Sachin Mania …

All I get to hear now is how everyone wants to win the ICC Cricket World Cup for Sachin. Guys, just win it first, ok ? Then dedicate it to your grand-mom, cat, couch , neighbour ……… I don’t care. Just bring the cup home.

My reading is chugging along rather nicely, momentum is everything in reading. So let me keep it going. I decided to get online and check out some new books. Flipkart is a neat little site with a fairly well organized book collection and free shipping.

Now let me see what I want to buy. History , Non fiction, Mystery and thrillers, Sachin Tendulkar, Travel ….

What was that again, Sachin Tendulkar as a book category ????

Surely not !!! He he he , the turbulent week at work is catching up with me. Let me check once more …

No , I was not mistaken. Sachin apparently is a stand alone category of books

Nothing personal against Sachin, top class professional and an absolute legend. But this is taking it a bit too far, don’t you think ?

Week of redemption

“All my memories from those days come gather round me
What I`d give if they could take me back in time
It almost seems like yesterday
Where do the good times go?” – Twenty years ago by Kenny Rogers

Good times are here again !! After 4 years of waiting, finally my family is coming back to be with me. June 9th is the day when I shall emerge from the ashes like a Phoenix and fly again.

Fly higher and higher, no limits now. I am floating in that unbelievable lightness that comes from a truly contented mind.

Finally my demons are vanishing and I am at peace.

May peace be with you too, wherever you are.

And may peace be with all the boy soldiers ( former and current) like Ishmael Beah, author of the gut wrenching book A long way gone : Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. One of the most shattering books I have read, I could not  sleep for a day after I read this.

Books like these can often give you a much needed perspective on what true hardship in life is.

Jnanappana

No, that was not some jumble that my daughter typed, it is the name of a famous poetry book in Malayalam. More specifically, the obtuse sounding reference to this old book is in the context of the following two verses

Randu nalu dinam kodangoruthane thandilethi nadathunnathum bhavan
Malika mugalileriya mannante tholil marappu kethunnathum bhavan

The translation, again obtained from the above link, reads :

In a matter of day or two You are He, who makes them ride on the royal chair.
On the shoulder of the king who climbs to the top of palace. You are He, who places the tattered heap.

How else can I describe my state ? Till yesterday I was a king. My house was filled with laughter, people, food , action and conversation. Today there is nothing, my family has gone back after their brief vacation

On the positive side, we spent probably the happiest week ever together !!

I will get back to my reading mode again. Among other books, I have the latest collection of short stories from Archer in queue : And Thereby Hangs a Tale.

The Lost Symbol

Just finished reading yet another of Dan Brown’s books, this time it is the latest one : The lost Symbol

I don’t know why I keep bothering to read his books, each one is progressively worse compared to the previous one. Last one I read was Angels and Demons and that was pretty average.

It is not the Symbol that is lost, it is Dan Brown’s brain that has got lost.

And I am lost for words to describe this book :-) Abysmal , is that the correct word to describe this ? Seems too mild.

Hard cover edition too, would definitely be good to squash a few cockroaches !!

Stay away at all costs !! If you simply have to read this , then don’t waste money. I will gladly gift you my copy.

Two more books

My disappointing luck with books continues, this time in the form of Six Graves to Munich by Mario Puzo (writing as Mario Cleri). Good thing that he wrote under a different name, no way this goes along with rest of the books Puzo has written !! Very ordinary revenge story, no twists at all and does not really touch you. Needless to  say, I did not like this one

Then moved on to a borrowed book, Six Suspects by Vikas Swarup. [I wonder what is the significance of the number Six in both the book titles !! :-) ]. This one can be labelled as decent. It had a reasonable start and a good ending , however is cursed with a completely crappy middle portion. Author gets bogged down in detailed descriptions and begins to bore and irritate you. You can safely skip around 150 pages and still not miss anything !!

Ordered more books, hopefully something good will emerge soon :-((

Virus strikes again

This time it is not the computer variety, its the real deal. I have been out of service since Tuesday night. Fever hovers around 102 and just refuses to go away. Just beginning to slowly get better now.

It so happened that this was one of the rare occasions when my family was in Bangalore. So I had hot food to eat and plenty of time to spend with them. Bad health can have its own weird set of rewards :) Family went back today, so I back to pauper status.

I am extremely frustrated with the sub-standard quality of books that I have been reading of late.  I can’t wait to forget that I ever read miserable excuse of books like BPO-Sutras:The Stories From Inside India's Bpo's And Call Centres by Sudhindra Mokhasi and The Last Testament by Sam Bourne. I can excuse the former, because couple of the stories there were interesting. Mostly they were just boring, repetitive and predictable.

There can be no excuse for The Last Testament though. This was my first ever Sam Bourne book, and he has resoundingly proven that he is quite incapable of putting together a suspense thriller. 

It sounded like an interesting plot when I read the back cover. The book completely lacks in pace or suspense. And an extremely weak ending to boot. His attempt at using technology (like use of second life, the way e-mail IDs and passwords are hacked) are laughable, the thriller almost becomes a comedy novel in those sections. I wonder what would happen if a more capable author like Robert Ludlum had gotten hold of the same topic !!

Seems like I have to read 10 awful books to finally stumble upon a good one !!

Random Thought

How tiger does it, I happened to see this book while I was out book shopping.

A thought occurred to me that how Tiger does it would be entirely useless to me. First reason is that I bet Tiger never read a book to figure out how to do things on a golf course :). Second reason is why would I want to try an emulate a genius ?? A genius is so not because he did things a certain way BUT only he/she has the ability to do things that way. Ordinary mortals have no use for their techniques.

So would you want to try the Tiger way ? I prefer more of the Maradona way myself :)

Daughter of the East

The latest book that I read has been Daughter of the East , which is an autobiographical account of Benazir Bhutto. Although the latter part of the book are quite repetitive and boring, I was hooked by the initial portions. Especially the ones involving the trial and execution of her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

I am always fascinated by these incredible tales of courage, people who refused to back down in spite of clearly knowing that they would lose their lives. One of my friends suggested that it may be a hunger for power which prompts folks like Bhutto to take on such risks. While I do not understand what drives people like these, I am not sure that it can be explained simply as a need for power.

I am quoting some lines from The Autobiography of Malcolm-X as told to Alex Haley . The Malcolm-X autobiography is one of the most extreme biographies I have read. The anger and determination of this man bursts through in this book.

" I am only facing the facts when I know that any moment of any day, or any night, could bring me death

....... it always stayed on my mind that I would die a violent death.

To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament that I have, plus the one hundred per cent dedication I have to whatever I believe in-these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age".

That is not something a power hungry man would say.

I would like to think that I would stand up for what I believe in. Would I risk my life for it ? Probably not ...

More thoughts on Outliers

Sometimes the initial read lulls you into a false sense of greatness about the book. A quick re-read is often eye opening. Although the books Outliers is quite interesting to read, realistically it did not tell me something that I did not know earlier. Let me summarize the key points in the book for you

• Once your IQ is greater than a certain level, it does not really matter how high it is. What matters more is the amount of hard work you put in and in some cases your ability to interact with people and influence them
• The economic and social status of your parents, does play a role in shaping your personality and hence decides to a certain extent your success level
• Many times success is about being at the right place at right time, not really about how smart you are. e.g:- The relative prosperity of the generation post the Great Depression in US

All this is hidden behind an interesting array of statistics and behavioral studies. But ultimately this is what it amounts to. Thinking back , all of Malcolm Gladwell's books have left me a bit confused. There is no strong conclusion, no clear point established.

When talking about geniuses , why not compare say a Diego Armando Maradona and Richard P Feynman. What is the common thread that binds them, how did they become the way they are ? IQ ? Can't be . I don't know if sporting geniuses have great IQs. So there has to be more to genius than IQ and hard work. Why do so many of them hover so close to self-destruct button ?

Now that would have been an interesting analysis to read. What say thou ? :)

Still recommend reading Outliers though. Pretty decent read !!

Ulcers !!

I have been harassed over the past couple of days with mouth ulcers. Actually not strictly mouth, I have some harsh variant which happens to be near my throat area. Each time I swallow, feels as if someone is hammering nails into my throat. Otherwise I am fine, meaning I still have my normal ( maybe slightly more than normal ) appetite.

But how do I eat now ? All depends on what I want more badly : avoiding pain or eating food. Right now avoiding pain wins hand down. Which also means I am in this permanently irritable mode due to reduced food intake :(

Apparently there is no real treatment apart from taking Vitamin B-complex and hoping for the best. There are several old-wisdom based suggestions "Gargle with hot water", "Use hot water with salt", "Apply salt near the ulcer" and so on. My theory is that most of these are purely for the amusement of the bystander who is laughing at your predicament !! }:-{

In case you are wondering why my co-passenger driving experience blogs are not yet up, it is for the simple reason that I am not getting any experiences !! The driver is out of action with an ankle sprain, chances of recovery for next week also looks bleak :(

Reading has started on the right note. Finished Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell. An interesting analysis on why some people are more successful than others, , tying success to lots of social and external factors that are not so apparent. I enjoyed it. Blink was good, Tipping point was poor, this one is very good again.

Baked another version of my cake, this time with raisins added and minor adjustments to my baking temperature and cooking time. Turned out excellent, was very well appreciated by my colleagues. Entire cake vanished in less than 5 minutes :-). Planning to try a marble cake this weekend.

In the meanwhile my struggle with the persistent ulcer continues.

Ulcer , ulcer go away,
Don't come on another day,
Big Pradeep wants to eat,
Ulcer, Ulcer go away

Like the flowing river

From whatever little I have read so far, there is no better collection of thoughts than in this book by Paulo Coelho.

I have no energy to read something new, so I have been revising some of my old books. This one can be re-read any number of times.

One small extract in which I find a lot of meaning and comfort is below

A rose dreamed day and night about bees, but no bee ever landed on her petals

The flower, however continued to dream. During the long nights, she imagined a heaven full of bees , which flew down to bestow fond kisses on her. By doing this, she was able to last until the next day, when she opened again to the light of the sun.

One night the moon, who knew about the loneliness, asked : 'Aren't you tired of waiting?'
'Possibly, but I have to keep trying'
'Why?'
'Because if don't remain open, I will simply fade away'

At times, when loneliness seems to crush all beauty, the only way to resist is to remain open

And I remain open. Oh but what a fight it is at times, you shall never know ......

Quotes , quips, dialogues

You know, some quotes that you read, dialogues that you hear, tend to stay with you for a while. Here are some that randomly come to my mind

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist" - Verbal Kint ( Kevin Spacey)  from the movie The Usual Suspects

"Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards!" from the book The valley of fear by Arthur Conan Doyle. ( I must have read this while I was in 10th, it was so thrilling !! )

"Anger is what gets us into trouble, pride is what keeps us there" - Source unknown ( Might have mentioned this earlier sometime on my blog, one of my favorites )

"Beedi undo sakhave oru theepetti edukkan ?" from the Malayalam movie Lal Salaam.( Dialogue has no specific meaning, just one of those you can never seem to forget !! )

"I am going to make him an offer he cannot refuse" from the book, The Godfather by Mario Puzo ( One of my favorite books, sadly whoever I have loaned this book to has never liked it :( . For the record, I have not seen the movie )

"You don't need a patch on your arm to have honor"  - Kaffee ( Tom Cruise ) in the movie A few good men

"Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?" - from the movie Reservoir Dogs

"I'll be back" - Don't think you need a source on that one !! :-)

I would like to add Stand by me by Ben. E. King to the earlier list of songs. Lyrics are decent and a soulful rendering.

Off to my cooking lab now . Let us see if something edible comes out today !

Mars, Venus and other weekend activities

I am reading this rather nice book by John Gray on Why Mars and Venus collide.
The book talks about how to reduce stress in relationships by explaining how Men and Women are different by creation itself.

Makes for nice reading, would need some amount of practice to implement whatever is written of course. Unfortunately, I have never finished reading the first book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, so I cannot really tell you any comparison between the books. One irritating thing about Why Mars and Venus collide is that lot of it is repetitive. Still many of the facts mentioned were new to me , so I am happy with this book.

I have bought an Orhan Pamuk recently, My name is Red. I have never read him before, so should be interesting.

Finally got around to meeting an old friend and family today. Have been planning a visit for 4-5 years now. She was just recently married then, now she is the mother of two kids :-). The second one is a carbon copy of his mom. So nice to see that !!

Weekends are never really complete without friends ...

Orkut baba

According to Orkut baba, today's fortune is "If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted". If it is not extravagant, then why desire at all ?? :-)

I am 'revising' some of my old books now as I wait for my latest acquisitions to arrive . Why Mars and Venus collide by John Gray and Lateral Thinking by Edward De Bono. I have never read Edward De Bono , so looking forward to that book. The old books under revision are Man , Woman and Child by Erich Segal and Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth

For the Jeffrey Archer fans, there is good news. The latest book A Prisoner of Birth is quite good. I found it to be a very enjoyable read. This is unlike his previous book , False Impression which was rather mediocre and predictable by his standards.

My cooking experiments have fallen by the wayside now, need to revive it. Will be back with more cooking adventures shortly.

Today being April 1st, I did make some weak attempts at fooling couple of my friends. Did fail miserably in those attempts :-( I am not a convincing liar, I guess.

Update on reading

I Recently finished reading The Twisted by Jeffrey Deaver. Started reading it late Friday night, continued on Saturday morning and by noon I was done. Nice collection of really Twisted stories. Really wicked endings, none of them predictable. Only problem is all of them are murder stories, so it does get to you a bit after a while.

Now started on The Tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell. I had read Blink earlier. Blink had a very different way of looking at why certain things are the way they are. It also opened my eyes to how deep rooted some prejudices can be, without we ever realizing it . Although the data that he presents is very impressive, I don't think he is the best in terms of writing. Reading his work is a bit laborious. He tends to repeat the same thing several times and it does get a bit irritating after a while.

One more book in the pipeline is The Afghan by Frederick Forsyth. I doubt if he has written a better book than The day of the Jackal, but then I am not that well read in Forsyth.

Feels good to regain my reading speed, I thought I had completely lost it for a while !!

Weekend & reading

Really hectic weekend, it was final exam time for my students at EOTO. Both Saturday and Sunday went in that. Usually these are frustrating days for me, because I keep seeing them repeating the very same mistakes we try and teach them to avoid :-((

I am done with Like the flowing river. Brilliant book, this goes right near the top of some the best stuff that I have read. It is a collection of lot of thoughts, each story does make you think and reflect a little bit. Not too heavy to read, language is simple and smooth.

I found one particular passage particularly beautiful after my first pass through the book. This is an excerpt from a book by Okakura Kakuzo

We see the evil in others because we know the evil in ourselves
We never forgive those who wound us because we believe we would never be forgiven
We say the painful truth to others because we want to hide it from ourselves
We show our strength , so that no one can see our frailty
That is why , whenever you judge your brother, be aware that it is you who is in the dock

This is definitely a book to be re-read several times. I still maintain my earlier opinion on The Alchemist, I think it is a bit over-rated.

Reading @ full blast

Turned over 2 novels in a couple of days, that's fast even by my standards !! First one was The Appeal by John Grisham. The next one was False Impression by Jeffrey Archer. Both are decent reads, though both the authors have written far far better books.

The Appeal builds up nicely, the ending was disappointing for me. It looked like Grisham grew tired of writing and gave up towards the end.

False Impression I thought was a bit too obvious, nowhere near his old classics like Not a Penny More, Not a Penny less OR Shall we tell the President

Still , I am happy to be back to reading ways. Next on agenda is definitely Like the flowing River !!

Back to reading ways

Finally I have gotten over the reader's block :-) . The book that I have started on is "The Appeal" by John Grisham. I believe I must have read all of Grisham's books.

I think his ability has declined a lot over the years. Some of his earlier ones were quite impressive . I loved A time to kill , The Chamber and The Rainmaker. A painted house was not bad either. I was disappointed by his recent ones like Playing for pizza , The Bleachers or The King of Torts. Maybe I am just reading too much of Grisham.

I find the same trend of diminishing ability with most of the specialists like Robert Ludlum or Robin Cook. After a while , you get tired of the same plots. How many different ways can you spin medical thrillers and spy stories ?Compared to them, I think Michael Crichton is still very readable after all these years.

The second book in queue is Like a flowing river by Paul Coelho. After my disappointment with The Alchemist, I am deliberately keeping low expectations this time. Who knows, maybe this book will surprise me ....

I feel much more at peace now , reading does help my state of mind a lot !!

Why I like Jan Ullrich

If there is one sportsman in the world whom I genuinely feel sympathy for, that would be Jan Ullrich. Imagine winning the Tour De France at a very young age, then be hailed as the next big thing in cycling only to never ever win it again !! Always destined to finish second behind the great Lance Armstrong.

I have read Armstrong's books : It's not about the bike & Every second counts. I have tremendous admiration for the way he overcame obstacles. But Ullrich is the one who arouses my curiosity. How can a person who is so talented waste it all by just being lazy ? What goes through his mind, what does he think ? It would be fascinating to know. Unfortunately his Autobiography , aptly titled Ganz oder gar nicht, Meine Geschicte ( All or nothing, My story) , is not available in India . I do not even know if an English edition exists !!

I also read a brilliant book by Daniel Coyle , Lance Armstrong , tour de force in which he traces the fascinating paths of three of Armstrong's 2004 race rivals : Tyler Hamilton , Iban Mayo and Jan Ullrich. This book gave me some insight into Ullrich, but still I yearn for more !!

There is this unforgettable quote by Ullrich's manager when someone asked him the difference between Armstrong and Ullrich. He said "Armstrong lives to race, Ullrich races to live".

Tell me, how can this guy not interest you ? :-))

On Books & Reading

I enjoy reading, though I always feel I should be doing more. There are some authors that I love like James Herriot and then there are some I can never figure out. Ayn Rand falls in the latter category.

I have tried my best to finish 2 of her novels "Atlas Shrugged" and "The fountainhead". Some how I have never been able to go more than half of either book.

I do not debate the fact that her thinking and ideas are distinctly different, may be even bordering on the extreme. It seems in her books everything has to be black and white, yes and no, right or wrong. The main character always seems so arrogant and disconnected from the real world. The sheer volume of Atlas Shrugged too does not help, I guess.

But then my likes and dislikes are often peculiar. Couple of my friends almost attacked me when I told them I found "The Alchemist" by Paul Coelho was not worth all the hype . For sheer beauty of thought, I would pick The Prophet by Khalil Gibran , and for simplicity of thought, I would any day pick The little prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Alchemist is neither here nor there as far as I am concerned. No doubt many of you disagree, this is just my opinion.

I aim to finish at least one of Ayn Rand's books this year, may be my opinion will change then.