Mystery.....Suspense......Fame........Intrigue......Love.....Deception.....Passion...

Sounds likea general list of emotions that would make up a potboiler hindi movie..isnt it?

OR ...could it could be a book ...a work of fiction, perhaps?

But, in all events, they are hardly the kind of adjectives that you would expect to be used to describe a non – fiction book....

Strangely still....a non fiction book whose premise is probably the most un-emotional topic of all - Mathematics :) :) :)

Before you think that i have gone stark raving mad..the book I am talking about is called “Fermat’s Last Theorem ” by Simon Singh.

The premise of the book is the quest to solve a mathematical mystery that was put forth by an eccentric mathematician a few centuries ago..and what probably resulted in one of the longest lasting unsolved mysteries . The book deals with the topic right from its origins and tries to give a picture of all the people who impacted and influenced it over the annals of time.

To someone like me, who loves a good mystery, the charm of a genuine mystery that endured for centuries in itself was a delight to read and understand about...

But, in this case, from a purely emotional perspective, I couldnt help but get attached to and really feel....through the personalities of people who were involved in this quest ....their circumstances and even their emotions around this so called holy grail of mathematics...

The way that so-called different fields of mathematical thought were combined together by different people and how it all came together beautifully in the end ..was a sheer thrill to behold. It gave the feeling of having combined different pieces of music composed by different composers into one beautiful harmonious symphony.

Cheers,

Me

Stating the Obvious:- A subject is never emotional. Only humans are. And hence ANY subject associated with a human has the potential to be.

Some random musings...

Been a while.....

I usually pick up books that I have never heard about mostly based on their name and then i go through the back cover / preface to see if there is something there that would interest me to spend some time with it..One such book that has intrigued me since i heard of it and that was way back in 2001/2002 was "One Hundred years of Solitude". To me, it was a very interesting name and something that warranted further investigation even though i knew nothing at all as to its contents..

Finally got around to reading it sometime this year...I started off gung -ho and I must say that as i moved through the initial chapters ..."Confused" would be the only adjective that applied. I am never good when it comes to remembering character's names and the fact that here was a book about a LARGE family having spanish and deceptively similar names meant that i was having a tough time groping around just trying to figure who the hell was doing what...the fact that they gave a family tree at the beginning of the book was really no help...coz a lazy bum like me really doesnt flip back pages to refer to the family tree...even if i am not quite sure who is killing whom...

I persevered through this initial tough period with the book...with serious reservations as to whether i could get through it...and things started to improve. As the book unfolded, i realised that there was a poignancy which held me spellbound especially at some specific junctures in the book. Its a book mainly about a place but also about a lot of people who are or become related to that place and the smaller stories of people like the piano player who came to Macondo(i forget his name :)) within the larger story of Macondo....intrigued as well as entertained.

I must admit that the Geography of the place- Macondo - did also confuse me as to where the author really intended it to be. Even if it is a fictional place,there are references to real places which did end up confusing me to some extent. At one point, i stopped trying to figure out where Macondo really was supposed to be and just took the authors word for anything geographical. It would have been much more enriching to me had i been able to pinpoint the general Geographical location of Macondo - maybe i guess it can be done from the book but it needs more concentration than what i put into while reading the book..

Just my opinion....but its no where close to my favourite list of books...but its definitely a book worth a read once...

Cheers,

Me

P.S : Happy Independance Day !!

Ref: One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez.