The Story of My Life - Helen Keller

A book that came my way late...I should have read it mush earlier is what I felt after reading Helen Keller's autobiography - ' The Story of my Life '.

Helen became deaf and blind at nineteen months, following a fatal disease.This autobiography is an inspiring and exquisitely touching account of how little Helen learned to communicate and break open the dark and silent world within to emerge as a ray of hope for people all over the world.

An excerpt from the book:

Is it not true , then that my life with all its limitations touches at many points the life of the world beautiful ? Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Sometimes, it is true , a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate.Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter.Fate,silent,pitiless bars the way.Fain would I question his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter,futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, "There is joy in self-forgetfulness." So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness.

The Last Jews of Kerala - Edna Fernandes

'The last Jews of Kerala' successfully captures the melancholy, despair and fear that envelops the last less than a score of Jews left in Kerala - the living remnants of around two millennia old Jewish settlement in Cochin.

Edna Fernandes walks the lanes of Jew Town , Cochin ,to capture the sad story of the two Jewish communities- the blank and the white- their histories, the fatal colour based caste discrimination and rise and fall of this once glorious community.She also goes to Jerusalem to study the life of the re-settled Cochini Jews of the now Israel to learn that while few of them successfully resettled in 'The Promised land' , others yearn for the peaceful and glamorous life that they left in Kerala.

It was not plague or war that led to the destruction of this community in Kerala but bitter feud and apartheid between the black and the whites.

A touching investigative account of a dying community in 'countdown mode' that has no more marriages but only funerals to attend ...