Butterflies, Parottas & the Bhagavad Gita: A quirky & heartwarming journey through God's instruction manual for life

by Hari Haran

“Gurus like Sri Adi Shankara, Sri Ramanuja, Sri Aurobindo…and many other such great men have expounded the Gita’s philosophy you know?” Barath sir said looking keenly at both of us.

“Ah, here goes our sir again" I sighed hearing that. "Gita, Vedanta, blah blah blah..Boy, what at all does the darned book say that it has impressed so many? And come on man, what is there to say about life? The usual & improbable 'Pray to God, be good, do good.."

“But you know what Venki?" sir continued, "I want a youngster like you to prepare a write-up on it…as you understand it. You know…it’s then it will connect to all the people like you out there. I really wish you do it for me."

“What?” my eyes widened in disbelief, “Me? A write-up on the BHAGAVAD GITA? Whoa! Come on sir, you should be kidding.” Saying that I turned & looked at Sandy who was seated near me.

"Imagine..you writing a commentary on the Gita with your half-baked English...'Do thy duty. But do away with the results, mind it', Ha ha.." Sandy guffawed.

******************************************************************************************

‘Butterflies, Parottas & the Bhagavad Gita’ is a book that expounds the philosophy of the Gita interspersing it with the story of two flawed, unlikely men - Venki & Sandy.

The two guys, despite being totally disinterested and despite trying their best to flee from it, are pushed by life circumstances to come to terms with the Gita’s wisdom. And they eventually do it too - their half-baked English and other failings notwithstanding.

But what they couldn't have known - the wisdom of the ancient scripture would also end up transforming them radically and irrevocably in the process, much beyond what they could have ever imagined.

Welcome to an illuminating, heartwarming and quirky journey through the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita - a journey that will change the way you look at life in the world forever.

Visit bhagavadgitaandthebutterflies.com to read an excerpt.

*********************************************************************************************

COMMENTS FROM READERS

"Novel & amazing work...a masterpiece!"
- A reader from Pennysylvania

"I laughed heartily, I cried at times...and at times I couldn't proceed with reading as I had to close the book to contemplate...Tremendous amount of work has gone into this."
- Ms. Lakshmi, Tamil Nadu

"Wonderful read. A treasure house of information.."
- Ms. Stuti, New Delhi

749 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 15, 2013

Reviews

[Vrushni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended for everyone.

[Shobalatha]

Never judge a book by its title. I've never had so much trouble getting through a book in recent times. Sample this, this one uses the ampersand symbol(&) instead of "and" througout. And if that's not distracting enough, the use of (by the author's own admission,) "half-baked English" enervates you. He rambles on for pages, without conveying anything significant, and this book could have probably worked as a slim book of inspirational quotes, which are the saving grace of the tome. Like, "No one reads a book, he reads himself through books," by Romain Rolland. Or, "You are a little soul carrying a corpse."

The grammar is an abomination. The book is peppered with swear words which seem out of place. And since they are all censored, why add them in the book in the first place? One of the first things we learn while constructing sentences as children, is to "put the donkey behind." But here you have "I & Dany" or "I & Sandy"... And too many colloquialisms like, "You stupid!" And the narrator of the book seems to have generated most sentences from a Yoda Speak application. Like this: Quite a headache it became for us."

The problem with the book is that the author thinks in his native tongue and translates it to English. Which is why they seem okay when you back-translate them. "Somewhere near only he will be standing." Capitalizations are all over the place and there is no consistency in spellings. You have misspellings (Yeiks), incorrect terminology (pockets of cigarettes), awkward constructions (Sir said me/ he insisted me) and many such jarring factors that make reading the book difficult.

The problem today is that with alternate media and self-publishing, everyone thinks that they can write a book. But unfortunately, not all of us can. I don't mean to be mean with my review, but seriously, I want my Saturday back.

[Varun Ramesh · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Bhagavad Gita itself is far smaller and easier to read than this book - a 650-odd-pages sized Chetan-Bhagat-styled approximation of its meaning.
I can appreciate the effort put into writing it, but the language is not concise and seems try-hard in places.