A book... and how my life changed!!

This post is basically the result of a challenge that I had with one of my friends. He said that I am supposed to write three consecutive posts on one thing(nothing alive... only articles allowed). And that the thing has to be something general(no personal objects allowed). So, being the brave girl I am, I accepted his challenge and here I go.

The topic I've chosen is, what else, books. Books have been my best of friends from my young age. I've seen happiness in them when I was sad, solace when I was hurt, good advice when I was confused, fun when I was bored, companionship when I was lonely(not alone, but lonely) and comfort whenever I needed it. I know everyone reads loads of books. Our generation reads more than our parents did and certainly much more than our grandparents' generation. I read around five books per month making it roughly one per week. But there are a few books that I go back to and find comfort in them all the time. Everyone connects to a few books in their lifetime. Among my five most favorite books, four of them are popular and contain loads of links in the net world.(You can see their names in the "My favorite books" list). The fifth one is a recent favorite of mine and I couldn't find much about it on Internet(amazing! I never thought I would find something which google can't give much info about... at the time of writing this post, I found only one link :() And, that book taught me so many things about life in a very subtle way.

The book is "Naintha Ullam" by Anuthama, a renowned tamil author who dealt with life and family, in particular. Though I've read some other books of hers(like Ketta varam, manal veedu, ondrupattaal, alangaana kathaigal, arpudhamaana kathaigal, etc.), I was not as impressed with them as I was with this one.

The story revolves around Mythreyi, the protagonist who is a young girl at the impressionable age of 14 and comes to Chennai(yes, our Singara Chennai ) from Sri Lanka(none other!!), leaving behind her foster parents and foster brother and family. She comes to her uncle’s house where her brother is. She is, at first, very scared of all the happenings around her because of the variations in the lifestyles between her house in Sri Lanka and her house in Madras( Doesn’t Madras have a more nostalgic feel to it, compared to Chennai?). She was brought up as the “apple of the eye” by her foster parents and her uncle and aunt do the same too. Her brother worships the ground she walks on and everyone is partial towards her. But, she has to learn the various nuances in the relationships and gets to learn so much about people and their relationships with one another and the complications that arise due to even seemingly simple happenings. She also understands the complexities that are present in each relationship due to the very nature of such relations. She experiences the changes that come with her transition from childhood to teenage to young adult and finally, an adult. She also enters into marriage without knowing what she wants out of it and learns to take things in the stride.


[to be continued]