Review: Different Seasons

Different Seasons by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book contains four short stories (well not exactly short). I loved three out of four stories which prompted me to give 3.5 stars.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption - This is one of my favourite movies and I loved the plot, although I found the movie far more engrossing. The character Red is actually an Irish guy and I wonder what made Frank Darabont choose Morgan Freeman, an African American. I cannot picture Red as an Irish however much I try to. Morgan Freeman has done a commendable performance in the movie. To make it short, I give the book 5/5.

The Apt Pupil - This was a study of human behaviour in adverse circumstances and describes how a when a perfectly normal person can turn into a raging psychopath. I rate the story 5/5.

The Body - I really could make neither head nor tail of this story and had to really skip the entire tale halfway through. I rate it 1/5.

The Breathing Method - This is a macabre and horrific story and the shortest one in the book. The ending is extremely revolting and equally spooky.

All in all, a fabulous book if you discount the third novella.


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Review: Mother Teresa The Untold Story

Mother Teresa The Untold Story by Aroup Chatterjee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Like all people, I was also also enamoured by the persona of Mother Teresa when I was growing up. Her congregation Missionaries of Charity was always in the limelight when some dignitary, head of state or a celebrity visited Calcutta to meet her. I was elated when she was ordained a saint by the Vatican in 2015. After she died, her Missionaries of Charity was somewhat out of the "limelight". This book is an outright critical piece of her haloed persona and the way Calcutta was portrayed as a city teeming with beggars and diseased people. Like the author has mentioned, it aggravated the negative image of Calcutta as portrayed in the book and the film "City of Joy" and for a long time I too was influenced by the book and viewed Calcutta as a place where poverty thrived.

The protagonist in the book is the city of Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) and the antagonist is Mother Teresa. The author has taken pains to shatter every myth surrounding Mother and her Missionaries of Charity who are viewed as doing good deeds around the world. MT is portrayed as a self-centred individual and vociferous activist of anti-abortion practices, pushing her agenda of promoting religious conversion and anti-abortion around the world.

At one point, MT bashing becomes the whole narrative in the book and it gets too tedious to continue reading. However, with all the feel-good persona of MT ingrained in us, the book presents a counterpoint argument against the same.

With all this bashing, it cannot be denied that she has done things which a commoner would not dare do. The book has a strong anti-Catholic narrative and is a scathing attack on MT.

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