अर्ज किया है.....

तेरी दुआओका दस्तूरभी अजब है मेरे मालिक
मोहब्बत उन्हीको मिलती है जिन्हे निभानी नही आती

(Forwarded)

Femme Fatale: Love, Lies And The Unknown Life Of Mata Hari - Pat Shipman

Mournful Fate Of Mata Hari, The Spy Who Wasn't Guilty - Russell Warren

Into The Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart - James R. Doty 

Mata Hari: Sa Veritable Histoire - Philippe Collas

Le Dossier Mata Hari - Frederic Guelton

As Time Goes By - Mary Higgins Clark (Spoiler Alert!)

I have been a fan of Higgins Clark's thrillers. But seriously, calling this one a "thriller" is akin to stretching the word's definition from Earth to Moon and back - at least twice.

Sure, there is a murder. A wealthy doctor, Ted Grant, who has been suffering from Alzheimer’s since past 8 years is found dead in his bedroom in the morning and the suspicion falls on his young wife, Betsy Grant, who had been alone with her husband the previous night.

Sure, there is mystery.Television journalist Delaney Wright has yearned to find out who her birth mother was since her childhood when she realized that she was adopted.

But here is the thing. There aren't too many people who can be suspected to have bumped poor Ted off. Once Betsy is mentioned we know that she has to be the birth mother that Delaney is looking for practically her whole life. That means Betsy cannot be the killer. There is nothing to point fingers at either the housekeeper or the caregiver. That leaves Ted's two partners and his son Alan. Only one of the partners, Doctor Scott, is mentioned in detail. So with Alan and Scott most of us have a 50% chance of spotting the killer. Not much fun in that, is it? Once we know Betsy is Delaney's mom, we don't need Holmes or Watson to figure out that Peter has to be the father. So the mystery element too goes completely out the window. If the killer had come for Betsy and she had been shown to fight for her life while trying to uncover who had killed Ted - during what would appear, at least to her, as the final moments of her life - the reader could have found herself to be scared a bit.

Alas! Nothing of that sort happens :-(

Though Alvirah and Willy Meehan are my favorite characters, I must say that I will try my very best to forget this case of theirs.

The Spy - Paulo Coelho

A book on Mata Hari, by Paulo Coelho? I double-checked the back cover and the name of the author to make sure I had read both right. I had. Intrigued, I checked the book out.

For starters, I always thought that Mata Hari was a spy but didn't know that she was falsely accused as one. Even after reading the whole book I couldn't figure out if the letter that the novel claims to be based on was a genuine one or a figment of the author's imagination. As a Hindu, I was amused that Lord Shiva was described as the Hindu God of creation and destruction - Hindus consider Brahma as the creator, Vishnu as the one who sustains and Shiva is the destroyer. As a Hindu, I was also appalled when Margaretha Zelle is described to have simulated an orgasm near the Shiva statue during her first dance performance at a private museum in Paris. I am not sure if this really happened during her first dance. But if it didn't then I am disappointed that Coelho had to resort to such cheap tactics just to bring a bit of eroticism in the novel.

I turned the last page feeling somewhat cheated. The novel didn't bring out life of Mata Hari in a complete sense. There were no insights or thoughts about life as can be found from other Coelho books. In a sense, the novel felt incomplete.

The following two sentences, however, will remain forever etched in my memory:

Love kills suddenly, leaving no evidence of the crime.

When we don't know where life is taking us, we are never lost