The Lulu Duologues- A witty and eye-opening insight of the world around

                                               

BOOK: The Lulu Duologues
AUTHOR: Vivek S Patwardhan
GENRE: Short Stories, Conversation
THEME: Current Affairs, Psychological Equations

Parrots are known to be verbose birds and can hold conversations when trained well. The author Vivek Patwardhan used this concept well to show an intellectual dialogue between his parrot, Lulu and himself regarding various incidents that happen around us in the society.

This book consists of 70 different types of conversation wherein Lulu questions or sheds light on various social issues and prejudices which makes the author reconsider his stance. The topics of conversation are as wide ranging as discussing abstract and emotional topic to discussing politicians, sportspersons and criminals. Some of the abstract and emotional topics include 'The Bystander Effect', the reason which compels people to act indifferent when others are suffering as well as nostalgia and loneliness during a festival.

First of all, I would like to commend the author for introducing a concept of duologues between a verbose and smart bird like Lulu and himself. The poise with which Lulu shed insights or asked questions without imposing her thoughts is something which might not be possible with another human being as we the humans tend to be very opinionated and tend to think our opinions are the right ones.

The language is simple and intelligently constructed as you cannot have a flowery and literary conversation with a bird. I liked that the author took care of such small nuances.

Each duologue is constructed in a manner which has 2 arguing sides leaving the readers to weigh the pros and cons and come to his/her own opinion. The duologues don't sought to change anyone's mind only to rejig the thinking cap of the readers.

The only drawback I have with this book is some of the topics have abrupt ending to the discussion/duologue. In some of the topics I wished the author and Lulu could have conversed more as there was more that that topic.