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A review by sidharthvardhan
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
5.0
"Your mind stays in the place it's been thrown out of.”
- Naguib Mahfouz
True that - both for grownups looking back at their childhood memories and those migrants leaving their nations. A feeling of being exiled. And one looks back into one's past as Amir is doing both towards his childhood. And one does feel that feeling.
I ain't much about patriotism, much less about guilt some people like to associate with people migrating away from a nation seeking better lives ( it is this shame which gave title to Taslima Nasrin's Lajja) but there is a beautiful couplet from Sanskrit - about how after eating sweet fruits and soiling leaves, it is a disgusting life birds will have if they cant burn with trees.
It is this guilt the book's later half is about. Should migrants leaving disturbed nations feel guilty? I don't think so but it is understandable that they feel some kind of survivor guilt when they look back to ruins they leave behind. And so they come back, chasing after strayed kites much like Amir. (Wrongly felt -it is fault of politicians who start ridiculous wars)
- Naguib Mahfouz
True that - both for grownups looking back at their childhood memories and those migrants leaving their nations. A feeling of being exiled. And one looks back into one's past as Amir is doing both towards his childhood. And one does feel that feeling.
I ain't much about patriotism, much less about guilt some people like to associate with people migrating away from a nation seeking better lives ( it is this shame which gave title to Taslima Nasrin's Lajja) but there is a beautiful couplet from Sanskrit - about how after eating sweet fruits and soiling leaves, it is a disgusting life birds will have if they cant burn with trees.
It is this guilt the book's later half is about. Should migrants leaving disturbed nations feel guilty? I don't think so but it is understandable that they feel some kind of survivor guilt when they look back to ruins they leave behind. And so they come back, chasing after strayed kites much like Amir. (Wrongly felt -it is fault of politicians who start ridiculous wars)