Saturday, July 15, 2006

Awareness of death, the key to live...

Its one of the few books that moved me intensely..So much so I wept into my pillow wracking with sobs... We do take so many things in our lives for granted, dont we?
Though I already knew this, it took a writer like Paulo Coehlo to make me live the statement as Veronika did, in his latest novel "Veronika decides to die"!

Its the story of a woman in her twenties who decides to die...and for what? because life is the same yesterday, today and would be too tomorrow. So self-sufficient that it is boring...a good job, nice food, loving parents, clubs to enjoy, boyfriends for company....monotonous as any other day!
Unluckily she escapes the bid on her life and ends up in a lunatic asylum only to find out that she would be living for a week more. Her heart had been damaged to a great extent by the overdose of sleeping pills.
She lives her life those seven days...she discovers herself, her dreams, her joys, her desires, her love, her sorrow, her pain, her hatred...she allows herself to live completely 'coz she might not have another chance...

Madness is something we do relate to with screams, torn dresses and crazy laughs. We see a different side to madness altogether through this book. A person is mad 'coz he doesnt live life
according to a set of soceity norms, coz he or she does not think like the others around them,
'coz somebody said that the world is round and not flat, 'coz someone said that the earth goes around the sun and not vice-versa...! We are all mad in some part of our lives or the other....?

People are different just like there are no two leaves looking alike in the forest. Thats the way God created us. But we strive to be the same, suffocate our dreams and stick on to the social
stream, bend and break our loved ones to follow our rules and systems....and this forcible
attitude to be the same brings about the natural madness inside all of us.

We want security, stability, surety in our lives and we build walls around us and never live life passionately every moment....and it requires death to shatter our insanity and make us live intensely...!

So beautifully written that I saw death looming ahead, I wanted to live life today and NOW as I wont have a tomorrow...

A "must read" book of madness and wisdom, death and life, despair and love....!
lovingly living,
Kalps