In Hindu philosophy, turiya is the experience of pure consciousness. It’s not a state of consciousness. The term state will imply change, but turiya never changes or evolves to something else. (Source: Wikipedia.org)
But, I’m not going to talk about any philosophy. Yes, I’m talking about “Turiya”. Turiya is a title of a book, written by Maradilla Syachridar. Who is Maradilla Syachridar? Check my older post here.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Pretty familiar line, isn’t it? But still, a cover holds an important role. A book’s cover is like a window, or even a gate, perhaps. We need to see or go through it to see what lies beneath it. Judging by Turiya’s cover, what do you see? Is it a book about wine? Why the picture is being turned upside down? Why it has three hands hold a glass of wine each? What are they toasting about?
Well, you can ask lots of questions based on a cover. And to answer them all, you need to open it up and see it through.
I have read the book, cover to cover. And I’m not going to give you a summary what the book is all about. In my opinion, a very same book can give two different persons two complete different perspectives. Even in a very same person, a book can tell different things every time he/she re-reads it.
To be honest, I just read it once. And what I will tell you is my own experiences and feelings about the book.
Turiya turns my state of emotions upside down, even though it was written on a woman’s point of view, it doesn’t mean that a man can’t understand it. Happiness, sadness, excitement, tenderness, even anger and scare, Turiya evokes six basic emotions in me, quite a lot for a small book.
What I like the most while I read Turiya is how it makes me see a reflection of myself, my life, the way I think and live my life. The book pictured a distorted figure of reality that revolves around me. It may sounds like an exaggeration, but that’s the way I feel. Somehow I can relate to the characters feelings and emotions. I think that’s because Turiya is written in a language that fits me well.
That’s the beauty of Turiya, I think. It makes my consciousness wanders to a different dimension, to a place where the characters live, with the story line that keeps my own train of thoughts running. A pretty well-written fiction literature, I might say, even though I consider Turiya as a not-so-light reading material.
In my acknowledgement, Turiya is written in Bahasa Indonesia. If there’s an English translation version of Turiya also published, I think more people in the world can also enjoy the roller-coaster feelings that it gave me.
Just a little bit of information, limited copies of Turiya are sold out in only in 3 days. The pre-order session will be opened in May 10, 2011. For more info to pre-order this book, you can visit Turiya by Maradilla Syachridar page on facebook or Else Press page on tumblr.
And if you want to know more about the writer, you can take a look in Maradilla’s realm in Brainmelosa.
For Maradilla, keep on being creative and productive in everything you do, don’t forget to enjoy it while you do it. For all the readers and future readers, hope you enjoy Turiya and keep on supporting Indonesian writers.
Thanks for reading this not-so-well-thought review; I wrote it with my heart while I left my brain someplace else. :p
Note to self: I think it’s time you take writing and literature more seriously, Fadil.
