Bird’s Eye View

There is this new trend of increasing number of professionals from medicine, engineering and management taking to writing short stories and novels. From Where I See is a similar attempt by a practicing 

anesthesiologist Ajay Yadav. 

Ajay dreamt to write a book which could peep into the other side of the curtain to find answers to hundreds of controversial yet pertinent questions like “why in one religion it becomes so easy to get volunteers to blow themselves and others for the sake of religion? What precipitates extramarital affairs? Does the immature and wrong interpretation of female emancipation the reason for 13 times rise in divorce rates in last five years? Is it justified that for commercial gains, we instead of presenting women as “women of substance” are projecting them as “material for sex”? Should prostitution be legalised? Are the working women better than <g data-gr-id="100">house wives</g>? Are the wars really necessary? Who are the true freedom fighters in <g data-gr-id="117">freedom</g> struggle of India? Is it right to give credit to Mahatma Gandhi for single handedly expelling the Britishers from India  while in fact he was a firm believer that British rule was meant for the welfare of the world? Can we consider him as <g data-gr-id="120">epitome</g> of morality even if he didn’t mind sharing <g data-gr-id="121">bed</g> with his 19 years old grand niece just to check her control over sexual desires?

There is an eternal child called human conscience in every one of <g data-gr-id="109">us</g> but we never listen to it – because we are afraid that our faces covered with hypocrisy and defence mechanisms might get exposed. This book is such a rebel child, which dares to enter our sleeping souls.

The book starts with police inquiring about Shruti’s death from Ajay. Then the story moves in a parallel motion; some pieces of interconnected past and the present. After a long gap the protagonist, Ajay meets his childhood friend Shruti on a social network site. He finds her struggling with intrapersonal, interpersonal, inter-social and inter-religious conflicts. 

Through Shruti’s <g data-gr-id="112">life</g> the author has tried to find out the root causes and probable remedies of these conflicts. The chapter on the evolution and politicisation of religions is interesting. There is an attempt at an unbiased, free from mythology, <g data-gr-id="110">narration</g> of <g data-gr-id="111">history</g> of five major existing religions of the world.

The book is full of quotes, few worth following are:

 

Why we have to bargain with everything in life; why can’t we honestly get what we deserve and honestly give others what they deserve.

The books narrative style meanders from being a story being told to an essay being read. It’s a hybrid, an innovative genre, but can’t say how successful it would be. The characters are well delineated, the author’s writing style is simple yet effective; narrative has a flow and opinions are strong but on the flip side narrations at certain stances becomes long enough to distract the reader from story line, the length could have been a little less. 

The blurb  on the back page says that it’s not only a book; it’s a path to a revolution, it’s a journey towards a Utopian world; If you are open minded, have the courage to accept truth and have <g data-gr-id="124">desire</g> to change the world; then be a part of the change holds true.