Em and The Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto My rating: 5 of 5 stars On a train journey from Kerala to Mumbai, I lay down on the top berth and silently put down my kindle and closed my eyes for some time. The definitions of normal, abnormal, sane, insane, mad crisscrossed in my mind and I mourned the loss of the so-called ‘mad’ people from the world. Who are we to judge them? Who are we to put them into boxes created by our own definitions of normal, desirable and perfect to survive? Darwin’s evolutionary theory and the accompanying phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ suddenly seemed hollow. Fittest? By what means? Thanks to Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom, a book I was looking forward to read from a long time now, my mind kept asking me questions to which all I did was to close my eyes and listen. Living with a patient of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some other medical conditions has been expansively described. It makes you laugh at times, shed a tear or two at others. But it teaches yo...
The blogger here is a book lover who swears by books to keep a dull day at bay. When life isn't humorous, she tries to be. When it backfires, she ducks under a book. Proceed with caution. You may trip on a book.