Dharma | Conversational Stories by Amish and Bhavana | Book Review

Recently we got a chance to read Dharma that comes with the tagline Decoding the Epics for a Meaningful Life. a book by one of the bestselling authors of India, Amish Tripathi, who co-authored it with his sister Bhavana Roy.

Amish is known for setting a trend of re-telling ancient Indian stories by weaving them in the modern context. His books are not only re-telling, but re-imagining the stories as well. While some readers has cricitized the modernization of the ancient tales, the message he tried conveying is well-accepted wholesomely. His books caters the need of modern readers who are not much familiar with their roots or haven’t explored the ancient Indian literature on their own, due to various reasons.

Let us know what do you think about Amish’ books. Here are quick links to our views for some of his books:

• Immortals of Meluha
• The Secrets of The Nagas
• The Oath of The Vayuputras
• Scion of Ikshvaku
• Sita – Warrior of Mithila
• Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta | Book 3: Ram Chandra Series
• Legend of Suheldev – The King who saved India

Book Cover:

Let us take a look at the cover page of this book.

As you can see, the cover page of Dharma: Decoding the Epics for a Meaningful Life is quite attractive.

As – Dharma – has a really broad meaning, it must have been a challenge for the cover designer to come up with something faithful to the book title. The designer brilliantly portrayed the wheel of Dharma over the rich black canvas. The wheel is designed in the golden color. Over the dark background this golden wheel represents the journey from darkness to the light, from unawareness to knowledge. The wheel also represents the timelessness of Dharma.

A very thoughtful and attractive cover page.

The Book And Our Views For The Same:

Amish and Bhavana both are literary geniuses, and there are no two thoughts about it.

The way they grew up in a humble background by hearing the spiritual ancient stories that conveyed life-lessons from their elders, made a solid foundation of character in both of them. They remembered the stories and decided to convey them to the current generation in the way (the modern readers) like.

Bhavana joined Amish later in this course, but, Amish has already made his place in the literary world with his nice writing and marketing genius.

We got a chance to listen to the Audible – audiobook version of Dharma, and some of our comments are based on the narration, which may not apply to the paperback or Kindle version of the book.

Usually, we talk about a book in two distinguished segments, focused on the story and our views for the same, respectively.

As this book is a set of conversations and is like a short-story collection, talking about each story will lead to a lot of spoilers. So, we’ve decided to merge both these segments here.

The book is comparatively small, so when not on promotion, you may find it pricey.

This book has a totally different narration style than the previous books by Amish. Basically, it explores late night conversations between an elderly wise couple, their daughter and son-in-law. It is beautifully setup and starts the book in a little intriguing manner.

The discussions are realistic and they include discussion about Kama and Sex as well. And, it represents a little awkwardness also, making it more realistic in the Indian context. It is a healthy discussion and everything in it is worth reading/listening. It contains nothing that is written for the titillation purpose, as it is a discussion amongst family members.

The audiobook narrator – Kanchan Wadi – got a lot of wrong pronunciations and that is the low point of the book according to me. The stories including Nachiket, Lopmudra must be presented with correct name pronunciations. Eg. Lopamudra. (She was a Maharshi). The pronunciations of Sanskrit Shlokas are a turn off. Even Adhirath is mentioned as a rathi, that is wrong. Adhirath was a Saarathi not rathi. Rathi is a very capable warrior and Saarathi or Sarathi means charioteer. The book get it again wrong when it says वो एक अधीरथी का पुत्र है| Same way, name of Saamb is pronounced as “Sambaa”, Matsya is referred to as Matasya, Tantipal is referred to as Taantipal, and so on…

The authors deserves rightful credit for choosing interesting names for the fictional characters of the book.

The book talks about various historical and mythological characters in an interesting way. However, most of the time it refers to the characters from the Amish’ previous books and not from the ancient Indian (that is Bharatiya) literature. And, the referrers make it very clear at more than one points. So, in a way, this book is an extension of Amish’ previous books.

Summary:

A nicely written book that could have been narrated better. It conveys some fantastic life-lessons and try busting a few false notions also. A definitely worth reading book. It is more focused on Amish’ previous books and the incidents and characters mentioned in them rather than on the original ancient Indian literature and scriptures.

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 7.5 stars out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Paperback - Amazon IN
• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Kindle EBook - Amazon IN
• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Audiobook - Amazon IN
• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Paperback - Amazon US
• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Kindle EBook - Amazon US
• Buy - Dharma by Amish Tripathi, Bhavana Roy - Audiobook - Amazon US

Over To You:

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