“THE BOY`S NAME WAS
This is the first line of Paulo Coelho’s – The Alchemist.
On the cover it is written like –“A magical fable about following your dream”.
The book is about a boy and his dream.
He had a dream about a treasure and he decides to find it out.
He meets a merchant’s daughter who do not know how to read.
He wanted to marry her.
But he realizes that a shepherd cannot marry her.
During his search for treasure he falls in love with another girl.
At first he thinks she is the treasure but later decides to continue his journey.
If you look for something dramatic or colorful like other novels you are reading the wrong book.
The basic concept is that a treasure is assured for everyone in world.
All you have to do is to pick up the clues and omens from the universe.
And you are a part of universal soul.
There will be troubles, challenges. It goes like that.
Nice to read, nice to hear. Difficult to implement.
What I want to paste from this book is:
1. I wanted to sleep longer, he thought. He had the same dream that night as a week ago, and once again he had awakened before it ended. (പ:3)
He tried to get up. It was around 7 am as usual. He felt the familiar magnetic attraction between the steel cot and the shirtless body.
2. The girl was typical of the region of
She had long curly hair divided in to two- spread over her shoulders, which gave her an instant Jesus Christ look.
3. With the girl with the raven hair, his days would never be the same again. (p:6)
That was a start. As they often say “The world was never same again” for him.
4. Even me—I have not thought of other woman since I met the merchant’s daughter. (p:11)
He never thought of someone in the place of wife.
5. In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God had prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omen that he left to for you. (p:30)
He watched the hawks as they drifted on the wind. Although their flight appeared to have no pattern, it made a certain kind of sense to the boy. He followed the movement of the birds trying to read something into it.
He was looking for answers. Answers from Almighty, answers for him.
In search of it, he looked at the sky for some pattern. Tried to read the name of the shops, advertisement captions, and random letters in newspapers hoping for a direction.
6. When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor. (p:38)
7. Every blessing ignored will become a curse.
8. “Never stop dreaming”, the old king had said. “Follow the omens.” (p:64)
The most beautiful romantic part in this book is this:
At the moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the soul of the world surged within him. When he looked in to her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke – the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pair of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well.
She smiled, and that was certainly an omen—the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was for all his life. The omen he had sought to find with his sheep and his books, in the crystals and in the silence of the desert.
It was the pure language of the world. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at the moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life and that with no need for words she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than anything in the world.
He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language it is easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it is in the middle of desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning. Maktub, thought the boy. (p:97,p: 98)
9. …and realizing that he had loved her before he knew she existed. (p:99)
10. They became friends, and except for the fifteen minutes he spent with her, each day seemed that it would never pass. (p:101)
10. One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving. (p:128)
11. The desert nights were cold, and were becoming darker and darker as the phases of moon passed. (p:131)
They were standing near an open space, where the nature is lavishly painted in green. It was not a rainy season. It was supposed to be a sunny day and cool night. But it was about to rain.
12. There had been times when his heart spent hours telling of its sadness, and at other times it became so emotional.
“It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it’s become passionate over a woman of desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights when I am thinking about her. ” (p:135)
His life became simple and light in one end but more complicated and confusing in the other end. It felt as if something shameful happened to him, but could not identify what it is. Everyday he got up with her thought, finished the work with it, and went to sleep with the same.
Then she started visiting him in dreams
13. Wherever your heart is, that is where you will find your treasure. (p:138)
14. Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. (p:138)
15. “Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?”
“Because that is what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.’(p:138).
16. Your eyes show the strength of your soul. (p:143)
17. “So is that love is?”
“Yes that what love is. It is what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon becomes a man, and the man in turn, the desert. It is what turns lead in to gold, and makes the gold return to the earth”
When someone falls in love, he becomes a poet.
When he loses it, he becomes a philosopher.
When he matures as a philosopher, he becomes a man again.
All the italics in the above text is quoted from my novel posted here.
2 comments:
This is an incredible book to start reading..
Thanks for your comment, Vidhya.
This is a very special book to me.
There are lot of things in this book that I can personally relate.
Almost 3 years ago I wrote a long story. The sentences in "Italics" is quoted from it.
It is been really long since I posted this one and I am really curious to know how you reached this page..
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