Immortal for a Moment: Small Answers To Big Questions About Life, Love And Letting Go
‘The further we travel to immerse ourselves in an unfamiliar world, the closer we get to our own self.’
If you have something like this, and more at your reading table, the lamp burns beyond midnight into the wee hours of dawn without a coffee break. With this you know, I have loved the book, and the review will bear vivid dimensions of positivity oozing with a zest for life. Yes, it’s about life and lessons learnt from it, but not without a pinch of salt and without a pail tumbling down.
47 chapters divided into 7 domains; quite a warm treat on a rainy day. If you wish you may finish off the book in a day; so simple so straightforward is the musings. But if you wish to savour the honey tickling your reading buds, then my strong recommendation, one chapter a day and then carry it to your loneliness, to your broodings, to the heaps of guilt running rife and many more dark corners to expose them to light. The book has a bit of everything; parenting, relationships, travel, social media, people, geography, history and the science of merrymaking. These are blogs cum articles written by the author, on various platforms put together in a paperback. There are struggles, shortcomings, toppling over, and again finding balance in your own idiosyncrasies.
The author, who successfully dabbles between journalism, photography and writing, brings out the ink to sketch myriad colours of who, what, how, life and its meaning changed for her with every incidence; it could be an eye bruising fall at the school or her green bangles reminding her of her mother-in-law or a Sherpa sharing the secret to a happy life like a monk or her husband who never wanted to be a father and now is the best man of his three daughters. 47, I again emphasise, is like tour a within the cockles of your heart for 47 days.
What amused me most is a modern woman, juggling the traditional aspects of being a Hindu daughter and a Muslim daughter-in-law, keeping her maiden name and allowing her daughters to be known as begets of a Muslim man. No ego, only preferences and choices must rule your existence, to each his own; a major take away for me. This comes out so well in one of my personal favourite chapter- ‘Married to a Muslim-He fasts, she feasts’.
Breaking protocols and bending to some, the author dismisses the need to fight, argue, breaking your bones and predominantly peace; for every battle is not worth the war. Walking away is not a sign of cowardice but a virtue you care for personal freedom and sometimes allowing nonsense to just creep away peacefully without making a commotion out of it. Better to rest in peace, than to live in pieces. I can go on because, for precisely 47 days, I have lived with this book; caressing, cajoling, persuading it to tell me more and more till it is exhausted and I replenished with childlike enthusiasm for life.
Go grab it, for it’s the perfect oiling and overhaul for rusted machinery called moron mind. It’s a way to enjoy being IMMORTAL within a MORTAL life! Leaving you with an excerpt on parenting, I loved most:
‘One of the biggest lies of parenting is that parents are always right. The second lie is that it is the children’s responsibility to make their parents happy when they grow up.’
Buy the book here: