He is asked by Siddhartha to kiss his forehead. Govinda has a hard time understanding Siddhartha’s mind. Govinda, who turned into a Buddha follower, is still searching, and Siddhartha tells him that Govinda would never find what he’s looking for as long as he’s searching for it with a goal in his mind, as opposed to finding that thing with an open mind. He meets Govinda one day, and they exchange their past stories. He tells everything to Govinda, who after realizing his friend has attained what he had always looked for, decides to leave Siddhartha and disappears in the forest. Siddhartha realizes the cycle in life, the river communicates extensively with him the wisdom that he had been seeking. Siddhartha has a tough time with his son, who finally leaves him and runs away in the town, the same way Siddhartha had run away from his father when he was young. Kamala, who’s bitten by a poisonous snake, dies in the Vasudeva’s (ferryman’s) hut. Later he meets Kamala again, this time with ‘Little Siddhartha’, his son. He lives a modest life with the ferryman, who is a good friend and an excellent listener. Siddhartha decides to approach the ferryman and work with him for he wanted to learn from the river. He soon realizes that this is not what he would wanted, and leaves it all only to end by the side of the same river he had crossed earlier, on the verge of committing suicide.īut then, just as he wakes up from an enlightening dream, he meets his friend Govinda again, who is surprised to find Siddhartha in rich cloths and nice shoes. Thus, Siddhartha parts ways, crosses a river with the help of a Ferryman and reaches the town, where the author describes his life with ‘Kamala’ as an ordinary person, amidst wealth, pleasures of life and ‘Sansara’.

Both friends separate when Govinda wishes to join Buddha and his disciples as a monk, while Siddhartha differs and believes that true wisdom, unlike knowledge, cannot be communicated by one person to another. The book starts with Siddhartha and Govinda leaving their homes and families to seek the knowledge of Self, living their lives as ‘Samanas’ and embracing asceticism. The next section is my summary, for personal documentation purposes, and not recommended to the reader as it would spoil the flow for you. If you’re planning to read the novel to the fullest, stop reading here and pick that book up. The book is called Siddhartha and it describes the spiritual quest of a young Brahmin boy named Siddhartha and his friend Govinda. This month’s book was a little unconventional (for me), and the first of its kind that I’ve read. A little late with May’s book review, but here it is.

Siddhartha hermann hesse review