The Alchemist

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it

 

     This is one of my favourite quotes from the book. The alchemist is a novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho. The book is about chasing dreams and realizing them. It was a nice read. The book evokes a sort of positive feeling and guides how one should realize his dream. This is narrated using a story of a Shepherd boy, Santiago, who undertakes a journey to pyramids in order to realize his dream.

 

     The book speaks about ‘Omens’ throughout which are the gestures of God. When one is on the path of realizing his dream, God helps him by showing signs. Santiago reads these omens, such as rolling out of the stones Urim and Thummin from his pocket when he was robbed and left moneyless, in desert he studies the flight of the hawks and infers about the threat in the future. ‘The Language of the world’ is something which the book refers very often. It is the language which the world speaks. It is the language the sheep speaks to look for food and water; the Camels speak to the desert and so on. Every object in this world communicates using this language.

 

     The principles of Alchemy come somewhere in the middle of the book. In the mid way through his jouerny, boy meets Alchemist who guides him for the remaining of the journey. The book also refers to ‘The philosopher’s stone’ which transforms any metal into gold and ‘The Elixir of life’ which can cure any illness. Alchemists posses these.

 

     The book is written using a simple language. But i did find some philosophical parts hard to understand. I am considering reading the book a second time to get some more insights. If not anyone, at least Paulo Coelho has realized his dream by writing this book!

 

Maktub !  

 

Book Review : The 3 mistakes of my life

    Oops! I did a mistake by reading this book. That was my nth mistake in life (Of course n being a positive integer and much greater than 0). Okay! Jokes apart, this is the third book by Chetan Bhagat, who is back to India now and has dedicated the book ‘to the country, which called him back’.

 

    The 3 mistakes of my life is a story of three best friends (sounds familier isn’t it?) based in Ahmedabad. Govind is the narrator of the story. He is a born businessman and dreams of owning a big business someday. He is in love with Vidhya, who happens to be the sister of one of his best friend Ishaan. Ishaan is very passionate guy who loves cricket. He was the best cricket player in his school and aspired to be in Indian Cricket team. But he performs badly in the selections and thus ends up getting rejected. His parents want him to join Army, which he hates. Govind’s other friend is Omi, who is the son of a priest of a local temple. Omi doesn’t know what to do in his life, but he doesn’t want to continue his father’s profession. So he sticks around with his friends. Then there is Ali, a young boy who is a gifted cricketer, but is more interested in playing marbles. Ishaan spots him and starts coaching him with a hope to see him in Indian Cricket team one day.

 

     The book starts very well giving a detailed description of each character. Chetan’s style of narration has definitely improved since his first book FPS . Half way through the book, it gets dull, and at the end the climax part sucks. Lot of communal violence is brought in, and it was really a pain reading the final few chapters. I hope Chetan comes up with science fiction novels in future.