The Missing Rose : Serdar Ozkan

                                                 Image Credit : Peaceintheworld
It's funny the books that come into our hands at just the right time in our lives. Almost as if they were waiting all along, and then when they feel they can wait no longer, gently drop into our lives, and urge us to turn their pages, and partake of the wisdom within. I chanced upon Serdar Ozkan's The Missing Rose while waiting for an optician to fit my eyeglasses. The cover said that if you loved the Alchemist or The Little Prince, you would love The Missing Rose too. Intriguing, I thought to myself, because I really did love those two classics.

Serdar Ozkan takes us on a vast journey of finding something very simple - happiness. The other day I was telling someone 'happiness takes such a lot of hard work.' And it does. Being happy is not easy even though it is really what the soul is meant for, what gets it singing. We contrive to lose sight of happiness when we believe that our life is not going in the direction we want it to - and that is the key, isn't it? Sometimes we think if we have what we want, it will make us happy - but as I have found out, obtaining this or that in life has not given happiness. Rather, happiness seems to lie like a forgotten rag cloth in my memory's dusty attic - and I find that it requires as simple an act as picking up that rag cloth and dusting your mind to make one happy. For a while. Before you forget, and that rag cloth gets consigned again to some forgotten corner.

Leave my petty wanderings though - The Missing Rose is "the story of Diana, a young woman whose desire for the approval and praise of others has made her let go of her own dreams and values." Following her mother's death, Diana learns that she has a twin sister named Maria. It is her search for Maria, who is revealed to her in a series of 4 letters written by Maria to her mother, that takes Diana on a search all the way to Istanbul. Her search is not just for Maria - but also to learn the secret of conversing with roses. Yes, you read it right. To understand the language of roses, to talk, to listen to them. And through that to learn a lot more about herself.

In this allegorical fable Serdar Ozkan packs in timeless truths about time. The folly of not listening to one's dreams or roses. Finding the light within. And learning to live without worrying what Others are saying or doing or watching. Difficult as it sounds, it makes sense. And as a book, The Missing Rose is eminently readable. It may take an hour or two of your time, and then you feel like going back and trying to understand it all over again.


Verdict : Do read it if you liked The Alchemist or The Little Prince. 


Rating : 4/5