Bestseller author Paulo Coelho is excited by India, Kerala precisely. Recently he took to Twitter to tweet a photo of an autorickshaw that has his name written on its back. Indian autos having names and pictures of actor and actress, movie dialogues is quite regular, but Pradeep running his auto-rickshaw in Kerala has used the name of his favourite writer Coelho and his book Alchemist to embellish his mode of living.
The word ‘Alchemist’ is painted just below his name in Malayalam. The act caught the fancy of the writer who acknowledged the gesture by writing, “Kerala, India (thank you very much for the photo).” The tweet garnered more than 22k likes and over 1.7k retweets and is still counting. Bibliophiles from India received the acknowledgment with much love, especially the ones residing in Kerala.
Pradeep was informed by one of his friends about Coelho’s tweet, to which he was delighted and excited that his ‘beloved writer ‘ tweeted his autorickshaw. For Pradeep, he read the Malayalam translation of ‘Alchemist” 10 years ago.
But naming his vehicle on a writer earned him good company with other writers, film directors and musicians as they discussed books and social issues during trip. He often receives books as gifts from his passengers. Popular music director Veetrag is one of his happy passengers.
After Coelho’s tweet , Pardeep wishes to meet him in person some day.