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.

Five Point Someone : Book Review

     What actually got me to this book was the hype around it. The book was released in 2004 and remained as the bestseller till 2007. That was enough for me to grab a copy and start reading. May be I m very late in reading the book. I should admit that, to quite an extent, the book lived up to my expectation. Chetan Bhagat (IIT+IIM), the author, has the ability to narrate the story in a very lucid manner. The book has around 270 pages and can be completed within half a day. And once you start reading this book, I m sure you will not stop until you finish – all at one go J

 

     The story is that of three friends who join for Mechanical Engineering at IIT, Delhi. Hari is the narrator of the story. He often finds Viva terrible and lands up in soup as he is not able to answer the questions in spite of knowing the correct answers. He falls in love with Neha, the daughter of HOD of Mechanical Dept. Ryan is a tall, handsome and smart guy who hates mugging. He is innovative in nature. He often comes up with new designs in class but is pushed to follow the conventional designs by the professors. He gradually starts hating professors and stops attending classes. Then there is Alok, who comes from a very poor financial background. He aspires to become an artist, but then decides to study hard and join IIT so that he can get a good job in future and support his family. His father is not well and is undergoing treatment for paralysis and his mother is the only earning member.

 

     Ryan, who finds IIT curriculum uninteresting, decides to break the whole system. He finds it useless to mug up five to six courses a semester. He comes up with new strategy – Co-operate to Dominate. Hari and Alok become followers of Ryan and soon they start spending most of their time boozing, fagging and watching movies. When things go out of control, they decide to steal the question paper from HOD’s room and end up getting caught. Their life is in a total mess now. How do they come out of that situation? That’s the climax of the story.

 

     The title ‘Five Point Someone’ indicates the relative grading system in IITs. Five pointers are the worst performers in the class and are generally ignored by all the professors. The incidents, the characters, the plot everything is described very well. The book explains ‘What not to do at IIT’. Ironically you will find those ‘not to do’ things interesting. Overall it was a nice read. I am looking forward to read ‘The 3 mistakes of my life’.