Rise of the sun prince by Shubha Vilas - Book review

JAICO's  Rise of the Sun prince is the Bala kand of the revered and famous epic Ramayana.

This book is the first of the  6 part series titled Ramayana:The game of life  by the author Shubha Vilas. The book draws extensively from the Valmiki Ramayan and Kamba Ramyan (another version).Interesting mini stories and poetical analogies from the above books form   Rise of the sun prince.

 The book retells the story from the times  when Valmiki was Ratnakar and how his angry curse turns into glorious verse Ramayana, the base meter for the composition of Ramayana. It narrates the leadership model of Dasharata, the birth of Rama, his growing and learning  years with sage Vishwamitra till he gets married to Sita. But most of all the highlight of this book is the story of Vishwamitra from the time of he being a King from a royal lineage to being conferred the title of Brahmarishi by Sage Vasishta. Interesting mini fables, folk tales and stories form the lifeline of this book and keeps the reader captivated throughout.

The book is a light and breezy read in that the  narration is uncomplicated and in simple language. The situations and locations are beautifully described that I have paused at many places to visualize them. One worthy of mentioning is  the description of Mithila city. Another interesting and special aspect of this book is the foot notes in each page which beautifully correlates the stories on that page to dealing with modern day life situations.

Situations as in dealing with the relationship of our lives between parents and children, between husband and wife, between siblings, between a leader and follower and all those values required for a happy, righteous and contented life. 

My verdict is pick up the book even if you know Ramayan, because this book is not just about the Balakand of Ramayan. It is about Ramayan - the way of life,  many life lessons in those 250 pages priced at Rs 250. 

As for me, can't wait for Book 2 of Ramayana: The game of life - Shattered dreams. 

About the author: Shubha vilas, a spiritual seeker and a motivational speaker holds a degree in engineering and law with a specialization in patent law.

His leadership seminars are popular with top-level management in corporate houses.  He addresses their crucial needs through thought provoking seminars on themes such as 'Secrets of lasting relationships', 'Soul curry to stop worry' etc.,

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When I was caught and bowled

Whenever my son goes to washroom, he is never back soon. He sometimes is lost there for more than 15 minutes. On repeated knocks on the door, he emerges with my mobile in his hand. And now with half a day school sessions and IPL time, my mobile and even my laptop/ tab is never under my control. while my daughter is glued to the laptop in her room, my son is with my mobile happily watching the football matches and IPL. Now i am no cricket fan and so it irks me at times when the two war over their favorite teams and to top, I find both my gadgets in their hands. Thanks to Starsports.com ( My TVcable operator does not beam starsports anymore). But I try to keep calm.

Everytime, the IPL fever starts, they come up to me to ask whom would i support? My son a dhoni loyalist would say "Amma, support CSK, remember you were born in chennai" and my daughter would say"ma, don't forget you were raised and your family lives in Bangalore. Now don't be unpatriotic, Support RCB"

I say to them, " I care less and am not interested who wins or loses".

Yesterday's RCB loss over KKR triggered a verbal duel between my CSK supporter son and My daughter an RCB fan. Sad with the loss of RCB and her bro's taunt at RCB, my daughter was cribbing and ranting. And i could'nt keep my calm, I yelled "Stop being crazy and don't fight over a sport. The teams are having fun playing and making money, while you are wasting your time and energy".

That was then my daughter caught me and I was totally bowled over by her statement. "Amma, you don't understand this now and find it crazy. But you were a teen once and how many times have you recollected your cricketing stories of how you made scrap book and bunked school to watch cricket".

I could now relate to what she said. Once upon a time, I was a huge cricket fan and have done some crazy things. One of them is to maintain a scrap book. The scrap book contained photos of cricketers, their bio and other cricketing stats. It was a red diary which my dad had gifted to me . I would cut photos of all those cricketers whose interviews appeared in sportstar and other magazines like Illustrated weekly, Femina etc. Not just cricketing stats, I would even stick photos of their family and have extra stats. Like Vengsarkar's wife was Manali, Gavaskars wife was Marshneil, named after a variety of rose, Sandeep patils first wife was archana, binny's wife was cynthia, kirmani's wife was habiba and so many more like Kapil dev's hotel in chandigarh , who were the knighted cricketers etc. Infact , my parents would say, I did everything short of doing "aarti".

The craziest I have done was when i bunked school to watch "The prudential cup" in 1983. My school worked second shift from 11.30-5.15 and so i could'nt wait for the school to finish. I wanted to watch the match from the toss to the uncorking of champagne and so I and my friends bunked half a day school to reach home. Each one of us cited an excuse but it was only the next day our friendly teacher told us she knew about our plan.

Another crazy thing was when I studied in class VIII B. The whole class created lots of noise because the school did not declare holiday for a 5 dayer held at chinnaswamy stadium. The principal who walked by our class, found the reason for the noise and made us stand in the hot sun for the whole period.

All those memories I have narrated at some point of time to my children and sometimes even I wonder how cricket crazy I was as a teen. I then smiled at my daughter and thought to myself " Yes, crazy and cricket go hand in glove in our country and now with starsports.com IPL is at its craziest."

While I bunked school to catch the match, today's fans can catch it on action recap , courtesy starsports.com Recently, my housing society organized a gully cricket match called Force 4X4, 4 members in each team playing for 4 overs. My family participated and so could not catch IPL. They came home and caught it on starsports.com( action recap) and people at workstations can be connected parallely to the scoreboard through fastest score board of Starsports.com . As for me, i am no cricket fan,  but i love the starsports.com song " Kanna, keep calm and watch Pepsi IPL on starsports.com"

This post is a part of Starsports.com Cricket just got better! by starsports.com in association with BlogAdda.com.