Book Review [40] : God is not great

Christopher Hitchens was one of the extremist philosopher of the moder era,  and even the epitabh of an 'Atheist Fundamentalist' does not do any justice to his sharp "intellect". Unfortunately i started reading him after his death so could not question him directly for his critique of religion. 

'God is not great' is called his magnum opus and it indeed raises many questions and makes many observations but the questions and inferences that it raises are not new, the same questions were raised thousands of years back by the 'Shramanas' of India, Socrates of Athens etc etc. I was expecting some thing new and some thing more concrete from Hitchens but looks like he has left that work to the fledgling atheist movement of the 21st century. Every society needs laws for its organic evolution and every great civilization ever lived had its own set of laws and whoever revolted against those laws got a severe punishment, even Socrates had to drink poison. And even in today's world people like Assange have to fight cases to save themselves. Almost all religions that i know have great ideals in them the problem lies in the implementation of those ideals. And not all axioms of religion can be taken at the face value, each and every word of written book or revealed book should be subjected to a severe test of rationalism before accepting or considering it as truth. Everybook has a life span and it will be a real shame if the wisdom of a book be a given more weightage than the Genius of that era. Giving birth to 10 children or not using contraceptives may be a good "constraint" for a scantily populated region of MENA but certainly that can not be applied to the region of Bangladesh or Indonesia although both these regions are Islamic regions. Gotta go now, its 01:01 AM, good night guys.
Highly Recommended (8/10)

Book Reviews [38/39] : Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas

Amish Tripathi has done a wonderful service to Indian culture and religion, and in particular to Uncle Pai who regenerated the interests of Indians through his Amar Chitra Katha. The Immortals of Meluha and The Secrets of the Nagas are like a fresh breeze in the sweltering land of modern times. 

'The Immortals of Meluha' starts with the 'Discovery' of Shiva in the region around the Mansarovar Lake and ends with the victory of Suryavanshi Meluhans over Chandravanshi Ayodhyans. Meluhan civilization was nothing but great Indus Valley Civilization and Chandravanshis were "degenerated Aryans". The awareness of Amish with old and odd places and legends, and creation of the characters of Nandi and Bhadra is legendary. Although its a fiction but sometimes it seems pretty real. The character of Sati and the gory details of the practice of Vikarma (i.e. untouchability) is absolutely relevant to the contemporary world. The role of Shiva is strikingly similar to the one played by Suniel Shetty in a Bollywood flick "Mohra". This book is a very good time pass but definitely not worth than 150 Indian Rupees. You can order this book on India Plaza and it comes in just 100 INR.
Highly Recommended (8/10)
 

'The Secret of Nagas' is not that spectacular than the previous book as it is slow and more like propagation of an Ideology. Some times it seems to be a grand failure but in the end Amish successfully regenerates the magic. Its very predictable book and it unfolds the story of Ganesh, Karthik, Kali and Parushram but certainly it lacks the magic of Immortals of Meluha. The character of Daksha, that was shown very weak and gullible becomes completely villainous in the book.  This book definitely does not worth more than 100 Indian Rupees but a nice time pass. I finished the book in less than 7 hours.

Overall these two books are decent books but at many places they become full of cliches and suffer from the consistency of predictability. 
Recommended (7/10)