And where were you looking..??. Review on Siddhartha - Herman Hesse

Who am I? What is my purpose in life?

I wonder how many of us ever asked this question to ourselves. I read them at a calendar which had the ?Geeta Saar? and pondered for hours during my days of unemployment! And then, one fine day, when I was sipping my coffee at cafe coffee day, the manager of the book shop came to me with the book in his hand.

He opened a page in front of me and said, ?boss, read these lines and tell me what do you think of it.? I started reading from there and ended up buying the book ?Siddhartha?, for there was no way I could leave the book on that shelf.

I reproduce the lines from the book, with due credit to the author and the publisher:

??It may be so,? said Siddhartha wearily. ?I am like you. You do not love either- how else could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. The child people can; that is their secret.??

Have you been lonely in a crowd, and felt together when alone? Do you hear words when no one speaks, and go deaf when people talk to you?

If you can enjoy your own company and know the importance of existence, then the book is meant for you. Hermann Hesse has bluntly told what the brief history of time is; absolute. The soul is like energy, it can neither be created, nor be destroyed.

It is omnipresent, like a river, which is in the mountains, at the fall, in the plains and the swamps, in the oceans and also in the clouds. The same river, is present everywhere. It is like the soul, which is in the past, present and will also be there in the future.

The book makes you believe that time is a non-entity when we speak in terms of soul and the universe, ?atma? and ?brahmand?.

The author, a noble laureate, has blatantly told that you can not be taught anything by any teacher.

?Whether beautiful or ugly, wise or foolish, opinions are unimportant; anyone can follow them or reject them.?

The book is about looking inside ourselves to find the eternal answers, and realizing that God resides in all of us. The book is not meant to be read once, it is to be used as a reference when you are stuck in the worldly matrix and can not find a way out.

Crisp, concise and clear, the book is an answer to the quest of knowledge and will satisfy all readers alike, without any extra effort.