MANISH Paperback – 10 Oct. 2021

Great book

This book is about education reform, showing us that our schools create good and bad people at the same time. That means our schools failed us. For example, our education system in its current form, creates good people like Newton or Einstein and bad people like Osama Bin Laden or Dr. Joseph Mingele. This book recommends to fix our curriculum using empathy and imagination. Empathy will make sure our schools create only good people and there will be no Osama Bin Ladens coming from our schools. Imagination will make a shift from memorization-based learning to a learning based on imagination, so that every student gets a chance to become the next Sir Isaac Newton.

I had never heard of this book until toward the end of last month when I was in a business trip to South Africa. I also learned that the author is a 9 YO child and he came to Johannesburg to give a Ph.D graduation address at one of the local universities in SA. I met with the author in Johannesburg but did not take his autograph after finish reading the last two chapters of the book.The book starts with Imam Zalgai giving Taliban training to American Muslim children while having inappropriate relationaship with ten-year-old Muhammad Abdul. And the book ended with the imam reaching into his pocket and pointed a gun at the Soborno. “Come inside the Mosque,”Manish ends with no hope for better times. Now I regret not taking his autograph because I recently realize that how can a book ended with a positive tone after the countless events of trauma, violence and brutality, emotionally and physically throughout the book, the hopeful ending only makes a dull thud against the depressing, dark, adult topics depicted by a 9 YO child.

Manish is a beautiful fiction... written by a 9 YO. This unusually eloquent story is also about the beautiful relationship between Hindu and Muslim. Purohit Mehta gave his life to save a Muslim child, Soborno Isaac. However, it was emotionally difficult for me to finish this book because my eyes filled with tears at the end so I did not read the last page when child knock the mosque door.