The River Sutra, written by Gita Metha. Is the story of a man who gives up society in an effort to find out what life is really about. For this he declares himself a vanaprasthi, being a man of the forest, or one who gives up the majority of their worldly possessions to learn about the mysteries of life. To do this he retires to the Narmada River, the most holy river in India, and lives in a small bungalow owned by the government. While he stays there he meets many people who have all come to the river for one reason or another. All of them also tell him a story, having something to do the divine or life itself. He meets many characters, a monk, a music teacher, an executive, a musician, and a professor. Near the end of the book a character tells him .
" The better is one thing, the pleasant another.
Both aims may bind a man.
But the wise man chooses the better one over the pleasant"(pg 219).
This is the true meaning of the book but rather not in so many words, for the singular theme is that there are always two ways to view a situation and while neither of them is necessarily right the only way to truly understand life and the divine is to see and understand both perspectives. .
One of the first stories that we hear is the story of the musician and the teacher. The story starts off with a man who is married to an overbearing and unreasonable wife, and has two children that always side with their mother and hate their father. One night the father goes out to a mosque in order to hear the Quawwali singers. That night he sees a girl and a blind boy singing, later that night the girl and confronts him and tells him that she must leave for a job and wants him to take her of her little brother (the blind boy). The teacher agrees and takes him as his pupil. The father takes the boy as his son and loves him as he would a son. However in doing this he ends up paying attention only to the blind boy and not to his family.
