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

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

    ReplyDelete
  5. 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

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...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...