Minutes of the book Club meet held on September 3rd, 2013

Readings by book club members:

Amit:

·         Ethnic conflict and civic life- Hindu Muslim relations in India / Ashutosh Varshney

o   This book deals with Hindu Muslim conflict, its reasons and a comparative study taking examples of cities like Lucknow, Aligarh, Surat, Ahmadabad, Cochin, Hyderabad; why in certain cities ethnic violence takes place easily and why in other cities it does not, having more or less same population ratio and similar political system.

Deepali:

Messages from the Masters and Many Lives and Many Masters / Brian Weiss

His books basically focusses on past life regression. Dr. Weiss has helped thousands connect with their past lives and experience tremendous healing and reveals how past-life regression holds the keys to our present life.

Karthik:

·         Nethaji 100 – Hundred facts

o   Incidents in the life of freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose.

·         Sivaji 100 – Hundred facts

o   Incidents in the life of actor Sivaji Ganesan.

·         Thevar 100 – Hundred facts

o   Incidents in the life of freedom fighter Muthuraamalingath Thevar.

·         Hitler

o   Collection of incidents in the life of Hitler.

·         Zero Degree / Charu Nivedita

o   ZERO DEGREE stands out as a groundbreaking work of Tamil transgressive fiction that unflinchingly probes the deepest psychic wounds of humanity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Degree

Pratibha

·         The Rebellious Enlightened Master:  OSHO  / SWAMI GYAN BHED.

o   SWAMI GYAN BHED is an ardent disciple of Osho and he made an earnest attempt to present  the true account of the life and saga of Osho  (i.e. Acharya Rajneesh) This book gives a brief  description of Osho right from his childhood till his death.   Osho was a very intellectual person with bright vision of philosophy   Osho talks about the religion and western / eastern philosophy.  According to him  philosophy means to think . Many renowned gurus and babas consider Osho as god as they believe Osho is a avatar of buddha and shankaracharya. He also  remembers the incidents happened 700 years ago and he visualise  the future too.

Vignesh

·         Technical books related with his work

Vandana

·         Come On Inner Peace! I don't have all day! / Sachin Garg

o   Samar Garg lost his peace after his beloved passed away. Navya Sharma abandoned her peace in the hands of drugs. Vandana doesn't want to let go off her peace, but destiny has other plans for her. We are all looking for peace of mind. So are they. An adventure which began at the Ashram, in Rishikesh, becomes one of the most soul crunching journeys ever.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for reading. The plot of the story is not clear. There is no sequence to the story.

However, after reading this book my wish to go to Rishikeh once again got revived. I have this wish of staying for few days at a religious place just to relax my mind. Rishikesh is on the top of my priority list.

While discussing a book From Dongri to Dubai, We touched upon a very interesting topic for discussion, viz. Freedom of Speech. Do we really have freedom of speech? can we truly & honestly say what we wish to say sans fear??..This is slightly debatable. There are people who write about current happenings, politicians, gangsters, famous personalities, etc. (Of course, when you say something, it has to be backed by certain facts). But one cannot deny or forget that they are aware of the consequences, it is not that they live life freely. They are threatened by external forces….

Vis-a vis, even common people like us don’t have freedom of speech. We would think twice before giving a true and honest verdict. I think we are bound by people’s emotions. We would not want to hurt other person’s feeling and end up giving a false picture!!!!!!!..This can be harmful at times..

Anyone wish to add???