Skip to main content

Let yourself bloom

 


Book Review

Title: You are Blooming

Author: Swarnali Nath

Amazon E-book, 2020

 “Let noble thoughts come to us from every side,” Rig Veda exhorts. We live in rather ignoble times. A global pandemic has revealed more potently than anything else our vulnerability even before a microscopic virus. In spite of that, we don’t seem to learn the essential lessons. We keep fighting in the names of gods and religions. We keep chopping people’s heads to prove the might of our gods. Nations threaten one another for a few acres of land in the border areas. Men rape and kill little girls for reasons that only they and their gods know. No, we won’t ever learn lessons.

That is why certain lessons become more and more relevant in spite of the fact that they are not new. Certain stories of love and compassion, grace and beauty, sunshine and bliss need be told again and again. We need be reminded again and again of our capacity for regeneration, the urgent need for that regeneration. This is what Swarnali Nath’s e-book, You are Blooming, does. It is yet another much-needed reminder that we can redeem ourselves at any time, however tough the going is getting.

The book is divided into three parts of equal lengths: Hope, Beauty, and Grace – each part has 7 chapters. Rather, 7 letters addressed to the seeker of happiness. The author speaks in the voice of a spiritual guru speaking to her disciple. The style is conversational though monologic and it is meant to touch the heart rather than the intellect. Certain transformations need to take place in the heart and not in the intellect. Swarnali is speaking about such transformations.

Here is a voice that seeks to bring more light into an increasingly darkening world, more love into a world being smothered by bitterness, more hope against the mounting despair. Here is a book that seeks to release the bird with broken wings back into the sky to which it belongs. This is a book that adds grace and charm to life, bringing noble thoughts from every side.

The book is available here.

PS. This blog is participating in the #MyFriendAlexa campaign of the Blogchatter.

Comments

  1. What a lovely review. I've read some of Swarnali's articles and I'm sure the book will be awesome. But your insights are equally great.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very befitting and precise review! Completely agree that the book is a beautiful 'much-needed reminder that we can redeem ourselves at any time, however tough the going is getting.'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nice review! Must read this book soon.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a beautiful review of a beautiful book.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a beautiful review Sir. Very rightly said certain things really need to be repeated again and again to ourselves if not to others and this book of Swarnali's is certainly a reminder of how we can awaken that goodness within us.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you so much for the beautiful review Sir. I am overwhelmed and honoured. I am grateful for the abundance of love you have showered on my book. This means world to me. Thank you Sir. Gratitude 😊🙏🏻

    ReplyDelete
  7. I have started reading it and I agree it's a voice of positivity in these turbulent times

    Ruchi Nasa https://thevagabond.me

    ReplyDelete
  8. There is a certain softness in Swarnali's writing and it comes across in the book. Yet to read it on Amazon. I just say that from my memory of it on Blogchatter. Wonderful review sir.

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a crisp & beautiful review sir. certainly during trying times, certain noble thoughts need to be repeated.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...

A Curious Case of Food

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...