12th Book of 2024
There are times when you leave any kind of physical activity and you need a great boost to get up and restart. There can be no better medium than a book to give you that push which can help your procrastinated state to moot your status quo. Thankfully, I got my hands upon 1700 in 70 by Gita Balakrishnan at the right time. This is an autobiography written by the 53-years old woman who walked 1700 kilometers in 70 days to let the world know the importance of designers and how designs can lead to betterment of citizens living with and around us.
This 180-pages book is a very unique work in its own sense as authoress doesn’t try to explore much about her life but gives us a glimpse of it and then begins to talk extensively about her walkathon journey. Reading about her past makes you feel uncomfortable in the beginning but it moves you because she has moved on in life after being victim to a horrific incident like rape. It is so courageous of her to talk about it and let the world know what happened with her. She also mentions how the accused came out on bail. This tells the bad state of our judiciary system and how it can make a person suffer more than the event itself.
Not only speaking about her walking experiences only, Gita starts the book very nicely in terms of giving us insights on how she prepared for the same in terms of physical activity, nutrition, diet, sponsorships, social media activities etc. It tells how there’s a whole lesson of management even about such events which makes us assume that the book is only about an individual activity. One great thing that authoress have taken care is about the way chapters are planned and executed. The short chapters discuss only a small segment of this long timeline which helps us understand about her 70 days long journey in parts of a week or so. The language used to narrate her tale is also reader-friendly which makes it an easy read for all the ages and class of people.
The illustrations in the book helps us understand the path she covered in and through multiple states of India. It makes it easy for us to understand her journey when we read the chapters as we get the visualization of the path she has covered during this endeavor. She regularly mentions the name of even the small villages, towns and cities and explains us about its locale details, cuisines, houses, constructions, issues and people. She even mentions some local people who are going through some tough activities for the betterment of their self and society as well.
As I have myself visited some of the places in Madhya Pradesh such as Datia, Orchha, Jhansi etc. hence I was able to comprehend the accuracy with which Gita has described all these places and their specialties. She also keeps us updated about the kind of physical and mental challenges she had to endure through this painful journey and how she overcame them regularly. It must be applauded how she doesn’t boast much about herself but maintains the tone of letting us touch her experience of this walkathon and the grit and passion that goes to make it happen.
Talking about the drawbacks, I only felt that authoress spoke very less about the purpose of her walk i.e. designing element and the multiple issues which the designers, artists and artisans must be going through in our country. She touches upon a few of them but this book sounds more about just the walking experience and less about the purpose of it. As a reader, I wanted to understand how a designer must be collecting details while traveling through different landscape of India but I only got a little of it. Other than this, reading the book has been a motivation and I rate it 3.25 stars out of 5.
Thanks!
WRITING BUDDHA
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