Siddhratha, written in Germany, is a commendable work of Herman Hesse, who delineated segmentation of life in twelve chapters. As Herman described, Siddhartha went through the virtuous life cycle of Rig Veda. Entire story has summated prime factors such as origin of life, relations among people and perishability of life. Boy Siddhartha being Brahman son with magnanimous knowledge and veneration was never satisfied with life and he always waggled to learn the inner self. Eventually, he left his house instead of his father’s indignation and adopted the path of Samana with his ardent and disciple friend Govinda. After his exorbitant learning, Siddhartha, as he described later that “wisdom cannot be given because giving wisdom is foolishness”, found that something was still missing that nobody could teach him and decided to listen to the inner self. Govinda, being enthralled by Budha’s parable, joined pilgrimage of Goutma Budha and Siddhartha took refuge of self-learning.
After few days he came to the city and met beautiful courtesan Kamala, who was like freshly cracked fig, and decided to learn about love and life from her. Consequently, Siddhartha started to enter into phase of SANSARA, lifecycle of childlike people who always engaged themselves in other’s affection and futile well-being. In this stage of life, he, Siddhartha, acquainted with merchant Kamaswami and many gamblers, and learnt about business, forbidding his austere SAMANA life. As twenty years passed by, suddenly in his dream, Siddhartha felt disastrous consequence of his exuberant life and immediately decided to leave such extravagant life and his wife, Kamala, who was bearing his child.
At this juncture, Siddhartha came to know about unique entity of life as Herman articulated main theme of his verse astutely. Vasudeva, who was a mere ferryman without any conventionally pedantic pedagogy, guided Siddhatha though his enlightenment of Atman. Vasudeva always assisted that “Listen to the river because you’ve never listened all what it says to you and all how it laughs at you”. Certain things viciously dawned in Siddhartha’s life – unprecedented death of Kamala, affront of his obstinate son – and incessantly groaned him. All these abominable mishaps reproached Siddhartha’s learning and thus gave him souvenir of his forlorn. River, like life, originates from its source, flows away down the civilization and perishes in same form. Uniqueness of entirety, OM, provided tranquil to Siddhartha when he detoured through his past -- his fortunes -- and felt distressed.
Herman has described life and relation among people allegorically through the eye of Siddhartha and, in my opinion, Siddhartha would be worth reading for those who have rejuvenated themselves through the incarnations of modesty: thinking, waiting and fasting.
