Saturday, February 1, 2020

9 books that stayed with me. 2

2. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

I don’t read anything and everything now, life is too short to do that and there is a lot of quality available, but it wasn’t always the case for me, not until I conquered the language barrier.

I had read enough Marathi books, so when I went to the library I had read most of the books by good writers and had to read books by ‘Popatrao Bhase’ because I wanted to read something new. If you haven’t read books by ‘Popatrao’ then you wouldn’t know the level of low-grade books I had started to read. And that is when I saw my second brother, also from Marathi medium, read an English book called Atlas Shrugged. I decided to give it a try, and boy oh boy how glad am I that I did. 

It took me 8 months to finish reading this book - considering it was my first English book and I wasn't accustomed to the language and also because the book is huge.

From the first scene in this book where a girl gets out of a train and is teased by some men for questioning why the train stopped working, and then she shuts them up by saying she is Dagny Taggart - the owner of the train that they are traveling in. From that first scene onwards every scene in the book gave me goosebumps, it made the feminist in me proud too. I do not want to divulge the plot in case you are planning to read this book. But the basic theme is about creators and leeches, creators are ignored by the public, that is by us, and leeches are worshipped who exist because of the creators. This book was written in the ’50s and one can not help but wonder the kind of vision Ayn Rand had, the theme applies to today’s world too.

And then the next book I read was ‘Fountainhead’, again by Ayn Rand. A man who doesn’t let go of his principles and values, can he attain success? Considering everyone around us is ‘compromising’ some way or the other. At one point I got so mad at the man that I threw the book to the floor (I do not remember doing this to any other books that I read), such are the emotions that Ayn Rand makes the readers go through. I read Fountainhead a couple of times after that and it remains one of my favorite books. 

I enjoyed reading many English books after that - like Animal Farm, Alchemist, Pride and Prejudice, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Da Vinci Code, Veronica decides to die, Tell me your dreams and many more.


1 comment:

  1. Perfectly articulated Rasika. I love this author...Ayn Rand was an author who's words could make readers cringe, laugh.... basically readers were transformed into a different zone.

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