Siddhi's Blog

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.    Niccolò Machiavelli's "The Prince" has remained widely hated and controversial for a long time but continues to be intriguing and deeply interesting to read.  I have been wanting to read this for long and finally got my hands on it this Saturday. The problem with The Prince is, it is shocking and hard to swallow. Machiavelli, a popular and proud diplomat was left to live a life that felt like a punishment to him and while he writes the prince he relapses into his dramatic life as a diplomat, he draws on his experiences and knowledge about the political system and the ways various rulers came into and held on to power. The book does not aim to preach, it is not supposed to be morally or politically correct and it is better to go into it without putting that burden on it. It is an analysis of the methodology of remaining into power. Machiavelli...

"In the present state of society, it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground." The Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects was written by Mary Wollstonecraft and was first published in January ,1792.  Mary Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers. The publication of Vindication caused considerable controversy but failed to bring about any immediate reforms. From the 1840s, however, members of the incipient American and European women’s movements resurrected some of the book’s principles. It was a particular influence on American women’s rights pioneers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. I came across this book while I was reading “The Idea of Justice" by Amartya Sen; there he talks about her work which has been remarkable in bringing about the perspective on human right...

   Once I had finished reading The Republic by Plato, I developed an interest in the entire building a city thing. I picked up The Politics by Aristotle as my next read. It took me months to finish reading the Politics, reading and rereading the chapters and googling words throughout the book. The Republic was a dialogue which was fun to get through, The Politics however, is a treatise, it is a really long essay (almost 300 pages) , and after reading it I sit face to face with my laptop to write this review while I am completely overwhelmed because, let’s face it , how am i supposed to review something like this? It's a classic and I doubt that I even understood it enough to review it in its entirety. The Politics is divided into 8 books, which consist of multiple chapters each. Collectively they answer different questions such as: what is the best form of governance? Why have a government at all? Aristotle proposes that all societies are established for a purpose, that is ...

 I had picked up The Republic in August last year and only finished reading it in the beginning of January. Getting through this book has been an achievement for me. I procrastinated a lot because I was intimidated by the level of difficulty, but it was all worth it. I had come across Plato's theory of the Philosopher King when I was attending my Jurisprudence class and was so intrigued that I ended up getting into The Republic.  Let's talk about Plato. We all have heard about Plato and Socrates as the greatest philosophers. Plato was an ancient Greek philosopher. He was a student of Socrates. Most of his works reflect the ideas of Socrates and he is the main character of his dialogues. Plato authored about thirty-six dialogues. The Republic is his most renowned work. In Greek the title is understood as "Politeia" which can be rendered something closer to 'forms of government' or perhaps 'constitution'. The Republic is set in Athens. Socrates was sente...

 "Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is."  Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre is one of the most important philosophers of all time. Despite his work garnering considerable flak over the years, his theories on existentialism and freedom cement his place among the most influential Western philosophers of the 20th-century and beyond. Nausea is Sartre's first novel. I am not big with philosophy, but man do I love words and books! I picked up Nausea because first, it has a very curious title and second, I was looking for something short and interesting. Nausea is 100-something pages long. It is the diary of Antoine Roquentin.  Roquentin is a French writer and the narrator. He lives in solitude writing History related texts. In the book he interacts with two other characters regularly. One is the self-taught man and the other is a woman with whom the narrator sleeps with often. The self-taught man is an important character. He spends his time reading books, he reads t...

Tomb of Sand is a book written by Geetanjali Shree, originally in Hindi and translated by Daisy Rockwell. The book won the International Booker Prize in 2022. The book,  if I describe it vaguely, is a book about a depressed old woman and her story of overcoming that depression and revisiting her teenage trauma from the India-Pakistan partition. But this is not just a long book. This is a big book, huge. It tells the story of a woman, two women and women in family, women who are not 'women', of men and grown children. It tells the story of a family, of a country, two countries, the border and the old woman. The book is more than 700 pages long and is written in three parts. The first part starts with the old woman facing the wall after she lost her husband. She is grieving, the entire family is grieving. The family tries to pull her back, but she is deliberate and stubborn , saying "nahi hi uthungi" which later turns into "nayi hi uthungi", "I will rise ...

Chronicles of the Lost Daughters is the most recent book I have read. I picked it up because of the beautiful cover and was not able to put it down without reading.  Originally called "Narach" (which means weapon) it is a bestselling Bengali novel written by Debarati Mukhopadhyay. It is historical fiction, which is not my most beloved genre of books because of how detailed and heavy the stories end up sometimes. But this book with its easy language and engaging plot, was a page turner right till the end. The story is set in nineteenth century Bengal. Tragedy falls over a young widow Bhubonmoni and her brother Krishnoshundor's family where they are forced to leave the village and the events follow one after the other.  The story involves many interesting characters. The young musician Chondronath. The two young daughters of Krishnoshundor . Notorious businessman Nobokishor Dutta. In the narrative of this novel, many historical figures, including Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, Kadom...