"With wet eyes he tells Mohsin that he realized there are only good or bad humans, not good or bad Muslims."
When I first read the summary of this book, I instantly thought, 'This is gonna be a good one,' And the main reason I thought that was because this book contains so many questions of our daily lives that go unanswered and unnoticed. And to think that someone calls them out in a book, it surely had to be a terrific read.
Stories of Us is author Bobby Sachdeva's work of dynamic and concise stories that leaves a little something for the reader to ponder upon. He includes stories in scenarios of daily lives of people from different walks of life. You will find so many diverse characters with such rich stories, such as businessmen, rag pickers, illegal immigrants, religious leaders, family, friends and so on...
The book contains a total of 41 chapters and some of my personal favorites from them are The Third Gender, Notebandi, My Father My Hero, Shor- the noise, etc. For me these chapters have such a strong and captivating message behind them. All of the chapters talk about the different view points of people in a society, living such different lives from one another. This helped me learn and think about life from the perspective of these people. In one of the chapters, the author mentions the plight of rag pickers as the Swaccha Bharat Abhiyan is negatively impacting their livelihoods. This made me realize that even the noblest of initiatives come at the price of some kind of inconvenience to someone. These chapters contain many such eye openers that are sure to leave you in some thought.
However, some things that I also noticed while reading is that some chapters in the book are a tad bit complicated. This might be because of the inclusion of many characters with different backgrounds which are necessary for the plot to fit. They are short in size which is beneficial for readers to re-read or skip some chapters.
Few authors have the courage and nerve to speak about the unquestioned norms of society and the change that needs to be brought up. Bobby Sachdeva is one among them. I would recommend this book to anyone with a keen interest in learning something about our society, anyone who is curious to learn about how life is for some people and to anyone who wishes to bring about a change with a shift in perceptions.
DETAILS
NAME: Stories of Us
AUTHOR: Bobby Sachdeva
PUBLISHER: Pan Macmillan India
DATE: 2019
PAGES: 242
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