Skip to main content

Inspiration for beginners

 


Book Review

Title: Inner Feelings

Author: Cindy D’Silva

Format: PDF E-book

Dag Hammarskjold’s Markings is the best diary I have ever read. I don’t think he wrote it with the intention of publishing. It is a collection of the author’s personal inner struggles. The entries started when the author was 20 years old and ended at his death by a plane crash at the age of 56. The entries reveal the deep psychological and spiritual struggles that the author passed through and the lessons he learnt from them. You will find such gems as “Never measure the height of a mountain, until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.” And “Like the bee, we distil poison from honey for our self-defence…”

I was reminded of this classical diary while reading Cindy D’Silva’s short e-book whose entire title is Understand and Accept Your Inner Feelings to embrace life wholeheartedly. This is not to suggest that this book reaches Hammarskjold’s profundity. But there is the striving. There is a strong desire to overcome the hurdles on the way and conquer heights. Moreover, the book reads like a personal diary written in order to come to terms with the author’s own inner struggles.

Look, for example, at this observation on guilt: “No, I’m not perfect. As a parent and spouse who takes care of numerous tasks, including the 2-minute jobs in between them, I have sometimes: 1. Burnt utensils to charcoal; 2. Slept through a messy house…” It’s a pretty long list which concludes with the counsel: “You see, no one is SUPERHUMAN. We just organize our priorities differently…”

Occasionally there is poetic irony in the writing. “I wanted to be an actor or a model but did not grow more than 5 feet.” At times there is pain. “Some people probably thought it was a joke but sadly their words stuck with me and gave me such low confidence that I could barely introduce myself without a pounding heart.” The confessional vein juts out sometimes. “When I wanted to lose the fat which I felt wobbling every time I danced, I tried hitting the gym and got bored in two weeks. I preferred sitting and hogging in front of the idiot box instead.”

The book presents 27 themes for the reader’s contemplation. The themes vary from ‘appreciation’ to ‘passion’, ‘hope’ to ‘vanity’, and ‘gaslighting’ to ‘gossiping’. The blurb ‘warns’ the reader not to read the pages in a hurry. “Take your time and read it,” it counsels, “feel it and absorb it.”

The book, in other words, is not for casual reading. It is not even meant for enhancing one’s knowledge about the themes. It is meant to inspire, to make one meditate, to help one introspect and improve oneself.

Having said that, I must add that I was left finally with the impression that the author could have made it a little less preachy and more suggestive. Of course, the style and tone of a book depend largely on the targeted readership. This book seems to be meant for novices in self-exploration.


The book can be downloaded here.

PS. The above book is part of the Blogchatter Ebook carnival and my own modest contribution to it is LIFE: 24 Essays, absolutely free to download.

 

Comments

  1. Cindy D'SilvaMay 25, 2021 at 1:05 PM

    Thank you for your kind words!! Appreciate it!! Love this 'It is meant to inspire, to make one meditate, to help one introspect and improve oneself.' ... For the novices in self exploration ... On the spot! Thanks!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 26, 2021 at 7:33 AM

    I have downloaded the book, Yet not started to read. Your honest review is encouraging me to give it a read very soon! Thank you Sir!

    Archana
    archusblog

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rajeev MoothedathMay 28, 2021 at 11:22 AM

    Will take a cue and read this in a leisurely manner, slowly and deliberately.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuMay 30, 2021 at 1:31 PM

    I have downloaded the book and will start reading it soon. Your review has given me a direction.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kratika DixitJune 20, 2021 at 2:27 PM

    I am glad to know about you sir :)

    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
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more