Santanu Sarkar

An amazing book. You may hate Hitler, as I do. You may condemn his philosophy, his rhetoric and his actions. However, what a "treatise" he has written. Here again, one disagrees with most of what he writes but there is no doubting the power of what he has written. This book was written for a purpose. And it served that purpose. That demonstrates the sheer impact of what has been written. There are indeed some extremely interesting observations. One such observation about Austrian Parliament rings a bell: "The intellectual level of the debate was quite low. Sometimes the debaters did not make themselves intelligible.............A turbulent mass of people, all gesticulating and bawling against one another, with pathetic old man shaking his bell and making frantic efforts to call the house to a sense to its indignity by friendly appeals, exhortations and grave warnings?' His observation about the media are equally telling: "It took Press only a few days to transform some ridiculously trivial matter into an issue of national importance, while vital problems were completely ignored or filched or hidden away from public attention". "These highway robbers would grab at anything which might serve their evil ends" Even the devil's mind has some interesting facets to his existence.

Amish's 'The Immortals of Meluha' takes you back around 4000 years and you begin imagining the Hindu mythology' s gods with Amish's eyes.. This pure work of excellence captures the reader and just goes on making him imagine and showing Lord Shiva from the author's eyes. It is a story of a common man whose good deeds transform him into the great Mahdev. Amish has very well brought up all the elements of Shiva's character be it the care and compassion for the weak, be it the wisdom and depth in thoughts, be it the doting husband that Shiva is ,be it the valour of the great warrior Lord Shiva, be it the excellent dancer that Shiva is, be it the anger he possess for something going wrong. The book has light elements too and Amish has very wisely used almost all characters from Lord Shiva's life to be characters in his book beginning from Shiva's wife Sati to Nandi to Daksha to everything. The book just entraps you into it's mystery by the excellent description and mind blowing dialogues.. When you read the third one:- The oath of the vayuputras, you'll find love. You'll understand love You'll understand grief You'll understand life I don't know why my eyes filled with tears everytime I remember him. That poor soul represents each of us. Shiva, you're no God for me. But someone I'll never forget. In my childhood I always needed a logical answer for the elephant head of Ganesh, the tragedy happened to Sati, the ugly physique of Kali and everything. I got the answer now. I've seen a different version of every person ,whom once I admired as God. Now I know Shiva like a friend. Very close. But this story did hurt me a lot. I don't want anyone to have a fate like his. He's no God. He's someone who lived a very different life. It's definitely worth a read...for those of you who are searching for a book to be their first one this might be it.