Life is What You Make It - Book Review

There I was alone fighting my secret Battle with depression.. Several words, incidents and emotions haunted me that neither could I express nor could I suppress… It was a feeling like standing on the top of the cliff of the edge, neither having guts to fall and at the same time not wanting to get down…

And at that stage of my life, I thought of visiting a book store and getting a book that can divert my mind from such pessimistic thoughts. And I saw this book “Life is What You Make it” by Preeti Shenoy, published by Srishti publisher in 2011.

This 209 page novel is one of the national bestsellers. Its tagline attracted me in the first look of the book which said – ‘A story of love, hope and how determination can overcome any destiny’.

Preeti Shenoy has written about the most sensitive issue in the society which people take it very lightly and it is ‘Bipolar syndrome’ -  A disease which takes birth in depression and ends in suicidal tendencies.

And as we all know, as per the statistics, India is leading in the suicide ratio. Often depressed people are mistaken in our society as either mentally unstable or crazy. And so we fail to understand the bipolar syndrome symptoms.

This book  - ‘Life is What You Make it” is about a girl, Ankita Sharma, who is quite brainy, intelligent, loveable and artistic girl who has always aced in every exam she has taken and is very career-oriented.  She falls in love with a guy named Vaibhav in her school life and keeps in touch with him even after school life through letters.  

Then in college, Abhishek enters her life and their love starts budding. But when Ankita gets her admission in MBA in the most reputed institute, she decides to choose career over love and this makes Abhishek commit suicide.

Ankita gets over it and enters the MBA institute and makes her mark there. She is very enthusiastic girl and is always helpful to others. But slowly, the regret of Abhishek’s suicide haunts her.  She starts losing her concentration in studies. A girl who was an avid reader once a time now doesn’t understand a single word even when she reads repetitively. She finds it all black drops on a white paper- meaningless and lame. The frustration overtakes her and she tries to commit suicide and finally gets landed up in mental asylum succumbed to parental pressure.

There, Dr. Madhusudan helps her come out of that depressive stage of her life and explains her the beautiful meaning of life and tries to re-instill the spirit of living life in her reminding her of  her desires and passion.

My Opinion:

It’s a must read for all the people who have at least once in life lost the meaning of life for whatsoever reason and thought of giving up on anything.  It’s for u to explore what happens with Ankita then? It’s a gripping story and you would want it to finish it in one go. Excellent narration. Stirs up the emotions.

Bipolar syndrome is a disease that is discovered in most of the people these days. It has also been discussed about in Kareena’s latest movie flick – “Heroine”.

The people who are victims of bipolar syndrome, are very enthusiastic when they have work on hand and are quite hyper-active, over-happy, outgoing and bursting with high energy levels and that is called manic state. They get anxiety attacks. They don't even sleep in this anxiety.

But when they are idle and in depressive state, they feel a void inside them and try to commit suicide since they find all dark around them and lose concentration. They are given tranquilizers and are forced to sleep. They get innumerable sleepless nights and turn insomniac even.

‘Lunatic’ and ‘Crazy’ are not the correct words for such people. All they need is someone to hold their hand and show them again the origin of light in their life. They need to be reminded that they are important. They need to be reminded of their own passions because anything beautiful can be accomplished only with passion and not with pressure.

Life is for sure What you make it so why not make it beautiful and purposeful. And help gaining the purpose to those who have lost the purpose in their lives.

So Grab your copy and touch a heart and enlighten a soul. Just hold a hand and eliminate the darkness. If u can’t be the sun, at least be the candle.

My rating:

4/5

This review is a part of ‘That Tuesday Thingy-Dwitiya’ by Indiblogeshwaris.