Fitting in..

Reaching out towards the world I felt,

Will I be able to fit in with it,
Will it see me the way I am or the way it wants to see,
Have I the charm to enchant your elite,
The beauty, to have men fall at my feet,
The demeanor, the wit to sway you my way,
The intelligence to hear you and say what to say,
I doubted my ability to mix and converse with sense,
I second guessed myself, oh! more than once,






I reached out to a book, lying on the shelf..


I felt like myself....

Book review

I just finished reading ‘A thousand splendid suns’ by Khaled Hosseini
After falling for his book the ‘The kite runner’ which was an enticing tale of friendship and relationships, I decided to give this one a chance as well.

The plot mainly focuses on the two female protagonists Mariam and Laila.
The book begins with Mariam’s isolated childhood and her thirst for acceptance in her father’s life. Her life takes a turn for the worse when she is married to a malicious and narcissistic man. Then narration then shifts towards Laila.
Laila in contrast to Mariam had a fairly blissful childhood marked by the encouragement towards education from her learned father, a romance with a ‘knight in shining armor’ type boy Tariq and indifference from a distant mother.
As fate may have it their lives collide. Their relationship changes and this forms the heart of the novel.

It is important to note that the book is a work of fiction and hence can not be depended upon for real details from Afghanistan and must be read in the same spirit.
Hosseini is a remarkable storyteller and once I picked up the book, I could not put it down till the very last page.
The book occasionally turns morose and sometimes too ‘filmy’ but like its predecessor it is a good read.

The monotony in the daily lives of women, sufferings endured by them and extraordinary love that overpowers all has been well woven into the story.
There are a few heart wrenching as well as some unexciting moments in the book.
Moments like Mariam’s realization that her father’s love was phony, her jubilation on having her first ice-cream and Laila holding her breath when she sees Tariq after 9 years as well as her heart breaking when having to leave her daughter at an orphanage are rather moving. The titanic fever that grips the entertainment starved people is also somewhat interesting.

All in all I think it is a good enough read, and can be read.