Book Review: Fall Like a Rose Petal

Self-help has never been my genre. I never championed the idea of getting hold of one.  If it is called self-help, why do we really need a book to help us? Why do we really need an author to tell us how to live life? Self-help books are a contradictory concept, I had always thought. Until I chanced upon “Fall Like a Rose Petal”. The subtitle, “A father’s lesson on how to be happy and content while living without money” caught my attention. I have this deep-rooted desire to travel the world without money (Well, obviously because I don’t have enough money to travel the world with it) and I thought AVIS (Viswanathan, the author) could really help me figure out a way. He did. Not the way I wanted him to but nevertheless I learnt my lesson. Like he says, “You will find Beauty in Unexpected Places.”

Well, this is a self-help book with a difference. This is no “guru-speak” like AVIS claims. I didn’t really struggle to reach page 290 (Yeah, the last page but I like numbers more) and hence you can safely conclude this is no Gita. It doesn’t leave you high and dry like your Moral Science classes back in school. This book is an earnest attempt to share the myriad of experiences the author had been through his journey down the lanes of ‘Life’. This book doesn’t tell you what to do in life but rather how to do what you want to do. And AVIS does a good job by keeping every bit of it personal and not preachy. This book is definitely old wine packed in a new bottle. You have heard all that AVIS wants to tell you a thousand times over maybe but the way he tells you makes you want to listen to him. And that’s where he wins the battle.

The book is a series of letters between January, 2007 and October, 2013 that AVIS wrote to his then teenage children Aashirwad and Aanchal about the way his life was unfolding and how he was transforming through the experiences. Through these letters AVIS helps his readers to understand the four-lettered word called ‘life’ and that’s how he makes it easier. Through a personal touch. He attempts to present to his reader a guru who practices what he preaches. And that surely works for him. The only thing I did not like about the book were the silly footnotes (No, it’s not a spoiler alert). I have no idea why those were even included. They weren’t much informative (and completely unnecessary) and they somewhat spoilt the flow.

The book helps you deal with the crisis you exaggeratedly call ‘life’. It helps you to restore faith in the magic that happens to you every day but you so ignorantly overlook. It tries to show you the bigger picture that flutters around you but you never succeed to catch a glance of.  It aims to give you a head-start if you had dug a pit for yourself and you are deep down there. And it wonderfully does all of that without you even realizing it. Isn’t that appealing? A self-help book that isn’t sententious? A self-help book that has a story to tell? And that’s what makes this book stand apart. I started the book with “Money (no money rather) on my mind” but ended with “Laughing my life away”.

Wish you a happy me-time.