48th Book of 2020
I have always been very vocal about my detachment from the genre of books which are anthologies, collection of short stories or poems etc. Rather than being rigid, I still ensure that I keep on picking up the books which are associated with this genre in case I might fall in love with it one day. This made me pick up the book named “One Proverb One Tale” written by the team running the Instagram page named “The Indian Proverb” about which I was unaware before picking this book. The cover page also has the tagline that says “Explore the wisdom of Indian civilization wrapped in tiny sentences”.
This book has 44 proverbs written in Hindi from our ancient civilization. To explain it better, author has also shared a small tale for each of them for us to comprehend and understand the meaning behind the same. Along with the Hindi text, author has also ensured to provide a translation for the same in English which made it little more helpful for me to proceed ahead with reading the small tales. All the stories sound simple but speaks big volume. There are some of them which makes you think about your approach and tendency towards others and your work. Author has narrated all the tales simply as a story but gives strong messages without being preachy. This is what makes these stories interesting.
The language used for writing the tales and stories are very simple. The editing is perfect as author could have stretched these short tales but it has been beautifully ensured that it gets completed within 1-2 pages itself. There is consistency in all the stories as they are written in one template itself as if author is describing someone else’s story and making them realize where they went wrong or remained unaware. Generally, authors tend to write as a first voice or third voice in different stories but here, such unwanted trials are not made.
Now, talking about few stories which shall always stay with me:
“Overthinking” is a nice chapter speaking on how we stay hesitant of doing something and committing mistake or else we end up only thinking without doing anything.
"The Loss" speaks on how we end up losing what we own for something which we have only lusted upon.
"The Present-Past" is about our behaviour these days where we never enjoy what we are currently doing rather keep thinking of the next task in hand.
In "The Soldier", author talks about how we never look at a soldier with any kind of identity but only as a soldier who safeguards our nation.
How our worrying doesn’t have any medicine even with the doctors is nicely portrayed in "The Worry" where author tries to deliver the message of how we are getting unhealthy due to unnecessary worries.
“The Suspicion” chapter shows the humorous side of the author which came as a surprise in between.
"The Curse" is a very good take on karma and receiving kindness in return of giving kindness.
"The Noise" is so apt as per today's era where a person keeps boasting about himself and we get into inferiority complex but we later realize that the truth is different and we are better in many terms than the person.
"The Controllable" talks about the biggest lesson Bhagavad Gita gives- "Karam Karo, Fal ki chinta mat karo".
"The End" is the last chapter which tells the significance of Death and how it brings humility in a human being after realizing that everything could have ended in one moment itself.
Now, talking about the drawbacks, I couldn’t find any except that there are some typos and grammatical errors in the book.
Overall, this is a very unique concept which I have seen for the 1st time in last decade. This is a great light-read to which I am rating 4.5 stars out of 5.
Thanks.
WRITING BUDDHA
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