The most important things in life happen due to the most ignored actions performed.

I could finally finish the book “War and peace” by Leo Tolstoy. It was my 2nd attempt to read that book. The first failed I couldn’t register those Russian names in my mind. It took me around 40 days to finish the 1500 page book. Therefore, on an average I read around 50 pages per day. Ofcourse I took 2-3 days break in between.
I thought it would be unfair for me not to summarize what I learnt from that book as only after I finished it I knew why great people like Gandhi were so much influenced by Tolstoy. So, I decided that I would write this blog.
In the beginning, it was tough to follow the story as it starts from a Russian soiree. It introduces so many characters in the beginning itself like Anna Pavlovna, Prince Nikolai Rostov, Shinshin, Prince Andrei, Prince Vasily, etc etc….
By the time I had reached around 80th page, I felt comfortable. I had come to know that Tolstoy is describing the lives of Upper class Russian lifestyles and the whole story was of the time when Napoleon Bonaparte, the French emperor was invading the world. The story mainly revolved around 6families.
Then I didn’t know the significance of the whole book as I thought it was another common story book. Many times I wondered how could people ever be influenced by a mere history book. Later was when I came to know that this was indeed a history book but it dealt with the story in a whole new way and it was how we ought to learn the history. I feel that the history textbooks in India for school children should be written in this manner instead of just giving out the events with the dates. This style not only makes history more interesting but also makes us learn from that a lot about human values.
I was really surprised when I came to know that the mentality and behavior of the people has hardly changed. Even though we say the world has become modern, the way the people think and act even today is the same. Sometimes I almost felt that Tolstoy wrote the book in 21st century.
One thing I couldn’t agree till the end was that he has severely criticized Bonaparte and this is obviously because Tolstoy was a Russian. But ofcourse, that does not mean that Bonaparte was right or he was genius.
He has not only explained how things were at that time but also explained how people thought or acted. He has explained with great efficiency, how peasants thought, how soldiers acted especially in the war, how a war was fought and how the upper class people in Russia reacted to that.
The thing which makes this book a must-read is, along with all these historical events Tolstoy has managed to link up many love stories amongst the characters and also the different emotions those characters display. Nowhere in the book has he forgotten to balance between history and the love stories. As the novel is very near to the truth, it is heart touching and an excellent source to understand peoples’ thoughts in different situations.