The Little Prince

Yay! I am done with the Orbis Terrarum Challenge! And, let me tell you, it’s a great feeling! 🙂 It has indeed been an enlightening and transforming experience reading for the OT Challenge.

I changed the list that I had initially prepared for the Challenge a couple of times, as my reading preferences changed with time.The books that I did finally read are:

1) Mahashweta – Sudha Murty (India)

2) The Bridge Across Forever – Richard Bach (USA)

3) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan)

4) PS: I Love You – Cecelia Ahern (Ireland)

5) Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho (Brazil)

6) Purple Hibiscus – Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

7) Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen – PG Wodehouse (England)

8 ) Memories of my Melancholy Whores – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Colombia)

9) The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint Exupery (France)

I just finished the last book of the 9  – The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery. (Courtesy: Veens). I read about this book on her blog and was so intrigued that I picked it up immediately. And I am glad I did! It is a beautiful book, and left me with a good feeling as I ended the Challenge. Thanks a lot, Veens! 🙂

As I began reading The Little Prince, I felt that it was a story for children, on account of the way it has been narrated and the fact that it is an illustrated book. But as I went on reading, I found myself more and more engrossed in it. It is a wonderful philosophical story, at the same time being simple and pretty. I was touched at the way things have been described in it. It beautifully brings out what is actually of consequence in life, and what are the things that are not. I felt myself drawn to the simple yet meaningful words that spoke to me of the divine emotion of love throughout the book.

The book is written in extremely simple language and is just 81 pages long. I thought I’d finish it in no time, but it made me stop and ponder at a lot of places. The story, narrated by the author in the first person narrative, is about a little prince from a far away planet, whom the author meets and befriends. In his short sojourn with the little prince, he teaches the author a few deep truths about love and life. The story is unique, and quite difficult to write about. It is a book that is best felt.

Do check out this book, guys! It is worth it!

I leave you with a few excerpts from the book that I absolutely loved (some might not make sense unless read in the proper context) :

If some one loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy just to look at the stars. He can say  to himself, ‘Somewhere, my flower is there . . .’ But if the sheep eats the flower, in one moment all his stars will be darkened . . . And you think that is not important!”

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“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”

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One only understands the things that one tames.

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“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you – the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”

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It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

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