Book Review – Aung San Suu Kyi : A Biography, Jesper Bengtsson

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Aung San Suu Kyi – one of the most eminent, yet least popular feminine personalities in the world. Someone that has spent a major part of her life in house arrest, fighting for the cause of democracy in her homeland, spoken on par with Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, she always remained a personality that I wanted to know more about.

With so much of interest did I pick the book ‘Aung San Suu Kyi: A Biography’, by Jesper Bengtsson. But, as it is always said, the more you expect, the more you get disappointed. This book is a disappointment, in the sense that what you get is not a coherent, comprehensive biography, but rather what looks like a hastily compiled bunch of standalone essays.

The author himself makes an excuse at the very beginning stating that this is not a comprehensive biography of Aung San, due to her isolation from the world, being in house arrest. However, isn’t that what the challenge of representing such a personality is about?!

He has done a basic ground work, meeting a lot of her supporters, relatives, party people, contemporaries and opponents. But he has failed miserably in putting it all together in a manner that befits a biography of such a persona. The books jumps here and there and with so many spelling and grammatical errors, makes one wonder whether one should have explored better before deciding on the right book to read about Aung San.

There are some serious lacunae in the book with only patchy information filling up for the serious details. When he ends the chapter about her family life in London - before she ended up arriving at Burma in 1988 and donning the mantle of a national leader – he mentions that she would have remained on the path to her goal of becoming a successful author/academician, if not for the phone call on the last day of March 1988. But neither before this mention, not after that, does he explain or elaborate as to who made the phone call or what was the phone call all about.

Also, the most critical event in the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, which resulted in her becoming a national leader of the Burmese, is her talk in the Shwedagon Pagoda in August 1988. But sadly, the book has no proper information on such a crucial and watershed event in her life. Now, imagine reading the biography of Mahatma Gandhi without any information about his works in South Africa or that of Mother Teresa without any information about her early struggles in the streets of Kolkatta!

My view is that if you are keen on reading about Aung San Suu Kyi and her struggle for the Burmese Democracy, this is not the book to read!

Ashok Krishna

Book Review – 'Siddartha' by Hermann Hesse

Reading a good book more than once is like stealing a kiss from a little kid – different and yet delightful, every time. ‘Siddartha’ by Hermann Hesse is one such a book. Picking it up 5 years after I first read it, I felt the emotions and expressions take a grip on me in an entirely new way.

To brief you on the plot, Siddartha is a young, wise Brahmin boy, who reigns supreme amongst his peers and is the darling of his town, due to his personality as well as Vedic acumen. Also, his spiritual orientation is very deep, making him the pride of his community and his family. However, Siddartha is not quite satisfied with whatever he has learnt through the Vedas about the Self (Atman) and the Supreme Soul. He gets his father’s permission to go and join the Samanas in the forest. His good friend Govinda, who had accompanied him like a shadow since childhood, follows suit. Both of them spend a long time with the Samanas, mastering all the techniques of carnal mortification and the tricks of spiritual conquests. However, the thirst for realizing and conquering the Self remains unsated within Siddartha as he is not quite satisfied with merely fasting and physically tormenting himself for no avail. Just then arrives the news about the enlightened one, the Gautama Buddha.

Siddartha leaves the Samanas and goes in search of the Buddha. With Govinda following him as always as a loyal comrade, they come to the place where the Enlightened One is staying. Govinda is convinced about the spiritual supremacy of the Buddha and decides to join the order. However, Siddartha is not satisfied with learning the bliss of Enlightenment from the Buddha and wants to feel the enlightenment by himself. He once again moves, leaving behind the wisdom of the Buddha as well as his long-time companion, Govinda.

His journey in search of the Self takes him to a town, where he comes the courtesan Kamala. Pretty and lascivious, Siddartha falls for Kamala. He learns the art of seduction from her and joins Kamaswami, a wealthy merchant, in order to earn money to satisfy Kamala. Though he doesn’t feel the normal, mundane bondage for wealth or women in the beginning, slowly the worldly life takes a firm grip on him. Did Siddartha learn the futility of the worldly pleasures? Did he attain the supreme enlightenment that he had been searching for his whole life? What is the wisdom that he attained at last? This book answers all this and more.

Hermann Hesse weaves the story with the expertise and wisdom of a sage, handling with élan topics that are always considered the forte of Eastern philosophers. I would like to safely say that each of us could connect ourselves with all those hurdles, hassles, cravings, yearnings and quests that Siddartha goes through. We all go through the same cycle – starting off as special beings, being wise, testing the waters of the world, slowly but surely ending up being bogged down into the mire of the worldly passions and emotions. The question is, are we willing to awaken our divine inner selves and walk the path of spirituality?!

Ashok Krishna

Atrocities of Burmese Military

~  ‘They put a sheet of plastic over my head,’ said Naang Yord, ‘and then took turns raping me. I couldn’t see what they did to my two girls, but I heard them panting desperately a little way away. After that I heard two gunshots.’ 

After that, the soldiers disappeared and Naang Yord was able to free herself. The first thing she saw when she had torn off the plastic sheeting was her niece’s body, lying at a little distance. She had been shot in the ankle, probably because she had tried to crawl away from the soldiers. The second time they had shot her in the head. 

The journalist Vasana Chunvarakorn from Bangkok Post met Naang Yord and other women who had endured such abuse, in sheltered accommodation in Thailand. Their pain permeated every word in her article: ‘Those who listen to the survivor’s stories have to push their imaginations to a terrifying limit. The women’s weak voices are heard only as a whisper. They have scars on their foreheads, ankles and wrists. Their skin seems to give off a scent of dejection, with distant traces of suppressed rage. Can anyone really handle what they have experienced?’  ~

- excerpt from the book 'Aung San Suu Kyi: A Biography', by Jesper Bengtsson.

I am so reminded about the plight of all the Tamil women in Sri Lanka!  :-(