Anish Nadh’s Blog

“ It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird because they don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. ”   I am reading To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. This book revolves around themes of racism, elitism, moral integrity, empathy, and coming of age. I bought the hardbound illustrated edition.   This book taught me how to put myself in another person’s shoes and truly understand their perspective before taking a stand. It’s easy to create our own justifications, but the other person will have their own reasons for acting in a particular way. When we put ourselves in their place, we gain understanding.   Coming back to the story, when Tom Robinson is accused of a crime, Atticus defends this black man in court, even though the entire town questions and condemns him. Eventually the jury finds him guilty even though he isn’t.  This book is a testament to courage and standing up for what is right, rather than going wherever the wind blows, following the town’s opinion. It...

I recently found Mark Twain’s  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, illustrated version, at a book store. I  read this book when I was in my 4th or 5th grade, in Malayalam, it was made into a graphic novel by one of those children’s magazines. This story was my favorite. I read it many times and really liked how resourceful and adventurous Tom was, with his friend Huckleberry Finn.  How could I forget the whitewash scene!! Tom definitely had some psychological insight, he could convince his friends to turn his burden into an opportunity!  I vaguely remember the whole story, just bits and pieces, of his girlfriend Becky, cemetery visits, some treasure etc. I couldn’t resist buying this out of curiosity. I’m so looking forward to begin reading this after a couple of days! 

I finished reading,    The courage to be disliked , by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Here are some   takeaways from the book.  No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it has no bearing at all on how you live from now on. Loneliness is having other people around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. The kind of relationship that feels somehow oppressive and strained when the two people are together cannot be called love, even if there is passion. When one can think, “Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely”, one can really feel love. Think with the perspective of “Whose task is this?” and continually separate your own tasks from other people’s tasks. Discard other people’s tasks. What another person thinks of you is that person’s task, not yours. Just face your own tasks in your own life without...