Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The Saga of In the Name of Honor and Chowringhee

Life, as we all know, is full of ups, downs, success and failures and we humans make sure that we lament over our periodical failures over certain things and curse the creator for having created such horrendous miseries for us. I too, until some time ago, was no exception. With a recurring reminder of my true survival in this world, life has made me traverse through different spheres. Mostly it had been kind enough to shower its blessings over me, but at the same time, like the very strict schoolteacher punished me to realize my mistakes, and made me look like a failure in front of the world. Nagging over petty miseries, today I manage to earn a fairly handsome salary, indulge in luxuries by my own but I still find reasons to say that life has not been kind to me.

During my everyday lamenting session about something or the other, I came across two powerful novels. These novels, I had heard about but it was the last Saturday when I bought them not knowing that they have the power to influence me and to make me realize that life is about surviving and resisting the desolation and about learning to be happy at our own conditions. “In the Name of Honor” by Mukhtaran Mai and “Chowringhee” by Sankar. Both these novels have something in common. They unanimously speak out the stories of real life characters, who at one point of their lives were just like us but it was their power to fight over their miseries, their decision to not to make a farce of the miseries, is what made them heroes to many and inspirations to people like me. Both these novels are tremendously powerful, mark my words “powerful”. They have an appeal of their own when they describe the torment that human lives, in some corner of this fertile earth, had gone through. While reading “Chowringhee”, which is originally a Bengali book and got translated into many languages, the only thing that I promised myself was to learn not to nag, not to grieve over my petty miseries, which now I realize are anything but miseries. Both these masterpieces can only influence people. However, one might say that why should I read about the miseries of others when my life is full of miseries. They will break me. No, my words to all those would be that try to read them once and see the power that these pages have in them. You will lose nothing; you will not break but will learn to live life. Life is undoubtedly, about achieving, it is about achieving to make ourselves smile at our miseries and keep our heads high to tell the world that no one is a born loser and it is in our hands to change our fates and to make the impossible, possible.

All you people reading my blog (I do not really know how many will read), must have had bitter experiences in your lives and some bitter experiences are probably waiting for your intervention. However, trust my words, just hold any of these two books or if you are generous to yourself, both the books that talk about real people, you will be able to feel the strength in you to fight your grievances. You will learn to wash away your grief and your misfortune, with the tears that you will have while reading the books and come out to be a stronger person. Today when I am penning this blog, I never knew that I could speak of strength. Well people who know me well, know that I am aggressive, however, these two books taught me that along with aggression I do need to face the miseries with a smile on my face and learn to realize that the grass is not always greener on the other side.