Having Rusks of Fiction with a Cup of Reality

Hey guys! Hope everyone's Tuesday evening is going pleasantly:)

After my first blog post, I was thinking a lot during the past few days about what I can write about next. What's the next thing that my feather-pen wants to put down from my mind's library?

So, here's what it whispered to me on Saturday evening, after finding its way through the maze of writer's block.

Our lives run at a fast pace, and each day seems to grow busier as time ticks by, never waiting for anyone to catch up with it. It's amazing how easily time falls out of our hands and away in the breeze before we know it, and this is something that most of us realize at some point in ourselves, in those little timeframes where our mind gets a break. In a world where the standards are risen everyday, and people are all aiming for their place in the skies, sometimes at the cost of others and even themselves, we often become too hard on ourselves when things fall out of line and don't act out the way we had imagined it. Sometimes, we just want to let go of the paddles of the boat and let it bob along the water without worrying about the lurking troubles below.

Looking back, the first thing that I fell in love with in this world as a child was a book. To me, it was stupefying how those bounded pages held so many little worlds, personas, opinions and emotions while already existing in such a vast, endless world like ours. For the longest time, I believed that just like the limitless nature of our universe, there's no limit to the knowledge that books hold within them- that treasure trove always has another hidden gem inside when you open it, one that you wouldn't have noticed before. Like most kids, my love for reading started from reading comic books. I still remember the infamous Tinkle Digests and childhood cartoon comics like Amar Chitra Katha (Indian mythology comic books) that would completely steal my attention if I spotted them someplace when my family and I would go out during weekends. I was also an ardent fan of the 'Geronimo Stilton' and 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid' universes, and I am pretty sure most of us enjoyed these childhood fantasies :p.

This is the cover of the Tinkle Digest, a beloved Indian children's read and magazine that has a lot of valuable and comedic stories, as well as science tidbits and Q&As that often have a takeaway.

These are some of the Amar Chitra Katha comic titles.

With age, our taste in our interests begins to mature and evolve, and that's also the time when we discover that we are in the process of crafting an identity of our own- we start to understand more about ourselves, and the kind of person that we are, deep in our subconsciousness. I transitioned into reading fiction and long novels and especially enjoyed murder mysteries (a huge Agatha Christie fan, FYI), fantasies, stories of war, struggles and survival, and tales from different cultures, many of which remain in my heart today long after I have read them.

One of the most touching novels I read recently was a work of fiction called 'Before Your Memory Fades and Before We say Goodbye'. These books are part of the 'Before The Coffee Gets Cold' series by Japanese Author Toshikazu Kawaguchi, but I didn't realize that until after finishing the book. The book is set in a cafe in northern Japan, where customers could go back in time and revisit any moment, and most importantly any person or being (dead or alive) that they wanted, by sitting in a particular chair in the corner of the cafe. This chair is occupied by a ghost when it is not in use, and there are a set of rules that the customer needs to follow for their time travel- one of these was that they could only be in the past until the time the coffee gets cold. Any longer, and they would become the ghost that inhabits the chair.

The aspect that really struck me about this fictitious concept was that no matter what they say or do during the time they are in the past, there's nothing the customer can do to change that past or the present. Perhaps this was a tinge of reality that the author wanted to add to his universe- that time lost can never be gained, that the past can't be undone, and that death is the inevitable end for every form of life on our planet. I remember reading the heartfelt collection of stories that this book held, sitting on my bed, wrapped in the silence of that cloudy morning that carried the song of rain, and trying to understand the depth and enormity of this message that the author wove into the words, thoughts and actions of his characters. About how no matter the downfalls that life pushes us into, it's up to us to find our way through the abyss and into the light.

I am hunting for the other books!

Most of my family members would ever so often encourage me to also explore the world of non-fiction as well, but the thought of non-fiction never really tugged at the strings of my teenage book-loving heart. I would always walk past the non-fiction section in bookstores without so much as giving it a glance and find my way towards the novels I so cherished. Whenever I heard of the word 'non-fiction', my brain would involuntarily paint a picture of boredom, and you know how that goes.

However, after I turned 18, this past year I had been gifted some books of this genre by my loved ones, and maybe the fact that they gave me these titles out of love and consideration urged me to read them. And for the first time, my mind, and my heart noticed a drift in its waves- I realized that what I perceived as 'not my cup of tea' , and boring was in fact, true memoirs of reality- of how life happens. I am not sure if I was the only one who had this sort of biased view about the world of non-fiction literature, but after reading these books, I think I am on the path to understanding its true essence and modifying my gears to learn about the different shades and colors that life reveals to all of us, when the time is right.

Today, I'd like to share these books with you guys- they hold a multitude of lessons and values from real people- beautiful souls, inspiring people who learnt these throughout their lives, through all the glee, happiness, sorrow and everything in between that life painted for them. These 4 books are starting to change my whole outlook on how I should go about my journey, and how other people do so too.

The first book is titled 'The Secret', by author Rhonda Byrne. The knowledge that this book shares is something that some of us probably use in our day to day lives already, but we don't realize the magnificence of those actions and how those thoughts shape our lives and destinies. I read this book during the 3 months before college started, and it really made me uncover the reason behind why we are encouraged countless times to have an optimistic mindset. Through a myriad of miraculous episodes and adventures, 'The Secret' tells us the key to our lives- that everything we wish for in our lives can be transformed into reality by thinking, asking the Universe for it and simply believing that it will come to us, no matter the path the Universe decides to take to make it come true.

By being grateful and happy for everything that we already have, our minds and hearts emit positive energy into the world, and our happy thoughts and positive vibes all travel back to us in the form of all the goodness that we wished for. And as always, it turns out that the opposite is true as well- the more we think that a certain thing is not possible, the more similar negative thoughts, situations and people we attract to us. 'Like attracts like', that's the powerful message hidden in this book. I believe this book is one that needs to be shared and passed on between all of us- it really has the power of a tidal wave of change.

Book Cover for The Secret by Rhonda Byrne

Another book that I was given was called 'The Last Lecture- Achieving Your Childhood Dreams'. It follows the final lap of the journey of Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch, after the time he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was given only a few more months to live out his life.

It was also around this time where he was asked to give something called a 'last lecture' at Carnegie-Mellon University, where professors are urged to give a lecture on the things in life that were the most valuable to them and what they would want to leave behind as a legacy, were they to pass away soon. Prof. Randy found this quite ironic, considering the fact that this was in fact a last lecture for him.

Through the quiet pages of the book that held his last lecture that he gave in September 2007, I read about how despite the fact that his life was going to end anytime within the next few months, people found him to be the happiest person alive out of all of them. He talks about all the things he learnt in his life that he would want to leave behind for his children, who he wouldn't witness growing up and setting out into the world. How you empower others and take them with you when you aim to touch the skies, and how every day, you strive to live life to the fullest no matter the adversities you face. Despite the forlorn background of this last lecture, terminal cancer never stole Prof. Randy's sense of humor, the zest and excitement he felt for the gift of life that he had been given, and when you read this memoir, you can feel his life-loving nature speaking in all of its entirety through the lines, even though he is no more today.

Book Cover for The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

This next book is an autobiography- of India's missile man and former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, by the name 'Wings of Fire'. This book wasn't given to me by anyone actually- I stumbled upon it one drowsy summer afternoon in my hometown, when I was rummaging through the decades-old bookshelf of my grandparents' home, listening to the mynah chirping merrily, for something to read out of my boredom. I figured that it was originally given to my mom and uncle when they were around my age as it was addressed to them, and I started reading it out of curiosity.

The story of Kalam, starting as a small, naive boy from the seaside town of Rameswaram at the southern tip of India, and finding his way to becoming one of India's greatest figures in aeronautics and space research, and one of its most remembered, cherished and just President, his story really is one that makes us question- what's our purpose in this journey of our life? What is thing in life that we are to discover, or have already discovered, that is the thing meant to spread our wings and take us into flight? His story encompasses the innocence of childhood, the unconditional love of family, discrimination in all its forms, the goals we set for our lives, the cracks in our path, the cliffs we find ourselves at, and the destinies that await us down the road.

Book Cover for Wings of Fire by A.P.J Abdul Kalam

The last book that I want to share today is one that I began reading only about 3 weeks ago. It's a book called 'This is Not The Life I Ordered' and documents the battles, struggles, the victories, and the learned lessons of four headstrong women- Jan Yanehiro, Jackie Speier, Michealene Cristini Risley, and Deborah Collins Stephens, and those of their children, and other such amazing women who were clobbered over and over again, and yet found the courage to get back up each time they were pushed down by life and society. In their own words, these women together have 'a history of six marriages, one divorce, ten children, four stepchildren, six dogs, two miscarriages, two cats, twelve koi fish, a failed adoption, widowhood, two parakeets and foster-parenthood', and have been in near death experiences, at the brink of bankruptcy, and three of them had grieved the deaths of their spouses.

When you list out all these troubles and adversities in one sentence, the weight of those misfortunes already begins to bring us down. It's hard to imagine how it must have been to actually go through these things, even harder to recount those memories again to put into a book, unless they happen to us down the road.

I am still reading this book and somewhere near the end right now, but the pieces of their lives that these women put down into their words, with such honesty and courage, really teaches us to be grateful for the lives that we are living today, and that we should continue to be grateful for it, no matter what aspects of it turn upside down, and how we should be ready to face any scenario that might knock on our doors one day, especially as a woman.

They also tell us about the importance of having a good, close-knit group of friends whom we can lean on for comfort, advice, or simply to open our hearts and lay its contents bare, to remove all that weight that has been dragging us down. This 'kitchen table group' they say, was one of the most fulfilling solutions that they found for their problems, and they urge us to have this kind of a friend group, sort of like a club, as well.

What I found even more motivational about this book was how each section started off with a quote, that put in one line the lesson the women wanted to impart in the following pages.

One of my favorites were-

''I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me''.

-Anna Quindlen

Book Cover for This is Not the Life by Deborah Collins Stephens, Michaelene Cristini Risley, Jan Yanehiro and Jackie Speier

It's only now that I am beginning to understand how a book can also teach me a lot about life and open my eyes to the plethora of experiences that people in reality face- that it can teach me and help me more than just improving my vocabulary or being a sort of vacation from the real world, or as just a hobby. 'Non-fiction' is just another word for reality, for life. I now find myself trying to move to the other side of the bookshelf, the one that holds the harsh, as well as the beautiful realities and secrets of living our lives. These books are ones that I believe would contribute to helping us to start building a new perspective on the kind of mindset we want to cultivate, how we want to build ourselves and the lens through which we want view the world. The world is a good place if we believe it to be so, and if we try to find ways everyday to make another person's day happier, and be grateful for every new day.

See you next, and hope you enjoy the reads!