradigms or any such pre-conditions of the mind. 

The book scared me when it talked about diseases and death but then it tells about that particular fear and how you can overcome it. The book gives you a lot of information about the body based on science and then you just start to float and feel as young as ever. You will gain the confidence to do anything your heart desires and find yourself much healthier than before. Once you reach the Timeless mind part of the book it blows up your mind trust me. You will see that body and mind are not different and are connected in unimaginable ways. 

I am spellbound after reading this book, there was a hint of regret for not having read this earlier but, all's well that ends well. Obvious 5/5.

Immortal Talks - Shunya (book 2)

So second book in the series Immortal talks, is as enlightening as is the first one. Book starts with a mainstream character called Anita who's life is about to change from the pit of poverty to prosperity. And parallelly Deva - Hanumanji is imparting immortal knowledge to his Mahtang disciples with help of analogies from mainstream human community. I can say that the book ends with a demo of the immortal knowledge by helping a mainstream character Sulochana over come her past traumatic events with the help of a helper-to-Gods soul called Dirgha. 

It talks about migration of soul from one character to another and from one pre-recorded scenes to another using Linga Code which helps the soul in choosing its next scene. It makes you aware of the difference between your character and your soul, and all the desires, karma and such of the character need not necessarily belong to the soul. The soul is always free to choose its karma, karma-phal and desires. 

Deva explains about the Linga Code and its absolute language, which has only two variables - Karma and Desires, using the analogy of binary language. Also the freedom of the soul in Shunya tunnels, incompleteness of the characters by definition, the invisible four mental bodies - Intelligence: Intellect: Samskara: Chitta, the unsuccessful and continuous efforts of the characters to become complete, how surrahs and assurahs take advantage of the character, and much more. 

All in all it makes a lot of sense when you are a seeker and not just a reader. I'm not saying this should be the ultimate truth, may be it is not. But unless you are open to accept and give it a try to expand your consciousness, you will never reach anywhere. 

I say at least reading, if not trying, this series is a must for everyone irrespective of one's belief or disbelief. A Sashtang Pranam to the author who writes in the name Shunya- meaning nothingness. Sharing such knowledge and not revealing identity is both a mystery and modesty. 

I'm definitely gonna re-read this series multiple times. The book gets 5/5.  

Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor.E.Frankl

 

Man's Search For meaning - Viktor.E.Frankl

The classic tribute to hope from the holocaust.

One of the finest way of conducting life and telling one's story. An amazing package for life in a book.

First part of the book is about the author's experience in the concentration camps during the World War II and how he was fortunate to survive Auschwitz. And how the manuscript of this book, which was taken away from him, was his motivation to look forward to something in the outside world after losing his family in the same hell.

Second part of the book is about Logotherapy which was developed by the author from his years of study and experience of psychoanalysis. To put it roughly here, every human looks for "a meaning" in everything, especially the desire to find meaning of life itself, which explains the title. To quote: 

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way".

I'm greatly motivated and transformed after reading the book. It talks to you on a deeper level. It teaches you, anything that happens in life is not under our control but how we look at it is completely relative and depends on your perspective. It is up to you to extract what meaning you want from life and the moment you hold that control with yourself, nothing that comes your way can have power over you. 

And I think it is wise to have the power of perception in our control rather than to give it to the situations and external factors. The book gets 5/5.