Book Review Of 'JOY 24x7'

 BOOK: JOY 24 x 7

AUTHOR: JITENDRA JAIN

PAGES: 133

BLURB:

Joy 24x7 is a very simple but unusual exploration of  joy. There is no religion in this book. There are no rituals prescribed here. There is no deep meditation being described here and neither is there any mention to any spiritual practice.

This is not a guidebook. This is not a “self- help” book. It is not going to give you “an instant formula for joy”. But it will surely make you explore your Joy for yourself in a very direct way. The simple, short snippets of daily lives connect with what Sadhguru has to say about Joy, will take you on a wonderful roller coaster ride on Joy with the Master himself.

With Sadhguru’s incredible clarity of expression, his brilliant wit and sense of observation, his ability to bring the most profound aspect in a very simple and direct way,  this book is for any human being who seeks to be Joyful.

No matter who you are, what you are trying to do, Sadhguru’s words will touch a wonderful wave of Joy inside you and you will soon be restless to seek Joy 24x7

 

MY TAKE ON THIS BOOK:

Let me begin with how I got hold of this book first. It has been a year or so I saw some of the interviews of Sadhguru with different personalities, and the answers he replied with were something I really enjoyed. And few months back when I was strolling with my friends, I discovered this book and instantly decided to buy it.

To be honest, we all seek for joy at some point of time. When someone dwell too much upon the expectations and validations of the society, it tends to be the case that the person is living to achieve the expectations and not what he actually want from his/her life.

Joy can be found in little things. Like, I was really happy when I called one of my teachers form college and she said she has been waiting for my call. I was really happy when I heard the voice of a person I haven’t in a long time.

A person can’t be happy all the time, it isn’t possible but the thing that is possible is that we can allow ourselves to gain experience and move ahead. We can allow ourselves to not hold on things and to let go. Life isn’t full of happiness but a balance between everything. So, finding positivity is what can make you happy.

Well, the book has small stories at the beginning of every chapter and exploration and explanation of the facts thereafter. The stories mentioned are of Dev, Lila and their son Arya. (which is very much relatable)

This book isn’t any fictional novel. Perhaps it is a book that will help you in realizing what you are lacking in life.

P.S.- It is a book with very few pages but it will strike you really deep. If you want to discover yourself, go for this book J

Overall rating- 4/5

Book Review of 'THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN"

 

BOOK: THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN

AUTHOR: MITCH ALBOM

PAGES: 231

BLURB:

‘All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time…’

On his eighty-third birthday, Eddie, a lonely war veteran, dies in a tragic accident trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hand in his—and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path for ever.

 

MY TAKE ON THIS BOOK:

‘No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river.’

Well, it is my second read and the first time I’ve read this book, I didn’t start reviewing books.  And you know? everytime I recall this book ‘The Five People You Meet In Heaven’ a smile curves up in my face.  Because if not for a dear friend of mine, I would have never encountered this book.

What I like the most in this book is the ending. Where it says, ‘The life of each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.’

The book starts with the first chapter titled ‘THE END’  and it is because the book is all about Eddie’s life and more about his death.

NOW WHO IS EDDIE?

Eddie basically followed the suit of his father and ended up working as a maintenance guy for the rest of his life in Ruby Pier which was an amusement park. He longed to leave this place, find different work, build another kind of life. but the war came, his plans never worked out and in time he found himself graying and wearing looser pants and in a state of weary acceptance, that this was who he was and who he would always be, a man with sand in his shoes in a world of mechanical laughter and grilled frankfurters.

The first person Eddie met in heaven was ‘THE BLUE MAN’. He made Eddie understand the fact that ‘there are five people you meet in heaven and each of them were in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at that time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life at earth.’

People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless.

The Blue Man tells Eddie a story and then viewed it from two different angles. It was the same day, the same moment, but one angle ends happily at an arcade, with the little boy in tawny pants dropping pennies into the Erie Digger machine, and the other ends badly, in a city morgue.

The Blue Man died because of Eddie, and when Eddie shook his head uttering it wasn’t fair, the man replied saying ‘Fairness, does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young.’

The second person Eddie met was the Captain. What he learnt from the Captain is that ‘Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.’

The third person Eddie met was Ruby, the woman who was the one the Amusement park was named after. What Eddie learnt from her was – ‘Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves’

The fourth person Eddie met was his beloved wife, Marguerite. She died at the age of 47. What he learnt from her was that ‘Life has to end but love doesn’t’

When life ends, memory becomes the partner and we nurture it, we hold it, live with it. Life will end one day but memories will stay till the end.

The fifth person and the last person Eddie met in Heaven was the little girl. The girl who was burnt in the yellow flames when he was held as a captive in the war. With the little girl, Eddie admitted that he was sad. Sad because he didn’t do anything with his life. accomplished nothing.

But the answer he was seeking since the time he reached this newfound land  made him feel better. He lightened up to know the fact that he saved someone.

Who was that someone? how did he save? What all Eddie suffered in life? how did he die? And how he played a role in the life of each person he met in heaven?

I am leaving it to you.

P.S-  Can I call it a mystery book? May be I can! Well this book has a special place in my heart. And I would be glad if you give it a try and let me know if you liked it.

 

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Book Review OF ' THE KITE RUNNER'

 

BOOK: THE KITE RUNNER

AUTHOR: KHALED HOSSEINI

PAGES: 327

BLURB:

Afghanistan, 1975: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realizes that one day he must return to Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant him: redemption.

 

MY TAKE ON THIS BOOK:

The first book I’ve read of Khaled Hosseini was ‘And the Mountains Echoed’ and I still remember the entire story. That’s the thing with the stories of Khaled Hosseini, they leave an imprint on you, perhaps the kind you will remember for a long time.

Amir’s father is a well known and respectable man in Kabul. He had always stood up against the wrongs but his son, Amir lack the qualities of his father. Whenever someone troubles Amir, he never stood up for himself. It was always Hassan who stood for him. Hassan considered Amir as his best friend but he was just the son of a servant for Amir. And when Hassan needed him the most, Amir left him alone. This guilt stayed with Amir for the rest of the life.

Amir’s father molded the world to his liking. The problem, of course, was that he saw the world in black and white. And he got to decide what was black and what was white. You can’t love a person who live that way without fearing him too. May be even hating him a little. Amir struggled to get love and affection from his father and it took him a long time to achieve so.

The only way to get Baba’s attention was by winning the kite flying tournament. There were no other viable options. Winning the tournament and running for the last kite to show Baba how competent his son was, was the only way Amir thought.

He won. But as he won, he lost something forever. (What he lost? Was it a person or a possession or anything else? That you have to find out from the book !) 

Ali, the servant who worked in Amir’s home had a congenital paralysis of his lower facial muscles, a condition that rendered him unable to smile and left him perpetually grim-faced. It was an odd thing to see the stone-faced Ali happy, or sad, because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People say that eyes are the windows to the soul. Never was that more true than with Ali, who could only reveal himself through his eyes.

Hassan kept trying to rekindle things between him and Amir, but Amir doesn’t have the courage to face him. It hurts, when you try to get back the bond you shared, but what you get in return is only series of disappointments. Amir has always been harsh with Hassan but Hassan never took it the wrong way. He always stood for his Amir Agha. And when Amir told him to go away, to stop harassing him, he left.

Once, Amir took Hassan to a hill top where they climb and read stories. That day, Amir threw a pomegranate to Hassan shouting ‘what should you do when someone hits you?’ he repeated it again and again and then answered ‘you should hit them back’ sobbing in between. The love and brotherhood shared between the two can’t be explained. I wish Amir wasn’t that rude or harsh with Hassan. May be things would have been different if he never participated in the kite flying tournament.

Although Amir and Baba toil to create a new life for themselves in the US, the past is unable to stay burried. When it tears it's ugly head, Amir is forced to return to his homeland to face the demons and decisions of his youth, with only a slim hope to make amends.

"When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father. And when you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There's no act more wretched than stealing" The way Baba explained this lines to Amir couldn't have been more realistic and relatable. 

The final chapter of the book is perhaps my favourite, and one that I have found moving even when rereading it. The message behind the very ending could be interpreted differently by different readers, but personally I feel that it offers a small sense of hope for both the future of its characters, and perhaps for the war-torn Afghanistan as well.

I loved how the story kept unfolding with time and I assure you would love it too.

How Hassan and  Amir got separated? What made them do so? Did they ever meet again? Why Amir remained thirsty for the love and affection of his father? What happened the night following the kite flying tournament?

I am leaving these question for you.

P.S.: the books I've read of Khaled Hossein so far always had a connection with Afghanistan and so does this book.

Let me know if you liked this book as much as I loved it :)

Overall rating: 4.3/5