Writing a review on a comic book done by friends about a friend is not an easy task. I don’t pretend to be unbiased and also fail to see how reading Kaisa Leka’s new comic book would leave anyone unbiased. Her new comic book is called Audarya Lila: The death of Tuomas Mäkinen and is co-authored by her husband Christoffer Leka. One is said not to judge a book by its cover, but you would do no harm if you made an exception to that for this book. As usual, Kaisa and Christoffer’s eye for design speaks out even if one just holds the book. It’s bound in an old Japanse style. Its contents are tied by a string and covered by two beautiful matte-printed panels. When untying the book, it reveals three separated parts, which are very nicely bound as well. Each of the parts tells a separate story, but with a common theme, the death of Tuomas.

The death of Tuomas is not to be taken literal, rather it is the symbolic death of the Finnish Tuomas into the Hindu monastic Gurunistha. In this book as in real life, he crosses the ocean from Finland to California, from singing in a hardcore band to constructing a Hindu temple. His life story is told from three perspectives, his mom’s, his ex-girlfriend’s and his own. Hence, the three separately bound parts of the book. All three of them recount how they saw Gurunistha evolve and enter monastic life. It is in some ways a biography of his religious life thus far. Though, his mother and ex-girlfriend do not just speak about Gurunistha, but they also display the affection they have for him and the effect his choice had on their lives. The story is told in such a way that one is compelled to sympathize with all perspectives. It’s heartfelt, but comical at the same time.

I would put this on the required reading list for anyone ever considering becoming a monastic and specifically a Hindu monastic. The book communicates that crossing the ocean to pursue one’s ideals can be most difficult for oneself, family and loves ones. However, when approached in a balanced matter, this sacrifice for all is very much feasible.

Leka, Kaisa and Christoffer. Audarya Lila: The death of Tuomas Mäkinen. 1st ed., ATP, 2008.

PS
Gurunistha, Kaisa and Christoffer and I share the same Hindu teacher. Most interestingly for me, Gurunistha’s first encounter with his teacher happened when we first met as well. I remember the talks we had in the car and walking on our way to Swami Tripurari’s lectures. We both felt refreshed seeing how Hinduism had a realistic answer to modernity.  In 2007, I spent four month in his company when I stayed at the monastery, Audary, where he lives. It was great to see how he still carried this sense of enthusiasm and energy that he had when he first met Swami. (Gurunistha blogs overhere)

A good friend of mine recently uploaded his bamboo flooring business website. Since all businessman are looking for customers, I would love to direct you to his new website. Bamboo floors are a good green alternative to standard wooden floors.

Bamboe vloeren

Twitter is an interesting tool. For those of you who have never heard of it, it revolves around the central theme “What are you doing?” Most social networks like Facebook have this feature ingrained. However, Twitter’s strength is that it just revolves around this one tagline and is able to generate conversation on what we are doing. Its combination of text messages, mobile web and external applications makes one always connected.
Through Twitter I have already met a long list of interesting people of which I’ve also met a number offline. There are many ways in which to effectively use this tool. Here are mine:

1. I engage in conversation. There are a few people whose twittering I specifically read and answer. Thus, you can add many people to twitter, but make a selection of the people who are conversation starters. This leads to the next point.

2. Of course, you do not want to ignore anyone else replying to your updates. There are two ways to deal with this.
- Subscribe to Twittermail. It gives me a unique email address and sends replies back into my inbox. In case, I miss an update it always ends up in my inbox.
- Twittermail is, however, delayed, so in case something demands an immediate reply I use tracking on my cell phone. I track my own @username, so all replies are sent to my cell phone. Well, Twitter is still buggy, so you may miss some of them but most end up on my phone, and otherwise there is twittermail as backup.

3. A good way to look for friends/interesting people is to use the search option. Search e.g. for a location, profession or interest. Browsing other people’s friends list (click the with_others tab) is also useful for this.

Good luck.

My Finnish friends, Kamalaksa and Krsangi, are currently doing a 1700 km bike trip. On their weblog 1700km, they post daily photos and blog entries. Sadly, their entries are mostly in Finnish and some Swedish, so I don’t understand anything. Apart from the fact that they like biking, they told me this trip was in the mood of the “slow” and carbon footprint movement. Why race or fly all the way to far off destinations when you can just slowly ride your bike and enjoy the scenery? I’m keeping an eye on their blog.