Sudha Murty's Discovery of the Indian Spirit

The current post is about a book that I am currently reading. Few books have excited me like this one, excitement enough for me to recommend the book to others - this post is an instrument to that end.

The Old Man & His God by Sudha Murthy is the book I am currently reading. The most striking thing of this book is its simplicity. Simplicity of language aside, I think it is the simplicity with which the free human spirit has been captured and presented that has caught my imagination.

Sudha Murthy is well known for the work of the Infosys Foundation that she runs. In the course of her work with the needy mostly in rural India, she encounters some really fascinating dimensions of the human spirit. The Old Man & His God is a collection of the author's encounters with the complexities of human nature - some rare virtues, some common misgivings and some strange anomalies. There are also accounts of her interaciton with her students, friends and associates - encompassing a complete spectrum of the Indian society.

Not that all the accounts described are truly astonishing. Some of them are pretty commonplace except that we normally don't tend to capture those defining insights from the happenings around us.

True to the caption Discovering the Spirit of India, this book does discover the spirit of the Indian society and takes the reader through an enriching journey - one that matures him to an elevated pedestal from where understanding human psyche becomes more easy and enjoyable.