BOOK REVIEW OF- Equations of a being: A being who gathered Moss

By-Ashutosh Gupta

Paperback: 170 pages

Publisher: Notion Press, Inc.; 1 edition (5 August 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 194769703X

ISBN-13: 978-1947697034

THE PLOT IN BRIEF-

If you have a penchant for both reason and abstractness, this intriguing piece of literature shouldn’t be missed. Equations of a Being beautifully coalesces the author’s thought pieces pertaining to the existential spectrum. Never has there been a book that blended emotions, intellect, and imagination so seamlessly, to celebrate a being in totality.

The author depicts his artistic persuasion, the enriched and disintegrated fragments of his existence, and the conclusions based on his interactions with the physical and abstract elements of life in a compelling and unbridled manner.

It’s a book for the ages that will let you trace the complete trajectory of a being and realize that a being has been and will always be a convergence of his tryst with abstractness, his acceptance of vulnerability, and his surge for virtuosity
THE TITLE-

John green had once said that there will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no Human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does. Equations of a being very beautifully describe our existence keeping the emotional point of view as the backdrop. The book perfectly correlates your heart and the mind, thus creating an equation between the two. As each situation in life represents a challenge to a human and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, a person should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each person is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

The title was apt and was very much concentrated on the plot.

REVIEW OF THE BOOK-

It has been said over years that Reality does not create the entire womb of human life. We have eyes that witness truth and beauty. We are creatures that think, plan, dream, and remember. The lambent luminescence supplied by human memory reveals that we live in a dream world. Human imagination tied to memory tells us how to live today and forevermore. So we see that a being is basically made up of two things- Imagination and Reality. If you chalk out an equation connecting these two aspects of live, you end up plotting a Human Being.

The author has portrayed every chapters of the book in form of a stage of Live. People undergo several sequential steps in maturing from infancy including childhood, adolescences, young adulthood, middle age, and old age. Each stage presents distinct challenges that require a person to amend how they think and act. And every time the author had tried to reconnect these human stages with the human emotions. It highlights the fact that Reflecting on various aspects of our lives is essential for a person to grow and adjust to changing phases in their life. Self-analysis entails examining a person’s existing level of self-esteem and documenting the inner voice that speaks to a person, which is frequently either affirming of self-defeating. Failure to periodically engage in self-analysis, make crucial revisions in our personas, and modify our thinking patterns when we encounter transformative events in life can lead to mood disorders, burnout, and other emotional maladies.

Apart from the cover and the illustration, I loved the usage of quotes too. Describing existence with an amalgamation of emotions is not so easy. I too loved the way the author had tried to bring out the meaning of life and existence. We always find that in the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. Equations of a being tell you that for human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people’s minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.

This is a very beautiful book I would recommend you to read.

Amazon link of the book- https://www.amazon.in/Equations-being-who-gathered-Moss/dp/194769703X?_encoding=UTF8&ascsubtag=e2d07d3a-fa1e-474a-886b-2d5c903eae89&portal-device-attributes=desktop&tag=googinhydr18418-21&tag=googinkenshoo-21

RATINGS

5 stars out of 5

Originality of the plot and sub plots- 9/10

Net emotions in the story- 9/10

Usage of words and phrases-9/10

The title, cover and the illustration-10/10

The net impact on the readers- 9/10
 About the Author

Ashutosh Gupta started writing in his late teens, as the urge to pen down his abstract reflections began overwhelming him. He has graduated his Bachelors of Technology; however, writing has always been his driving force. He primarily writes thought pieces pertaining to the existential spectrum.

He has written a short e-book The Constituents of Virtue, which has garnered reasonable acclaim. Influenced by the works of Franz Kafka and Leo Tolstoy, Metamorphosis is one book he wishes he had written.

With Equations of a Being, he takes his first strides as a full-fledged author and hopes to leave an undeniable mark on each and every psyche. He currently works with a Multi-National Corporation (MNC) and lives in Ghaziabad, his residence for the past twenty years.

Apart from writing, he has a penchant for music, cooking, and mimicry.

Reviewed by-

Sayan Basak

Kolkata