Life Without a Friend

Writing is a craft and being able to write is a blessing. I am not talking being able to jot down words or crafting sentences. What I want to refer is the ability to express yourself. Writing is associated with words and crafting correct, grammatical error free contents. But, that is not all. It is not that easy. Writing is more like expressing yourself in way that your words touch the hearts of millions.

I was not born with this ability. I am not sure I still can touch the heart of anyone. I just try to say things which I think and feel. I express myself through my words. This is writing. When I was a kid, I used to write the stories I heard from my grandmother. Why I did that I still don’t know. It was just an unyielding desire to see the story written down on paper.

People call me crazy. In a way, I am crazy. Earlier it used to hurt me. I felt like an outcast, in world of normal human beings. I knew from the start that I was not one of them. I had the strong sense that I did not fit in the crowd. I am not trying to say that I am outstanding, I merely mean that I am different.

From the childhood, I was a loner. I used to roam the backyard of my school at the lunch breaks. No one wanted to talk to me. I still do not know why. My only companion was my imaginary friend who always appreciated me. When I came home, I used to crawl under my father’s writing desk with a book. Being a loner served me well and with time I got used to being alone. Now, I do not need any friend to hang out. I know how to live alone. What had been a childhood necessity became my adulthood luxury. I can spend hours with myself. Books are my only companions. And I like it that way. When in school I craved for a friend to talk to. I had none. Maybe that is the reason I reached towards my pen and started pouring words over paper.

If you are being ignored by your friends, rejoice. You really do not need a friend to survive. You have yourself. You have a wonderful heart. Use it for imagination. You never know what you may become in life. Take advantage of the isolation. Do not be sad. If you want a friend badly, you can always find one in the pages of a good book. Make friendship with words and open the door of endless possibilities. And remember isolation is a blessing. Enjoy it.

When everything goes wrong

Sometimes life falls apart despite our best efforts. These are times when people need to adhere to positive energy. However, it is not possible to stick to the positive energy when life seems to take a reverse turn. When going through a time like this, you need to grow the gratitude. Even when every window closes down, there remains a hole somewhere which brings forth the sacred light. This light guides us through the tough time. We stare at this bright hue and endure the torment. Bear in mind that if there is darkness, there is light also.

Write down every single positive thing which you are grateful for. Remember that does not matter how much agony you are in, there will always be someone shouldering bigger burden of misery.

Blessing always comes with a mask. You may not be able to recognize it immediately. You will definitely realize with time that the bad thing had happened to push you towards the right path. Remember we never take the leap to cross a chasm, unless our life depends on it.

Demons are wonderful entities. They hit you when you are standing the nearest to your destination. Welcome this attack and proceed anyways. Be thankful for the ability to endure the demon attack and the opportunity to learn. Open your eyes and bear in your heart the wonderful gift of faith. You will cross the wild ocean and be ashore soon. You need to sail through the roughest ocean to be become a seasoned sailor.

When nothing works, read motivational quotes and articles to keep yourself motivated. Derive strength from the words and proceed on your path. Take each step with the faith that the light is near and one more step and you will be there. One day, you will be amazed to find yourself at your destination. 

A Lesson of a Lifetime

It was a Sunday evening. South City mall was enduring its’ usual stampede of crowd. An array or disarray of depending on your point of view, had gathered in the mall that day also. God knows for what reason. It’s a mall after all, not a historical place where some tragic hero died.

Anyways, after ambling down the entire mall, I ended up in the food court. Not to eat anything, I love watching people with food, each displaying different body language and talking different talks. You wanna go people watching, come to South City mall’s food court.

Besides the KFC outlet, my eyes fell upon a group of young men. One look at them and you will know that you are gazing at the corporate kids. They had the same stern expressions upon their faces, tolerating everyone. I watched in amusement before my curious gaze caught the sight of one of them.

This bespectacled man was engrossed in the biography of Steve Jobs, balancing the thick hardcover book in his right hand. From his left hand dangled the carry bag of Starmark. He had bought the book that day and could not wait to get home for the sneak-peek. I was tempted to ask whether he had an MBA degree or not. To me that would have made a hilarious scenario – an MBA trying to learn from a drop out.

Seeing his eager indulgence, I wondered why this guy was reading this book. Then I answered myself – to become Steve Jobs, silly. Another question made me take another look at the oblivious man – would reading this book make him the next Steve Jobs? There are so many editions out there in the market. So many young men and women are reading this. Before the publication of this particular biography, there were millions of others similar types of books available in the market. Then why there was only one Steve Jobs? Why?

I presented this question to my uncle. I asked him why. Why so many readers yet only one achiever? He smiled at the question and told me a nice story as a reply.

We all know that our holy river Ganga washes away the sin of the mortals. The mythological story goes like this –

When this holy river began flowing over the earth, Devi Parvati got worried. She went to her husband Lord Shiva. Sitting by Him, she asked, ‘Why did you allow this river to flow on the earth?’

Lord Shiva looked at her puzzled. ‘Which river?’ He asked.

‘Ganga,’ She replied with a frown.

Lord Shiva smiled at the crease on the Devi’s forehead. ‘What got you so worried?’ He asked.

She drew in a deep breath and replied, ‘Now earth people will commit sins and wash it away bathing in this river water. We don’t have the use for hell anymore.’

‘Now, don’t be so worried Devi,’ Lord Shiva said with affection.

‘I am worried.’ She refused to share His composed demeanor.

‘Okay, let me prove to you that, you have nothing to worry.’

With this, Lord Shiva came down to Varanasi (the Holy city for the Hindus) , disguised as a leprosy patient. He lay on a dirty blanket beside river Ganga. A stinking odor surrounded the air around Him, blood along with thick greenish fluid oozed out of the scars. He called out to the people passing by, pleading for their help. In agonizing cries He begged for someone to listen and drag him away from the harsh sunray.

One of the passers-by came closer hearing the anguished voice. He took pity over the man lay dying on the street and bent forward to hold the corner of the blanket, careful not to touch the flesh of the patient.

Before the mortal finger touched the blanket, Lord Shiva cried out. ‘Please, before you touch this hear me out.’

The pilgrim stared bewildered at the sudden reaction.

‘If you ever have committed a sin and still touch the blanket,’ Lord Shiva continued, ‘you will be attacked by this disease and soon become like me.’

Hearing this, the man jumped a couple of steps back. He retreated further and this time ignoring the cries of the dying patient, he vanished among the crowd – without even a backward glance.

As the day glided into night, hundreds cam and went, some even ran away. No one dared to test the authenticity of the warning. They just disappeared. Scared.

Next day, Lord Shiva lay in the same place, crying and writhing in pain. This day was not much different from the last one; people came and went away without touching the blanket.

Then came a young man. He seized the scene at a glance and rushed towards the suffering man. As he leaned forward to hold the blanket, Lord Shiva repeated the warning. It made the young man jump backward. He stood still for a couple of heart beats. Then he turned around walked towards river Ganga. Stripping his cloths, jumped into the water and drenched himself head to toe.

After this the young man came forward, confident. He held the blanket and dragged it away from the sunlight.

Lord Shivae came back smiling. ‘You saw that Devi?’ He asked. ‘Millions will hear you but only one will listen. Only one among the millions will take a leap of faith, risk everything and take a step forward. The Holy water will wash away the sin of that one person. We still need hell.’

My uncle chuckled as he finished telling the story. I chuckled back. Unless you are ready to take risk nothing will do anything. Have faith and act upon it.

‘Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.’ – George Seaton

‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ – Martin Luther King Jr.

Investing in Your Craft (Writing)

Yes, writing is a craft. You will have to indulge into this everyday to master it. That is the truth of every writer’s life. Sitting and staring at the blank screen or white paper is the dilemma every writer experiences (or so I have been told).

Now, you may be thinking how to invest in this craft? This is not a business procedure after all. What is there to invest? You can invest a lot of things.

Time – First of all you will have to invest your time. Without this element, the craft will simply refuse to grow. You will have to drag yourself to your writing desk and write. How much time you invest depends on you. If you are lucky enough to be able to stay back at home and don’t have a day job to go to, you can devote as much time as you want. But, for the unfortunate people out there like me, will have to make time for writing. You will realize that you need to make many sacrifices to make time for writing. You may have to sacrifice watching the soccer match. You may have to sacrifice attending party. Or you may have to sacrifice an hour of your sleeping time.

But the reward of these sacrifices is the delight of holding a finished novel in your hands. Your own creation, your pride. It does not matter whether this gets published or not. You will experience the exhilaration of being able to see the novel till the end. In the world of writers this The End means a lot. Ask someone who has failed to achieve this feat.

Money – Yes, you will have to invest money. You will have to buy books and read. Without reading, the writer within you will not grow. You will have to feed your soul and you cannot survive eating bread only. Or a bit clearly, a writer cannot survive eating bread only. True, there are libraries and you can borrow books. But, that way you will have to hurry through the pages so that you don’t keep this longer than the deadline.

Reading a book is like eating. You swallow the entire course of meal, your belly gets full, but you fail to consume the benefits of the food. Same thing happens when you rush through the pages of a book. You finish the story, but you fail to analyze the plot development, character illustration, dialogue crafting, conflict escalating and the theme.

When you buy books, you surround yourself in a literary atmosphere. Standing at the desk, you won’t have to remind yourself why you are there. You will know in heart that you are there because you want to join the long list of the published writers.

Have fun writing and keep investing without constrain. You will definitely get the result someday.

Don’t Get Trapped inside Your Writer’s Notebook

If you are writer, you MUST have a notebook. This is the place where you set yourself free and allow your imagination to run wild. The notebook is your storage place where you keep your thoughts safe.

There was a time when I used to jot down everything in my notebook. Be it a mere thought or a simple memory, everything went to the pages of the journal. I knew someday these things would come handy, someday I would use these somewhere. With passing time notebooks mounted over my cabinet. If you ever search my desk, you will find all sorts of notebooks in different shapes and colors, you name it and it is there.

So, this is the real picture – hundreds of notebooks, each containing more than hundred pages, thousands of thoughts are captured there, noted carefully. And when I need one special thought to use in a story, all I need to do is………well you can imagine. I will have to get down on my knees and rummage through the year old pile, go through each page of each notebook and hope to unearth the tiny piece of jewel. Plenty of work guys, it’s better to rely on your memory. I learnt to do this hard way.

If I say that I don’t have a notebook in my bag right at the moment, I will be lying. There is one. But I don’t run to it every time a thought occurs to me. I don’t even write down all the story ideas in it.

Learn to trust your heart and allow an idea to grow rather than capturing it somewhere in haste. I believe, if something is meant to stay, it will stay. If the characters are worth spending time with, they will drive you crazy until you sit down and make them emerge out of your heart.

Do indulge in your fascination and buy notebooks. These things are great when you are doing writing exercises. Spend five minutes everyday with your writer’s journal, before you begin the real writing session. Have fun writing whatever comes to your mind. But, don’t get trapped inside the pages of notebook. You may not be able to get out of it.

The Writing Space & Time – Early Morning Writing Session

It is important to have a space to write. Ever since I have started taking the writing business seriously, I am looking for this space. To be able to spend a few hours of writing without having anyone to hover over the shoulders is a blessing. And I so desperately was searching for one such place which will keep me away from the distractions.

Looking around I finally decided on the attic where no one goes. Within a couple of days, I found myself in that room with my desk and everything. Sound from the outside world does not usually invade that room. So, I smile in satisfaction – viola, finally (here I inhaled the cramped air of the room and immediately coughed it out).

So, here I sat with a stack of fresh white paper and a series of pens (yes, pen and paper unleash my creativity). I kept the dictionary and the thesaurus within my reach. A bottle of water was there too. I fixed my eyes on the paper, took a deep breath and waited – for the flood of words and stampede of creativity. The clock ticked in the background. Any moment now and I would lose myself into another world. I waited and waited. But, alas, only the blank paper stared back at me. I waited for another ten minutes. Nothing happened. I could not even produce the worst writing of my life. I could not jot a single word down on the page.

Coffee, I need coffee – I told myself. Another ten minutes later, I sat eyeballing the same blank page with a steaming mug of coffee in my hand. Nothing just nothing emerged out of my mind. Finally, beaten, broken and frightened that I was about to lose my words, I sprinted down the stairs with my favorite notebook and pen.

Just to make sure that I could still write, I did a quick writing session for fifteen minutes. When the page was filled with words, I leaned back and inhaled in relief. Yes, I could write and the words were still there inside my heart.

Presently, I have chosen a corner of the bedroom and placed my tiny desk and uncomfortable wooden chair. My work still sucks sometimes. But being able to produce something which sucks is better than producing nothing at all.

Isolation is good. It makes you think and realize a lot of things. But, being among people, I think is also necessary. This stimulates the creative flow. I have changed my writing time and selected the early morning session to avoid the interruption. Leaving bed one hour earlier seemed like a punishment to me the first time. After a mug full of strong coffee, I could open my eyes and appear at the writing desk.

When I lay the pen on the paper, I realized the bliss of early morning writing. Chirping of birds and the stir of human life outside the window along with the mellow sunray shifted something within my soul. My own writing felt like some else’s work of creativity. It sounded like the flurry of imagination of a happy soul.

You should try it too. Even if you are not a morning person like me, you should try early morning writing for once. You never know, like me you may even become addicted to it.

Why Do You Write – Dig Deeper & Find Out

Writing about writing is not easy. You need to write for a long time to gather some knowledge about the craft. But the initial question is why people write on the first place? Why do you write? Is it the lure of fame or lucre that keeps you jotting words after words down on paper? Do you want to work on your own selected time and writing seemed like an easy way out? Do you write because you like to call yourself a writer? Have you ever tried to find out the answer to the question – why do you write?

Writing is not easy. You know it, if you have done it. Painting pictures with words takes time and effort. People spend years working without earning a single dime. They hide their work in secret places so that others cannot see it. Yet, they go on writing. Rejection slips mount over the table. But the writing session continues.

Why endure so much trouble? Why not just give it up and take some other mode of profession – like being an accountant. True, you will spend days staring at numbers. At least, you won’t face rejections and humiliations being an accountant. No one will criticize you either. Your world will be totally safe. The best thing is you will bring home a stable salary, every month.

Love drives people to tolerate the torment of uncertainty. Love makes people continue writing, knowing that no one will read the piece of work. Working without getting paid or without recognition requires undying passion, or, maybe a demon forcing you to do it.

Without love or the demon behind you, it is not possible to carry on with this type of torture. You need to feel that strong pull towards your writing space. This heave should be firm enough to keep you there for at least one hour everyday. Only the want of money or fame will not do the trick buddy. True, you need to have a goal. There must be a summit which you want to reach. Without knowing where you want to go, how will you find the right path? But, deep down within there should be the eternal love. This will pull you through when you are standing in the middle of a field and hail storm gets hold of you.

If you love enough, you will go down over the ground and wait for the storm to cease. And when it does, you will pull yourself up on your feet, brush the dirt off and begin walking again.

Ask yourself, dig deeper and find the answer before taking the first step. You may not have the opportunity to return unscathed.

Looking Back – Year 2011

Looking back is not easy. Looking back is facing both the triumph and the failure. Looking back is coming to term with the mistakes. Yet, it is important to look back, to realize, to face and to salvage.

The year 2011 has brought to my life a fusion of experiences. I have won some, I have lost some – tale of every living individual’s life.

What have I won? I have won the right to call myself a writer.

My life as a writer has started early. I cannot even remember the first time I picked up a pen and wrote something. I can only remember writing and….getting rejected. Before 2011 I used to keep my writing confined inside the drawers lest anyone saw them. I was not up for the ridicules of trying to do something I was not meant to do. I dreamt making sure that no one knew about the dream.

2011 had banished that fear. Today, I not only earn my living writing, I display my work too. I dream and dream big. I don’t hide my dreams anymore. I dream of being a better writer than I am today. This is my biggest gain of last year.

What I have lost?? I have lost the gift called faith on 2011. Earlier, I knew that someone lived up there, forever watching over me. I knew that all the wishes and the prayers were being heard by a loving soul and they would be granted someday.

2011 had robbed me off that faith. Today, I simply don’t know where to look. When I look up I only encounter a diamond studded canopy. I don’t feel what I felt anymore. The emptiness echoes within, yet I am helpless. I suppose, I will never be able to look up and see the heaven ever again. The sacred paradise has become exquisite horizon to my mind’s eyes.

You gotta lose something to gain something. This last year has done that both to me. Whether 2012 repeats the trend is a thing to see. When I look back, I smile in fondness and say good bye to 2011 with affection.

The Book That Saved My Soul

From the days of childhood I am an avid reader. Reading is salvation to me. I go through pages after pages like a person whose life depends on reading the last line of the book. In this lifetime I have read numerous books, thousands. Few of them vanished the moment I finished the story. Few have made a permanent place in my heart.

Torn Apart by Hal Friedman and James Patterson is such a tale. The true story of a child’s struggle to return to a normal life after being shattered by Tourette syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety disorder, made me blink tears uncountable times. This non-fiction has all the twists and turns of a well plotted novel. The enthralling tale of suffering and defeat made me forget that I was reading a non-fiction.

When I started reading the story, I was going through a tough time myself. Life, all of a sudden, felt like a burden to me. Every morning I woke up with the question buzzing inside my head – is this life worth living? Tragically I could produce no answer to that question. This is the tale of another lifetime, one that I have lived and I have left behind. Whether I have won or fallen flat over my face defeated, I have no idea. I just don’t ask myself anything anymore. And yes, today I believe that life is worth living.

As I journeyed with the characters and experienced first hand the pain they had suffered and the strength they had displayed to conquer the setbacks, my own problems suddenly reduced before my eyes. I felt almost ashamed of the sulking and whining that I had done. I read the book crying and smiling at the same time. I cheered Cory whenever he overcame a drawback. I admired the courage of his father. I loved his mother when she stood by her son and faced the world. The fact that I also have got a mother like that made the affection even more real to me. I could connect with the mother and her pain.

After I finished the book, I sat silent for a long time, replaying the tale of struggle and success in my mind. I told myself the characters in the book were not the paper characters they were flesh and blood human beings. They had won because they refused to lose. They made it because they wanted to.

Sometimes reading becomes more than a pleasure trip. Sometimes reading holds you by hand the helps you cross the path, you dread the most. This is not a book review. There is nothing to write about the plot or the story. I don’t have anything to say about the writing either as James Patterson is a master storyteller and knows how to hold the reader by the neck till the story comes to an end.

Everyone who thinks there is no hope, not anymore anyways, should read this book once. Read it carefully and feel the pain. You will realize that even at the beginning of darkest dusk, there is still hope. And hope remains as long as you keep trying.

Read, discover and heal your scars. Live because life is beautiful……….

Fearing Failure is the Steppingstone of Failure

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear..” Mark Twain

I did not know the truth of this sentence for a long time. Since the days of childhood, I feared failure. That time it was flunking the final exam and remaining in the same class. Later it was being rejected by the publishers. But there remained the big, scary F word.

As I grew up, along with me grew the fear of failure. This fear kept me away from doing a lot of things. I was scared to admit that I wanted to be a writer. I was also scared to show anyone my writings. There was a sense of comfort in keeping the writings locked inside the drawers. I was comfortable. Showing my work to the world means enduring criticism, rejection yet. I was not up for that.

For a long time I adhered to this comfort zone. When I began trying my hands on creative writing, I stayed within the threshold of this region. Crossing this meant to me crossing the line of fire. I rather be at ease all the time.

This habit had cost me a lot. Whenever I walked into a block while writing a story, I stopped. Instead of trying to find a way to get past the adversity, I gave up writing it altogether. I kept saying that real writers never experienced this kind of blocks. The fact I faced this problem was the evidence that I was not a writer. Writing being a hobby was fine but taking this as a profession? No ways……..come on guys get real.

I failed to finish numerous stories which I would have loved to read because I was scared to make mistake. I wrote each line with the nagging feeling in my heart that no one would read this, publishers would reject this because this was not good enough.

All my life I feared failure. In the end this fear almost possessed me and got me down to the dust. What you fear, you become.

I had to force myself to deal with this. Kicking the ass of the fear was not easy but I had to.

Now, I write because this gives me pleasure. I know that even if no one reads what I am writing, at least my soul will derive solace from the fact that I have created this. I make mistakes and bindas do it. Being able to learn from the mistakes is the best thing that had ever happened to me. Believing in my ability to create has done wonders to my energy.

Today, I am a professional writer. I earn my living writing for websites. Am I proud of the fact? You are damn right I am. But this would not have happened had I not fucked the fear and made myself go with flow.

Don’t I fear now? I do fear. Only I have turned that into a driving force. Now I keep improving myself everyday because I am scared. I learn because I am frightened. I read like I am gonna die tomorrow. I live like life will end tomorrow. I write like this is the only chance I have to make it.

You see, earlier I used to fear blogging. I asked myself all the time, would anyone read this? Today, I have just expressed my feeling at a go. Who reads this does not really count as long as I can go on writing.

“Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain..” Mark Twain

Taking a Moment Off to Say Thank You

I have always wanted to be a professional writer. The joy of creating something out of nothing has driven me towards this path. All I wanted was to earn a living selling my writing. A simple task, don’t you think? Wwwweeeelllll………not really. Ask me what I have been through before I sold my first writing.

I have passed out from a school where the first lesson of English started from the sixth standard. The day I held my first English text book in my hand is still vivid in my mind. I remember touching the cover with the affection of a painter touching the canvas of the painting after finishing it. I remember feeling a twinge of fright. I knew that I was stepping into an unknown territory.

Not knowing what awaits in the turf I am about to traverse, sent a sharp shiver down my spine. I welcomed the fear. It felt good. It felt almost sacred. I turned the cover of Learning English (the English text book for Bengali medium students) and looked inside. It started with a lesson of ABCD. Imagine learning ABCD at the age of twelve. It’s true my father had taught me the alphabets long before I reached sixth standard. But the lesson ended there and I learnt no more.

As the lesson in school began, I discovered that I was not at all good in the language. Still I felt drown towards English and wanted to learn it. How I did, although I am still learning, is another story, one that I don’t want to tell.

I kept trying until I could overcome the fear and begin to enjoy the splendor of English. My next hurdle was to get myself a job of a writer – any job would have done it. This obstacle almost shattered me to the pieces. How many times I got rejected, I don’t even know. Some employers laughed at my attempt to write for a living, some challenged me and told me that I would never make it. One of them even went ahead and told that I write words without even knowing the meanings.

I took them all. Embraced the criticism, sometimes antagonism and proceeded. When I failed to walk, I crawled ahead. But I kept moving and kept learning. I wrote things knowing that no one would read them, knowing no one would pay for them. Yet I wrote.

I won’t say I have reached my destination. In this profession there is no such thing, there is only a road through which you can walk ahead. But no matter how far you walk, this path will never end. There is another specialty of this boulevard – here exists no rule. It is amazing. And finally I realized that nothing does matter. Whether I get published or I get rejected hardly counts to me. I have the ability to create and now I am making a living writing. Every paycheck that I receive is a reward to me. I cherish money now, because now I make money doing what I do best.

Never had I thought about stopping and bowing my head down in respect and say thanks for all these. Never had I cared. I never expressed gratitude for the nudge I received whenever I stopped. Today, however, I think the time has at last come to say thank you to the angles who has guided me throughout and hope will be there forever.

Tomorrow You will Die – What Is Your Plan for Today?

Yes, each one of us will have to yield into the arms of death someday. This life is about to end. Someday, you will no longer remain as you. Your mortal body will perish and cease to non existence. You only have one lifetime to make your dream come true.

Dreams are expensive. There will be a price tag. You will have to ask yourself whether you are ready to pay the price or not. Leaving everything you have, giving up the security for an unknown path takes courage. You will have to be insane to walk the walk, knowing the peril of chasing your dream. You may be wrong in doing so. You may even be right – you never know that, do you? Making mistakes is the best way of learning.

We spend our lives fearing failure. We say to ourselves that we don’t have what it takes to make it big. We fear – thus we fail. How are you to know that you don’t have it? How can you decide that unless you try?

Success and security cannot go hand in hand. You will have to make a choice. Either you embrace security or you reach out to success. The path which leads to security is easy. Strolling down to this turf will bring you only that security. The other one leads you through the unfamiliar mazes, the difficult one. You won’t know what awaits you. The thrill of not knowing, the fear of danger will force you to keep improving yourself.

There were people who chose this unknown road and emerged out the winner. Some died trying to make their dreams come true. Some survived to enjoy the glory of success. But none died regretting not trying when there was still time.

Open your arms and welcome your dream into your life. Pay the price, make the sacrifice and love your dream. Love yourself also for having the courage. You will make it, if only you believe it. Plan today, reach out today. Life offers no guarantee. Live today because tomorrow you may die………….

20 years from now you will be disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover ~ Mark Twain

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – A Review

The Plot at a Glance

A man stabbed to death inside a locked room, a set of footprints below an open window, a blackmailing scam about to be revealed, nine people with motive and an overly clever sleuth. That more or less covers the entire plot of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

This book has cooked up a whirlpool of controversy. Yet, this one is regarded as Agatha Christie’s masterpiece and a treat for any mystery lover.

A Glimpse of the Story

The story opens up with a death. It is a suicide. But, there is always a big but in every mystery story and nothing happens without a reason. The cause of death is blackmailing. The woman fails to deal with the continuous pressure for money and kills herself.

The next evening, right after dinner a letter from the deceased woman arrives at Roger Ackroyd’s doorstep. The first few lines promise the disclosure of the blackmailer’s name. But, Mr. Ackroyd dies before he gets to finish the mail. Few hours later Mr.Ackroyd’s family doctor discovers the body but not the letter.

Hercule Poirot takes the matter in his own hands and begins the investigation. What follows next is a torrent of clues, along with revelations of secrets. Each one of the nine suspects has got something to hide and it is up to Poirot to unearth the secrets one by one.

The Conclusion

Agatha Christie wrote this book to fool the readers. Every mystery writer wants to do that. But, everyone does not fulfill the task as effectively as Agatha Christie did in this book. Poirot reveals the name of the murderer in the last chapter. Before that it will be a guessing game for the readers. Each character as a suspect has played the role well. Each one of the motive is so strong that only an airtight alibi can save the suspect.

Finally, the red herring, the major weapon of any mystery writer, is so wonderful that you will see through the misleading clues, you will know that the particular character is being framed, but alas, the face behind the mischief remains hidden.

I sat in dumb silence for a long time after finishing the book. I was disgusted with the author. I was enthralled by her also. It was a kind of a grudging admiration which she won that day. She did her job and fooled me. She also did another thing – she churned my curiosity and made me crave for more of her.