A thousand splendid suns is the second novel of Khaled Hosseini. Two women, Laila and Mariam, with lives very different from each other are striving to survive in the soviet ruled Afghanistan. After the soviets are ousted, the Mujahideens start war amongst themselves, and the bad state of Afghanistan turns worse. There are firings killing innocent people. Its utter chaos all over.
Both these women have endured their share of misfortune in the dying state of Afghanistan. Its only when things seem to have gotten bad, they realise that there is more to happen yet. And thats when their paths cross in the most unusual of ways.
Mariam is a woman who has always been deprived of parental love and does not have children also. Her husband, Rasheed, is 30 yrs older to her and a tyrant. He doesnt let her do anything.
Laila is a woman who loses everything that was dear to her in the war: her brothers, her friends, her parents, and finally even her love, Tariq. She is forced to marry Rasheed and thus meets Mariam.
What starts as cold war, ends up bringing the women together! Mariam is the mother Laila always wanted, and Laila is the daughter Mariam had always hoped for. So, even though they are married to the same man, they share a very different bond.
The writing style is fabulous, not once do you feel the book being dragged. The characterisations are perfect. You know exactly how a particular character will react. Its beautiful.
The only negative I could think of is that the book is very depressing. I would actually go through bouts of depression reading the book. The first 3/4th book is extremely negative. So, its quite heavy that ways. But, the form oef expression is so powerful, it transcends you to the Taliban dominated Afghanistan and you can imagine the kind of life people led then!
Luckily, the end is hopeful and good…and gives the reader a hope for a better day…!
Cross posting this entry from my blog on CrazeFM.
Today evening as I was driving to college and gazing at the sky while going through the almost empty road. The philosopher in me woke up and was becoming aware of the beautiful surroundings so full of life. What is life without death? I thought.
Yes, what is the meaning to our lives if there is no death? Many people view the death as something opposite of life…but is it not true that the life is absence of death? So death is more fundamental… Yes I know I may be wrong here…there is something we don’t quite understand about death that gives us the fear, which is born out of insecurity. We always try to control our lives, determine its course, struggle frantically at trivial things just to have a little more control over our lives.
What is death but absence of any kind of communication? It’s just that, death is a mystery because it’s an information black hole: every bit of information can go in but we will never be able to say what it is like unless we die ourselves. However once we are dead we couldn’t care less about the mortals on the other side who are afraid to cross the inevitable bridge.
If we learn to manage our fear, will we be able to conquer the death? And would a person who is not afraid of death not be afraid of anything else? I don’t think death is just about the fear there is something more to it, as Blaise Pascal once said,
“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness he came from and the infinity in which he is engulfed”
Sometimes it just strikes me how true his words are…What is the solution? Or better still can there be a solution? But wait a minute… Solution is to a problem not misconceptions or ignorance for which there is no easy way out except learning to discipline mind not to be distracted by the world, which in itself is tough…then there is this difficulty of overcoming our preconceived notions, prejudices…which I can vouch for are harder to overcome than they actually sound to be.
At those horizons, knowledge meets the ignorance; unity meets diversity; and life meets death. Finally when the veil is off what do we see?
