The Alchemist

There are too many things one can learn from “The Alchemist”. Its all about following your dream and about taking the risk of following your dreams, which is actually so difficult to do and there are very few people in this world who actually do, I mean risk it all, just to follow your heart and your dream. Beauty is, the author is so right in saying that when u decide to follow your dreams the entire universe conspires in your favour which he called as the “beginners luck” and we all have been witness to this beginners luck at one or other point in our lives. Also, he talks about a stage in our journey towards realizing our dreams, where everything just goes haywire and there is everything working against us and it almost takes us to the brink of abandoning everything and just getting back to what was so familiar and comfortable (i.e. our usual daily life which we get used to) this is actually the time when we are being tested for one last time and it means also that we are really close to our objective. The example given was really great and yes nothing new but we forget simple things in our life like "the darkest hour of the night is just before the dawn". It is actually true that so many of us just leave the struggle when it gets really tough and the chips are really low, whereas actually we were so close to the objective, if only we would have had a little more patience we would have been there. In one of the episodes he talks about death, yes the fact we always forget, the only reality about our life, it is a constant which is not going to change rest everything is uncertain. There are a lot of us who either think that it happens to others and then there are others, who are so busy running after the materials that they don’t have time to think about anything, leave alone death. Yes, and those who do think about death, mostly fear it, some fear death because of the physical pain attached to it (such people actually fear the pain rather than the death, I am one of them) and there are some who think they do not want to die because its not time yet for them to go. Ironically but true, this decision about timings has thankfully not been left to us. So, how do we get over the fear of death or make it our friend, a companion? And not waste our beautiful life worrying about dying all the time. One of the possible solutions lies in this book, it reads "if i have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other". Yes very much right, one would never know when he or she wakes up in the morning that if it was the last day of his or her life and in fact, that day would not be any different from all the other days already spent. So, why not take everyday as the last day of our lives and live it up. Frankly speaking i really know what i am talking about, because I am in a profession which involves a lot of risk and death doesn’t have to look for reasons, it can just spring up from any bush in form of a small little piece of metal called a bullet coming out of the darkness of the night or just a deafening sound from under a culvert that I cross everyday. Here, everyday can be the last day of my life, every meal can be my last, every call to my wife can be the last time I would hear her sweet and loving voice and the kids… Anyways, so what I personally follow is, everyday when I wake up or every time when I move out on an operation, I say to myself "what a beautiful day to die" and there on, I just do what I have to and what I have been taught in all these years in the army and go through all the motions and concentrate on the job at hand rather than worrying about my death and I am really at peace with the fear of death. Another beautiful thought which I came across about death was in the novel by the author called "Confessions of a pilgrim". I derived from it that death can be visualized as a beautiful person who is always sitting besides us, so close to us that it travels with us wherever we go and it also accompanies us to our bed. Its a beautiful companion, a faithful companion, the only one who will never be unfaithful to us, rest all the companions are just lesser mortals and have been unfaithful at one point or other. Death always stays with us and actually speaking that’s the only companion who would accompany us all through our lives right from the moment we acquired some shape in our mother’s womb to the moment when we would get the vision of that white light and that feeling of lightness when we would finally leave this body also sometimes expressed as "VASTRA" (clothes) in the Indian mythology. As per the Indian mythology, the soul never dies, it is indestructible, it only changes a body just like we change clothes. Our soul is a part of God and it goes back to him. We can find the mention of the mighty soul of ours around the last portion of 'The Alchemist' where the shepherd realizes that ultimately it his own soul which is the “hand that wrote all” and his own soul was the part of soul of God. I firmly believe that there is no fiction involved in this story of the shepherd, but this is a true expression of mysteries and realities of our life, which we never pause to discover. There is message that this book wants to convey to us!!! I have never been into writing anything ever in my life, yes not even a personal dairy, but since the time I actually started writing which was just a month back, I realized that if we just write our thoughts as they occur, the resultant has a touch of mystery, because what we wrote with all our heart and soul, sometimes tends to surprise us. We tend to learn from what we ourselves wrote. We never realized that we had so much inside us and we don’t know from where, it all came. “The hand that wrote all”, yes I think its our soul that speaks out, the soul we never recognized, the one we never knew, the one which is part of soul of God…. …All religions have over all the years have preached a man “Know thyself, you will find God”, “look within yourself u will find all the answers”, these words are so common but how many of us actually are ready to pause and give it a try. It may sound crazy, may be the book has a effect that may appear really crazy but I am sure there are some people who would identify with me. May be when Paulo Coelho wrote this book his soul was revealing itself and that’s why some of us can identify with it because our souls are the part of same soul of God, just like his is. May be these lines of his novel were written by the “Hand that wrote all……………”

This was one of those books that I never would have picked out myself if my book club had not chosen it for us to read. Being the only guy in the club, I have to say that they all loved it. To me it was one of those books that I kept asking my wife, "How on earth did this become so popular?" I was thinking that it was one of those 'fad' books that everyone reads because 'everyone' else is reading it. But to be honest, I did finish it and there were even moments when I had to read just one more page. It did teach me a lot about the life in the desert and such, so it wasn't a waste of my time. Would I recommend it? Depends on the audience. It is easy to read and you feel good reading it. Military History buffs would be bored.

I don't hate it, but I didn't love it. Maybe it's the translation, or just the way the book is lamented. It didn't light the spark in me most classics do. The soul of the world didn't seem to capture me the way I hoped it would, it was a nice book. Simple with a clear plot and an undeniably unique idea. But some parts of me strikes it as pretentious, it feels unreal. The ideas themselves are believable, but the over emphasis placed on some ideas creates an atmosphere that annoyed me more than inspire me.
But then again what do I know............

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: Composed simply and scripture-like, it reads at times too much like a children's fable, but picks up steam by the end.

When a book is as infamous as “The Alchemist”, people who miss why it is special and interpret it as “too basic” are no surprise. Simplicity does not at all, lack depth. “Base instincts” and “base emotions”, the core of who we are, to the contrary, equate profundity. A single-threaded fable is the hinge onto which authors hang important principals. This is why the message of children’s stories are more complex than the adventure carrying them. I put aside this novel a long time, expecting uppity scholastics. I was thrilled I could coast and soak up the nuggets that resonated with me.

Let’s dispense with critical analysis and consider this: few of us have careers in what we love doing best; what our most natural talent is. We don’t dare take a pay cut in pursuit of it, we don’t want in-laws disapproving of us; we accept the most lucrative jobs among those readily available and stick there for life. I’m certain Paulo Coelho is addressing we, who dream of writing; who hesitate to believe we can be published authors.

We permit roadblocks to overrule treasured hobbies too, or the most sincere items on our personal wish lists; because we think them costly or impractical. I adopted a saying that I use whenever something I dream, begins to look feasible. I declare: “There will be bills whether I do something fun with the money or not. Let’s create some bills we’re happy about”! ‘None of that is new but it comes as a relief to see other people courageously asserting the same thing you believe. A new thought for me is that the universe conspires to help us, if we are true to ourselves and make a move. I smiled throughout this whole book. That says five stars to me!

n  الرواية التّي سبّبت .. ظاهرة الإحتباس الحراري :n

قد يبدوا العنوان غريبا نوعا ما.. ولكن صراحة أحبّ العناوين الغريبة " الرجل الذّي حسب زوجته قبعة " ، " انتحار حمار " و عناوين أخرى غريبة يزخر بها عالم التأليف والكتب، ولكن ما سبب اختياري لهذا العنوان ؟

حسب وكيبيديا هذه الرواية تمّت ترجمتها إلى حوالي 67 لغة .. وبيع منها 65 مليون نسخة في 150 بلد، وفي مقال آخر .. يقولون أنّه لصناعة طن من الورق نحتاج إلى قطع 17 شجرة طول كل واحدة منها هو 11 متر .. هذا بالإضافة إلى عمليات التصنيع والنقل وما يصاحبها من انبعاثات غازية. سيقوم محبّوا الرياضيات والإحصائيات بحساب عدد الكتب في الطن الواحد ثمّ عملية ضرب هذه الأطنان في عدد الأشجار اللازمة لصناعتها .. ويضيف إليها تقديرا نسبيا لكمية الانبعاثات الغازية أثناء عملية النّقل والصّناعة .. ثم يقوم بتقسيم النّاتج على عدد البلدان التّي تمّ فيها طبع أو بيع هذه النسخ . لنجد أنّ هذه الرواية بشكل ما أو بآخر كانت سببا في ارتفاع درجة حرارة الأرض مسبّبة ظاهرة الإحتباس الحراري .

في النّهاية.. ماذا عسانا نقول يا كويلهو؟ لقد غيّرت حياة البشر بسبب روايتك.. ملايين البشر تغيرت حياتهم بسبب ظاهرة الإحتباس الحراري، ذوبان القطبين الشمالي والجنوبي بسبب ارتفاع درجة الحرارة أنت السبب فيه .. تغيير الفصول وتداخلها أنت السبب فيه.. الأعاصير القويّة والعواصف المتقلبة أنت السبب فيها .. ثقب طبقة الأوزون أنت السبب فيه .. اجتثاث أشجار غابة الأمازون ( وأنت من البرازيل وتعرف قيمة هذه الغابة ) أنت السبب فيه .. لقد قتلتنا يا كويلهو بروايتك هذه .


أخيراا :

من الروايات القليلة جدا التّي قرأتها بسقف توقعات مرتفع .. ولكن للأسف خاب ظنّي والسبب فيّ أنا وليس في الرواية طبعا

n  عن المراجعة :n

" I did it my way "

- Frank Sinatra .
n  n

كتاب درمانى
به كسانى كه هنوز مثل من به گرداب تلخ انديشى (يا آن طور كه سعی می کنم به خودم تلقین کنم: واقع بينى) دچار نشده اند و با جملاتى مثل "اگر چيزى را بخواهى، تمام كائنات دست به دست هم مى دهد تا آرزويت را برآورده كند"، ته ته دلشان نورى شیرین و گرم و لذت بخش مى درخشد. به اين ها اين كتاب را توصيه مى كنم، و ازشان برادرانه درخواست مى كنم با خواندن كتاب هاى نورکُش، مازوخيست گونه تلاش نكنند اين نور را خاموش كنند. بعد از نور، چیزی جز ظلمت نیست. گرایش های انتلکتوئلی فقط اسم شان خوب در رفته.

هزار و يك شب
پيرنگ اصلى داستان، از حكايتى از داستان هاى هزار و يك شب اقتباس شده. خود نويسنده در مقدمه ى داستان اشاره مى كند كه نويسنده ى آرژانتينى خورخه لوييس بورخس نيز از همين حكايت هزار و يك شب الهام گرفته و داستانى بر اساسش نوشته.

خلاصه ى حكايت هزار و يك شب چنين است:
آورده اند كه در بغداد مردى فقير شبى در خواب ديد كه گوينده اى همى گويد: روزی تو در مصر است.
آن مرد به مصر سفر كرد. شبى در مسجد جامع قاهره خفته بود كه دزدان به خانه ى متولى مسجد در آمدند و ناله و فرياد اهل خانه بلند شد. چون شحنه در رسيد، جز آن مرد فقير كسى را نديد. او را بگرفت و تازيانه بزد و به زندان بينداخت.
بعد سه روز او را خواند و گفت: سبب آمدن تو از بغداد به مصر چه بود؟
گفت: در خواب ديدم كه كسى به من گفت روزی تو در مصر است.
شحنه بخنديد و گفت: اى كم خرد! من سه سال است خواب مى بينم كه گوينده اى مى گويد كه در بغداد، در فلان محلت، در فلان خانه، حوضى است و به زيرش مالى فراوان. ولى خواب را باور نكرده ام. تو به سبب اضغاث احلام از شهرى به شهرى شده اى؟!
و آن خانه كه صفت كرد، خانه ى همان مرد فقير بود. به بغداد بازگشت و به زير حوض خويش گنج فراوان يافت.

کیمیاگر!
بهتر بود اول یه صحرا رو میدید کمی زندگی در اون رو تمرین میکرد..اونوقت میفهمید 2تا سنگ اون چیزی نیستن توی گرمای مرگبار صحرا به ذهن بیان..مکالمه ها پوشالی..و افکار بی تناسب به شخصیت..فاتتزی و سطحی..تلاش بیحاصل برای عمیق سازی با چند نقل قول از انجیل..تریکی که نویسنده(؟)های اثار پرفروش(!)ایرانی جدید هم بهره میبرند..شباهتی که بینشون هست هم اینه که این سبک اثار ارزش ثانیه ها رو هم ندارن .چه برسه به ساعت ها..
حالا اگه این کتاب معمولی بود چندان مشکلی نداره..ولی این همه پابلیسیتی...
و بهتره راجب روح جهان! اصلا صحبت نکنم..
اصلا ��اهرا نویسنده در جهان واقعی زندگی نکرده..افسانه شخصی ات را بزی ای!!!..کلا برای جماعت های الکی خوشی که با کتاب ها به اصطلاح روانشناسی!؟بازاری به لذذ معنوی! میرسن مناسبه..
این سبک زندگی هایی که شامل 5صبح با لبخند بیدار شدن و rainbows nd puppiesمیشه..
حالا همه اینا به کنار..شما توی یه صحرا با قبایل عرب دنبال کیمیاگرید..بعد این وسط زبان جهان!!!یه دختر تیین عرب با چشمای سیاه و لبان مردد میان لبخند و سکوت هه..که کراش ناگهانی شما میشه.."هنگامی که اینان به یکدیگر برخورد میکنند و نگاهایشان با هم تلاقی میکنند,سراسر گذشته و سراسر اینده اهمیت خود را از دست میدهد و تنها همان..:||
God give me a * break..
"فهمید که روزی باد شرق عطر این زن را به سوی او اورده بود":|احتمالا محصولات دیور استفاده میکرده.
و دقیقا اون لحظه ای که مطمن شدم چرت تر از این نمیتونه بشه,دیت های کنار چاه و فلرتینگ تلپاتیک شروع شد..
"در مسیر افسانه ات حرکت کن,صحرا همیشه همان میماند,عشق ما نیز چنین است" !!!!!its been 2days: