The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

It is an extraordinary story of an ordinary boy named Santiago …a shepherd by profession. He had chosen to be a shepherd as he liked to travel and discover new places and people around him. One day, while sleeping in an old and broken temple, he had a very strange dream. And this was the second time he was having this dream. He could not understand anything from the dream. So he went to a dream interpreter and came to know about his destiny for the first time. He became aware and confirmed about his destiny when he met another elderly person calling himself the king of salem ….then he started his journey towards his destiny and on the way he met lot of other people along with The Alchemist and the love his life.

The alchemist changed his life…he came to know the truth about the human being’s hidden capabilities and could utilize them on his way towards his destiny… The Englishman who learns that action is the best teacher and that its better late than never to start one’s quest and often the truth is very simple, Fatima who tells him that love need not hold a man back, the crystal seller who teaches him that you need to cleanse your negativity, the alchemist who speaks to him about destiny. He even learns from his sheep lessons of patience and the silent language that everyone speaks. But as he observes.. the sheep were not actually teaching him but he was learning from them.

Now to know the story in detail you need to read the book…it may seem to be a mere story, but when you read the book you will come to know how this mere story tells the huge secrets of our lives…

I realized that we are just common people, but each person has a dream, a destiny to reach. But the thing is that, you need to know your destiny. Once you know your destiny then only you will be able to go towards it. No wonder, the story was a complete fiction, but the theme behind the story is a reality for every human being. One can fetch his/her dreams and can write & achieve his/her destiny…that is what the story is all about…

You will come to know how influencing this book is once you read this and try to realize the similarities between the simple shepherd & us, his dreams & our dreams, his destiny & our destinies…may be, our dreams and our destinies are different, but what the similarity is that…the destiny is in our hands only…

Few lines from the book :
** At a certain point of our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie …
** There is one great truth on this planet : whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it is because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It is your mission on earth.
** All things are one.