My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I am not a lover of self-help books and anything related to sports. Unless there’s a theme of romance or mystery running in it, No thank you I don’t wanna read it. So obviously I said the same to the author when he introduced his book to me but I had downloaded the same and just left it there in my kindle. Then I had a chance to read another book by the author and was simply impressed with his storytelling and decided to give PLAY 2 DISCOVER a try and thank God I did; else I would have surely missed out on a gem of a book.
This is no motivational story in the usual sense nevertheless it inspires the reader to empathize, to strongly feel for the conditions that the people in sports have to endure to make a mark in the world. Play 2 Discover uses the background of sports like cricket and football to provide some uncompromising and blunt look into the realities of life. Essentiality myriad subjects like untouchability, racism, choice of faith, aggression are all touched upon thru the lens of sports and one can definitely see the glimpse of the mystery writer poking his head from some of the stories as Vinod Balan successfully throws in elements of surprises in few of them.
Hardly 50 pages but a book that needs to be read by youngsters to understand life and the universal language of equality to all and to learn to never give up despite the unassailable mountains that may be looming in their lives.
Reading this while the Olympic games are running in the background kind of made me appreciate the years of sweat and blood endured by all the sportspeople. Hats off to each person who had to undergo incredible hardships to succeed in their dream.
We all fight many battles within ourselves and with the outside world. This edition comprises ten short stories. Each of these stories tries to connect certain aspects of sports with real-life scenarios. The stories highlight the struggles of the main characters and how they learn from their experience and manage to break every barrier and rise above every obstacle.
In each of these stories, Sport has been used as an effective tool to battle inner issues like; Depression, Anger, Selfishness, Unfairness.
And to counter societal problems like; Caste & Religion, Language, Child Labour, Age & Body Shaming, Social Inequality, Societal Mindset.
The moment you try to convey something with a preachy tone, you start losing everyone’s attention and begin to drift away from your intended goal; which is why the ten issues highlighted in this book are presented as fictional stories and not as a documentary. The unexpected plot twists and turns in each story are meant for making the storyline more gripping which would ensure that the respective messages are conveyed effectively.
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