How to Live a Life of Radiant,Joyous Fulfilment

T K Manik Reddy (Islampur)’s Odyssey Powered by Positive Vibrations is the story of a boy who adopts positive thinking to achieve a fully realised, inspirational life. It is basically a personality development novel that revolves around an unusual love story between the protagonist and Rudha, a brilliant girl. Edya meets both Rudha and his friend Raman during his engineering days at NIT, Suratkal. He loses both anchors  but survives the twin tragedies only because of his positive thoughts.

The  beautiful beach campus of NIT Suratkal provides the perfect backdrop for the narration of this almost autobiographical novel.

However, the author claims that this book is not an autobiography. In fact, Manik Reddy explains, “Rudha’s untimely death imposed on me, an agenda. An agenda for developing positive thoughts. I decided to chronicle my own journey of life through this book so I could help others.”

So we meet Edya in the rural environs of an unknown village in Karnataka where he is influenced by many people, starting from his grandmother, an indomitable lady who singlehandedly brought up her children after the death of her husband.

The author writes,"My grandmother was a brave lady. Her husband died when she was barely 25. She had already endured the death of her first four children. The fifth one, a daughter had survived. My impatient grandfather married again for a male progeny. Ironically, the new bride, very soon became a young widow. She remained childless while my grandmother gave birth to a son, my father, barely an year before her husband died, leaving her at loggerheads with the other widow. The sudden death of her husband left my grandmother with many different challenges. 'I had to protect the young kids from the jealous childless widow,' she had told me in one of her regular bed-time stories. The family farms had to be protected from the scheming relatives. The greedy relatives were eliminating anyone trying to protect me. But I am made of sterner stuff, not the one to give up easily.”

Many interesting incidents which motivated the author at various phases of his life have been described in this book in great detail. The author goes on to pen his deep anguish and challenges but also describes how he overcame his dark phases.

And citing his own example, he urges his readers, especially the youth who are stressed out and leading an aimless, wayward life to explore a better way to exist and to think.

And to perhaps focus on what is possible rather than what is not. Because, as he says, it is the thoughts you entertain consistently that ultimately lead to happiness or sorrow in life.

The author says,“Positive thinking can be adopted via certain principles that I want the youth to adopt. These concepts have been tried and tested by me from the time my life started in a tiny village, moved through a public school, a residential Engineering college and continues to this day.”

This is an interesting book but at some places, one gets really bogged down by a plethora of quotes by great people.

Travelling to more than 30 countries for business development and to attend conferences, Manik Reddy has delivered many a motivational lecture in India and abroad and maybe that experience influences his writing to a great extent.                                                                                       

 Book: Odyssey Powered by Positive Vibrations

Author: Manik Reddy T K (Islampur)

Publisher: Sapna Ink

Price: Rs 245

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