The Zahir

I’m a fan of The Alchemist, I believe it’s an inspiring book, and gave me insight when I needed it the most. For those who haven’t read The Alchemist, it’s a story about achieving your dreams …. a fable that you can read in one go, I wouldn’t call it ‘heavy’ reading, and that’s the good part!!!
Anyway moving on to The Zahir, Paulo Coelho’s latest novel , I haven’t read a non text book for a while now (the last book I read was probably last summer)!! I was also a bit jaded with the message in The Alchemist …sometimes you want something with all your heart and the universe will conspire to help you get it, but you wont get it , or if you do you realize its not what you wanted after all!!! Having said this, even when I believed more in the message in the Alchemist, I didn’t think of Paulo Coelho as some kind of Prophet /Messiah /spiritual type person , or atleast I don’t now!! He’s just a person who writes books and I believe to an extent he believes and practices the messages in his writings.

Anyway, unlike The Alchemist , The Zahir is rather longwinded. The protagonists lead unconventional lives….for me the book started getting interesting mid way into the story, which incidentally is about a world renowned author’s search for his missing ‘ex’ wife.. However like The Alchemist, Mr. Coelho does have some very good insights on life, Some interesting quotes by the author , related to “The Zahir”

“There's a lot of me in it. But the character( the lead protagonist) is more egotistical. I'm also egotistical, but not the way the character is. This guy is successful, he has everything, but his wife has left him. The most important value - love - is missing. What is wrong with this institution called 'marriage'? What is wrong with this institution called 'the pursuit of happiness'?”

"I realized I don't need a lot of things to be happy,"

“Anyone who fails to obey the voice and arrives sooner or later than he should will never get what he wants .”


“I think it is a problem of our society that we don't enjoy (ourselves.) We have these values, like, you have to be rich, you have to get a diploma, you have to work hard, otherwise you are useless, you are nothing but a pariah. And the book asks, 'Is it true? This is what my mom told me, but is it true?”

I for one would really like to meet the person who thought of these ‘values’ and the other ‘mental blocks” , society ,myself included , entertain.. though I’m making a conscious effort to discard these and other unreasonable values ;)

From Author Paulo Coelho living simple life by ANGELA DOLAND of the Associated Press:
The central theme of the novel centers on conquering the obsessive goals people believe they must reach to attain happiness. In this case, the object of obsession is the main character's wife. But it can be anything, Coelho says - making money, finding love or having children.
Such single-minded, goal-driven passions merely deplete an individual, he says. He calls those passions "zahirs" - an Arabic word meaning "visible" or "present" which inspired a tale by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. For Coelho, a zahir is "something which, once touched or seen, can never be forgotten, and which gradually so fills our thoughts that we are driven to madness."
When you're obsessed with something, "you don't follow the signs, you don't relax. You don't even understand why you want it, you want it like a child," Coelho says. "You start living for the obsession alone ... You want to arrive somewhere regardless of whether you're enjoying the road or not.

O.K. before I completed reading the book , I was a bit worried that right now I didn’t have a personal Zahir..now I realise that it’s a good thing :)