Thursday, December 7, 2006

My First Book: Amman - Tribute to Mother

Amman- Tribute to Mother

Foreword

The story of Amman exemplifies the various ordeals faced by an average upper middle-class Indian family. This story is about an educated, talented and intelligent woman who had to go through a series of struggles at various stages of her life in order to fulfill her dreams and her aspirations. It is the story of a woman and a mother who has faced the battles of life with stoic courage, perseverance and a determination to succeed however daunting the odds looked.

The simple and lucid style will most certainly take you through a collage of incidents and memories that ring so true with scores of incidents and experiences one sees around us. Some of the incidents are poignant and some outright inspiring. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this book could be used at a certain plane as a reference manual of sorts by young mothers keen to mould their little ones.

The story about the real life goddess, as the word Amman means is replete with examples and situations that are very ordinary and yet present themselves as vexing problems in lives of so many families. This story is not about the struggles of some celebrity because neither the protagonist nor the author is a celebrity. Millions of families go through life’s roller-coaster of joys, problems, trials and tribulations and face them with the ammunition of faith, determination, self-respect and hard work at their disposal. This is a story of woman who went through the seemingly normal, unsung and completely unglamorous set of events and faced the vicissitudes of life with loads of positive thoughts and a fierce determination to fight back without settling for the consolation prizes that life’s race offers.

I am glad Sachin decided to write this `non-story’ because this is one story that has to be told so that people in different situations and different predicaments realize that life’s joys are to be culled out from the routine and the mundane challenges and that inspiration does not necessarily come from the lives of the great but from the lives of people who make themselves great on the small and big theatres of their own lives. This book celebrates the struggles, the wins, the tears and the smiles and it celebrates what life is finally all about – living and living well.

Prof: Yogita Karnik

Back Cover of the Book

“It seems like just yesterday that my father took me to this lady who would be taking my 'English Conversation classes'. Little did I know then that ‘Amman’ was to play such a pivotal role in my life... It was much later that I realized that her strength, her determination, her versatility, her confidence in herself had always been an inspiration... Her joie de vivre has forever been infectious... I am the woman I am today because of the undying faith she has had in me..... I met her after almost six years... Six years, and I'd grown from a vulnerable, unsure teenager into an engineer, only days away from leaving the country... Six years, but nothing about this woman had changed... I entered her new home in a new town, and still felt the same rush of familiarity... I left that day with the assurance that all I had to do was turn around, and this wonderful teacher of mine would be standing there, with more belief in me than I would ever have in myself.” Aditi Thanekar


This book captures the aspirations and struggles of an average upper middle class Indian family. The bonds and values running invisibly through the pages of the book seem to have acquired a character of its own. It’s a story about an educated, intelligent and talented Indian woman who has been through struggles at various stages in her life be it her own education or her son’s. The description of life style, virtues, qualities of a typical Indian home stands out in vivid details and it could possibly be a family you know well. It’s quite likely that some episode or events may remind you of a few incidents from your own life in some form.

This is a story of a mother who had to struggle to put her life in place. This story may take you up nostalgia lane for nothing mentioned in this book is fictional. It’s a tale about people who never make it to the lime light and whose struggles never get mentioned. Seemingly ordinary mortals end up performing far more stellar and braver roles, than one would imagine, making their own lives and those of people around them happier.

Millions of households and families battle various setbacks and this book is almost a saga of how the much vaunted Indian Middle class goes about living its life. Ordinary lives are a combination of extra-ordinary struggles that go un-noticed. Fasten your seat belts; the trip to nostalgia can get a bit bumpy.

1 comment:

nadi said...

sounds very good.
looking forward to reading it.