Once I was more keen to reading fiction books primarily because the dreams woven within fictions end up in a happy note most of the time. Non-fiction never appealed to me because I thought it futile to read real life agonies documented in a book. I was like "when there are so much pain all around in this real world, why waste time going through the agonies experienced by different people and feel the pain"...rather the non-fiction stories with their melodramatic plot and action sequences and ultimately a happy union made me feel happier, transporting me into a world of Utopia...where every wish is granted, every dream is fulfilled and every desire is met....I was a decade younger when I used to think so silly.
Now all grown up with a mind of my own, not that I didn’t have a mind ten years earlier, but yes, emotional maturity was not there which is required to think in-depth, I have started developing a liking for non-fictions, biographical and auto-biographical writings. The euphoria of reading surreal stories has been replaced now by the empathy and understanding gained out of a real-life experience recorded on paper. It seems each of us lives through a life that is nothing short of a kaleidoscope of happiness & unhappiness, failures and frustrations, wins and losses, fortunes & misfortunes. Each of us has our life affected by the refrains of this kaleidoscope and we live it all, sometimes survive and sometimes give up halfway through.
One of my college pals couple of years back committed suicide for a reason unknown to us. She left behind two small young daughters. Looking back as I could recall, she was a vivacious girl very much in love with a boy whose photo she once showed to us. Her father died all of a sudden while she was still in college and later I heard that she got the job of her father. After passing out from college I met her once in a metro train on my way back home from the university while I was doing my masters and she was returning from office. She was wearing a saree and I caught a glimpse of the streak of vermillion smearing her head. She was looking happy, at least so I presumed. I wonder what might have transpired within a handful of years that she chose the drastic step of ending her life.
Sitting in the cocoon of comfort of my paternal home, when I was chatting with one of my old college friends with my heart full of excitement for shifting to Bangalore the following month, my friend broke the dreadful news to me. That was first time someone I knew of my age died and that is also through a means like suicide....It is just terrible....the feeling.
As life seems more real now than it was when I was living it with an impressionable mind busy in conjuring up dreams for future, I feel more than inclined to go through non-fictional autobiographies and biographies for life pictured in non-fiction might not take you to a hunky-dory realm of paradise, but it will bring you face to face with what life is all about and how people survive amidst untoward circumstances and live their share of good and bad fortunes boldly with an indomitable spirit.
Now all grown up with a mind of my own, not that I didn’t have a mind ten years earlier, but yes, emotional maturity was not there which is required to think in-depth, I have started developing a liking for non-fictions, biographical and auto-biographical writings. The euphoria of reading surreal stories has been replaced now by the empathy and understanding gained out of a real-life experience recorded on paper. It seems each of us lives through a life that is nothing short of a kaleidoscope of happiness & unhappiness, failures and frustrations, wins and losses, fortunes & misfortunes. Each of us has our life affected by the refrains of this kaleidoscope and we live it all, sometimes survive and sometimes give up halfway through.
One of my college pals couple of years back committed suicide for a reason unknown to us. She left behind two small young daughters. Looking back as I could recall, she was a vivacious girl very much in love with a boy whose photo she once showed to us. Her father died all of a sudden while she was still in college and later I heard that she got the job of her father. After passing out from college I met her once in a metro train on my way back home from the university while I was doing my masters and she was returning from office. She was wearing a saree and I caught a glimpse of the streak of vermillion smearing her head. She was looking happy, at least so I presumed. I wonder what might have transpired within a handful of years that she chose the drastic step of ending her life.
Sitting in the cocoon of comfort of my paternal home, when I was chatting with one of my old college friends with my heart full of excitement for shifting to Bangalore the following month, my friend broke the dreadful news to me. That was first time someone I knew of my age died and that is also through a means like suicide....It is just terrible....the feeling.
As life seems more real now than it was when I was living it with an impressionable mind busy in conjuring up dreams for future, I feel more than inclined to go through non-fictional autobiographies and biographies for life pictured in non-fiction might not take you to a hunky-dory realm of paradise, but it will bring you face to face with what life is all about and how people survive amidst untoward circumstances and live their share of good and bad fortunes boldly with an indomitable spirit.
