Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Many of­ten say sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy should ex­ist sep­a­rate­ly, but for au­thor Burt Sinanan these two dis­ci­plines are the foun­da­tion­al in­gre­di­ents in­ter­mixed solid­ly in his book Uni­ver­sal Soup.

Sinanan, 42, a chem­i­cal en­gi­neer based in Lon­don, for­mal­ly launched his first book–Uni­ver­sial Soup Ad­ven­tures in Sto­ry Col­lect­ing at his fam­i­ly's home in Clax­ton Bay, last Sun­day.

The book, which is self-pub­lished, traces the ad­ven­tures of a young en­gi­neer Beni dur­ing the course of his ca­reer. Beni, through his trav­els to dif­fer­ent places around the world, meets peo­ple of dif­fer­ent races and cul­tures whose ex­pe­ri­ences and his in­ter­ac­tion with them changes his view of life.

Sinanan, in an in­ter­view with Sun­day Guardian be­fore his re­turn to Lon­don last week, ex­plained that he al­ways want­ed to pen his own book and share the ex­pe­ri­ences and lessons he learned dur­ing his trav­els.

He ex­plained that as a stu­dent in Na­pari­ma Col­lege he was ex­posed to var­i­ous books that piqued his in­ter­est in writ­ing, and with the mo­ti­va­tion from his for­mer teacher James Lee Wah, he de­cid­ed that one day he would pur­sue his pas­sion for writ­ing. Six months ago he turned that pas­sion in­to a re­al­i­ty.

Sinanan, who ded­i­cat­ed the book to his six-year-old daugh­ter, Surya Belle, said the main char­ac­ter in the book is fic­tion­al, but every sto­ry is a re­al ex­pe­ri­ence and is coloured with ex­am­ples of the var­i­ous shades of hu­man­i­ty.

"Every sin­gle sto­ry is true, but it was tied to­geth­er by a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter. It is hard to be­lieve that one per­son could have all of these ex­tra­or­di­nary ex­pe­ri­ences, but there were many ex­pe­ri­ences of many dif­fer­ent peo­ple. I chose to link them and get the best of their ex­pe­ri­ences and char­ac­ters and tie them all to­geth­er," he said.

The book, which is loaded with his­tor­i­cal tit­bits, some culi­nary gems and dash­es of Tri­ni hu­mour, is a wel­come ad­di­tion to any lo­cal lit­er­ary ad­dict.

Sinanan said he need­ed to com­mu­ni­cate his ex­pe­ri­ences to peo­ple all around him and the best way he could have done was through sto­ries.

"It was to ed­u­cate and en­ter­tain at the same time. So the book took a spin us­ing sci­ence–which is my back­ground–and the all-round part of me– the hu­man­i­ties–and try to merge it in­to one.

"We have cov­ered so many re­al as­pects of what hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences are sup­posed to be and that is what is im­por­tant to me the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences. Too of­ten now peo­ple are sit­ting in their of­fices or sit­ting in their homes and the as­pire for one thing and it is my hum­ble view that is not a com­plete view, that is not life," he said.

Es­sen­tial­ly the book, he said, is "the process of meet­ing peo­ple and cap­tur­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of mine and oth­er peo­ple that is so broad and touch­ing."

Sinanan said that it would be "dif­fi­cult and un­fair" to choose one sto­ry or char­ac­ter as his favourite.

How­ev­er he ad­mit­ted that the fe­male lead char­ac­ter, Beni's Ar­gen­tine love in­ter­est Fer­nan­d­i­na, struck a cord in his heart.

"The tri­als and tribu­la­tions she went through and the strength she was gain­ing from her own ex­pe­ri­ences which were dif­fer­ent. But she was to her coun­ter­part (Beni) a love in­ter­est and when they went their sep­a­rate ways, like any good love sto­ry, they got back to­geth­er and un­der­stood that they have formed the com­plete cir­cle of the rain­bow. Most peo­ple do not know that a rain­bow is a cir­cle part of which is on­ly vis­i­ble above sur­face," Sinanan ex­plained.

The book, he said, is def­i­nite­ly a jour­ney in many sens­es.

"I still try to bridge that gap be­tween phi­los­o­phy and sci­ence. There is a con­nec­tion there and you can­not sep­a­rate it from your own life, your roots and it is part of you and prob­a­bly mould­ing you in­to some crea­ture that you do not know who you are or who you are go­ing to be it can­not be sep­a­rat­ed. It is like a love/hate re­la­tion­ship," Sinanan said.

Sinanan, who is al­so an artist, did paint­ings of scenes re­lat­ed to each sto­ry and in­clud­ed it as an ad­di­tion­al sec­tion in the book.

The book, he said, took him six months to pro­duce and is al­so avail­able on Ama­zon Kin­dle.

He said his sec­ond book is al­most com­plete and will be launched in the com­ing months.

The new book, he said, will be a jour­nal of his daugh­ter's ad­ven­tures of her trav­els with him around the world. He is al­so plan­ning to pub­lish a book of po­ems.

�2 Sinanan can be reached via e-mail at burt.sinanan@gmail.com