Living Out The Plan: A Review

A teacher is an important influencer of lives and of society. It is through the framework provided by a teacher that most of us learn as we grow up. Along with the home, the school is another huge agent of socialization for the child. And the teacher is by far the most vital resource in the school. Teachers also learn and grow, just as they labor to teach, and shape children into worthy monuments in society. To teach must reckon as an ambition and a lifelong calling for many who are teachers. This appears to be the case with Aloysius Aseervatham as recorded in his recently released book, Living Out the Plan.(available on Amazon).

Subtitled as Intrepid Approaches, it is a memoir of his experiences and those of people close to him. It comes across as a book written with honesty and commitment to the form of the memoir. With a beautiful and intimately written foreword by Bridget Hamer, it is interwoven with meaningful and realistic dialogues. It also contains long narratives passages which serve their own purposes just fine. Living Out the Plan is essentially a reflective account of a teacher and his experiences across distinct and diverse landscapes, while holding on to a belief in the divine and astrology.

Living Out the Plan is characterized by the solemnity of a genuine retelling of a true life adventure. The main character is a nomad of some sorts who moved from Sri Lanka, to England and Zambia before making his final tent in Australia. An innate teacher, he never really deviated from that calling in life. While much of the book tells of his triumphs and contribution to the expansive world of teaching, it is also a story of personal loss and tragedy as exemplified by his account of the loss of his dear wife, Jasmine, whom the author travelled the world with along with his three sons.

With eight appropriately titled chapters and three appendixes, it concludes with “Ode to Jasmine,” which is in many ways fitting, since the author saved the best tribute for the last. He seemingly tells us that he saved the best for his dearest long gone wife. As it is common with memoirs, autobiographies, and other intimate and personal narratives, the writer is often temped not to self-efface. But Aloysius Aseervatham manages to sidestep this human weakness because he comes across as a man of immense humility and absolute faith in a God who controls the cosmic forces and all of life.

Living Out the Plan is a story of accomplishments, self-satisfaction and loss. Much more than that, it is a book bristling with the literary talents of perhaps, one of life’s best teachers.

PS: Steve Ogah is the author of Barak Obama’s Logic. Twitter:@publishingrita.