Book Review #63: Title Is Untitled By Santosh Avvannavar and others

Title: Title is Untitled

Authors: Santosh Avvannavar, Kundan Srivasatava, Rajashree Ghosh and others

Publishers: CreateSpace Independent publishing platform

Genre: Non-Fiction/Social Awareness

Pages: 120 odd pages

Source: Review Copy by Author

Finally I’ve read a book that kept me thinking for a while. The book made me to realize what is right is not always deemed to be right. This book covers the most important aspects of the modern Indian society and its flaws. It is more accurate to say it as flaws, since, this book covers some of the most serious happenings in our society, and be it on the male or female populace. The atrocities, the crimes, the extortions, abductions, scams, etc… has been covered in a greater detail in a conversational type. Yes, this may be a work of fiction, but, only the characters are made to be fiction, but, the story is simply straight forward.

This book "Title is Untitled" is on the category of “Social Adult Book” because it covers majorly the aspects that are mostly related to the problems that are faced by the adults. At the same time, the readers have to be reminded that, these kind of criminal offense are happening against children too. There are 11 stories that the authors have written in this novel, while each story has covered a topic, mainly, child marriages, sexual fantasies, marital rapes, suicides among men, domestic violence, prostitution, abduction, blackmailing, abuse of power, retirement scams, education scams etc… It is a serious book and it gives the readers a chance to ponder over few things. The title of the book “Title is Untitled” is very apt for this book.

Each story in the book speaks of a social evil, and the victim may be either men or women. Authors have not shied away from speaking their mind about some of the topics which are considered way too taboo in a conservative society like India. For instance, a particular story speaks about a man, who gets abducted by a group of thugs and abused him and forced him to a marriage that he was not at all consented with. This is popularly known as Groom abduction and it is quite rampant in various parts of India.

In another chapter they talk about a woman who has abused the domestic violence laws and made it as a business. Her sole purpose is to marry a gullible man and force him for divorce citing some unacceptable reasons and get alimony from him and search for a new victim.  

Another story speaks about a person who is not at all qualified for even a degree finds an institute that offers Ph.D. degrees for negotiable fees. This institute is not a legit and not even government approved. This person pay a hefty amount of money for his degree and without even doing a zilch of research of his subjects, he ended up getting his Ph.D. This particular story tells us that there are scams at even higher education level.

One more story is of a sexual fantasy of a young woman, who is all but cared for her unusual expectations when it comes to love making, which actually resulted in a more serious damage mentally and physically. And, like this, there are many stories from the book, that each speaks about a certain social evil. There are little facts at the end of every chapter that gives us the statistics about the problem that they’ve discussed in the chapter.

The writing style is a commendable job. They’ve avoided too much adult content and focused more on the issue. Grammatical aspects are quite satisfying. Content wise, it is rich and as I said it before, it is pure message oriented. In this age of money making race, several other authors try to write some garbage to make some quick money, but, these authors are an exception to that case. They have focused more on the content, more on educating the society and less on the money front.

I am highly impressed with the designing part of the book. The front cover image looks stunning and appropriate fonts helps the readers to read the book comfortably.

Towards the end of the book, you can read little profile of all the authors, through which we will come to know that, they’re working towards a better society, motivating people towards a better living and educating them.

Rating this book is a little tedious job. You don’t get to see this kind of book often. It’s short, crisp and contains a bundle of information and facts that can be used widely to teach the masses. A must read book at any cost. I highly recommend it.

Note: I received this book from the author in exchange of an honest review.

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My Rating:
5/5

Book Review #24: Anchu by Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa

This is yet another masterpiece novel by my favorite author, Professor, Thinker, Philosopher Dr. S.L. Bhyrappa sir. It is amazing to think that, how he could possibly be able to capture such thinking and ideologies under a single book. Then it struck me like a jolt, this is the theme of all Dr. SLB sir's books. No wonder, the immense feeling I got while reading this book is beyond explanation.

This is a profound book, making the readers to go beyond the material relationships and arrive at a conclusion. Detractors can always bang their head against the wall, but, they can't deny the fact that, this book makes everyone, literally everyone, to think for a minute or two about their own lives.

This book mainly revolves around only 2 persons. Though there are other filler characters for the sake of the novel, readers are not much bothered about those characters. The protagonists of this novel is enough to carry out the story. This book is certainly unputdownable. It takes the readers on a ride, the psychological ride that anyone could imagine. It takes only a man like Dr. SLB sir to write such books.

The plot of the novel introduces us to the main protagonists of the novel. A well educated woman, Dr. Amrutha, a Ph. D. scholar and a lecturer in a college. Though she had a good job to support her, psychologically she is a woman of suicidal tendencies. She was deceived by her own family members, by her husband and her aunt. By their dubious coup, she lost all her properties and she was thrown on the road along with her two small kids Vijay and Vikas. She and her kids lived alone in the house that was left by her father years back.

Another protagonist of the novel is Somashekar, an Architect by profession, who is well settled and came to Mysore from Mumbai in search of expanding his Architect business. He is good at heart and an honest person, but, he is too weak to express his feelings. That leads him to a bigger mess in his life. Having lost his wife and a daughter, and a failed relationship in his mumbai days, he had no plans of another relationship and was quite happy with his job.

The phase that connects these 2 protagonists is a situation, where Dr. Amrutha calls Somashekar for an urgent repair of her house. He finishes of this repair job and finds himself attracted to this woman. She also had the same feelings towards him. As the story continues further, these two persons were found out that, they love each other and finds a new ray of silver lining in their respective lives. Their love story continues just like any other love stories. But, her suicidal tendencies and mood swings makes both of their lives difficult at many stages.

Author had brilliantly imagined the psychological imbalance state of Amrutha. She is happy at sometimes and in split seconds she gets this immense feeling of loneliness. Everyday she decides to take her life and writes suicide notes and takes her revolver and heads to a hill station and within no time she decides not to do so. These events had made her traumatized everyday. Somashekar feels that, he needs to take care of her and he supports her in every possible way. He changes his timings of work just to be with her. At some point in the novel he was succeeded in changing her mind to concentrate on future rather than taking life.

There are few stages in the novel, where both of them quarrel and decides not to see each other again. Later, they finds their lives are even more empty and dull, which leads them to concile again. As the story further reveals, Amrutha finds out that she is carrying the child of Somashekar. For which, She felt very guilty and again she decides to take her life. But due to the intervention of Somashekar, this plan was failed. Later, she decides to get aborted and still she finds her life pointless, aimless and meaningless.

As the book reaches its climax, Somashekar encourages Amrutha to file a lawsuit against their Aunt and relatives to take back all the properties that was belonging to Amrutha. Also, he gives timely suggestions on how to handle this case. Amrutha slowly recovers from her traumatic stage of her life and finds a new hope for her life. She fights the case with all her might and wins the lawsuit against her aunt and relatives. As the climax approaches, Somashekar feels that, he should marry Amrutha and accept her two kids as his own kids. For which she agreed.!!

The story seems very simple and straightforward. In reality, it is impossible to express how does one feels when someone was deeply wounded psychologically and how their behavior will affect their loved ones and surroundings. This is the crux of the novel and one should read it to experience it. Readers are hard pressed for words to describe the state of Amrutha and her waves of thinking in the book. It is best not to mention in this review. Overall, a must read book, it actually changes one's behavior and thinking.

My Rating: 5/5