Aleph – Another addition to my growing Paulo Coelho collection

“If you want to see the rainbow you have to learn to like the rain”

This was just one of the beautiful sentences which kept me mesmerized this weekend and up way too late I might add. Such beautiful words! Rich in depth yet so simple and elegant. To me reading most books by Paulo Coelho is as divine a experience as enjoying the double chocolate cheese cake at Paradise Road Gallery Café – savored slowly, one spoonful at a time.

It was completely by accident that I discovered that he had a new book out. I was browsing through PC’s Face Book fan page and blog whilst chilling out in my office den on a poya day and happened to play a video completely by accident which turned out to be the trailer for Aleph his new book.  The moment it dawned on me that a new book was out my heart started beating fast! I started sweating and was agog with excitement. I HAD to get my hands on this new book right then. Fortunately for me Vijitha Yapa Crescat- yes one of the few book stores open on poya days - had a few copies available and I rushed there like a drug addict running to get his fix and heaved a sigh of relief when the copies were finally in my hands.

I am glad to report that my reading experience of Aleph lived up to expectation.

In fact it seems that it exceeded my friend RC’s expectation who I also got a copy for because she says that it was the best book she read of his so far. Personally I thought it was “Eleven Minutes” or the “The Zahir”. But then each to his own at least that is what I say.

It also dealt with a subject that I have been thinking about a lot the past few days. Specially due to the current situation I am experiencing in my life right now. Do the people whose lives we have affected in a previous life (positively or negatively) come back into the presnt? As a Christian who worships in a charismatic church these kinds of subjects are considered taboo. But still I can’t help but wonder?