Unlike many books I have read where I tend to develop a consistent sense of liking or disliking for the book and the protagonist/subject it talks about, I have had a surreal love hate relationship with this book. When I started of, the first three pages made me feel disgusted with the selfishness and unreasoned honesty of the character. The cursory transition from an incestuous relationship he shared with his girlfriend, seeking peace and pleasure in her body in times of extreme disgust or exhilarating achievements, to just a perfunctory act made me question his sensibilities and existence of anything real in life. I got harrowed with the justification given for such acts. Though the book discussed the alchemy with utmost honesty and elaborative/seductive/erotic plots, the uncertainty in behavior, attitude, feelings, acts it uncovered at times made me feel helpless and announced the act of controlling things/situations futile. Just when I summoned the theory it advocated, the youthful and crude description by which he weaved the vivid heuristic assumptions we make for ourselves and world around us took me by an awe, I wanted to critique each one of it but I just couldn’t. I would like to share couple of notes I made from this book
“Each one thought his self-worth was directly proportional to the number of people who read him. It had little to do how much you knew or how good you really were- things outside of yourself determining your sense of yourself.”
”The universal law of men, you are not what you see reflected in the mirror you are who you see shining in other men’s eye.”
“Petty success is a disaster.”
“My life was a lie and I couldn’t suspend disbelief forever”.
“When lovers bare their bodies they have sex, When lovers bare their souls they taste Godhead’
“It [Mahabharata] understands the world is powered by desire, and that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress. But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing and the only reason for all doing. And doing is life, doing is karma.”
“Desire is a wonderfully promiscuous thing, but when it is trapped in monogamy it cannot survive without love”
I can go on forever here but I would rather let you read this book to understand it better. My takeaway would be “Immortality is farce, the sooner we understand it the better it will be for us to calm down our ever rattling mind.”
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