Whispering Bricks By Siddhartha Bhasker | Book Review

Being a book reader has its own perks. And, when you are associated with the Team ThinkerViews, you realize it even more. Here, one get a chance to know about and read books from the genre, which otherwise, could have been given a miss by him/her.

Whispering Bricks, penned by Siddhartha Bhasker and published by Fingerprint! Publishing, is one such book.

Book Cover:

Being a gateway to the virtual world explored within, the cover page is responsible to make its first impression. And, despite believing in the fact that – a book should not be judged by its cover – one cannot ignore its influence.

As you can see, the cover page reflects the title of the book quite well. The illustration of an un-plastered wall, flaunting the bricks – goes completely in sync. It also represents the architecture of educational institution buildings build before a few decades. A pilled of slice showing a group of young students adds to the positive of the same. The line drawings of people sharing various emotions with each other – reflects the tagline of the book.

Overall, a very thoughtful and “honest to the book title and tagline” cover page that is moderately appealing.

The Stories And My Views About Them:

While we love to talk about a book in two distinguished segments dedicated to “the plot” and “our views” each; we are merging them here.

One of the reasons is, the book is a short story collection. If we explore the plot of each of them, it will be full of spoilers. And, we should avoid them as far as possible, right? Well, some of them are inevitable, but, we will try to avoid as many of them as possible.

First thing first. These stories are not for everyone. Those who studied in engineering colleges and/or management institutions can relate them quite easily. The will find these stories familiar and it may make them recall some of their own memories too. For the other readers if may not be that “connecting”. Of course, the emotions – friendship, love, family – can help them connect with these stories (or a few of them) at some extent.

Frankly speaking, for me the best story from this collection is – Angel of Love (Rajiv Ranjan).

I like the way the character of Manan, a girl born and brought up in Rajasthan is explored. The way it is transformed from – a regular young girl to the mother of many – is simply brilliant. She was an aspiring designer looking forward to a possible bright future. While travelling back, she saw a young girl (probably 11 or 12 years old), trying to find something to eat, and that changed the course of her thoughts and eventually, her life as well. In author’s words:

Realisation hit her then that while designing cloths for the rick would give her fame and glory and money, it would never put a piece of clothing on malnourished body of a girl like the one in front of her.

It reminded me a similar incident happened with Gandhiji – who then decided to wear only necessary cloths throughout his life.

I like the details about how the name of the shelter “Surman Sansthan” is finalized.

You shouldn’t miss reading this story.

Placement and Society is like a “twin” story to this one – in terms of the central thought. Equally important read.

Same way, I like the story The Last Flight to Chennai (Ashwin Ravichandran). While it is an emotional story, it reflects a perfect balance of philosophy and reality. It is about a young student – Gautham – who is part of various groups whose activities are scheduled and he came to know that his grandfather had a massive heart-attack! He was very close to his grandfather, at the level that there are some secrets that he shaded with his “taatha” only! This news made Gautham to plan a travel to Chennai, to see his “taatha” for the last time; but if he do so, what about the pre-scheduled stuff he is involved with? More importantly, what his “taatha” would have wanted him to do in such situations!

The story brings in quite a thoughtful ideas about the best possible tributes one can give to his/her loved ones. The discussions between Gautham and his friends are worth reading. They reflect the genuine affection, maturity and wisdom on the ground of reality.

If you love literary gems, Four Walls Don’t Make a Classroom (Yatin Kamat), will interest you more. It has some fantastic lines like:

Four walls don’t make a classroom. A classroom is a reflection of the people inside it and of their dreams. Some dream of fulfilling their ambitions. And some dream of finding happiness.

Four walls don’t make a classroom. A classroom is made of all the stories that exist within it. And I wonder now, where this one story truly belong – inside this book or within that classroom?

A few more such stories are there in the book which remain with you even after you complete reading the book. Chakru Clears His Debt (Chakru) is one of them.

The idea of collecting various stories reflecting different emotions is essentially a good idea and the thoughtful title of the book is a positive aspect. To keep the authenticity, the author has used a few Tamil words in the book. The footnotes reflects their meanings, so the readers will rather like the use of them.

The use of words like DiscF, PGP, tuchhas, facchas,… adds a flavor to the book.

The book has some interesting lines (from different stories) that are worth mentioning:

The dark clouds always clear!

Nothing wrong in getting crewed by the professor. That’s the whole idea of these presentations.

If everyone thinks this way, then nobody is every going to do anything about the poor simply because the people who are in a position to help will always have a higher opportunity cost!

They both had accepted what had been left unsaid. It was something that would always be there, lingering between them. After all, not every love lasts a lifetime. Not every love is defined and not every love requires owning the other person…

The lecture we were attending was part of a popular course on campus. It went deep, sometimes so deep that Kant and Plato ended up getting roused from their graves.

We are all slaves of our memories and yet, we go on making more of them.

These lines must have given you a fair idea about the quality of writing you can expect from the book.

A few stories in the book are complete let-downs, at least for me. So, I will not elaborate much about them. A few of them could have been completely edited out. Sometimes when you try add all the flavours they don’t sync quite well. Of course, every reader has a different taste and it is the domain of the author and the editor to decide what to keep and what not.

Summary:

Overall, a collection of short stories of different flavours. Some of them are simply un-missable. While others are for some specific readers.

ThinkerViews Rating:

Around 7 stars out of 10.

Quick Purchase Links:

• Buy - Whispering Bricks by Siddhartha Bhaskar - Paperback - Amazon IN
• Buy - Whispering Bricks by Siddhartha Bhaskar - Paperback - Amazon US

Over To You:

If you already have read the book do share your remarks and thoughts via comments below. Does this review help you in making your decision to buy or read the book? Do not forget to share this article with your friends over various social networks. Please follow/subscribe us on various Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, Audible, and others. And yes, you may like to subscribe to our RSS feeds to get latest updates for the site to land right in your mail box.