Books in 2022: Train to Pakistan

 Book #2

Once I wrote a blog post about overlapping philosophies among different novels I read. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh re-kindled that memory. On one hand where Mistborn's first novel taught me how religion can bind people and can help them achieve what seems impossible, train to Pakistan introduced me to the other side of it - how religion can plague minds of entire population to an extent that they resort to violence.

To be honest, I don't think I am meant to read such novels. Kushwant Singh tends to be very descriptive about the locations, weather, actions of characters and what not, that I get too bored to completely digest what the novel wants to convey. The pace of the story is so slow that, at one point, I had to avoid reading 2-3 pages of description of monsoon weather and then about what Iqbal Singh and Hukum Chand were thinking while they were trying to sleep. 

It was hard but I finally succeeded to comprehend the use of Juggat Singh's character who spent like 50% of the novel's time in Jail. But I unfortunately failed to do that with Iqbal's one. May be I will try it again some other time and see if I have matured enough to digest Khushwant Singh's works.

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