Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

It is that time of the year when there is a sharp wind outside your window, when the sidewalks smell of woody fires and when old well thumbed books are reclaimed from their resting places. I am currently going through a Paulo Coelho phase, someone recommended “The Alchemist” to me and I was hooked. As tales go, it is not ground breaking work, what sets it apart though is Coelho’s way of telling an often repeated story.

He has the power of wanting to make you get to the end even when you have a fair idea of where Santiago’s adventures will take him. Coelho’s and therefore Santiago’s world is part fantasy, part mystical but they have their bearing firmly tethered in the reality that you and I share. While it is a book about dreams and the voices of your heart that are drowned out and often pre-emptively, it is also a book about how the grandest of dreams often choose the heart of a simple and rather unlikely person to begin their journey. Perhaps even more riveting is Coelho’s theory about the way the Universe re-aligns itself twice during the giddy travels that entail following a dream till it manages to take over and consume you with the force of its passion. The first time is when you start off on your quest and the second time is when your dream is almost within your grasp. I can place only a handful of books in the “Life changing” category, “The Alchemist” happens to be one of them…simply because with its layered simplicity it forces you to learn the often overlooked truth that there is no such thing as a failed dream, there is only the dream you gave up on.

So with Coelho firmly presiding over my reading list I started with “Veronika Decides to Die” which had mixed reviews from everywhere (which automatically makes it my kind of a book because if people cant make up their minds about something, there is a good chance that it has untapped potential). It is classic Coelho again, don’t be put off by the language however, it can be discordant and not because it is weak, that does not stop the message from shining through. This is the story of a 20 something who decides that she needs to die because she has been there done that and what else is there really. Veronika’s life according to herself, is a post orgasmic chasm where there is a hollowness compounded by the frenzy of the past. She fails (and miserably) in her suicide attempt and ends up in an asylum. And here Coelho takes over and takes us on a journey of self discovery where you learn that one size doesn’t fit all and that there is great strength to be found in madness and in walking against the crowds.

Coelho argues that those that build walls around them end up worshipping glory and absurdity in the same way, for heroes and madmen both show spirit and courage (maybe for different reasons) that stem from self belief. Veronica learns to question, learns that “dignity” has nothing to do with the self and is a mirage created by society to keep us from worshipping the madmen, and learns that you grow only when learn to love your own voice and more importantly, when you can accept that madness is an honest refuge from a dishonest life that thrives on the norms of a hypocritical society. Silence gets more answers than questions do, says Coelho at one point. That is when I realized I was a convert. Read this book as an experience, read it with an open mind. At the end of it you will walk away knowing that you will perhaps always wear masks because it is comfortable after some time to hide your face, but do know that if you take the mask off and are ridiculed, the fault lies not with you…freedom comes with a price and it is not always the free man who has to pay it.

After the heavy duty thinking exercises, I chanced to pick up Mitch Albom’s “The five people you meet in heaven” at an airport and almost gave up on it because I was still reeling from the Coelho wisdom. Albom is not the most grandiose writer around, he writes from the heart however and he is convinced of what he says and that is perhaps the biggest gift. This is the story of Eddie, the maintenance worker who dies whilst trying to prevent a Ferris wheel mishap. We follow Eddie through to heaven (and no, there were no preachings or spiritual sermons) where the ghost of Eddie is allowed to meet five people from his life because as the first one tells him “Heaven isn’t this wonderful place you go to, heaven is getting your time on earth explained so that you can finally make some sense of your life”. Eddie meets people from his past, his wife and finally as life (and death) comes full circle he learns what he struggled to understand all along. He learns that you when someone you love finally leaves you, it is always almost given back to you in the form of memories and that there are no sacrifices, there is only the passing on to someone else…and as life begins to make sense finally, he queues up with four other people to let the cycle run its course for some other soul. It is for the most part, a feel good book, it promises no earth shaking sentiments, but it reaffirms the ones that matter and are easy to forget. In the end, it is about going on and letting go and realizing that you can do so with grace because really, what other choice do we have?