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 ?

SMS flood

Generally I am all for technology, but in some cases people misuse to the point of absurdity. Take SMS for example. I get all sorts of nonsense wishes on my cell phone, here are various samples that I have got over the past few months

1. Happy New Year ( Well this is not too bad, apart form the awful text art some folks seem hell bent on making)
2. Happy Republic day !!? ( really ??? when was the last time you wished somebody in person for this ?)
3. Happy Men’s day ( Please, never ever wish a man on “Men’s” day, if at all there is such a day. I beg of you, please don’t)
4. Happy Bandh !!! ( this was when there was a call for a one day Bandh in Karnataka following the fights between CM and the Governor)
5. Best wishes for “XYZ”-festival ( Might be useful to check at least if this is a festival that I am even aware of, let alone celebrate !!)
6. Motivational messages – (I do read a considerable amount of books, so chances that you will tell me something original is slim. Why not avoid it altogether ? )

I really need to update my phone to something that can bulk-delete. My old-fashioned phone is killing me :-(

The Confession

The latest in the series of books from John Grisham, one in which he goes back to what he does best : Create scenarios based on the US justice system that gets you wondering “Just hold on a sec, is that really possible ? What if it really happens like this ? “

The theme of the book is around an innocent man who is executed by the state of Texas, and the mayhem that breaks loose once the real killer admits his crime. It triggered a lot of thoughts about the death penalty, which sadly is also a practice allowed by the Indian judicial system and laws.

I thought a bit about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty, here are some of my thoughts

I do not believe we can pass a judgement on whether a fellow human being should live or die. Nor do I believe that any civilized form of governments should have the blood of its own citizens on its hands.

I am aware that once a person breaks the laws established by society, he has to pay the price for that. The price however cannot be his life. Keep him in prison for his entire life if you want, but let us not pass a judgement to kill.

And surely the issue of sustaining the cost of the prisoner for his life should not be too much. After all, at least in India, the death penalty is supposedly reserved for the rarest of the rare cases. I saw that currently we have around 300 prisoners on death row. We are a country of over a billion, we should be able to take care of 300 more without breaking our budgets too much.

Creativity and books

“The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources” . I have heard of this one before, still makes me smile every time I hear it. And with the power of Google at one’s disposal, I tend to agree with the above statement.

Finished reading a few books which have sort of disappointed me. The best of the lot was undoubtedly “Immortals of Meluha” by Amish. Based on Hindu mythology and a premise that what if the Gods were ordinary human beings like you or me who got elevated to a cult like status by means of their deeds. Shiva is the central  character of the novel and it is quite decently written. I did not find it moving fast enough for my liking though. And it is the first part of trilogy. As a rule, I hate trilogies, don’t think I have ever found the patience to even attempt completing one.

Also managed to plough my way through the massive autobiography of Steve Waugh : Out of my comfort zone . Well over 750 pages. Boring and irritating for most of the time and an incredible pain to hold in your hand and read ( nearly sprained my wrists just holding the book! ). Unkind readers may suggest that the book is not unlike Steve Waugh himself. A much better review can be found at the following location : http://www.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/234157.html

Currently thrashing my way through In the Line of fire by Pervez Musharraf. Musharraf is genuinely un-aware of world history or is a blatant liar. His portrayal of India is as the rogue state and Pakistan is the friendly neighbor who is minding its own business. I doubt if he believes in this himself !! More controversies regarding the book can be read from the Wikipedia entry above. Overall he comes across as a pompous man who is desperate to prove to the reader that he was a great man. However the end effect is quite to the contrary. 

Must try and find better books. The growing collection of books in my home is again forcing me to look at e-book readers. In the next year, I hope the companies can sort out the pricing of the readers as well the e-books themselves.

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.

Rain, Power and me

Not only is it raining here, but it is windy like crazy. And the strange part is the rain and wind exist only for a one hour stretch in the evening. After that it is perfectly calm and bone dry. But boy, the one hour more than makes up for the remaining 23 hours of calm. It has been total mayhem for past 2 days. Trees falling, windows getting shattered, roads getting flooded and what not

Plus the small issue of lack of power of course. The merest sight of a breeze and power goes off. I am supposedly a fully qualified electrical engineer and I can offer no explanation on why this maybe the case.
Is the power switched off to prevent trees from falling and shorting the wires ? Maybe , but underground cable is not exactly rocket science technology to implement, is it ?

More sadly the lack of power brings back two painful problems
1. Since the ceiling fan does not turn, mosquitoes have a field day in attacking me. Hence I cannot sleep very well
2. I light up a mosquito coil to shoo them away, but the smoke invariably triggers an asthma attack. Which in turn again means that I cannot sleep

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Among these raging insomniacal days, I have somehow finished Coming back to me by Marcus Trescothick. In one word- brilliant. 

Truly eye opening account on how devastating depression can be, and also on how under-diagnosed the condition is. It is very rare for a professional sportsman (who is still an active cricketer in the county circuit) to be so open about his problems. The story of his cricket life is very well written with a touch of humor present all the time. The book won William hill sports book of the year award in 2008 and I am not surprised at all.

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.

When everything else fails …

…………… try reading. Always a good remedy to unwind and relax. Especially when a weekend looms where friends are unreachable or unresponsive. Everyone has their own lives to live, which is why books are such a reliable backup.

Well, let me try and recap my last 3 books. First was 2 states : The story of my marriage by Chetan Bhagat. Contains plenty of pot shots at Tamilians, with a few unkind portrayals of Punjabis too thrown in. But overall he is not far from truth. There is very little in common between North and South, however hard you may try to prove otherwise. The book is very light to read and reasonably entertaining.

Another one that I read was Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton ( may his soul R-I-P). Quite a deviation from the usual science thrillers that he writes. Story of a band of pirates around 17th century. For me it is more of a portrayal of super-heroes who are indestructible.  Pretty weak by Crichton’s standards. Not a bad read, but not a recommended one by me for sure

Most recent one was Arvind Adiga’s - Between Assassinations. Quite well written, very simple stories. There is an underlying anger or frustration that comes through in each one of them. I am yet to read the 2008 Man Booker prize winner – The White Tiger, I am  tempted to after this book.

There seems to be quite a lot of very good Indian authors around. I must read more of them.

What the dog saw

Thus is titled Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book. I don’t know about the dog, but what I see is a very poorly written book. It is almost as if Gladwell decided “Alright, I have had a good run with 3 decent books, let me put out a crappy one now and see how many people  fall for it”.

I had some apprehensions when I read Outliers, Gladwell seemed to be presenting fairly obvious principles in a different manner, so that suddenly they seem like startling truths. However his presentation was good and the book was pleasant to read

This is not true of What the dog Saw. The book offers no insights. I started yawning from page one and the feeling lasted throughout the book. I heard him described in some quarters as one of World’s most influential thinkers. I don’t consider him as a thinker, he is more a collector of interesting facts and statistics.

At the other end of the spectrum, I read Dork: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese by Sidin Vadukut. The story of a mediocre MBA graduate’s life in a mediocre consulting firm. Very light to read and absolutely hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed it !!

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.

And then you win some ….

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers – M. Scott Peck

I can hear my friends groaning. Here he goes again on one of his tangents on life, dealing with dark moods and so on.

Not true this time, my friends.

I stepped out my reading rut with a recent trip to Sapna book house. This time I took time to read a few pages and made sure I am not getting conned again. Here is a quick summary of the reading action over the past week or so.

The Simple truth by David Baldacci : Not his best but still a decent read

Amen:Autobiography of a Nun by Sister Jesme : I bet the original in malayalam would be far more readable. The language is ordinary and some emotion is lacking from the story. Not bad, but if you are aware of the inner workings of Church, the story will not surprise you. Distrubing ? Yes. Shocking ? No.

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown : Just passable according to me. Far too many holes in the story line including the hindi movie like escape from a falling helicopter without parachute :)

Q&A by Vikas Swarup : Of course, the book of Slumdog Millionaire fame. I have not seen the movie, but found the book to be surprisingly good

When a tree shook delhi by Manoj Mitta and HS Phoolka : An actual account of the anti-Sikh riots that followed 1984 assassination of Indira Gandhi. Events that led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to make the following comment 11 years later “I apologize not only to the Sikh community but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution”. Well said, Sir !! After reading the book, my head too hangs in shame that such incidents happened in my country.

Wish you well by David Baldacci : It is a departure from his usual nail biting thrillers. This book is far more laid back, but Baldacci does paint a very nice picture. The story is a simple one, but touches you. For a change his characters seem deep and well formed. I enjoyed this one

I am out of books for now, maybe I should plan a raid to Crosswords shortly.

Speed of reading has been very rapid, I am averaging about a book per two days !!

Sleepless nights have made an untimely and unwelcome return. Mind is all jumbled up, almost beginning to see arrays of floating bodies before my eyes :-(( Frustrating ……

A different role

Past week saw me donning a different hat again, this time that of a porter. Well, not really :-)) I was just coordinating the shipment of household goods from Bangalore to Kerala for a friend.

Invariably the shifters are never on time, the supervisors are always stuck in traffic and there is some last minute hassle or the other. A similar sequence of events saw me stuck at the shifter warehouse for far longer than I anticipated. The end result being a Schumacheresque dash through Bangalore traffic to reach office just in time for a 6 pm teleconference !!

The job is pretty similar to that of driving coaching, not much upside, plenty of downside :-(( I am becoming a sort of specialist in these kinds of tasks .

Was not keeping especially well during the past week either. Heavy chest congestion has reduced me to a leisurely walking speed. Anything more than that results in coughing and asthma !!

Bad luck with books continue after a mind-numbingly boring book called False Economy:A Surprising Economic History of the World by Alan Beattie. The author is hung up on his own greatness and the sentences are maddeningly long and meaningless. The outer cover makes tall claims, inside is all hollow. Shockingly poorly written, I do not know how this escaped the sword of the book editor. Maybe there is no such thing as an editor these days. This is another book that I won’t bother to finish, simply because it is not worth it.

Just came back from a drive across Bangalore, was feeling very downcast sitting at home. Reached back in time to catch the last few moments of Federer-Roddick final. I was backing Roddick to win :-(( Great match, nonetheless.

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 :-((

Will to survive

Have you ever felt like losing your will to survive ? [ Now don’t panic, this is not about losing will to live. That one is a different kettle of fish altogether, I have no time for that nonsense !!]

Was reading Paulo Coelho’s Manual of the Warrior of light again, when some lines jumped out at me. These are verses picked out at random from different chapters.

When the warrior of light watches a sunset and feels no joy, then something is wrong …… A warrior of light makes use of solitude , but is not used by it

The warrior of light does not always have faith. There are moments when he believes in absolutely nothing. And he asks his heart ‘Is all this effort really worth it?’ But his heart remains silent . And the warrior has to decide for himself.

The warrior of light has learned that God uses solitude to teach us how to live with other people.

What kind of a book shopper are you ?

I often wonder if it is possible to predict what kind of a person you are by analyzing your book shopping habits. Some types of shoppers I have seen are listed below

• The confident shopper : They come in looking for a specific book. If that is not there, they would probably leave not even bothering to browse
• The perennial browser : The kind who spends couple of hours browsing, in the end does not buy any book. Most of them tortured and lost souls :)
• The superfast shopper : Before you blink he / she has 3-4 books under their shoulder and ready to check out. Not a common species, I must say
• The iterative shopper : Scan the book shelves multiple times, often going over the same section more than once before making final choice. Often slow to pick up books.

I am more of an iterative shopper. I usually put down mental markers on which ones I want to buy while browsing, but I don’t pick them up till I am fairly close to checkout. Average shopping time is around an hour and maximum I buy at a time is no more than 4 books.

And I hate store staff lurking near me while I am browsing. I hate crowded bookshops also. I boycott the Gangaram’s in MG road for these very reasons. This is also why I love Crosswords.

I have bought some more books for reading this Friday, however the mind is not quite there yet ……..……

Manual of the humble driver

Heavily inspired by Paulo Coelho’s Manual of the Warrior of Light :-)), original passage can be found at this link

Every driver has felt afraid of his passenger canceling a booking
Every driver has, at some time in the past, been late to arrive
Every driver has trodden a road that is filled with potholes
Every driver has suffered the whims of his passengers
Every driver has, at least once, believed that he was not a driver
Every driver has failed in his duties
Every driver has said 'yes' when he wanted to say 'no'
Every driver has hurt some of his passengers
That is why he is a driver, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is

Creativity is tough, Plagiarism is easy

Sleep backlog

Hoping to clear up on some piled up sleep back log this weekend. In case you are wondering why, this article should give you a fair indication :-)

To be fair, my trainee driver is improving quite well. Apart from one occasion, when she nearly put me in a coffin, that is. We both survived and here I am tapping away happily on my keyboard

Reading should also be interesting with John Grisham and Muhammed Yunus beckoning me.

Asthma is knocking on my doors again, this time I am hoping to somehow keep lids on it.

Hope is very deceitful , isn’t it ? Yet many people seem to think without hope there is no life …

Well I don’t seem to have a life now, so does the converse hold true ? Am I a hopeless case ? ;-))

Hope you have a good weekend ;) Adios …

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 :)

Reading update

Q : What does reading a bad book teach you ?
A : To be more careful with your money in future

I just finished reading two below average books.

First one is a true story named How Starbucks saved my life. Written in such a mediocre fashion that I felt even I should have a go at writing a book: “How not reading such books saves you pain” is what I will name it. Story of a guy who loses his high flying job and ends up working at Starbucks. I found it to be completely lacking in any sort of momentum. The attempts of author to do flashbacks into his past based on some situations he encounters in his new life is weak and sometimes even laughable. The only good part of the book is that I got a 25% discount on it !!

The second one cost me more money and left an even more bitter taste in the mouth . Stranger in Paradise by Robert B Parker. Quite likely that most of Mr. Parker’s books will remain strangers to me, and paradise does look a distant dream when you read the above book.

“Jesse nodded” seems to be an overwhelming favorite line of the author. In fact the author has some obsession about getting all his characters to keep nodding. I was also nodding off towards the end !! Entire book is filled with conversation between people, none longer than 2 lines. Felt as if I was reading the script of a stage show. There was no suspense, no thrill and very little mystery.

I am hoping one of my all time favorites John Grisham will recover some of his long lost writing flair with the recently released The Associate. Just started on it, looks decent so far.

I am pretty sure I will enjoy Banker to the Poor by Muhammad Yunus, which is next in line after I am done with Grisham.

My co-passenger duty causes me to get up early around 6 am, so I am unable to read too late into the night :(

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 !!