Shalimar The Clown – Salman Rushdie

My fourth Rushdie book. The first one I read was "The Moor's last sigh". My mother had a tough time making me live a normal life till I finished reading it. I picked up "The midnight's children" with much excitement and found his strong "Rushdie Style" a bit too much. Still, the book made a descent read. It was "Fury" next time. Even if you get it as a freebie, for God's sake don't waste your time on this book. It needed reassurance by looking at the cover page to believe it was a Rushdie book.

"Fury" was a disaster; made me vow not to pick up any of the Rushdie books. I happened to read some reviews on the book afterwards. They say that is the worst ever Rushdie. I try to pick up books after checking out the reviews. Having read two of his other books, I didn't even think twice before picking up "Fury" without any reviews. That was a disaster.

"The Moor's last sigh" is simply the best out of the four I have finished. I didn't even realise that there is a suspense till I got to the last pages. And the revelation left me dumbstruck. Man, it is damn worth a try. The Zogaibi & Da Gama families and The Chipkali movements, his lady love etc etc etc.

"Shalimar The Clown" is OK. I would rate it same as or slightly above "Midnight's children". Even before I reached half way through the second chapter (it has only five big chapters), I could guess the rest. Still, the book could get me to read the whole thing, just to find out how it happened.

India :- The first chapter. Captivating.

Boonyi:- Second chapter. Beautiful and happening in the beautiful Kashmir.

Max:- Complicated. Second World War, Hitler. Even Charles De Gaulle himself makes a cameo appearance !!!!!

Shalimar The Clown: Can be well predicted still good.

Kashmira:- The end. Again, just as expected.

This man has got an amazing ability to mix up fiction with history. How easily is he talking about Second World War and Ratty Rhodes and Max Ophulus and the university and Charles De Gaulle as if everything else is as much real as the world war.

One thing that struck me is that he is unusually realistic in this book. Boonyi's friend gets raped and he DIDN'T write that "the night after she realised she has got two wings and flew up to the heavens". Rather the lady commits suicide at the end. There are certain aberrations while Shalimar the Clown escapes from the jail, but that was not over done.

The bottom line is "borrow & read".

The PROPHET - Kahlil Gibran

This is the fifth time I am reading this book in its entirety. The first time I read I found it too tough for my level of cognition. Somehow, I wanted to decipher the meanings. Tried a second time which made it easier. Since then, anytime I see the book in my pile, I can't help but read atleast tose lines that I have underlined.

I am no one to talk about the greatness of the book. It is the most brilliant of all humanly written books. Atleast, considering the minimal number of books I have read. May be this is not just another book, but a guide to free you of all your illusions that cover the real knowledge lying behind. Gibran speaks of nothing more than what we all know, yet he speaks lot more.

I would call The Alchemist a good book. But can't even compare that with this book. I think I liked Alchemist because I read that first and then read The Prophet. Had it been the other way round, I am sure I would have found felt it was just another book.

Since I don't even think I am worthy of describing Gibran, let the book speak for itself.

These are some of my favorites. And there are still some of the lines which I haven't exactly understood.

---------------------------------------------------

Love

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Marriage

You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Giving

You give but little when you give of your possessions.
It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

Eating & Drinking

When you kill a beast say to him in your heart,
"By the same power that slays you, I to am slain; and I too shall be consumed. For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand. Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

Work

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

Joy & Sorrow

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Houses

Your house is your larger body.

Clothes

Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.

Buying & Selling

And if there come the singers and the dancers and the flute players, - buy of their gifts also.
For they too are gatherers of fruit and frankincense, and that which they bring, though fashioned of dreams, is raiment and food for your soul.

Crime & Punishment

But I say that even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
And as a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree,
So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong without the hidden will of you all.

Laws

People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

Freedom

If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

Reason & Passion

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite.
Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows - then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason." And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, - then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."
And since you are a breath In God's sphere, and a leaf in God's forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

Pain

Much of your pain is self-chosen.
It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.
Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:
For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.

Self Knowledge

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths

Teaching

No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of our knowledge.
The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness
And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

Friends

Your friend is your needs answered.
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Talking

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

Time

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,
And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

Good & Evil

Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?

Prayer

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
I cannot teach you how to pray in words.
God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.
And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,
"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.
It is thy desire in us that desireth.
It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.
We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."

Pleasure

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"
Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,
But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,
And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

Beauty

All these things have you said of beauty.
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

Religion

Your daily life is your temple and your religion.
Whenever you enter into it take with you your all.
And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.
Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.
And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.
You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.

Death

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

---------------------------------------------------

I had such a difficult time in selecting the lines to post here. I couldn't make up my mind as to what to omit and what to take. This is a book I keep with my holy books and I read during times of confusion and trouble. Never ever has a book influenced me so much. I am speechless .....

The Flight of Pigeons – Ruskin Bond

Something that doesn’t fit into the Ruskin Bond style. Not recommended if you have something better to read.

I have read Ruskin Bond. Those were good, in the sense that it was as simple as he meant it to be. This is a serious subject. This doesn’t leave you with the kind tranquility other Bond books leave you. Nor does it make an impact in you such a subject would have made.

It is about Ruth Labador & her mother during the British Empire in India and the 1857 revolution. How they were orphaned and how they survived. Nothing more about the book.

With all respect and admiration to Ruskin Bond; pick up some other book of his, not this.

Tuesdays with Morrie – Mitch Albom

All of you, who have read/are reading/planning to read any of those self-help books, please read this. There is nothing to like or dislike in the book. It is a simple books that tells you about a dying man how much he appreciates life. But if you are looking for some high fundas or philosophies on life, please don’t bother to read..

Morrie is a 70 year old dying man. And Albom was his student. Albom could never find the time to contact his professor before he learnt that the old man is dying. He goes to visit his old professor. And the book is all about their meetings on Tuesdays. I will just quote something from the book that struke me hard.

“Forgive yourself. And forgive others”

Forgive myself, that had always been the hardest part for me, even if my mistake is ridiculously silly.

“Death is so natural. It is just the part of the deal you made”

It can come anytime.

Morrie shakes you hard to open your eyes. He urges you appreciate little things in life. To love people, not to keep grudges, find pleasure in not being the first.

Things that we realize only on our death bed. Hopefully, we have time to imbibe the essence of Morrie’s last days.

This book had left a mark in my heart. Give it a try. May be you will learn to appreciate your own life, the people around, even the lifeless things around you. Believe me, that is a good feeling.