Conscientious Reflections

Allianz of Crooks

2011-12-27T20:19:00.000+05:30

An email made my day...! Today I received an email from an international figure. Some one, if not for the strict and religious upbringing in which she was brought up, would have been as influential and popular as Winnie Mandela or Hilary Clinton. Someone whose better half controlled the destiny of a nation for decades. But as Lady Luck was not in the favor of this lady, her husband was murdered in a coup and she is orphaned. Alone and with her husband's huge treasure in her custody, she want to relocate and settle in my country doing any business. And she has chosen me for guarding her money of which I will get a small share...

Ladies and Gentlemen, please lent your ears for the wails of this lonely lady... wife of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi:

Greetings in the name of Allah,
am the wife of the late Libyan president Gadafi who was killed
by rebels on Thursday 20th oct 2011, please my life is in big
danger and I would like to use you as my contact to move a huge
some of money and start living a free life in your country. for
I have been on veils as a Muslim since he married me, which is
our religious rights, nobody has seen my face or known me except
my children and himself and I thank Allah for this.
I cannot be identified by anybody in the world now that things
has gone bad. Am taking refuge in Algeria. I and my children
can't go back to Libya for now.We are afraid that our life could
be in danger in Libya.The death of my husband was a broad day
murder by the Libya rebel.he was captured and was killed not by
stray bullet as the would was made to believe.
I want to relocate to your country,to start up a new life. I
have some money in my possession which i will like to invest in
any profitable business in your country.I want you to guard me
through the business i will invest.I will reward with 20 percent
of the total money.
Please,I will give you more information as soon as I hear
from.kindly send your reply to my private id:
mrs.safia-gadafi@hotmail.com
Waiting to hear from you.
Mrs. Safia Gadafi

My only problem with this wonderfully drafted letter is the spelling mistake in the name of this widow. The height of internet scam...

But now a days these things never bother me. In such cases my stand is that, if someone is fooled by these schemes, they deserves it. What bothers me is perfectly legitimate business houses doing robbery on broad daylight legally. And helpless public falling for sweet promises and parting their hard earned money. If you check the title of this post, you will know who is this party about whom I mentioned.

When an insurance adviser, who was rather close to my family and who had helped us in past approached me to take a policy, one with a very reasonable premium and which is in no way a burden for me, I was only glad to oblige. The most attractive thing that he told was that after paying three year's premium we can withdraw the amount at any time as we chose and even if we never pay the premium, it will never lapse. That was how I took my first ULIP plan. After paying three year's premium, I never thought of it again as I was planning to withdraw the money in case of any urgent requirement. And the need struck now.

That was how I found myself at their office last day morning. The person at reception was much helpful. He listed out the required forms and proofs for surrender of the policy. He even suggested waiting for a few more days to withdraw, as the market was not healthy right then. He filled the form for me and shown the places where I should put my sign. Then he lead me to another officer sitting in a cubicle. This guy checked my policy number, typed it in his system and after a few minutes of calculation, announced the total amount due to me if I surrendered the policy then.

I was startled. It was almost 45 % less than my fund value. May be he made an error while telling me. I tried to correct him. But he confirmed the amount and told the difference is due to the surrender fee. A surrender fee amounting to 45% of the total amount due to me? My knees got weak. Blood rushed to my head. He was telling me to wait for more time as with time the surrender fee will reduce incrementally and at the end of 20 years it will be zero. I told why I was not told about the surrender fee, if it was this huge. All I was told by everyone was that after three years I can withdraw the money at any time. There was a formula for surrender fee in their policy document, a bizarre one which did not made any sense to me or any of my much experienced friends to whom I showed it. I collected all the copies and documents on the desk, stuffed it in my bag all the while telling him how big a cheat his organization was. And while coming out of his cubicle, I gave my parting address.

"Look my friend, if you guys think that you and your firm can do this New Year party with my hard earned money, I am not game. You all can go to hell, I am not going to give you a paisa of it. See you after 20 years."

Two Novels That Started Great..

2011-12-24T20:38:00.001+05:30

... but got fizzled later. I have a bad habit of reading first page and selecting novels, especially of those writers, whom I have never tried before. It has yielded disastrous effects many times. And two novels that I read in recent times are good examples. These two novels are humorous and the starting was so good that I expected the whole novel to be as great as that one page. I got a bad feeling after some time, but continued reading thinking that things will get better. Alas, that was not the case. First of these books is a best seller, a book so famous that many wannabe writers felt after reading it that novel writing in Indian English is a cake walk. A misconception, the troubles of which we are still suffering through numerous supposedly humorous books endorsing the book shelves in major book stalls. Second one did not cause such a stir, but it was quite successful in a limited circle, if many comments of certain reviews in some sites are to be believed.

Anurag Mathur's novel The Inscrutable Americans follows the life of an Indian student in USA. The book was a best seller when it was published in 90's. That was a time when American dream was catching up big time with middle class Indians. A village boy Gopal, son of a business tycoon selling Hair oil, comes to US for studying Chemistry. The novel starts with a letter send by him that recounts his experiences in the plane. The author has captured the innocence of the small time boy in that segment wonderfully. Randy is his friend in the college who tries to introduce him to the American way of living. The problem that I find with this novel, which otherwise is readable and witty in many parts, is the over emphasis laid on ... hm, shall I say... getting laid..? The whole concept of cultural difference between US and India as per this novel can be simplified in these two words, which I feel makes it too shallow. Another problem is that Gopal infatuation to score an American girl and the ways he employs for that takes up a huge chunk of the novel and after a while I really felt bored. And after reading the whole book, only parts that lingers in the mind is his hilarious adventures in supermarket and his meeting with the other pretentious Indian guy.

The second novel is No Onions Nor Garlic by Srividya Natarajan. Her first novel starts wonderfully with a drama enactment of A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Tam Bram (Tamil Brahmin, for the ignorant) Professor Ram. Four young men checks out the list of characters and audition for parts, just so that they can try their lick with the fairies in the play. And then they comes to know that they are selected.. for the part of fairies. I read this introduction and couldn't control my laughter and decided No Onions Nor Garlic as my weekend read. But after this initial segment, it was downhill all the way. The novel is supposed to be a criticism of the ways of Tamil Brahmins and the way they never let people of other castes and religion get the upper hand. The battle ground is a college where Professor Ram and his cronies doesn't want any one outside their caste to come up- students or teachers, and they are ready to stoop to any level to stop it. The novel tries to analyze caste politics in work place.

The problem is humor. It is crass... No, I don't have any problem with humor involving bodily functions. Problem starts when it gets repetitive. Whenever a particular negative character enters a scene at least one mention is made about his generous behind. Author squeezes out every possibility to evoke humor out of it till the reader gets a terrible nausea. The characters are black and white and too shallow. The writing is funny in many places but overdoing it causes fatigue. The story is bizarre and tries to spoof old Tamil movies when it reaches half way with many plot twists. Which also makes it boring after a while as it does not evoke any laughter. And the main antagonist Professor Ram, is demonized and humiliated in such a bad way that by the end I felt genuinely sorry for the chap. I really felt that the author had some personal enmity with this character.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Fast Paced Philosophical Thriller

2011-12-14T16:15:00.000+05:30

There are novels that appeal to the senses, fast paced thrillers filled with unexpected plot twists that takes place around the globe. Then there are novels that philosophically ponders the question of human existence. Some novelists try to combine these genres and we get fabulous novels like Fight Club. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G K Chesterton is another fine example. This novel is as exciting and fast paced as any mystery thriller and at the same time makes the reader think about the paradoxes it poses. The best thing about the novel is that there are no detailed descriptions of any philosophical thoughts as in some other books of the same category like Zen And The Art Of Motor Cycle Maintenance. There is not a single dull moment throughout.

The novel is set in early 20th century London and starts when a poet, Gabriel Syme comes to a suburban park where he meets anarchist poet Gregory, who gets disturbed by Gabriel's opposing view that life and poetry should be according to clearly set laws. When Syme accuses that Gregory is not serious as an anarchist, he is taken to a meeting place of anarchists. Gregory is all set to get elected and appointed to the Central Anarchist Council of Europe. There Syme surprises Gregory by revealing that he is appointed by Scotland Yard and using the resultant confusion of Gregory, gets himself elected into the Council. Each member of the Council is uses the name of a day as a secret code name and Syme is Thursday. In his first meeting he meets other council members, each seemingly normal men, but to careful eyes a bizarre enigma. Sunday, a huge and giant man is the leader of the Council. As Syme tries to prevent any more bombings and destroy the council, he finds out he is not the only one in the Council who is concealing the real identity. He is pulled into several surreal, absurdly humorous and breathtaking situations.

The novel is heavy with allegory and symbolism. The code naming of Council members into seven days of the week refers to the Christian belief of creation. It carries a view that there cannot be pure good or evil and a close and in depth inspection will reveal the goodness in any evil. The novel is difficult to be classified into a mystery, satire, fantasy or allegory. It is a unique mixture. The book is in public domain and if you like to download the ebook you can do it here.

Once upon a time: Beyond the iron curtain

2011-12-05T19:55:00.000+05:30

Indian readers will be familiar with french journalist Dominique Lapierre from the epic book that he co authored with Collins, Freedom at Midnight, which is a retelling of the events that culminated in Indian Independence. Once Upon A Time In Soviet Union is his book about a journey that he undertook decades through then Soviet Union to get a first hand experience of the life of commoners behind the iron curtain as Soviet Russia was known then.

Year was 1956 and Lapierre told the ace photographer of the newspaper where he works, Jean Pierre Pedrazzini about a plan to travel in Communist China, a road trip in a motor car without any official interference. Later they changed the location from China to Khrushchev's USSR. Then a number of coincidences made the plan working and soon they found themselves accompanied by their wives in a car crossing Soviet border. Slava was a Russian journalist allotted to accompany them along with his wife. And thus started a life changing journey. Equipped with perfumes and miniature Eiffel Towers, the French couples were a hit in Russia, with people thronging around wherever they went. One main reason is the car, as many Russians had never seen a car with more than one color in their entire life time. They spends time with many common Russian men and women, doctors, laborers, peasants and waiters to know what kind of life they are undergoing. And to be fair, it gives a neutral account of the state of things there.

The pathetic state of country's roads and infrastructure and the non availability of good fuel mars the pleasantness of the journey many times. The interactions with the Russian couple reveals the sad state of a propaganda driven ruling that existed a the times. Excellent photographs by Pedrazzini contributes to the reading pleasure.

Inside out and outside in: Two travelogues

2011-12-04T12:56:00.000+05:30

I happened to read two travelogues recently. Two books similar in certain aspects but different, even diametrically opposite in some other ways. First one is written by a US citizen about the experiences he faced in India when he lived here for some months. Second one is an account of travels around the globe by a US settled NRI. Both are humorous and immensely readable. But the way in which these two men finds other cultures, the way they describes them, makes the sharp contrast.

Mark Mattison worked as a teacher in India for a few months along with his wife, who is a diplomat and wrote the book Surrounded by Indians, using his experiences of his stay in and around Delhi. He is wondered by the exotic nature of Indian culture- temple of rats, pachyderms roaming around the middle of the city, sacred cows, honest cobbler, Royal Enfield Bullets.. At the same time he is appalled by the chaotic nature of it- rough traffic of Delhi, men dancing noisily on weddings, troubles with red tape and unclean conditions of hotels and streets.

The other book that I read was by M P Prabhakaran on his travels around the world. The reason I picked this book was its title: "What Makes Islamic Turkey Different From Islamist Saudi Arabia - The World As An Indian Sees It". I felt it could be a complementary reading with V S Naipaul's book Among the Believers. But it was just a small part of the book, when author visited both countries and wrote an article deliberating the difference Islamist rule of Saudi has with Islamic state of Turkey. Author is particularly impressed by the degree of freedom enjoyed by women there. But I have to admit that I was not disappointed by the book. It was funny and a real page turner. The author conducts himself with much humility and tolerance to unknown cultures as a student eager to absorb them. Also though he is settled in USA, he acts as an ambassador of India, projecting the image of India as a multi-cultured nation every where he goes.

As I had mentioned earlier, these two books can make a good study of contrast. One is a view of India from outside world and other one the view of outside world through Indian eyes. Mark Mattison's work is insightful and entertaining, but the judgmental nature of it cannot be ignored. He sees every thing by the eyes of an American and compares every thing in terms of US. One example is men dancing in a Baaraat. He feels they are desperate men, who never have an option to get a girl friend. At the same time, Prabhakaran shows a way of seeing things without passing a judgement. He watches unknown with a wonder akin to a kid. And that makes this book interesting.

Jeffrey Archer's As the Crow Flies: Story of an Inspiring Retailer

2011-11-29T20:05:00.000+05:30

It has become like a custom from last one year, every couple of months I pick up a novel by Jeffrey Archer to read. The thicker the book is, the better. It all started when I happened to read this book called First among equals and got hooked to a story telling style that is very fluid and captivating. He is definitely one of the best entertaining story tellers of our time. What amazed me is his capacity to write novels that spans decades, mostly the whole life of the protagonists, and still manage to keep the reader's interest level up through out, page by page and sentence by sentence. As The Crow Flies is also not different.

I feel this novel is all the more apt for the moment as India is planning to open its door to FDI in retail. The novel tell the inspiring rags to riches story of a man who started as a vegetable vendor to become the owner of the biggest retail showroom in the country. Charlie Trumper used to sell vegetables with his Grand Father on a barrow. Inspired by his grand father, he dreams of owning the biggest barrow in the world. The story follows up his life as he struggles to realize his dream. Every element that makes a page turner is deployed here- romance, suspense, love, emotion, action, adventure, scheming villains, twists and turns, coincidences... everything in the right amount, at the right moment. Story is told in the perspectives of multiple characters, which makes it all the more interesting. It also helps much in character building and readers find them more identifiable by knowing about their fears and motives that causes several of their actions.

But after reading the whole book one thing that gets etched in the reader's mind is Charlie's diligent pursuit. His passion for attaining his goal, his willingness to observe and study from his mistakes, his readiness to stand tall adhering to his principles in any adversity. That is what makes him endearing to readers. But Archer does not make him super human. He has several short falls that he overcomes thanks to his virtues and the company of faithful and caring persons who surround him.

I would heavily recommend this gem of a novel to any one interested to get entertained and inspired.

Dam(n) politics

2011-11-27T13:05:00.000+05:30

This post is the revival of an old series "All are mathematics" written sometime back as a fictional satirical political commentary. Read the whole series here.

"We are all going to dogs. No body care for us. Not the state government or central government..." Abu cried.

"Well, these politicians does not have any interest to save the lives of people. They are interested only in swelling their vote banks and Swiss bank accounts. Corrupt lot." Divakaran complained.

Rajagopal Master, as usual, was on a walk to the tea shop of Raman Pilla for his daily dose of political gossip, when Abu and Divakar joined him near the library. Abu, an old student of Master, (you have met him before) has come back from Middle East, after his short but successful stint in business and is planning to establish his own business empire in his village, a hair transplanting clinic, which he is confident to be a huge success owing to the increasing cases of baldness, thanks to global warming, global recession and global pollution. Divakar, also an ex-student, was a student union leader in his early days. Later as he inherited a patch of land and a good running family business after the demise of his father, he severed his ties with politics and is now a vocal critic of the dirty pits it has fallen into. Rajagopal Master, in his mind, thinks that it as a classic case of sour grapes as many of his colleagues from earlier times are walking the power corridors, milling great fortunes.

"It seems the death toll will be anywhere near 4 million if the disaster strikes. Kerala will be torn into two halves and the commercial town Cochin will be below water. We are doomed for an eternity." Abu said.

"Well, it seems the MPs from Kerala has met the PM and got assurance of some kind." Master told, remembering some snippet of news that he overheard the last day on TV, while channels were being changed faster than the pop up ads appearing with a 3G connection, during the eternal struggle between his son and wife to see channels of their choice.

"No use Sir, Tamil Nadu politicians have strong hold in center, our guys won't be able to do much against them." Divakar replied in a rage of fury.

By this time they had reached the tea shop and there also the discussion was on the impending disaster that may be caused by the rupture of the hundred year old dam. Appukkuttan, the librarian of the village library and one of the few computer literate members of the older generation was working overtime to spread the awareness among locals. He used to come up with at least five multicolored posters and slogans daily to upload on Facebook and other social networking sites and it will be a lie to claim that he does not get a perverted kind of pride and pleasure, when he gets likes and comments on them and when the best ones goes viral.

"Everyone has to dedicate their time for the cause, irrespective of caste, class and religion. This is for the common good." Appukkuttan declared to general public.

"Hm.. This is precisely the reason I told all of you during the last election time, to vote us into power. Then no one heeded. Now all of you will suffer for it. Historically only Left governments has stood against central government with a spine that is not bend. No use of complaining now." Sudhakaran the local Leftist leader commented in an uninterested tone.

"Man, this is not the time for getting divided. We have to take this cause above politics. Yesterday also the CM of other state has declared that dam is safe and sound. Why should they care for the dam..? If it breaks they won't have anything to lose." Appukkuttan was furious.

"Anna, don't forget that my village and hundreds of others like it gets water from that dam. If it is ruptures, there is going to be a severe drought that the world has never seen." That was the dissenting voice of Selvan, who had come there one decade ago as a laborer and got assimilated himself into the society in so much depth that it was the first time most of even thought of him as an outsider.

"Master, what do you think of all this?" Raman Pilla asked Rajagopalan Master, while keeping a hot glass of tea on his table. Now all heads turned towards Master, as he was known as a man of good judgement. Normally his arguments were never biased.

"Hm..." Master sipped some tea, took his time to devour it and to frame his thoughts. Divakar was remembering that moment when he asked a particularly difficult doubt in mathematics class years before.

"I think you all remember the case of Laaly that happened some time back. She found herself in serious trouble when found herself pregnant without getting married. Well, the whole village knew she was into some funny business with that truck driver Ramanan. But when confronted he told outright that there is no chance that it is his, as he had taken all necessary precautions while they were, hm.. getting cozy. There were lot of mudslinging between them, which passed on to their families and in no time our entire community was divided in two. One group told that there is nothing wrong with Laaly and she is just making the whole story up for money. The other group blamed Ramanan for ditching the poor girl after committing to marry her. When things took a nasty turn all the elders gathered and decision was taken to get her examined medically and take a decision based on the result of that examination."

"But what is the connection between this long forgotten episode and the issue of dam?" Abu asked the doubt that lingered on every one's mind while hearing the monologue.

"Well, this issue is also not different. Kerala claims that the dam is severely damaged and even a mild tremor can cause the rupture resulting in loss of lives. They want to built a new dam and decommission the old one. Tamil Nadu asserts that there is no need to panic and the dam is strong still. They absolutely deny any claim by Kerala that there is a safety issue involved. Both the parties puts forward diametrically opposed statements as facts. The only sane way to end this argument is to make either parties agree for examining the dam by an impartial agency, the report of which will be agreed by both parties involved and take necessary steps to prevent any disaster before anything nasty happens, just like how we did in Laaly's case."

Silence reigned. Master finished the tea, kept the cup on the table and rose to leave. All were pondering on the words that they just heard.

"Master, finally what happened to Laaly..?" Abu whispered in Master's ears, thinking of all that interesting things he missed out while he was abroad...

V S Naipaul Travels Among The Believers

2011-11-26T19:44:00.000+05:30

V S Naipaul, the famous Nobel lauraete and the one of the best English writer of our times (arguably), is a man who dwells in controversies thanks to his egotistical behavior and guts to call a spade as a spade. Decades before the militant stream of Islam became number one enemy of west, he had embarked on a seven month journey through four Asian Islamic nations. The time was when huge socio political changes were taking place in these countries. Naipaul chronicles them as he saw it in his book Among the Believers.

He starts his journey from Iran, just after Khomeini ousted the Shah through an Islamic Revolution. Though the outer world (read the west) felt that it is a release from the oppression, he senses it as the beginning of a new regime of religious oppression. This is evident from the suppressing of Communists who aided the removal of Shah from power.

Naipaul identifies the effort by fundamentalists to take back the country to conditions similar to the desert cities that gave birth to Islam- a kind of time travel using faith as its vehicle. It may be his colonial upbringing, Naipaul sees only the physical decay all over and is exasperated by the depleting influence of West in the lifestyle of Iran. Another of his complaint is that the rapid return to religious roots is taken with the help of technology, that he feels is Western world's monopoly. Naipaul seems is paradoxical that the struggle to become a desert tribe is made with the help of weapons, communication devices and vehicles that are, as per his view made and supplied by West. An anti western war using western technology!

What Naipaul does in his travels to other countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia is to identify the movements that try to radicalize Islam and make it more unique and identifiable with the religion at its state of origin by imitating the Islamic Revolution in Iran. And he finds such movements in abundance. Naipaul shows some compassion to these movements unlike the disbelief with which he viewed the transitions in Iran under the rule of Khomeinis. He is pained by the efforts to eradicate or eliminate the effect of diverse cultures that contributed to the growth of Islam in its beginning stage in these countries. Like destructing the ancient Hindu linkage to Islam in Indonesia by disregarding the customs with Hindu roots in that region. He is more critical to Pakistan in this regards.

The book succeeds in making the contemporary reader ponder about how it all might have started- 9/11 and the American war on terror. And that I believe is a significant achievement. Whatever you deduce about the ideological inclinations of the book Among the Believers, it is truly a very good travelogue. Naipaul's chronicling of environments and people inhabiting them in different countries is nothing short of magical.

Book Review: The Habit of Winning

2011-11-20T14:42:00.001+05:30

There was a time when I used to read a lot of self help literature. Almost for a couple of years they acquired a major part of my reading list. That was the time of self doubt, fear about future and the time to built up that much required confidence among chaos. And they served the purpose. At least some of them did. But then I grew tired of them, they all sound the same. Most of them lay out a program to create the path to success. Lot of theoretical statements, step by step procedures, complicated exercises, personality development techniques to built up an artificial surge of confidence... Once I had a discussion with a good friend about the use of such books and finally we arrived at the conclusion that, though we never tried to follow any of those success formulas they offered, we still had imbibed some of their positive advises which has helped us tremendously.

All these thoughts were running in my mind while I received the mail to review Prakash Iyer’s book The Habit of Winning for Blogadda’s book review program. Also to speak frankly, the terms Habit and Winning on the title was a big turnoff. There are scores of books with similar titles, many of which I had started and discarded even before completing a dozen pages. But then what captured my attention was the tagline “stories to inspire, motivate and unleash the winner within”. The word stories became the deciding factor and I put down my name also for consideration.

Now, after reading the book, in less than a day, with just two sittings, 150 pages yesterday and another 100 today, I feel I did the right thing. The book is much different from hundreds of similar self help titles inhabiting the shelves of book stores and libraries. It reminded me of the first self help book that I read- Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. What made him different from other motivational writers is his emphasis on the principles. His argument was that unless we have a character built on strong principles there is no everlasting success. Prakash Iyer also gives emphasis on making the foundation right through building up of solid principles to make the way forward.

Another strong point of this book is that unlike other titles, instead of making a course program with one step following another, the author tries to make the readers themselves to chart their journey to be a winner. I feel this is much effective than providing an instant formula for success, because here the reader will be able to think for themselves and individually apply different thoughts presented in the book to their lives using their own reason. Another benefit is that the commitment of reader will be for themselves. It will not get faltered as the reader himself try to find the way using the principles outlined as told by Mr R Gopalakrishnan in the foreword.

The book consists of eleven sections consisting of small chapters, nothing more than 5 pages. Each section deals with different steps that are required to live a healthy and successful life in harmony with surroundings. Chapters consist of stories and tidbits of wisdom that drives home the point to the reader. The stories, some of them taken from real life with real heroes in them and some from old parables are much effective in illustrating the point writer is trying to make. Prakash Iyer uses his experience of decades in sales to charter a motivating and enlightening journey for the reader.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Small Minds, Big Mouths...

2011-11-18T20:07:00.000+05:30

Today I had a visitor in factory, Mr RR. Actually, he appears at least 2 times weekly. He is our machining vendor. Whenever there are any machining jobs that we cannot do in house, we delegate it to his company. Best thing is that he has most of the machines required by us and it saves lot of my following up time and he comes at least 50% cheap compared to other vendors. Today he had come to deliver some material. When he arrived, I was coming out of canteen having just finished my lunch. The moment I saw him, I asked him whether he had his lunch. I told him to immediately go to canteen and have it when he answered negatively.

Later he came, we discussed the things and I told him to wait in reception area as some paper work had to be finished. I took leave of him and was just moving to my work area, when the Security Supervisor came hurriedly towards me.

"Sir, from now on wards lunch won't be provided to visitors.." He told in a serious tone.

I was aghast. "But why?"

pic courtesy: zazzle.com

"Sir, there are lot of troubles when we provide lunch to them. Many times our boys are missing lunch. So this was a decision taken by HR and Finance managers. Today you should not have let RR have lunch."

"But I don't have any information on this sudden change of policy. And it is cheap to deny visitors their lunch."

"But I have noticed many times that Mr RR comes exactly at lunch time- between 1 to 2, and straight goes to canteen. This is happening from some time and we cannot allow this."

"Is this your observation?"

"Yes, and I have told the Finance Manager about this."

My blood boiled. "I will speak with the Manager. You can carry on."

RR was standing some 10 feet behind me. I was afraid that he might have overheard the conversation. The Security Supervisor had a sound similar to a locomotive engine. It will be a disgrace if he had heard it. I could not even look back due to shame.

I went straight to Finance Manager's chamber. Asked for some time of his and explained him what has happened.

"Sir, that guy RR is a vendor of ours. He has a factory of his own. He provides occupation for at least 8 workers there. He makes at least ten times more than what I get every month. He behaves to all of us, including the Security personnel, in a humble manner, with utmost respect because we are his customers. That does not give us any right to insult him like that. He arrives here in his own vehicle spending petrol worth at least Rs 500. According to that great watch man, it is for eating this free lunch worth Rs 20..."

FM, being a pacifier calmed me down with sweet words, promised necessary warning will be given to Supervisor and put all the blame on HR manager, as it usually happens.

Some people never see the big picture...

Why Shouldn't I Read Chetan Bhagat?

2011-11-16T20:10:00.001+05:30

Recently I am finding much discussion and many articles on Chetan Bhagat and the kind of novels that he write. On one side there are his fan boys (and girls) who swear by him and would recommend him for the next Nobel prize if they had any say in the matter! On other side there are hard core literary enthusiasts who will never accept any one who writes in a language comprehensible to others as some one worth mentioning. And both sides are on an endless debate on the merits of CB, as the writer is affectionately called.

If you have been following Conscientious Reflections from some time, definitely you will be knowing I am no big fan of CB. And in many posts I have never missed a chance to take a dig on his populist writing style. In fact the only one novel of his that I read is The Three Mistakes of my Life, and I was of the opinion that it is nothing better than an average Bollywood movie story. My friends were of the opinion that I should try some of his better works, like Two States or Five Point Someone. The reason I never ventured above Three Mistakes is mentioned in one of the posts before. If I read a writer's book for the first time and I feel it was not worth the time spent on it, I will not try any of his other works. Not because I hate the writer, but when there are so many better books out there that cannot be read even in a lifetime, why to risk valuable time? (After reading his long and boring novel Insomnia, I never tried another one of Stephen King.)

No one can argue with the fact that CB is a phenomenal seller of books. His books, all paperback and priced competitively beats the competition by adopting a story telling style that is simple and pleasing to the mind. Most of his readership comprises of young, urban readers who has just become financially independent and just started the reading habit. (I know there are exceptions.) They relate to the plots in these novels, which are mostly everyday situations. So eventually what matters is Chetan Bhagat caters the need of a certain category of readers. I think no one can blame him for doing that. What is wrong if his books make a few thousands of people start a reading habit? At least a handful of them may graduate to a higher level of reading experience. If someone is not liking the kind of stuff he writes, they can always stop reading them. But no one can dictate that he should change his style just to cater their reading requirement. We all had read Enid Blyton or Chandamama during our childhood days. Now just because we have grown up, can we stop others from reading them? Won't it be absurd if instead of a humorous picture story, an article on stock trading appears on latest Archie comic?

To hard core CB fans, I have only this much to say, don't heed to any detractors. Enjoy reading what you feel like. But please keep in mind that there are many other delicious offerings out side the circle. Once in a while put on an adventure hat and go exploring. Check out Aravind Adiga on his White Tiger or Kiran Desai lamenting on the inheritance of loss. Spend some time exploring the life of Pi or of the midnight's children. Believe me, you will be delighted.

The other side of history...

2011-11-04T20:36:00.000+05:30

The Other Side of History is a play directed by Prakash Belawadi, based on the play Hindi play Baaki Ithihaas by Badal Sircar staged at Rangashankara, Bangalore.

It is a striking examination of middle class mentality. The main characters are a middle class husband and wife Sharad and Vasanti, both academics waiting for the big break. One day they read in newspaper about the suicidal death of a college professor, who was their acquaintance some time back. Vasanti, an aspiring writer, starts writing a story imagining the reasons of the professor. Sharad, after hearing her version of the story, does not feel it is right. He thinks of another story. Finally the dead man's ghost appears and narrates the real reason of his death. Sharad seems to identify himself with the plight of the dead man.

The play make the spectator think about the plight of a common man, leading a common life, when lot of uncommon things happen around him. Violence, war and blood shed and all the unjust world, though seemingly not affecting him, causes ripples in the consciousness. A meaningful, well acted attempt, though not as gripping as it should have been.

Aldous Huxley's Brave new world: Classic Dystopia

2011-11-03T20:01:00.001+05:30

Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. While latter is a world where everything is perfect, in a dystopian world oppression and control of individual freedom is the norm. Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World is a fine example of a novel set in a dystopian world. The novel is set in future London where scientific progress has reached such a level that several important factors of human existence like religion, war, violence, disease and even reproduction has become obsolete. An outsider enters this paradise and feels it is a brave new world, just like Miranda who was raised in a lonely island in Shakespeare's The Tempest sees drunken antics of sailors and exclaims it is a brave new world. But a close examination makes him find the hollowness of the place.

In the World State all are happy. Everyone has jobs, there is no disease, no troubles, no need of a commitment to anyone, all are beautiful. Here kids are produced in factories. The classes in which they should belong is predetermined by chemically altering the brain development and they are raised that way, by employing several subtle suggestion methods. They don't even know about the possibility of moving to a higher caste in the hierarchy. Consumption of resources is encouraged to sustain the system. Momentary bouts of depression or unhappiness is cured by Soma, a mind altering drug without any side effects. Sex is recreational, solitude is a vice and love is unheard of. Marriage, relations and pregnancy is considered vulgar words. Outside of this world, in reserved forests are a tribe of people who still follows rituals from past, like marriage and family, following an amalgamation of religions. John the savage enters from this world into the State, which at first glance looks like paradise. But when he finds the facade behind the free life led by the people in this new world, he cannot adjust with it, causing havoc in his life and those around him.

The last novel of Huxley that I read was Point Counterpoint. It was a large novel and tough to read because of the multitude of bizarre but relatable characters inhabiting it. But the characterization made the reading of it a pleasure. But Brave New World, though short and readable, gives no such pleasure. The people are more like cardboard cut-outs here. The long discussion sequences in Point Counterpoint makes one vary initially, but once you get the gist of the novel it becomes interesting. Brave New World also has some such moments, but discussions are more animated and dry.

When a dystopian novel of such proportion is discussed, the other classic cannot be ignored- George Orwell's 1984. Orwell's dystopia causes pain to its people and thrives, but Huxley's makes them embrace pleasure and sustains itself by making them slaves of that unlimited pleasure. The system makes them slaves by creating a sense of wild freedom in them. The former can be toppled by a revolution, but to win over latter is next to impossible.

Delhi Noir: Dark Delhi Under Belly...

2011-11-01T11:42:00.000+05:30

Noir in French means black. Noir is a movement that started in movies when the darker sides of human psyche was explored. The movement was in its prime in early 40's and characterized by melancholic characters succumbing to crime and violence in urban settings. Later versions of Noir movies came to be known as neo noir. Noir can take up any genre of movie making- crime, mystery, suspense, horror, sci-fi and even comedy with dark undertones. (One fine example of neo-noir that I watched is Billy bob Thornton movie The Man Who Wasn't There.) Later, noir became a genre in fiction and in comics.

Delhi Noir is an anthology of short stories with noirish characters featuring Delhi as the backdrop and edited by Hirsh Sawhney. It is part of a Noir series of books published by Akashic Books with other titles including Seattle Noir, Istanbul Noir, Chicago Noir etc. The book contain 14 stories written by established and not- so- established writers, taking place in various places in and around the capital city. The book will be more appealing to those who are familiar with the city because each story happens in a well known area. The same time it may be appalling to the same people because it does not present a rosy picture of the capital. Those who felt Slumdog Millionaire was selling Mumbai's poverty may feel that Delhi Noir does that by portraying sleaze, crime and violence. Personally I feel a little introspection will do no harm. And if the shock provided by Delhi Noir helps in achieving it, then it serves the purpose. Another factor to keep in mind is that these stories are not trying to give a message, or trying to give a remedy to any social evil. They are just exploring the evil minds creating havoc in situations that we face in our every day life.

As to the literary value of the stories, I would just tell that all fourteen of them are well readable and some of them, if not all, are spell binding. Most of them has a cheesy, on the face and crude approach of story telling characteristic to the genre. Violence, sleaze and gore are added in generous doses and at the same time at least some stories makes an effort to pry into the minds of protagonists, though it is not a necessity. Shock value, as I had mentioned before, plays a great role in the appeal of crime noirs, and most of the stories in this collection succeeds in catering to this need. Violence against women is an oft repeated theme in this collection. But I feel the title of Delhi as the rape capital fairly justifies it.

This one is a good read for people who are fans of the genre and for Delhiites who would like to rediscover the darker sides of the city with which they are familiar.If you are put off by lack of any poetic justice in plot, or by excess of gore, crime, violence, sex and absence of a moral sense, better keep off.

Shashi Tharoor's Five dollar Smile

2011-10-30T13:01:00.002+05:30

This book called The Five Dollar Smile by Shashi Tharoor, is a collection of stories that he wrote in his late teens and early twenties. Any one who has read his book The Great Indian Novel will not have doubt that he is a gifted story teller. His socio- political articles appearing in different publications from time to time establishes his mastery over telling complex things in a simple language comprehensible even to laymen.

This collection of stories clearly gives you a picture of the evolution of Tharoor as an author of enjoyable fiction. His varied experimentations with telling stories in different genres amuses us. There are stories of satire, romance, crime, comedy, social relevance and even a soft porn one somewhere in it! Many of the works shows off a young Tharoor's attempt to understand the working of the complex society around him.

The best of the lot as per me is the first one- The Five Dollar Smile, a story written when Tharoor just got associated with UN. It is the story of a kid living in an Indian orphanage whose smiling face gets featured in a popular advertisement appealing to donate money, five dollars, for charity. To his credit, Tharoor restraints himself from falling into the pit usual to newbie writers- over sentimentality.

The last work in the book is a social play that severely criticise the policies of then governing Prime Minister and the emergency declared by her. Interestingly Tharoor is presently a Parliamentary member who won the elections by being a part of the same political party of that PM and headed by her daughter in law!

Read this delightful collection more for knowing the initial experimentations and subsequent evolution of the writer into a gifted story teller than for its literary merits. The brief note before each story that describes the situation in which it was written adds to the comprehension.

Science, Art and Religion: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

2011-09-26T15:06:00.002+05:30

Robert Pirsig's profound philosophical novel, Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, is a study on the relation between three pillars of thought on which humanity stands- art, science and religion. The novel is an account of a long trip taken by the unnamed protagonist, presumably the author, with his kid on a motorcycle. Lot of philosophic discussions exploring the way human mind thinks, termed Chautauquas are wound in the novel.

At the starting of the novel, the protagonist is shown as a man of reason. His interest to do all the maintenance works of his bike is the point made to demonstrate this. Basically he categorizes people into romantics, who only looks at the beauty of things and classical, who has a more practical approach and loves analysing and problem solving. Also there is the presence of a mysterious ghost whom he calls Phaedrus, who the reader realise on the course of the journey to be the disturbed past of the hero.

The story deals with the philosophical journey on which Phaedrus embark insearch of the meaning of Quality. He goes deep and deep into the subject to the point of insanity. The novel ends with the hero identifying with Phaedrus at the end of the journey. He identifies the link that connects art and science- religion.

Though the book contains exhaustive philosophical discussions and may prove tough and deterring for some one who wants entertainment in his reads, it will be interesting and even rewarding for a patient and serious reader.

JS and the Times of my Life: Book Review

2011-09-18T14:35:00.001+05:30

After putting down Jug Suraiya's autobiography, 'JS and the times of my life- A worm's eye view of journalism', one thought that came to my mind was that whatever I write about this book, Jug Suraiya is not going to give a damn. I may write that he should be awarded a Nobel Prize for this literary masterpiece or I may warn readers to avoid reading this one as plague, but one thing is sure Suraiya is not going to be effected n any way by what I say. One of the responsibilities of an autobiography is to make the reader realize, what kind of a person the author is by taking a peek into his head. And if I can say the statement that I made in the first sentence boldly and confidently, I think this is a successful book.

Jug Suraiya, the irreverent columnist and journalist who write the columns Jugular Vein and Second opinion in Times of India newspaper, is widely regarded as an uncompromising satirist of great talent. This book clearly demonstrates the point. If we see the autobiographic writings of any contemporary journalist or politician, we can notice that, they try to sell the book with some controversial political content which gives a shock value. Another common strand that binds such books are the unabashed servings of self promotion. Many writers try to convince the readers that they are the ones who shaped up the history and they had hands in any important matter that happened to the world, though the truth may be that they did not had any clue about such matters at the time. But Jug Suraiya never tries this gimmick. He starts the book with the revelation that he never wanted to be a journalist and ends by claiming that he never was one. And in between you get a taste of journalist world and how it works.

The title is a smart word play with the author’s name and the two publications he has associated with- Junior Statesman (JS) and Times Of India. (I like to call latter Time-pass of India due to the excess of commercialization and was much amused to find out that even Jug Suraiya seems to agree with it.) Jug Suraiya joined Junior Statesman from the time of its inception as a magazine for teenagers from the house of Statesman which is a more orthodox newspaper based in Kolkata (then Calcutta). JS offered a departure from the journalistic norms of the times by making the matter more interactive. At a time when entertainment was considered a luxury and luxury a crime, JS pioneered the art of ‘infotainment’. But this came with some price as the parent publication was not so cooperative in the adventurous nature of JS. After a while JS had an untimely death. After the demise of JS, Suraiya continued to work with Statesman, though he was not so interested in the work that was offered. Later he was offered a job in TOI which he accepted and relocated to Delhi with his wife Bunny (who needs no introduction). Though he was not so impressed with the business oriented working in TOI, he continues to work there. He tries to make the reader see the reason for the over-commercialization of TOI though in no way justifies it.

In the book, the author gives a very humorous recounting of all these times with more emphasis on different characters that associated with him from time to time. He keeps much of his personal matters on the background, except his life with his wife Bunny and dog Brindle, and only gives details of such matters when they serve to address some social issue. Other parts that really stand out are the reminiscences about several travels he made outside the country, especially Tibet.

JS and the Times of my Life is a real funny and interesting ride. It gives a glimpse on the history of two interesting publications- JS, a pioneer that introduced Indian readers to interactive journalism and TOI that cashed in on that. It also give glimpses on the change that our nation and its readers underwent in a couple of years. A special attraction is a long list of people whom Jug Suraiya pissed off in his long and illustrious career.

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

The memorandum: Language Troubles.

2011-09-12T17:59:00.001+05:30

There are many instances in history where a work of art- a novel, a poem or a play, was made for the purpose of criticizing certain corrupt elements of the society, and even after decades, after the society in question is long dead, these works still stand relevant. Like Joseph Heller's Catch 22, written as an antiwar novel, can be an allegory of corruption in any organisation existing today. Or parallels of George Orwell's novels, that were anti communist propaganda, can be spotted in any capitalist or semi capitalist societies in modern times.

The Memorandum is a political satire written by Czech playwright and first President of Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel , to showcase the inefficient and absurd operation of the Communist regime that ruled Czechoslovakia then. Now when the same play is re-watched much of the happenings seems absolutely plausible in any multinational corporate giants' offices.

The Managing Director of a company Josef Gross, is struggling to make out the meaning of a memo that he received that morning which is written in an absurd language. His secretary informs him that it is a new language, Ptydepe, that is introduced in the firm to make the work place communication efficient and error free. The move is made by his deputy Ballas. Gross wants Ballas to cancel this absurd introduction, but Ballas refuses and gets ready to fight his boss. Some dirty office politics follows. Gross cuts a sorry figure when he goes from department to department to get the memo in Ptydepe translated. The segments were the teaching of the new language is shown is hilarious. Gross steps down as Managing Director when the office watcher, a worker whose job is to spy on others, finds that he broke the rules in getting the memo translated. The new boss Ballas finds it equally difficult to manage things as it goes out of his hands too. Finally Gross is reinstated as MD and ultimate causality is a typist, who helps Gross in translating the text out of pity. She is fired. Ptydepe is abandoned and a new language is introduced to better it.

Are They Deterring Democracy?

2011-09-03T10:05:00.003+05:30

United States of America is a nation that has launched attacks on several other countries from the time of its inception. The reason told for most of them is safeguarding democracy. A common factor that can be noticed about most of these attacks is the fact that they were against third world nations endowed with rich natural resources. Is the interest of USA to upkeep the democracy in third world genuine?

Deterring Democracy is an extensive study by Nom Chomsky about interference of United States in the internal affairs of other nations. The book was written in 90's, just after the fall of Soviet Union. Till then the communist demon and its plan for world domination was cited as the major reason for invasion into third world. But even after the fall of USSR, USA continued the same policy with the pretext of saving the world by perpetuating the ideals of democracy.

The book starts with an analysis of cold war period and gradually tries to deconstruct the myth of American effort to maintain democratic practice. Chomsky quotes liberally from politicians, media, policymakers and military sources, whose quotes are in public domain, to contradict the cover up that was done to the public. The book effectively states that all these efforts in several countries were in actual effect detrimental to Free thinking and democracy and has only served to put tyrants who are sympathetic to American needs and wants into power.

Nicaragua, Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Honduras, Costa Rica, Namibia, Columbia... The list is endless. Chomsky proves that if the rulers are ready to heed to US interests, they are given every freedom to rule however they want. But if that is not the case, even a democratic government will be toppled and someone who is ready to be a puppet will be put to the place. Business is important than human life.

US media also highlights only what the policymakers want to reveal. If a news serves the propaganda, it is highlighted and if it does not suit the purpose, it nowhere features. Many tyrants like Mussolini and Saddam were darlings of government and media when their policies were according to US interest. Once they comes on the way of making profit, immediately the demonizing starts.

What reading Deterring Democracy does is to make us wonder about the possibility of an alternative history, which is much distant and contrary to what we read in textbooks or newspapers..

Khasak's Legend

2011-09-02T10:00:00.000+05:30

Khasakkinte Ithihasam is a Malayalam novel written by the late O V Vijayan, who was one of the brightest novelists in India. This novel is considered a landmark in Malayalam literature. No wonder it is the most sold novel in South Asia and on which most studies were done in Kerala. Never was something so huge, profound and of epic proportion created in Malayalam.

Created is the apt word because the whole world of Khasak, though inhabited by common humans, possess some kind of a nightmarish dream like quality. Laden with myths, superstitions and legends Khasak is a village that struggles to come in terms with the diverse communal population that it houses.

The novel starts when Ravi reaches Khasak to open a single teacher school. The school is the idea of the Hindu Nair community of Khasak as they have to send their kids to a distant place for education. It is a blow for the Mollah of the village as even the Muslim kids desert his religious classes to attend the school. The novel deals with the life of Ravi in Khasak and the bizarre characters he encounters there. Also playing havoc in Ravi's life is his troubled past and pangs of guilt to escape from which he taken up the job.

Both Khasak and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez came out at almost same time. The parallels between both cannot be ignored. As this first novel was written in an incredibly long time period, the evolution of Vijayan's intellect can also be mapped as the novel progress to its tragic doom. The picture of a righteous Ravi who comes to Khasak with a guilt ridden conscience and his becoming one with the superstitious people of Khasak by sharing with them their life, misfortunes and beliefs can be an allegory about a confused generation.

Vijayan has himself translated the novel to English as Legends of Khasak. Critics' opine that it can be considered as a standalone work as it differs considerably from the original.

Payyan and Chathan: Two Protagonists of VKN.

2011-09-01T12:00:00.001+05:30

VKN- three letters are enough to bring a smile to the lips of any well read malayalee. Vadakke Koottala Narayanankutty Nair, is one of the best writers of satire ever born in Kerala. It is a tall praise when we consider Malayalees as a community that enjoys humor, especially satire more than any other. We have not one but two ancient dance forms that are satirical takes on epics and legends- Thullal and Koothu. From the time of the birth of Malayalam language, there were a long array of humorists giving strong doses of satirical blows to society and establishment- from Kunjan Nambiar of mediviel times to Sanjayan, E V and Chemmanam Chacko of recent times. At present, Malayalees crowd for watching comedy movies more than any other genre and the art form that attracts common man is Mimicry, especially skits imitating politicians.

So why VKN isa step above all of them? The one quality is his prose. It is very imaginative, multilayered and precise with lot of quirky word plays enough to give P G Wodehouse a complex. VKN style is a slang word used among academics. Each and every sentence that he wrote is convoluted to such an extent that it does not have just the face meaning. You need to ponder deep to understand the crux. His writing is rich with references from various sources- ancient and modern literature, art, current affairs, local slang from different parts of the state, politics... He has written several long, short, mini and micro stories. I will take two of his most famous characters to illustrate the point.

Payyan is a character who appears repeatedly in several VKN stories, the important ones being in the collection called Payyan Kathakal. He is also the protagonist in several of his novels. Though in most stories Payyan, whose name can be loosely translated in English as 'the kid', appears as a journalist working in New Delhi, there are stories with different backgrounds too. May be those were stories from his early days. Payyan, who refused to join IAS, even after getting selected, decides to freelance as a journalist and make use of his intelligence and wit to mingle with the people inhabiting the power corridors of Indian capital. This he achieves mostly by being in the good books of society ladies, sleeping around with them and using them as sources for exclusive scoops. Though shown as a resourceful man with good hold on the top of political hierarchy, many humorous occasions arise due to his poverty. The stories may seem outright politically incorrect- sexist, immoral and racist. But behind the veil of subtle humor, it is possible to identify the writer's contempt of a society that is boastful, intellectually shallow and on the verge of a breakdown.

Another of VKN's protagonist, Chathan is German (VKN language for Cheruman, a scheduled caste. This is a sampling of his unique style. Such wordplay intertwining many languages and cultures is seen liberally in his stories. Another example is his claim in one of his stories that famous thinker Nom Chomsky is a Nambuthiri- Malayalee Brahmin, because Nom is a first person pronoun used boastfully by them). Chathan stories follow the land reforms introduced in Kerala to disastrous effects. He is illiterate but street smart and highly influential, albeit poor like Payyan. He uses his wit and intelligence fearlessly to create havoc in the turbulent farming scenario of inland Kerala to hilarious effects.

My only regret is for the readers outside Kerala who can never enjoy the unique VKN humor as no translation can do justice to its very local nature.

The Blasphemy of Temptation

2011-08-29T23:15:00.001+05:30

Religion has always helped mankind to achieve heights of spiritual upliftment. But at the same time organized religion has pulled us to the ditches. What organized religion has always done anywhere in the world is to negate the importance to the solitary communion with soul and chain the religion to rituals. Add doses of fundamentalism and intolerance, and you get a perfect recipe for disaster. Organized religion curbs the flow of free and rational thought and puts a bar on freedom to think.

Many instances can be found in history when a different reading of religious texts or symbols or leaders causes a furor and elicited the catcalls of blasphemy. Controversies erupt and some may even turn violent. Like what followed Rushdie's Satanic Verses and M F Hussain's paintings. Some artists try to show a different point of view, but some do it just to be in news and profit from the resulting publicity. While taking Nikos Kazantzakis' controversial novel "The Last Temptation" to read, I was intrigued to find out in which category this one will fit.

The Last Temptation is a try to fictionalize Jesus Christ's life as an ordinary man, who is in constant turmoil to come in terms with the difficult task given by God. Christian thought has always painted Jesus as an upright, virtuous young man with a strategical approach of how to do his job. He is never afraid or confused and stands tall in-front of any obstacle. When Kazantzakis tried to change this traditional an orthodox view of Jesus with a more human one, obviously he met with resistance.

Kazantzakis' Christ is a young man who makes crosses for Romans, in-order to crucify the rebels, so that he will become evil and God will stop coming to him. His villagers think of him as a traitor and abhor him like plague. Finally he has to shake his fear and start his journey to the desert, where he has to face many temptations laid out for him.

The evolution of Christ from a normal person to Messiah was as emotionally turbulent as his fate after becoming one. He has to keep off the temptations of everyday life, lust, confusion, anger, dejection and fear of unknown. He has to keep the interest of his disciples, the Apostles, who are portrayed much weak and not committed fully to the cause, all except Judas Escariot. And what a character he is..! the brooding, ever suspicious, contemptuous, violent man, whom Jesus finds the only one capable of executing his final order, to betray him to Romans.

The novel takes you on a surreal journey through the minds of some of the most brilliantly written characters. Normally, I feel like quoting one or other passages that I feel interesting from the books that I read. If I try for that here, I will have tion reproduce the whole book. The prose of Kazantzakis is that good. The long and detailed description of plot and character motives make it a tedious read, but patient reading can be rewarding.

The controversies surrounding the book, I feel are uncalled for, because the portrayal of Jesus is much more divine and respectable, even when the weight of miracles and divine birth is lifted off from his shoulders.

Point Counterpoint

2011-08-21T22:00:00.000+05:30

In his longest novel Point Counterpoint, writer Aldous Huxley tries to peek into human psyche. It is a novel without any central plot and contains several entangled subplots that details the thoughts and actions of characters from varied strata of humanity.

Thoughts and actions or more precisely the differences and inconsistencies between them, makes a major theme of the novel. Lot of pages are devoted for long discussions between different characters, who end up baring their emotional self to the reader. Though the setting is 1920's Britain, the novel is equally relevant now because of the universality of the theme.

Moral and emotional weakness of the main characters carry the story forward. Strained marriages, infidel husbands, wives with secret lovers, confused idealists, writers, painters, journalists, secretaries, murderers, bad bosses... It is a colorful procession of characters that makes Point Counterpoint worth reading.

Boy with suitcase: Another tale of displacement

2011-08-20T23:56:00.001+05:30

Boy With a Suitcase is an English play that I saw a couple of months back from Rangashankara, Bangalore. At that time I had watched quite a few plays with similar themes and I was not interested to repeat what I wrote just a week or two back. That is why I just postponed writing about this delightful play.

Boy With a Suitcase is an Indo German joint production- Rangashankara and Schnaawl. Directed by Andrea Gronemeyer, it is the story of a boy who had to travel to London from his unspecified home town when his home is destroyed in war.

Displacement is a major recurring theme in contemporary art- be it novel, plays or poetry. I think the biggest challenge that modern man has to face is to adjust to the changes he has to face when he is forced to get displaced from his home. The causes may be different- war, search of better living conditions, dissatisfaction.. In middle ages, it was pretty rare for someone to leave the comfort of his home and travel to the uncertainty of distant lands. That may be the reason why we have celebrated all those rare journeys by making them legends- actual and fictional, like those of Sindbad or that of Ibn u Batuta.

But in modern times, each of us is Sindbad, embarking on our personal adventure with a string attached to a home that we had possessed once upon a time. The boy also has heard the story of Sindbad and is excited to start his journey to distant land of London, where his sister lives. His parents have send him off in a bus with just a suitcase so that atleast he will be safe from a raging war. The play draws a parallel with the journeys of Sindbad by making the boy go through some far fetched situations, where he meets some very peculiar characters.

Unaccustomed earth: Emotionally satisfying read...

2011-08-08T20:54:00.005+05:30

Unaccustomed earth is a collection of not-so-short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri. The author heavily relies on the experiences of being a second generation Indian settled in USA to carry forward every story. But the restraint shown in romanticizing them makes it a collection suitable for light reading. Though the situations are done to death and utterly cliched, a natural development of lead characters and the subtle undercurrent of humor makes the reader to connect with them instantly.

As I said early, every story deals with the process of assimilation of immigrants into the local culture. The book is designed in such a way that each story gives you a little more insight into the turbulent life of immigrant Indians in US. The book start with the title story of a widower father coming to meet his daughter who is married to an American. She finds out that her orthodox father has considerably changed for good. There is another story that has a similar plot, named Only Goodness, but with a sad ending, of an alcoholic brother coming to meet his married sister, who in the first place had introduced drinks to him.

Nobody's Business deals with a man falling in love with an Indian girl, who is his housemate, but can only watch her falling in a destructive relation with another man of doubtful intents. Hell Heaven is about the relation between a student and a married woman who helps him in the unknown country. In the story titled A Choice of Accommodations, a Bengali- American man goes to his high school crush's wedding with his American wife and gets into some severely unpleasant situations.

In the end there are three stories that are connected together as a sad love story, but are equally convincing as standalone reads too. Here, each story- Once in A Lifetime, Year's end and Going Ashore is told from the view point of either of the one protagonists, as if speaking to the other person.

If you need an emotionally satisfying light read, I would recommend trying Unaccustomed earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.

A Management Talk...

2011-08-07T20:30:00.001+05:30

"I cannot do this job. These guys, you know, never obeys what I say. And at the end of shift, our boss call me and fire like anything for not getting production as per target. I feel like running away from here." K was disparate. (No, he is not Joseph K and I am not a Kafka wannabe. His name starts with K and as I respect his privacy, I am reluctant to reveal the full name. Which is again absurd because any of my company employee reading this Blog will id him and others, I am sure won't care a hoot).

This guy used to work under me and as his performance was quite good, he was promoted to another department, handled by my boss, as a foreman when there was a vacancy. He was finding it difficult to cope with additional responsibilities and was ready to come back to the former position. But our boss was not agreeing.

The time was evening, and our cab was about to move out. If I am going to miss it, I will have to hitch a ride with any of the big shots in their comfortable air conditioned cars, which sounds a pretty good proposition, but is not the case, as my previous experiences had taught me. Lending ear to more office talk or gossip, as these talks eventually turn into, is harrowing. But as is my inherent style, I decided to hand him some pearls of wisdom quickly so that I won't miss my cab. (The best things about giving advise according to me, is that it does not cost you anything and can generate enormous goodwill. So I never misses a chance.)

I will not check your patience by giving all the personal things that we discussed. In short, I gave him some tips on dealing with workers and our boss from my experience, as my relation with both parties had been quite stable till now. I concluded by telling him a story that I read in an article sometime back, which I feel may be of interest to my readers.

Once a manager approached his mentor who is in the top management of another firm. He was totally let down by his team and was blamed on a daily basis by top management for the failures. He was frustrated of dealing with his subordinates, who hated him, and with his superiors who simply blamed him for any and every trivial matters.

His mentor asked him, "How much salary you draw every month?"

"Rs 60000."

"Ok. Just think that for the actual work that you do in office, you are paid Rs 20000. Rest of the payment is for getting hated and blamed. You don't have any physical work like an operator or your juniors. Your actual job is getting hated and blamed. Now if you have this attitude and you work for reducing the hate and blame targeted at you, you will be in profit. Always remember, for the actual work that you do, you get only 40% of your salary. 60% of salary is for getting blamed and hated by others and for absorbing the pressure."

Is There A Happy Death?...

2011-08-01T16:18:00.002+05:30

A happy death is the first novel by Albert Camus. After writing it, the acclaimed writer decided not to publish it and went on to write other novels like The Outsider and The Plague which were deemed classics by critics. After his death the manuscript of A happy death was discovered and going by the well known tradition of cashing in the death of famous writers by publishing every crap written by them, it was published.

It is not surprising that Camus decided not to publish this novel as it is terribly lacking in plot and character development. It is obvious that this novel developed ultimately into The outsider, a classic, though they are poles apart in the underlying philosophy. The plot of a guy, even the name is similar, remorselessly murdering another man is the common factor.

A Happy Death is the story of Patrice Mersault, a poor Algerian clerk leading a boring work life and an aimless relationship. He happens to meet his lover's ex-love, a rich cripple. He convinces Mersault that to be happy, it is essential to have time and time can be bought by money. So only way to be happy in life is to become rich. Mersault kills the guy, take all his money and abscond, probably by the invalid's consent. There ends the first part of the novel named as Natural death.

In the second part, titled Happy Death, we see Mersault travelling from city to city in train. But travel makes his condition more miserable. Then he starts living with three of his lady friends, all of whom are in pursuit of happiness. When this also does not serve the purpose, Mersault decides to stay alone in country side buying a huge house with the money that he stole. He starts feeling happy but gets a fatal disease and dies, a happy death.

The novel is ambiguous. It does not reveal much about the relationship between characters or the reason they act the way they do. But it is worth reading for its strong, underlying philosophy.

Janasheen: Music review

2011-07-31T09:33:00.002+05:30

When Stella send me an email appreciating the blog and asking about the possibility to review the album Janasheen by Nickk, which they are publicizing currently, I was a bit worried. I like hearing music and even passing comments on songs. But to review songs... it is out of my forte. So to keep the authenticity of the site intact (I admit that was a trumpet blowing..) I approached my good friend Andrews Lijoy, a wonderful singer and composer with a great music sense, who readily agreed to help this friend in distress and make a guest post on Conscientious Reflections for reviewing Janasheen by Nickk... On to Lijoy....

Nickk is the latest musician to hit the already populated Indian pop music field. A singer, composer and lyricist, he has just released his debut album- Janasheen released by Beatfactory music.

The album has five tracks, if the remix version is considered as a separate track. The first one is Janasheen, the song with a video. Janasheen has a very feel good effect to it, but I don't think it will linger in the mind for long. The song is devoid of any special magic to it. The strength of the song lies in the soothing voice of Nickk. The strings and beats at the start reminds me of a slower version of Ashlee Simpson's "I am me", but it still gives an "ear candy" effect.

The second song, Guzaarish Rock is actually not a rock version. Any song won't fall into a rock song category by having some heavy string portion added to it. An attempt to modify it to a rock version actually kind of disturbed the feel of the song.

The melody of the pack is the track called Jaane Kyun. Here the singer takes advantage of his voice and the orchestra backs it up very well. A slow and smooth song which is easy on ears.

Iqteza is a typical club song. It has nothing special that can throw you on the dance floor right away.

Guzaarish Dance version- Only adding certain extra beat does not make a dance version of a song.

Overall Janasheen is not a ground breaking pop album, but not a bad one either. Songs are quite okay, but treads the usual path of pop songs that are being released now a days. With a voice like that he could have surely done a much better work.

How to be a successful blogger a la Govind Tiwari...

2011-07-20T21:39:00.000+05:30

I was checking news today when I came upon this Indian blog that hit the bull's eye by becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter and Facebook. He is even featured on leading newspapers as a human interest story. So how did Govind Tiwari managed to be a mini celebrity? What are the techniques adopted by this blogger to get an enormous traffic hike in just days?

For answers have a look at his blog govindtiwari.blogspot.com and you will come to know that for getting attention in today's world you need not do any hard work. What you need is a blog with a really freaky template, some of your crazy, in literal sense, photos, basic knowledge in photoshop to screw them up, a demo version video making software, an absence of imagination or a sense of aesthetics and lot of love, for yourself...!

I have been wasting my time, thinking of interesting topics to write in this space, of new words and of making situations just to show them off, of how to promote it so that some unsuspecting reader finds me and read what I have to say. This guy, like that Brahman, who challenged the circus performer, who jumped through a ring of fire, to jump without ring or even fire like he did, became the winning horse on whom no one cared to bet.

Wishing Govind Tiwari best of luck in future endeavors and a happy blogging life...

Treadmill: A Never Ending Run

2011-07-15T20:10:00.000+05:30

Treadmill is a Hindi play written by Sandeep Shikhar and directed by Abhishek Majumdar. It is a comedy about the futility and emptiness experienced on the run for survival in the modern world. Treadmill is a metaphor used throughout the play for depicting the never ending run without any aim. After a session on treadmill you realize that you have not reached any where, you are on the starting point itself.

Four characters enact all the characters. The play starts with a couple deciding to part. Then the hero meets a guy to whom he tells his story. How he meets the girl, falls in love and manages to marry her. From then onwards it is a downward spiral. Days and months passes by when their life gets into the prison of routine, work, communication by SMS. Slowly different characters from different walks of life emerges on the stage. The common point that binds them all is their never ending search, one which does not get them any where unfortunately. Finally the guy who hears the story becomes a part of it. He claims that the story is his. In the end audience realizes that what they just saw was an episode from their life.

Great acting and superb direction. The plot is a bit confusing initially, but slowly gets engaging. What would have been a monotonous grey depiction of a married couple's life gets its colors from many interesting sub characters coming on stage at various points of play with their existential burdens on the shoulders. All in all a good watch...

The Height of Irresponsibility...

2011-07-14T20:45:00.002+05:30

After suffering for decades from terrorist attacks, across the border, from inside the country and from beyond the oceans, finally the common man can make the sigh of relief. Things could have been worse. You thought a handful of terrorists keeping our financial capital as hostage for days together was bad? Or a series of blast in metro trains is terrible? Or terrorists striking three cities across the nation at the same time was a shame on our intelligence department? You are wrong...! Worse could have happened...!

So says our Yuvaraaj... and how can we deny the words of him?.. the future of our nation.. According to the young Gandhi, government was successful in thwarting 99% of possible terror strikes. Of course just like Sachin cannot hit a century in every Cricket match, during some unlucky times sad things happen. And yesterday was one such day. But do not worry! He and his government is hell bent on stealing the victory from terrorists in coming days. He assures us a hundred percent result soon.

So as per Rahul Gandhi, 99% of terror attacks are foiled "Due to effective vigilance and surveillance...", and "...it is difficult to stop every terror incident even though the country has improved by leaps and bounds in combating the menace." Just imagine, if the government was not as successful as Mr Gandhi claims, what would be the condition of our nation! Not too good if you take the case of latest blast in Mumbai. Every three days there will be another bomb blast. Simple maths, if this attempt is among the 1% of attacks government could not prevent, surely there should be minimum 99 other attacks which were foiled. Otherwise the claim is wrong. So to prevent any one to accuse him of telling lies, let Mr Amul G keep the proof on table. Of 99 possible attacks prevented by the intelligence agencies. Or at least a handful of them. If that is also difficult can we see at least the proof of one incident that was prevented by the intervention of agencies.

I doubt, Juniorji would be capable to do this...

If he is our future... then we, as a united, independent nation will soon be history...

Another interesting comment came from Shiv Sena's Uddhav Thackeray. He was lambasting Congress government on its inability to protect citizens. " Why should innocent people suffer? Who will take the responsibility?" This coming from a person who wants to throw out every non Maratha out of Mumbai... who tries to expel them out by violence...

Being an Iconoclast...

2011-07-13T00:15:00.000+05:30

An iconoclast is someone who lives against the conventions of society. Someone who breaks the icons.... They do things differently, creating new ideas from existing situations, which never occurred to others. In his book Iconoclast, Gregory Berns, a neuro surgeon, describes the biological specialties of an iconoclast that helps him in perceiving reality differently from others.

Brain uses certain shortcuts to analyse the information gathered by sensory organs to make its work easy. These shortcuts cause us to ignore or overlook certain aspects of things. But certain people tend to notice these aspects and some of them uses it to their advantage. They are iconoclasts...

According to the author anyone can train the mind to behave like an iconoclast, there by achieving creative success. The book has lot of examples of iconoclasts, successful and not, who changed the world against all odds.

Debates: Past and present...

2011-07-07T21:20:00.000+05:30

In olden times, people who did not have any work used to pass their time by debating!... What they do is, they select a verse or a stanza of a poem written by some no-good jobless poet, usually in Sanskrit and debate on that. The first assumption made by these pseudo pundits is that this worthless piece of poem deals with the existential perils of mankind and contains a deep meaning and can cure the world of all its troubles... So each of them interprets it, finds the meaning and try to assert that, their view, which no one in the group follows, is correct. Verbal fights occur among the participants, each of whom equipped with ideas of their own, to claim that they are right. The poor poet delights in all the unwanted attention that his useless poem receives.

Last few days, I am standing on the pedestal of the poet. I was told to make a financial statement of my department. As I am just 6 months old there, and the management wanted to show the expenses ridiculously low and the time alloted to make it was less and I had many other urgent duties to attend, (add any other excuses that you can think of), I made an extensive report without researching, mostly out of my own imagination...!

After getting my emailed report, the finance manager never bothered to look into it let even correct and forwarded it, as it is, to the auditors. Auditors, who could not make the head and tail of it, asked the manager to put some sense into it. Baffled manager interpreted it as per his limited knowledge and needless to say, the interpretation was bull. Auditors got further confused. They wanted to clarify it from the person who made the report. Manager asked my boss to make some sense out of it. My boss who made an equally imaginary report last year, added his inputs, further complicating the matters. The auditors came with hundred objections. Meetings after meetings, where all of us auditors, finance manager, my boss and me debated on and on taking different points to suit our individual requirements. We decided to maintain our stand, with blessing from our big boss. More lies were added to the whirlpool by making many more imaginary, ridiculous reports... Tomorrow, finally the tired auditors want to close the audit. I have just made two more reports containing the details which they have asked and am hoping to end the trauma once and for all.

Pray for me.. :)

On other news, I watcher Transformers 3 last week. And boy, it was the most tiring movie that I ever watched. The humor was inane, acting bad and the CGI was too long. The climax was so long and pointless that, I felt it was longer than the actual movie.. And I also watched X Men: First Class, which compared to the inane Transformers installment was first class. Another watch was a Thai Action comedy called Saturday Killer, which I will recommend to any avid movie watchers not to watch... Most ridiculous comedy I have watched in a while, cringe worthy is an under statement...

Turn Petrol Price Hike to Your Advantage..

2011-07-03T13:10:00.000+05:30

Gas price is increasing sky high and along with it the price of anything and everything remotely involving transportation. The common man's already stooped spine is now looking like a rainbow with a single color- Black. But as you know Conscientious Reflections always advocates optimism in any pitch black circumstances. And to follow up with this tradition, I am putting up this post to show some ways in which you can turn the hike to advantage.

One good thing about this hike is that gasoline products- Petrol, LPG and Kerosene will totally get eliminated from households, thereby reducing the domestic violence against daughter in laws considerably. If you cannot even afford LPG for frying potatoes, it does not make sense to make a scheme for frying your Bahu! If we are lucky, may be there will be a truce between Saas and Bahus, till the petrol price comes down or the unlucky son's/husband's income increases drastically to accommodate the above said products in the kitchen again, though both the options seems unlikely in the prevailing situations. And there is an additional bonus being the stoppage to Saas- Bahu tele serials, causing the whole family audience, right from kids to grant parents, to enrich their vocabulary and cultural background by watching reality shows where young no-good teen agers and non existent celebrities abuse each other mentally, verbally and physically.

To prevent the nation from going back to bullock cart days, the petrol barons of India can lead the way by introducing new schemes for tempting and promoting people to buy petrol. Ambani's Reliance can be the front runner in this venture as already they have made such a revolution 10 years back by offering mobile phones for 500 Rs, thereby making the most ordinary of the citizens vulnerable to prostate cancer and depression. Give the customer a vehicle free of cost, or with a minimum down payment ensuring they will buy the fuel from you for a stipulated period of time. Giving out Hummers will be the most profitable thing to do.

Get a Nano for just Rs 500, if you buy it through your nearby Bharath petroleum gas station*. Conditions Apply...

Financiers can start loaning money against petrol, like Muthoot financiers and Manappuram do using gold. You can go to the nearest office with a can of petrol, diesel or kerosene or a cylinder of LPG and get a loan for that. All this within 5 minutes.

The Ad will look something like this:

Muthoot Finance introduces Muthoot Petrol Loan. Loan within 15 minutes..

Manappuram stands for you... or drives...

On a serious note, at least now if we start curbing the dependency on fossil fuels and look out for more green energy sources, we can make earth a better place.

I already started the endeavor with my new solar water heater. It does not work on cloudy days and early mornings, when I really need hot water to bath, but it is at least a start.

Stilettos In The Newsroom: An Insider's View

2011-06-27T21:52:00.000+05:30

Book Source: Author

Media plays an all important role in today's world. Each person is indebted to news in TV, internet, news paper and many other sources in forming their ideas, making their choices. So naturally we all will have a curiosity to know what goes inside a newsroom. Rashmi Kumar's debut novel, Stilettos in the Newsroom tries to give an inside view into the operation of newsrooms. As the author is a journalist having first hand experience of the plot, the reader expects a lot of whistle blowing, which the book provides to some extent.

Radhika Kanetkar, enters the magical world of journalism as a rookie subeditor, in a Pune newspaper. After eight years, she has become a features editor in a Delhi based journal. The book chronicles the journey of eight years, laden with friendship, love, jealousy, hatred and office politics. A whole lot of characters who plays important roles in Radhika's life, positively and negatively are introduced. Each chapter deals with a new lesson learnt to survive in the whirlpool.

The novel is simple, straight forward, short and immensely readable. Any reader who has worked in a corporate office can identify with the protagonist, as she fights an every day battle to stay up in work. The love life of the lady is very subtly revealed, without falling into the pit of sentimentalism which is primarily associated with the stuff. The language is easy to follow and identifiable to the upper middle class urban youth, whom I feel, the novel is targeted. The incidences described are of a varied and contrasting hue- funny, sad, revolting, romantic...

On negative sides, the novel has a very loose plot. It follows a non linear time line sometimes, which is not handled as effectively as required and may baffle readers. Many a times, I do not feel much for the characters except the lead one. Also, as the story takes place in a newsroom, you expect some uniqueness of the place to crop up in the novel. But after reading the novel, one has a feel that the newsroom is not much dissimilar from a regular office, although as I told before, it helps us to identify with the struggle of Radhika. I would say, a much more tight plot, an in-depth characterization and an extra 150 pages would not have harmed the book in any way.

What's the Opposite?

2011-06-25T09:58:00.000+05:30

"Hey, What is the opposite term for Like?"

"Dislike."

"For Soft?"

"Hard"

"Stand?"

"Sit."

"I am writing?"

"I am not writing."

"You are quite good in English! One last question. Tell me the opposite for Nagpanchami!"

"What the ...!"

"Wrong answer."

"Ridiculous question!"

"Give the answer or agree your failure."

"I don't know, you give the answer."

"Nag did not punch me."

"Is this sk ill of making bad jokes hereditary or you practiced it?"

The Inspiring Prophet

2011-06-11T17:26:00.000+05:30

Al Musthafa, the prophet who is stranded in a foreign land for 20 years is awaiting the ship from his country to return back. And the day arrives when the ship arrives in the port. He bids farewell to the hosts, and they asks him to talk for a last time. He discusses with them about life. To different queries from people from different walks of life, he puts forward his thoughts on love, marriage, work, joy, crime and more.

This is the premise of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, a collection of many poetic essays that primarily deals with living a pure life, in tandem to the basic principles of nature. Kahlil Gibran is a Lebanese poet and artist who immigrated to USA when he was a kid. He is told to be the most widely read poet after Shakespeare and Lao Tse. The Prophet is an inspiring work of extra ordinary beauty and can be compared to mystical masterpieces like Tagore's Geetanjali.

"Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."

Attack of the killer cucumbers..!

2011-06-10T11:00:00.014+05:30

The world is struck by E coli scare. Many European nations- Germany, France, Spain, Czech republic, UK... are in a state of high alert following the news of the outbreak that caused the death of more than 30 people. The shocking news to the vegetarians is that, they have to take care of the diet this time, for a change. Previously we had seen such a turmoil on the dinner tables of non- vegetarians when bird flu and mad cow disease struck the world.

And primary suspect among the lot is cucumber, which is a pity because it happens to be the most harmless looking vegetable in the whole world- tasteless (not in a bad way), odor less, watery (a summer delight)... there is no need to even cook it. Imagine someone wearing a mask while handling a cucumber. But as I am typing this word is coming out that may be sprouts or lettuce can be the culprit.

Spanish MEP with cucumber

Spain is the worst hit. Whole Europe blamed Spain for exporting E coli affected vegetables, which resulted in tons of cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes being dumped by farmers. An angry Spanish MEP declared in European parliament that they have to restore the honor of cucumber. Ultimately Spanish cucumbers were tested and declared free of the bacteria though E coli strains were found in cucumber waste in trash bin in Germany. It is not yet established whether vegetable was contaminated or it came from other vegetables in the bin. Every where in Europe cucumber sales have come to a halt. EU has offered compensation for the farmers who are the worst hit by the scare. Still experts could not specifically identify the real villain behind the outbreak.

Criticism is mounting against the way Germans, who are the worst hit, are tackling the problem. No leads are made yet in asserting the real cause. Instead an international blame game is being played, where producer countries are defending their products and buyers getting paranoid and avoiding them like plague...

Reading in Bangalore...

2011-06-09T13:00:00.001+05:30

I have always been passionate about reading, which is evident if you have been visiting this place often. I should thank my parents and relatives who have brought me up by supporting this passion. If I get a book about anything, I will sit in a corner and devour it without caring a hoot about the world. In my childhood it was those Malayalam children's weeklies like Balarama, Poompatta and many of them like Chandamama that I used to satisfy my pang for the written word. In fifth class, I joined in two libraries near my home and serious reading began.

And what a coincidence! Now after decades, in Bangalore I have joined two fantastic libraries and am juggling my spare time between the books supplied by them. Both are professionally managed ones with an impressive catalog.

Before joining them, I had been getting my regular supply of books from peddlers on street. You can buy two books for Rs 140, and if after reading, when returned you can get half your money back or one book of your choice. Bargain was ok, but quality of books are really bad and the choice is limited to popular ones, which I do not have much interest in reading.

Then I happened to see the site of Librarywaala, and checked out the plans. I just tried to join and left half way. You have give some personal details and can join by paying through net banking. I just gave the details and left it there. Next week someone called from their office and they had a new year offer. So I opted for a 3 book plan per month and joined. Mr Manjunath came all the way (around 80 kms up and down) to my office to collect the payment and deliver the first set of books. And from then on I am regularly getting 3 books every month delivered at my home. Service is good, you can order by internet, no fuss... The collection is also quite good. I especially love the non-fiction segment. They have a variety there! Fiction is also good, but limited to popular ones. I cannot get much of Camus, Kundera or Marquez there.

Then I discovered that there was another library just behind my home. It is called Just Books. They too have a site and you can order books and get door delivery, but for preferred memberships only. I took a membership for unlimited number of books for Rs 150. The main attraction is the kiosk on the entrance where you can place your book and membership card and issue or return your books. You can search for titles and if they are not available in that branch, it can be ordered from any other branch, where it may be available. Here, non fiction department is not so strong, but fiction part is impressive. You name it and it is there.

So things are going pretty strong in the reading front and you can see the result in blog.

Osho: A Spiritually Incorrect Mystic

2011-06-08T13:00:00.003+05:30

Long back I had read a book by Rajneesh Osho. Normally all of his books are versions taken from the discourses given by him. What I liked about that book was, the clarity with which he explains things. Language is simple, straight forward and laced with humor. And when every other person either embraces or denounces spirituality, Osho opens a new path. His spirituality is bound to the world, giving all the importance to meditation, without renouncing the world and on the contrary embracing all the comforts of it. He was against poverty of any kind.

Last week I happened to read his autobiography, aptly titled Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic. It is again not a written one, but collected parts from 5000 hours of his talks. The biography part is a bit less and more are his explanations of his seemingly insane philosophy.

Osho is not for any religion. He is against all kind of conditioning, that comes with any religion. He continuously urges his disciples to stop being his followers. He is against the miracles and magical powers of so called prophets. He claims he got enlightened at a young age, but then he says you need not believe it. He spend his childhood with his grandparents without any friends and without attending an school. After years, his grand father died and then he returned to his father's home. By then his character was totally different. He shown good skill in arguing, rather profound self confidence, found pleasure in questioning any religious authority and would never obey any one or do anything against his will.

His book From Sex To Super consciousness that was released in the end of seventies, was the most controversial and well read book of that time. His complaint was that people were annoyed when he heard a mystic speaking openly praising sex, but totally ignored the part about super consciousness. Later he came to USA and started a community called Rajneeshpuram, but was later deported following allegations of several crimes. But he got a cult following due to the effectiveness of his meditation style that was a mix of West and East. In USA, he owned 90 Rolls Royce cars, which he claims made him famous, by shocking the American community.

Spoilt for choice...

2011-06-07T18:23:00.000+05:30

Last day the office canteen boy asked me, "Sir, when are you going to Kerala next?"

"Next week maybe, or the week after that."

"Will you bring banana chips for me?"

"No"

He was offended, though I told it in a light vein. If I say yes, and even if I never brought him the chips, he would have been happy. My telling no was unexpected and he was upset. But he also had to think that he gave me a choice. It was a yes or no question that he asked and logically he do not have any right to be upset when my answer is negative. He was supposed to be prepared for that. Because there was 50% chance for a negative answer.

So the moral of the story is that, never ever give a choice to anyone when you want only one outcome as an answer.

Speaking about choices, I wanted to write a post on them from long time back. But this incident last day prompted me to start it.

I started browsing through channels in TV last day and was flicking the remote for an hour or so without watching a program for even a minute fully. I see a movie playing and feel that on the other channel I thought I saw a better one, but by the time I reach that channel, advertisements had started. Then again I continue surfing.. Same thing happen when I am in the library. A long array of books and I keep moving from one rack to another, from one genre to another, takes a book at first and then browse some more. Put it back and grab another one... Making a choice is tough. especially for these small things like watching a movie or choosing where to eat. Is it all the perils of modern technology? Bombarding our simple every day life with so many choices?

Last day I watched this ad for iphone telling that if you do not have an iphone, you don't have one. (Of course I never bought an iphone, but after watching the ad, now I am sure I don't have one.) They say you can choose form 30000 applications!!!! 30000... What were they thinking?!!! Just to chose one or two from them will be like searching a needle in Sahara desert. In my phone I have four applications, Opera Mini, Snaptu, Newshunt and Kakuro (a fine game that can give some good exercise to brain). Except for the first and the last one, I opens them only once in a blue moon... I cannot imagine what I will do after downloading 30000 applications... Same thing about that 5 TB hard disk my good friend boasts about. 5 TB is a lot of space. If I fill it with movies, I will not be even able to watch it all in my life time, especially being in my current job.

So the world is hell bend on spoiling us with choices. Remember the good old days of Doordarshan? We used to wait for a week to watch a Malayalam movie, Rangoli or Chitrhaar! Once in DD national they started this top 10 song show called Ek Se Badhkar Ek. We were quite impressed by the show because all the popular songs were shown on a single episode. The hitch came during the second episode. My parents did not like it. They were asking what fun is there in watching the same 10 songs consecutively for two weeks. And next year we bought cable. Now around 5 channels played the same songs every half hour. And worst part is that we got used to it.

You know what I am longing for now? A world that is not so complicated, giving us infinite choices for every options that we have. For important options, it is good, a better job, a better study course, I don't mind a lot of options for these things. But for trivial needs do we require these much? Call me demented. I don't mind. I want only one TV channel that shows one quality program at a time. A library that issues one book selected randomly without telling me to choose from 50 titles of fluorescent colored jackets written by Danielle Steel. A movie theater with a single screen. An election candidate list with just two contestants to select from..

Panda Fighting His Past...

2011-06-06T12:58:00.000+05:30

Today I watched Kung Fu Panda 2, the sequel of the very funny movie about a Panda raising in the Kung Fu hierarchy to the coveted levels of Dragon Master. The sequel treads the similar lines of first part. But with some darker undertones. Still it is a fun watch and I will recommend it to any kid out there- from 1 to 100 year old!

This time Po, the dragon warrior Panda has to fight a peacock who is making evil scheme for domination! The Furious five constituting of Tigress, Monkey, Swan, Mantis and Viper are there to accompany him on his mission along with Master Shifu and two new masters Croc and Rhino. What complicates the plot is the nightmares which occurs to Po that is some how connected to his past and his tries to find out about them. Finally he realizes that his past is linked with the mission that he is involved in.

The animation is much more stunning than the first part. Fights are a treat to watch, plot and characters are well built. The cast is also too good. Jack Black, Jolie, Hoffman, Michelle Yeoh and Gary Oldman excels. But the other four in furious five, does not have much to do. It is a pity that Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu has just two or three piece of dialogue in the whole movie. This time they got Jean Claude Van Damme to give voice for Master Croc. But he is also terribly under used.

Another funny thing is that I happened to watch this comedy called Paul Blart: the Mall Cop today morning on TV, which is about an overweight security guard doing a Bruce Willis and protecting the mall that he is in charge from thieves. Kung Fu Panda 2 looks strikingly similar to this movie. Apart from the similarities of the leading characters, the vehicle that Po drives also seems to be inspired from the Mall Cop movie.

Chimeras: Stripping the legends

2011-06-05T12:51:00.000+05:30

Chimeras is an English play produced by One dot oh! and directed by Shrikrishna S, based on three short stories by Shashi Deshpande, shown at Rangashankara last week. It is a fusion of Dance and drama, the dance part choreographed by Chitra Aravind of Rhythmotion Dance Co.

All stories portrayed are derived from various instances in Mahabharatha, and in each one a character introspects the events unfolded in front of them, giving new insights into the epic. The dance performances interwoven in between, suitably adds to the narrative.

bangalore.citizenmatters.in

In the first story, Draupadi ventures into the hall were Krishna and Pandava princes are discussing their strategy of the imminent war against Kaurava. Abhimanyu's wedding with Uttara has just been over, and the talk of killing, destruction and the biggest war mankind has ever seen provides striking contrast to the mood. All are unilateral in their opinion that before war is commenced, a peace talk with Duryodhana has to be done, to avoid mutual killing. They propose Krishna to meet up with them and ask for half the kingdom. If they do not agree, at least for five villages. Draupadi is devastated after hearing about the peace talk. She feels she was the real casualty of the enmity with Kauravas and her husbands are not ready to give justice to her. She makes a monologue, exposing the cowardice of her five husbands and Krishna's double standards. Many ghosts of past comes out from the open Pandora's box. Her special love towards Arjuna, her disappointment when brothers decide to share her after hearing Kunti's words... But finally she comes to know of the futility of peace talk. She knows that they will not get anything out of that. She also comes to know that her husbands also know that and war is what they want. They are playing this game to make her and her revenge responsible to the imminent destruction.

In the second story, the war has come to a bloody end. All Kaurava princes except Duryodhana are dead. He fled the battle field and come near a dirty pond. His mind is all in turmoil. In the resulting monologue, he bears out his past jealousy and enmity towards Pandavas. And after he descends into the pond, a realization comes to him, that these are all superficial and what lies ahead is what that matters. That the real and final victory comes for the dead. Armed by this new found wisdom, Duryodhana comes out of the pond to fight the enemies and embrace death.

The third story happens some time after the war, Dhritharashtra and Gandhari gets ready to go to the jungle. Kunti decides to accompany them much to the dismay of others. Along with Sanjaya, they embarks on Vanaprastha. One day Kunti decides to leave the old couple so that they can spent some time for themselves and goes for a walk with Sanjaya. She thinks of the past events, from the time she married Pandu, her loveless marriage, sharing her husband with the more beautiful Madhuri, her children, birth of Karna, the many hardships they had to encounter. She confesses that her words to share Draupadi among her five sons was not accidental and a well thought plan to avoid them getting divided. She is amazed when Draupadi shows more affection to Gandhari after the war than to her and realizes that it is due to the fact that both Draupadi and Gandhari are childless and Kunti still has her five children safe. Through her talk to Sanjaya, we come to know that Kunti is not that silent, all suffering mother who always get sidelined. It is infact, many of the clever decisions that she took shaped up the history. Play ends when a wild fire engulfs the forest and Kunti sees her old companions ready to embrace death. She walks towards fire to join them.

The play is spell binding in many aspects. The acting, dance performances and stage setting all are perfect. The insightful dialogue makes strong impact. The play strips the mighty legends off the mystery that surrounds them and makes them share the pedestal with common people. The contemporary undertones of the play also cannot be ignored. Several parts especially in the first story makes you remember the conflict with our neighboring country.

Peter VS Dilbert: Principles Of Promotion

2011-06-04T16:24:00.001+05:30

Last day I was reading this article, thanks to the link shared through my blogger friend Nona's tweet. At one juncture, there is a mention about Peter Principle, which is regarding promotions in work place. I found the thought very striking and then started reading some more on that from Wikipedia and some other sources. I thought I will share what I came to know about Peter Principle as the idea can provoke some thought process.

Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull wrote a book in 1969, called Peter principle, in which they started a study of hierarchy or hierarchiology as they coined it. They came to this conclusion that, in any hierarchy every employee raises to his ultimate incompetency level. So after a period of time, the whole order will be a collection of incompetent members causing a downfall, unless fresh blood is not induced.

Pic Courtesy: frontierpsychiatrist.co.uk

Take the case in a work shop. A worker who performs very well in his job will be promoted to the next level, may be as a foreman. If he shows good skill as a foreman he will be promoted to a supervisor. But if he does not perform as a foreman, he will stay in that job for eternity. There is no way he may be willing to go back to his former level in which he excelled. So we have an incompetent foreman instead of a skilled worker. This same process happens in all levels. A good supervisor gets promoted to a manager, but gets stuck in the same level from then on, as he may not be having the guts to take a hard decision. So ultimately, promotions become a tool to lock people in a level where they are incompetent and employees in every level turns out to be people who are incompetent to perform.

Some months back I was reading Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (the creator of Dilbert comic strip). Dilbert principle postulates that promotions in work places are a way to take out incompetent people from the front line, pushing them to upper levels where they will not have a scope to inflict much damage, so that the work will be carried on without obstruction by competent personnel who will never reach any managerial positions because,

in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don’t want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren’t in management.

Pic courtesy: hannibalis.blogspot.com

The main difference between Peter and Dilbert principle is that in former it is assumed that a person was competent in doing some work in the past. But latter says that even without showing any level of competency in any past endeavors, one can get promoted and even goes as far to say that experts in a field will not get promoted as they are required to keep the work moving.

I feel that Dilbert principle is one way to cure the harms caused by Peter principle...

To Sir With Love: Memoirs of a Teacher..

2011-05-31T20:46:00.000+05:30

If you ask me which is tougher, public speaking or being a teacher, I would say the latter. Though public speaking can make you vulnerable and more dependent on the audience that you get, being a teacher has an additional responsibility. You have the responsibility to make an effect on the lives of kids you deal with. It is okay if you make an audience sleep. But it is a crime if you make your students do it.

If you had learned in high school in Kerala during my time, you may remember this English chapter about a black teacher getting an assignment to teach a class of undisciplined kids and how he makes them come his way. Well, it was a portion from this autobiographical novel named, To Sir With Love by E R Braithwaite and I happened to read it last weekend. I think that, if you are a teacher, or if you want to be one, this book can be a manual for you. No pedagogy or teaching techniques can help you make that positive change in kids, unless the basic, your principles, are right.

Braithwaite comes to England after a stint in army, to find a job. His color makes him wait for 18 months without a job and then he lands up to teach in a notorious school. The novel deals with how he singlehandedly influences the life of kids assigned to him. At first he uses the standard approaches of psychology without success, and then he starts treating them as how they are and slowly breaks the ice.

The book deals with the subtle racism prevalent in every cultured society, where people behave as if they are Martin Luther King personified, but changes color when they have to accept an outsider among them. It seems that the book is made into a movie with Sidney Poitier in lead. Should be a must watch movie...

The interview: Dirty corporations.

2011-05-28T20:26:00.000+05:30

Watched this play called The Interview, directed by Akash Khurana, and presented by Akvarious at Ranga Shankara last week. The play is an attempt to unveil the ugly face of hypocrisy in the corporate world. As the name indicates, the play chronicles the challenges a person has to face to secure a job in a corporation.

It starts with a nervous Karan waiting for the interview to start, like any other aspiring interviewee only to be bowled over totally once it starts. It starts well, with one peg of whiskey... but what do this crazy interviewer want from him... or is he ready to do what is expected of him?

The intention is good, acting keeps you engaged, but was that much hoohaa required?... Too much of slapstick comedy dilutes the effect.. for me at least. And I hated Keith... He was getting on my nerves.. May be that was the whole intention.

All in all it is watchable, but nothing special and a bit tiring...

Marquez's Demon Love...

2011-05-25T20:50:00.000+05:30

Of Love and Other Demons, another gem of a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez... This man is out of the world! He creates a world of his own that is so different, remote from reality, twisted, comic and funny, but so life like. That is what I like about his novels, right from One hundred years of solitude, which is the first of his that I read, to this one. The ability to make people and places and objects that are so different from those we see, and at the same time narrate the story in a way which makes us readers resonate with that.. Genius.

Of Love and Other Demons, which the author claims is a retelling of a legend heard from his grandmother, about a girl whose hair kept on growing after her death, is wrote after he witnessed the skeleton of a girl with very long hair attached to her skull in a grave yard. The story set in a Latin American port, chronicles the life and tragic death of Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, the daughter of a Marquis and a cocoa and sex addicted withered woman, who gets bit by a rabies affected dog and is believed to have got supernatural powers afterwards. The girl never got any affection from her disturbed parents and grown up among African slaves of her father. She could speak their languages, perform their rituals, could dress and behave like them.

After getting bitten by a dog that had rabies in her twelfth birth day, her father starts taking care of her, with the help of an impassioned doctor. But her father gets forced to leaving the girl in a convent, where the inmates hates her, for her supposedly super natural powers. Bishop decides to exorcise her and the duty falls on a scholarly priest, Cayetano Delaura. And they fall in love.

The novel, while on one side explores the themes of religious hypocrisy, on the other side tells a passionate love story that ends tragically. Unrequited love, which is an often important plot in Marquez novels, is portrayed here also. And there is a demonization of love here as the title "Love and OTHER demons" indicates. Love is a demon as the other (religious intolerance, superstitions) demons that destroys life...

GYM VILLE... Now in FaceBook

2011-05-22T19:17:00.000+05:30

Always aspired for that six pack figure? Wanted to be a size zero model and sport a sexy bikini? Here is a chance to do that! Hit Gym Ville in Face book and earn the body figure that you always yearned for! Without sweating a drop or enduring muscle pain.

Gym Ville is the latest social networking game that has hit the Face Book. You can develop your own virtual multi gym, with every kind of virtual accessories available in a regular, real world gym and more. You can choose your Avatar, make your own schedule with the help of a virtual trainer, work out and earn points for every pull up, push up and anything you choose to do! As you pile up the points, you can buy more equipments, decorate your gym or increase the size of your gym.

But the best part is that you can invite your friends to join you in work outs, hang around with them, visit their gym, help them in their work outs (extra points will be credited for this!), and even gift them a dumbbell or two!

So what are your waiting for? Hit Gym Ville right now, and sport that six pack figure that you always wanted...!

Now to decorate your Gym walls, we have made available the wall posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Khali, Rajni Kanth (morphed), Mamtha Banarjee and the likes... A wall poster will cost you only 10 points. (This option is locked for beginners. It starts from 3 packs onwards only.)

The Working of Multi Level Marketing Business for Dummies

2011-05-20T20:44:00.000+05:30

Last day one of my friend excitedly told me about a new scheme to make money. There is this company that sends us online surveys about various consumer products. You get Rs 500 per survey that you participates. You can earn up-to Rs 4000 a month. For starting you have to pay Rs 11000 and subscribe for their e magazine. So calculation is very simple, 4000 per month and from third month you are in profit. You can even have up to 7 IDs by paying 11000 each time you enroll again. That makes a cool 28000 per month. Also they have a referral scheme where you can refer friends as a chain below you and earn commission. Wow! I was bitten... There is at least one person I know who is really earning through it. Adverts are shown in news papers, on TV in between cricket matches. I am a fool if I let go this chance... After all, sitting idle and making dough is the best career option possible!

But after some moments of delusional thoughts of idle days, comfortable wears and sufficient funds to dine and lead a lavish retired life, my rational part of brain took control. Who will pay 500 rupees for a survey?.. I tried the maths once again. This time noted every thing down. And what I found was this:

Click to enlarge

What I did, was to assume a hypothetical situation where a company starts from scratch, with zero investors. On first month they make 100 members, who pays 11000 each, which makes a total of Rs 11 lakh. That month company need not pay anything. Surveys are distributed, and received back. Next month, the promised money is given to members. More people are referred by existing members. Considering each person makes two people to join the scheme, there are 200 more members in the end of second month.

The company collects Rs 2,200,000 out of which, it paid back 400,000 to previous month's members for taking surveys. Also as referral remuneration company pays some amount to those who referred new members. I am not very sure how much each person may get for this. But in this case, I take it 50% of the joining fee, which I feel is a huge return for the members. That makes it 5500 per new member. Total in second month 200 persons joined. A referral remuneration of Rs 1,100,000 is redistributed to 100 members. By second month company has earned for itself a total profit of Rs 12.5 lakh.

By this time you may feel that we can believe them. Isn't it? Out of 33 lakh rupees they collected, they returned back 20.5 lakh to the members. 62%...! Okay, let us move on till ten months, every month assuming double the amount of new members join through referral, surveys are filled promptly by members, money for surveys and referrals are distributed promptly by the company. By ninth month end, company made a profit of 8 crore change. But they have redistributed 48 crore change to its 51000 subscribers...

How do you feel now? A completely believable revenue model? An honest company that promptly pays its dues and delivers on its promise? Quite good. But, assume in the end of tenth month, they chose to close the shop, without paying a single paisa for its subscribers, and abscond with all collection done on that month. That month alone company gets 56 crore as fees from new members. With the 8 crore profit made in nine months, that is a whopping 64 crore rupees.

You may have noticed that I never mentioned in the table, the revenue generated to the company through the Online Surveys, which are filled by its members and which they are supposed to deliver to their clients. Well that is because there are no online surveys...! That was just a cover for the entire operation. All survey forms you filled out are resting in piece somewhere in the recycle Bin of the company server. Online surveys make the whole scam believable. We suppose that the company paid us for participating in surveys, but, actually they are returning just a portion of the money collected as the initial start up fee. With every new start up company gets a buffer time for 3 months. By the end of 3 months new members pump in more money. This will not go on for long. The bubble will burst some day. So before that happens, the company dissolves with all the funds...

Foot note: You might already have known the scheme about which I mentioned here. It is very popular these days. My intention here is not to tarnish the firm, as I have no personal enmity to any one involved in it. My intention is just to prove to the public that, the cover of online surveys that this company takes the help of IS A LIE. It IS possible to return the money back to the members or panelists as they calls them, ( bakras as I decipher the word) without generating a single paisa from online surveys or any other source. And if they are prompt in paying your remuneration back now, it is because they are waiting. They already told you a lie, and they won't be reluctant to cheat you. If they don't abscond by the tenth month, they may do it at twelfth, or may be in the second year. Because that the later it goes, it may get riskier, but the wealthier they becomes (as is evident from the table).

A Guy Thing: Analysing Being a Man...

2011-05-19T20:22:00.000+05:30

Being a man is one of the most stereotyped attributes around... A real man is believed to wear innerwear unwashed for a rather prolonged period of time, he leaves the toilet lid always up, watches foot ball or cricket or wrestling or any MANly sports event, has a stubble and may be a scar on his face that he claims to be the result of a fight with a foe whom he mercilessly vanquished, but which in reality is caused when his friend asked for a loan while he was shaving and he twisted his face to indicate a refusal. When someone behaves against the conventions, he is labelled as weak, infirm or in worst case queer. So many of us, acts according to the stereotype for pleasing others and ends up deep rooting the notions.

Last week this play called, A Guy Thing directed by Akash Khurana based on The Dirty Talk by Micheal Puzzo, presented by Akvarious was staged in Rangashankara. Basically this one explores the dilemma faced by the stronger sex, while they try to be the stronger. Do you have to live according to the conventions of the society, or have a life according the choice of your inner being?

The story takes place in a stormy night inside a cabin, somewhere in a remote place. A very masculine, brutal, abusive guy, Mitch is stranded there with Lino, a nerdy, feminine guy. Mitch's wife has just left him and he meet Lino who claims to be a woman, in an internet chat room. They have some very intimate moments on chat. Mitch gives the directions to his house and finds Lino there, instead of the blonde, sexy girl whom he thought he was chatting to. Furious, he accuses Lino of lying and even orders him to hide behind a dresser. They shouts and screams at each other throughout, accusing each other for telling lies, but finally opens up. A totally confused Mitch, who wants accomodate his wife in his life and at same time want his father to approve of his manhood, confess about the situation in which he had to breakup with his wife. Lino, who lives in the garage of his sister's house, and stalks internet chat rooms disguising his gender, for partners in sex, seems content and happy with his petty life. The play ends when Mitch starts seeing Lino with tolerance and even shows a nod of friendship.

The dialogues are funny and acting by Ali fazal and Neil Bhoopalam is excellent. Though initially, the characterisation seems much cliched, later on it is revealed to be intended. The play tries to make us look beyond stereotypes. The language is loaded with expletives, so a word of caution to those who are weak in that department... Watch at your own risk.

Jeffrey Archer's Hanging Tales...

2011-05-17T23:18:00.001+05:30

I had read in an interview with Jeffrey Archer that, every person in the world has a story to tell. And that is what he does with this delightful collection of short stories called And thereby hangs a tale. If you have been following my Blog for some time, you would have known by now that I am much fond of Archer. I feel he is a very good story teller. So this book has 15 tales happening around the world, some of them as I have told based on real stories that he heard from different people, some his own creation.

Now I will not say that all stories are really great, some are predictable, some are not so eventful to the casual reader's taste (like the Indian love story). But all the stories have a peculiar readability factor which keeps them on. My personal favorite among the lot is Stuck on you, where a couple, rich girl and poor boy, trying to steal an expensive piece of jewelery, a plot twist that was detectable miles before, but a climax that takes the breath out of you, where you think why did not I think of that one...

Another good one is that story of wannabe golf pro who settles in an island, leaving behind his family business, on the hope that one day greatness will dawn upon him. The drama, emotions, are just too good. I will recommend this one for a casual read.. Highly readable...

Three Diaries of Che Guevara.

2011-05-16T21:00:00.001+05:30

No introduction is needed for the Argentine revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara. Generations of youth worldwide, has always found his life an inspiration to rebel against countless social injustices and dictatorial administrations. Over last few months I happened to read three of Che's reputed diaries written at various periods of his life, that helps us to understands the kind of person he is, the circumstances that led him to take the step towards rebellion and the historic background of the struggles that he has undertaken.

The Motorcycle Diaries is the most popular of his diaries, and is also made into a critically acclaimed movie. This book is an account of the journey by Che and his friend Alberto Granado made while he was a medical student, on a weathered motorcycle named la Poderosa. The intention was to explore South America and by the end of nine month and 8000 kilometer long travel, Che had seen enough poverty and social injustice that he was willing to fight for poor. At the initial stages we can see that Che and his companion are in a youthful, reckless and carefree mood. But as the journey progress, they become more sombre. After seeing and experiencing the exploitation, poverty and related difficulties faced by mine workers, communists, lepers and common people, the writing style becomes more reflective. As the diaries are edited before publication, The motorcycle diaries is the most readable of the three.

Back on the road, or Otra Vez as it is popularly known, is the chronicle of another journey made by Che after he became a doctor. It covers most of South America. It is after this journey that he experiences poverty and oppression first hand and it is the end of this journey that he meet Fidel Castro, which is a major turning point in the history of South America. The journal entries are not edited and this makes the reading a bit boring, as there are pages and pages of diary entries where the descriptions of endless waits for visas and permission to enter neighboring nations makes the reading tedious. The journey exposes Che to the finding that South America is actually not a group of small nations, but a big country that is divided by several colonial powers. The union of all South American nations into a powerful country was his ultimate aim. By the end of the Journal, Che has turned to a full fledged revolutionary, as is evidenced by several unnamed letters to his mother.

The third diary, The African Dream, is a description of the failed revolutionary war in Congo, in which Che had participated with the help of Cuba, to overpower the US backed government. One peculiarity that has to be noted here, is that Che never tries to downplay the defeat he had to undergo, nor does he try to justify the wrong tactics he and his Cuban comrades used in the guerrilla war. As a true hero, he accepts his tactical and managerial failures. At the same time he clearly mentions the major reasons it. The attitude of Congolese revolutionaries, underlying corruption among their leaders and non- rebellious attitude of general population comes under severe criticism. Even though he dislikes Kabila, the main rebel leader of Congo, he knew Kabila was the only man who has the potential to rise as a leader. This prediction came true when Kabila became a ruler of Congo after decades.

The snack for nights...!

2011-05-15T10:50:00.000+05:30

Unagi Pie... A snack for nights!

That was written on the dark red box kept on the top of the cupboard. Unagi...? It is not the first time that I am hearing the word. In that ancient episode of Friends, Ross tries to impress the girls demonstrating a Japanese martial art technique called Unagi. Later they find out he is bluffing and actually Unagi is a Japanese delicacy made of fish, much like Sushi.

Last week, we had a group of Japanese delegates visiting our firm, who had gifted some cookies that we all shared among ourselves. I googled and found Unagi is a fresh water eel found in Japan, which they use in cooking a wide variety of delicacies, from Pizza to pie... We have some pure vegetarians in our place, and if they knew that they have eaten fish, even unknowingly, it may prove a bit embarrassing for them. If they have seen the pics of live Unagi that I have googled, even non vegetarians will have a bit discomfort.

Unagi: Live and uncut!

When I confronted the person who distributed the 'cookies' and explained him of my discovery, he replied with a mischievous smile that he had felt something fishy while eating it. I left the matter there. My sincere condolences to all those unsuspecting vegans in my work place who had a taste of this wonderful cookie. (BTW I was not able to find out why did they advertise it as a snack for nights...)

Source Code: Cerebral Entertainment

2011-05-09T20:03:00.000+05:30

After the success of Inception, I think many aspiring movies in a similar line has started appearing. Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones is such a wannabe. Source code is a sci fi movie about a pilot going back into 8 minutes of past again and again to solve a crime, each time getting a missing piece of the jigsaw.

The movie starts with a man waking up inside a moving train, unable to remember how he got there, in a stranger's body. There is a friendly lady beside him and a group of commuters around. After 8 minutes, the train explodes. He awakes in a capsule. Then he realizes he is working for a program called Source Code where he has to locate the bomb and the bomber by living again the same situation, for exactly eight minutes, till he completes his mission. Each time he goes back, he finds a bit more about bomb, bomber, his own past and Source Code.

It is a well made movie, with enough plot twists to make you glued till the end. It makes you remember the German movie Run Lola Run, in which Lola lives 20 minutes of her life 3 times when she tries to save her boyfriend with different outcomes each time. Jake Gyllenhaal does a fabulous act as the confused army pilot who has to go through a tragedy many times a day. His acting has a boyish charm that really gives the otherwise serious movie a tone of normalcy. Vera Fermiga, as the lady who supervises and guides Jake, also gives a commendable performance. I did not like the acting of the scientist who invented Source Code. He hams pathetically.

If you like to exercise your brain a bit along with getting entertained, jump into Source Code and have fun...

Fast Five: In the City of God...

2011-05-08T21:18:00.000+05:30

Pic courtesy: okmagazine.com

Watching Fast Five, the latest installment of The Fast and The Furious franchise is pure fun. The movie is total adrenalin rush, chases, superb locale, well choreographed action sequences.. a viewer's pleasure. Some may complain of wooden acting of the cast, but that was expected. Even, in this movie, there is no great scope of exhibiting any great skills other than some very emotions like rage, angst, sorrow, which all the concerned actors does somewhat convincingly.

This time Vin Diesel and party have absconded to Rio, capital of Brazil. They take up a job of stealing cars from a moving train. They screws up badly causing the death of some American DEA agents. Now Brazilian police and a gang lord of Rio (Joaquim de Almeida) are behind them . To add masala to the proceedings, a tough American DSS special agent (played by Dwayne Rock Johnson) arrives to apprehend Diesel and Paul Walker. They decides to take up one last job, robbing Almeida of all the cash he earned illegally and recruits a team, consisting of guys from the previous installments of the movie (Remember Tyrese Gibson from the second part, 2 Fast 2 Furious?). Rest of the movie is a superb cat and mouse game involving all these players.

The best thing about the movie is that it never strays from its basic premise, providing some raw action viewing pleasure. The refrain from depending totally on car chases is notable, may be due to the introduction of Rock's character. And that has to be accepted as a masterstroke. Rock totally dominates the scene whenever present. The confrontation scenes with him and Diesel are electric. Another strong point is visuals. Rio is vibrating, beautiful and threatening at the same time. One cannot, but remember that masterpiece City of God, though there is no comparison between both. One weak point I feel is the anti hero, who is never threatening nor convincing. And also the similarity it shares with similar movies like Italian Job and Ocean's series.

The director Justin Lin should be given credit for making this one with enough explosions and breakneck speed so as the audience never tries to think what is wrong with all these men committing such absurd things.

Fight Club

2011-05-05T20:18:00.000+05:30

After a night in fight club, everything in the real world gets the volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off. Your word is law, and if other people break that law or question you, even that doesn't piss you off.

The unnamed narrator, a product recall officer in a car company, goes to cancer patient meets to get a cure for insomnia that is tormenting him. He meets Marla Singer there. Another day he meets Tyler Durden. When his apartment is blown in an explosion, he moves with Tyler's home, in return of which all Tyler asks is a fight. Thus begins fight club. White collared executives arrives there after work, fights each other and goes back with bruises and wounds. Then Tyler rescues Marla from death, much to the irritation of the narrator. Slowly fight club develops. Different chapters open in many cities and Tyler starts something sinister. He wants to spread anarchy.

I wanted to burn the Louvre. I'd do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now. This is my world, my world, and those ancient people are dead.

Thus forms Project Mayhem, a group of fight club members under Tyler, who want to destroy the modern civilization. Narrator starts to get uncomfortable with the ever increasing anarchy belted out by Project Mayhem. And then dawns the realization that changes every thing...

Chuck Palahniuk's modern classic Fight club, is difficult to read for faint hearted. It is violent, graphic and disturbing. It is a war cry against a world that is gripped by corporations, spreading consumerism amongst common people for their profit. Fight club itself is an idea against the formal style of white collared executives. Imagine a well dressed, well mannered executives arriving for work with a nasty gash on face, puffed lips and a hole on his cheek!

Read this novel at your own risk. One this is for sure, if you can get the plot, it may grip your throat...

Image courtesy: http://www.fightclubquotes.com/

Necessary Targets

2011-05-04T18:33:00.000+05:30

If you are keen on watching plays, you would have surely heard about, Vagina Monologues, an award winning, smash hit play written by Eve Ensler, a monologue on stage, endorsed by many celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg, Glenn Glose and Mallika Sherawat in India. Last week in Ranga Shankara, Bangalore, they organised a screening of Necessary Targets, another play written by same author.

Basically, Necessary targets follows the same often repeated theme of difficulties facd by civilians, especially women, during war. What makes it different is the presence of stark realism and the absence of any dogma that may cloud the minds of viewer. Directed by Prakash Balwadi, the play boasts of some exceptionally talented array of actors.

It is the story of two women, J S, a middle aged, matured, psychiatrist and Mellissa, a hyper active, ambitious, experianced (though young) journalist who goes to a refugee camp for providing counselling to the trauma affected women there. The refugees never bothers to pour their mind to them as the experts thought they would do. But as time passes, J S builts a relationship with the women and starts finding the answers of trouble she has in her life.

Image courtesy: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloid/glam-sham/gripping-tale-refugees-842#comment-10265

Perils of Participatory Journalism

2011-05-01T21:22:00.000+05:30

Some years back, I was having a discussion about self- help books with one of my close friends. (AK, your moment of glory..:-) ) Both of us used to read self- help books a lot and the discussion was about the effect that they had on us. Finally we came to a conclusion that although we read and forget them, or unsuccessfully try to copy the ideas given in them in life, after some time, some of these principles, stays with us. We uses them in life, without recognizing where we learned them, and that ultimately is the use of self help books.

I could not forget this conclusion that we came to, while reading A J Jacob's book "My Experimental Life". A J Jacob calls himself a participatory journalist. The kind that participates or takes the lead role in the stories done by them. A J does experiments with his life, subjecting himself to a different way of living, or an amusing experience, to write about it later. For his first book, he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z and for his second one he lived exactly as per Bible for a year. And this one, is a collection of nine weird things that he did with his life.

The experiments are taken up for various causes, some came as a challenge, like pausing nude like a porn star, while some came as suggestions form readers, like a month of total obedience to his wife. Some of them like living according to the philosophy of Washington, deciding to take rational decisions (he checked about 30 tooth pastes to find out the one that is really good, because he felt that the choice he took was not due to a rational decision), or being radically honest were taken up when he read about them and wanted to absorb these principles in life. Some were spontaneous decisions, like duping a popular star in the Academy awards venue, to know the life of a celebrity and outsourcing his life, private and professional, to a firm in India (even arguing with wife and worrying about deadlines). Living the double life of a beautiful lady was started to get a good match for his nanny.

What is interesting is the lessons learnt from all these being a human Guinea pig experiments, taking what is useful and ignoring others.. a very interesting, humorous and comic read... Check out for the video interview with the author here.

Me & Meri Maggi Moments... spoofed!

2011-04-27T21:33:00.000+05:30

I was staying over at a friend's place and for breakfast he made Maggi noodles. It is a long time since I had Maggi noodles, and for the first time on the packet I saw these Me & Meri Maggi stories. A very brilliant idea to advertise a brand that has been around for two and a half decades. Captured by the everyday-ness and simplicity of them, I went on a hunt in internet to find more stories that adorn different Maggi packs. And then I thought of this post, where different imaginary people recall their Maggi moments:

Me & Meri Hawala wala Maggi:

Satyanarayan, Hawalapur

I am a hawala agent and I regularly travel a lot with cash and you know how tough a task is to transfer money through Hawala. If someone robs me I cannot even complain to police. I do not even have food from restaurants, as there is this risk involved. Any time I am on road with money, I totally depend on my favorite brand of easy cooking food.. Maggi... Who can forget all those mornings, afternoons and midnights, sitting in a corner of bus stand or railway station, enduring the bites of mosquitoes, always scared of arrest, enjoying the warm, just cooked Maggi...

Me & Meri Supari Wala Maggi:

Moosabhai, Dharavi

In Mumbai, every one knows me... one and all fears the name of Moosabhai. When even a dog dies in Mumbai in a road accident, police suspects the hands of Moosa... And what do I like...? Garama garam Maggi noodles with thin chops of mutton spread on it... I still remember that rainy day, after just finishing a supari, (was it that Marwari builder or that rogue Eda Anna of Chhota Fakhir gang? You see it is difficult to recollect the details when the dhanda is going very busy.) I was back in my adda with chokre log... and Langda Raju made Maggi and Masala chai... waah!

Me & Meri Corruption wala Maggi:

Leader Swayam Bhojan Paandey, Dilli.

We are the servants of the people and we have to keep up an image in front of them. If some one finds out that the amount I gobbled up is a penny less than my precessor, what face I will show them... I have to face them after five years and they will be with me only if I show them I can bribe their votes. Jan Sevaks has to go through many tough ordeals in their life and to show that I am with the people I eat people's food whenever I am eating in public. That is why on any meetings or Baithak, I make a point to eat a bowl of Maggi in front of cameras.

Conrad's Secret Agent: On terrorism and politics

2011-04-25T20:42:00.000+05:30

Joseph Conrad's haunting novel, The Secret Agent, written in early twentieth century is one of the front runners of spy novels. Probably it was the first time that politics and terrorism makes a major appearance in this genre. Even for Conrad, this was a first. More than suspense or thrills, the novel concentrates on the psychology and motives of perpetrators and those involved in the story with varying degrees of guilt.

Courtesy: fantasticfiction.co.uk

This is the story of Verlock, who is a shop keeper, a family man and a secret agent for a foreign country, settled in London. He is a mole in the group of anarchists, interacting and spying on them. One day his boss calls him to office and gives him a mission- to commit a terrorist act on a building of Science so that people will think this is the work of anarchists and they will lose their public support. This mission creates ripples in the life of every one connected - Verlock, his family, anarchists, politicians, police officers, thus starting off a cycle of events getting more and more complicated by the plotting and sub plotting by all involved, to manipulate events to their personal benefit.

Major themes of the novel are terrorism and anarchism, which is pretty much contemporary even after a hundred years. But if you closely look, the novel implies the hands of external forces in such events. In the novel anarchists does not do any big crime and most of them, except the character Professor, (whom I suspect is a wise but psycho kind of guy) does not have the will power or guts to carry out any atrocity. But it is the people in high positions, who manipulates middle men like Verlock, for whom the job of secret agent is a mode to sustain his life, an employment, and makes them commit things they will never do or even think to do in their right minds.

The novel is superbly written with some wonderful characters, but a bit depressing, unevenly paced and much dark. So be prepared if you plan to read it...

By night in Chile...

2011-04-22T20:33:00.000+05:30

I will never tell you that this novel, by Chilean writer Roberto Bolano is a classic one, or that, if you have not read this one, you can jump in a handful of water and die.

I will never tell you that this is a novel that I will read many times, over and over, in many years that I may walk on this planet earth and get the same pleasure that I got the first time I read it.

I will never tell you that this novel will teach you how to lead a fruitful life or will give you any message on leading a fruitful life.

I will never tell you that this book will touch your heart, or will make you cry.

But

I will tell you that this book, the death bed rants of an old cleric, can connect to your life somewhere, like when you decided to put your ideology to rest and decide to flow with the community, or when your individuality took a dip in popularity and your alter ego which judges others became the mask that describes you...

I will tell you that this incoherent rants of a wanna-be poet, who became a priest, who then became a lap dog of rich and famous, shedding ideology in the winds of opportunism... may be your story too.

Meeting of East and West

2011-04-20T21:16:00.001+05:30

I have always liked Salman Rushdie from the time I read Midnight's children last year. What I really appreciate is that he established European sensibilities in Indian novel, that resulted the reading of Indian novel to be taken seriously by the intelligentsia throughout the world. It is arguable whether any other Indian novelist has seriously pursued the way opened up by Rushdie. Late Malayalam novelist O V Vijayan has written something in a similar vein, but writing in a regional language has its own limitations and is always under appreciated.

East, West by Rushdie is a collection of nine short stories, divided into three sections, East, West and East West. As the name indicates, the story telling in each section is in the respective styles and in the final one you can find the real genius of the author, when he treads the middle way where the story telling of Scheherazade and Panchatantra meets that of Boccaccio and Shakespeare.

In section East, the first story is called Good advice is rarer than rubies, in which a defrauder falls for a lady whom he tries to cheat off her money. In the story Free Radio, the government's attempt of compulsory family planning at the times of Emergency is portrayed. In the last story The prophet's hair, a strand of prophet Mohammed's hair that goes stolen creates trouble in a wealthy family. All the stories, though very subtly are social satires told in a very simple language in true eastern story telling tradition.

In the section West, the first story Yorick is a retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet, giving it a twist. Second story, At the auction of ruby slippers, refers to the slippers of Dorothy in The wizard of Oz. Third one, Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their Relationship, is a fictional account of Christopher Columbus' advances to Queen Isabella before he was commissioned for his historic journey.

Third section, East West, has also three stories, that I feel is the best in the collection. The Harmony of Spheres is a journey into the head of a schizophrenic and his occult journeys. Chekov and Zulu is a satiric take on star wars and the position of third world countries. It also subtly refers the death of Indira Gandhi and the repercussions on Sikh community after that.The Courter, the best one in the collection is a story about the relation between an old Ayah, Certainly-Marie and the courtier, Mecir, who happens to be a chess grand master in exile!

Satire is the tone of most of the stories and what takes the breath out of an unsuspecting reader is the astonishing range of plots, techniques and conventions that Rushdie employs in his story telling. A must read...

Regeneration of action stars

2011-04-17T18:52:00.000+05:30

I watched this movie called Universal Soldier: Regeneration, today morning on TV. Watching a simple, formulaic B-movie on a lazy Sunday morning is a pleasure. The expectation was almost nil, as the movie is probably fifth part of Van Damme's original Universal Soldier that released while I was a kid. The starting gave of the movie gave away the cheap budget of Van Damme movies these days. But I stayed on with it and what turned out was a very decent action thriller, with lot of good fights, some decent acting and quite an ok plot, which is more to ask these days from aging action stars like Van Damme, Dolph Lundgran, Seagal and the likes.

Some terrorists kidnap Russian premier's kids, and threaten to blow up Chernobyl reactor unleashing nuclear cloud if their demands are not met. Aiding them is a next generation Universal soldier played by Andrei Arlovski. In order to save the day Luc Deveraux (Van Damme, who is also a universal soldier if you have bothered to watch the former installments) is revived and retrained. Unknowing to all, the terrorists have managed to get hold of another more lethal and mentally unstable Universal Soldier Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren, Luc's arch nemesis in first part) who wreaks havoc within the militants. The rest of the movie is how Luc barges into the camp and manages to avert the nuclear disaster, rescue the children, kill the bad men and save the day.

The movie is pure B grade fun. Lot of kicking, punching, explosions, blood and gore. Fights are gritty and choreographed superbly, overall direction is good, the tension is not too tight, but rather fun to watch. The background music a bit retro and complements the setting. The three Uni Sols- Van Damme, Lundgren and Arlovski has enormous screen presence. The supporting actors are fantastic. Overall this is the best effort from Van Damme and Lundgren in recent times.

About acting of the lead pair- I don't think it is necessary for them to act much. Critics may crib about the wooden acting of action heroes, but they are not here for contesting Oscars. Remember Adrian Brody tried going macho in Predators and failed miserably? So let the qualified men do their jobs. Let us enjoy it..

The 39 Steps (a play): Hilarious Hitchcock..

2011-04-14T18:24:00.001+05:30

Pic courtesy: goodliver.wordpress.com

Hitchcock is associated with serious, shocking, thrilling visuals. And "The 39 Steps" is one of the most acclaimed movies the ace director has made and is considered to be an influence on his later works. So when this movie is remade on stage, as a farce, it may generate quite a stir among purists. "The 39 Steps" play, written by Patrick Barlow, is quiet successful as a spoof of the movie and numerous other movies of spy and thriller genre. Last Sunday, the Indian version of this play, a joint venture of Evam and Radaan, was shown at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore. An attempt which have, as they tell before the show:

Sex appeal, fights, Scotland Yard, love, betrayal, car chases, silk stockings, French men, English women and murder..

The 39 steps, is an attempt to show a whole movie, scene by scene on stage... What is the big deal..? Four lead actors plays around 140 characters, with great comic timing and imaginative narration! Several scenes require very imaginative setting, like a stage show or a scene involving the hero jumping from a moving train, which they convincingly portrays with considerable skill and ease.

The play starts with a bored Richard Hannay, deciding to do something great, eventful, historic and brave that day and finally decides to watch a play. He attends the performance by Mr Memory, who has an ability to recall any trivial facts from memory. A fight breaks out and our hero finds himself accompanying a beautiful Annebella Schmidt to his flat. She says about a secret plan named 39 steps, by a militant to steal military secrets out of Britain. That night she is killed and Hannay is the suspect. He sneaks out and travels to Scotland. Pursued by police and militants alike, he embarks on a cat and mouse journey that ends finally in Mr Memory's program in London where in a final show down, secrets are revealed.

Pic courtesy: go-nxg.com

Hannay is played by the lead actor, Naveen Balachandran, three other women who falls for him are played by Renu Abraham and other two actors, Karthik and Sunil, play every other characters like milkman, maid, farmer, villain, sheep, police, passengers and even some non living objects like trees and bushes with chameleon like ease, sometimes just by a change of the hat. (That train sequence is just hilarious.) Scenes from several other movies are also spoofed fleetingly. The motel in Psycho, chase with plane in North By Northwest, King Kong, Matrix...

I would recommend not missing this one... So next time it is in town, get on the 39 steps...

Camus' Outsider: Brutally Honest.

2011-04-11T19:35:00.000+05:30

What will be your attitude towars an honest person? Someone who always stick to his emotions rather than behave how the society wants him to? Someone who will die for truth rather than bow to the wishes of society and save his skin? According to the famous writer Albert Camus, such a person will be executed by the society.

In our society, any man who doesn’t cry at his mother’s funeral is liable to be condemned to death.

And it is to demonstrate this point that he wrote this small, but striking novel called The Outsider (The Stranger in some other translations). The Outsider is a story of Meursault, a young Algrian guy, who lives his life just like any other ordinary person. The only way he is different is that he is indifferent, he does not feel regret about his actions, nor is he passionate about anything. His life is just a procession of events, in which he just participates. When his mother died, he went for the funeral, but does not show any emotion of grief. After some days he kills an Arab who had picked a fight with his friend. He is put on trial. The trial which has to be concentrated on murder, the crime he did, diverts its course when the prosecutor implies that he is a monster because he did not cry in his mother's funeral. And death sentence is awarded to him as the jury finds it hard to show mercy to a person who is devoid of regret or grief. The novel ends when he purges out his hidden fury on a priest who came to show him the path of God just before his execution.

The whole court and the world was waiting for Meursault to break down and show regret for his deed, but he was not ready to be untruthful and show an emotion that he never felt. And they went on to demonize him. And Meursault was ready to die for truth, his truth, which was never parallel with the views of a civil society.

Parliamentary System and the cure it needs...

2011-03-31T21:02:00.000+05:30

Picture courtesy: socialcause.org

In India, the largest democracy of the world, there is a very curious development going on. The business is booming like never before, many new entrepreneurs are entering and reaping huge benefits by efficiently managing their firms. At same time, the governance is depreciating in an equal rate. Our government, that is of, by and for the people, is day by day sinking to lower levels. Corruption and mis-governance is deep rooted in the psyche of an average politician. Arun Shourie's book The Parliamentary System, tries to uncover the reasons behind this phenomenon.

Arun Shourie is one of the leading political commentator India has seen. He had shown his mettle in independent and powerful write ups that rips apart the hypocrisy of politicians and bureaucrats alike. He had shined as the disinvestment minister in Vajpayee led NDA government and did some good work by selling off non profitable white elephants like Maruti and VSNL.

Last week I had written a post on the book by Tavleen Singh, Political and incorrect. Many questions are asked in it about the poor state our country finds itself in. This book tries to answer them by analyzing the working of our Parliamentary and electoral system.

The biggest advantage our system has, as per the makers of it and the leaders who came to forefront through it, is that it gives mandate to those who are favored by the people. Majority of the people decides who has to rule them, and how to rule them. But Shourie shows us this is not the case! By analyzing the election results from several years, it is visible that 99% of our Legislatures are elected by less than 50% of voters, and majority of them commands the favor of just 7-10% of total votes polled. Shourie dissolves the myth of majority representation in our parliament. Precisely this character of our system has given rise to much of the problems surrounding us like increasing corruption (the travelling dacoit concept), minority/regional favoritism and criminalization of politics.

Picture courtesy: connect.in.com

When the electorate is splintered, as is the case now, getting the favor of a minority of voters can turn an aspiring politician victorious. This leads to over dependence on minority and regional politics and ultimate weakening of national parties. The final result is collective bargaining, as can be seen from the case of Tamil Nadu, where regional parties are strong enough to have a hand in decision making in center, even leading to the collapse of the Central government in many issues!

The book also deals with the attempt to make the judiciary powerless by amending the constitution by Legislative to their convenience. Detail description is given about the times of Indira Gandhi, the government considering itself sovereign and curbing the power of judiciary to interfere in its proceedings, when the seat of Indira was threatened by a ruling by Allahabad High court. This sabotaging of the power of Judiciary, showing the paper tiger of people power (the truth of which we already saw) caused much harm to the system.

The book is not just complaining or lamenting on the situation we have made ourselves in. Arun Shourie also prescribes a cure, by changing the system, without harming the basic principles of constitution. By ensuring that the candidates in an election has capabilities to perform their real role, governance, and the winning person has the support of majority of voters (>51%), the system can be made efficient to some extent. Increasing the power of Executive and Judiciary and by reducing the bargaining power of minorities and regional political parties, corruption will curb down.

I would recommend this book to every Indian who always feels, why we are the way we are. It is a tedious read, but worth at the end of the day...

Happy reading...

A farewell to arms: Apolitically anti war

2011-03-27T21:44:00.000+05:30

A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway is perhaps one of the most unromantic, unsentimental novel I have ever read. This does not make it dull or boring. On the contrary, this semi autobiographical work is a gritty, realistic portrayal of men and ladies serving in war, their struggles and cynicism.

Image from the site: readitcookit.wordpress.com

Basically a tragic love story, set during world war 1, this is a first person account of Frederic Henry, an American, working for the ambulance unit of Italian army. He falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine Berkley. He gets wounded and is moved to the same hospital where she works. By the time he is healed, she get pregnant. Henry is termed a deserter during one retreat and gets interrogated by battle police who wants to execute them. He escapes and gets to Catherine. Both of them escapes to Switzerland and spend some good time there. But during child birth, Catherine and newborn baby dies. Henry walks back to his hospital in rain.

The novel does not preach the devastations of war, nor does it portrays exaggerated sufferings of soldiers and civilians involved in it and is in no way a political statement. Even the major tragedy in the climax cannot be directly traced to the effect of war. Still this novel very subtly shows the anguish created by war, in the minds of those affected. The casual banter among soldiers, Henry's duologue with the priest, all are efforts to forget the dooming end the war can have on them. Even the love affair sometimes feels as a cover to remove the reality for some time from the minds of lovers.

On other news, I watched these two delightful movies: Malayalam movie Pranchiyettan and the Saint and Tamil movie Adukalam.

The first one is a satire, about the idiocies men will do to attain some fame and recognition. Mammotty stars as Francis, who is a wealthy business man, with only one sorrow. He don't get the recognition that other well educated members of his society enjoys. He tries to get it through many ways and all backfires. The format of the movie is very interesting. He meets St Francis in a church and he describes his story to him. Finally he realizes the fallacy of his attempts. Mammotty steals the show with his antics as Aripranchi (as Francis is called in his community).

The second one belongs to that numerous Madurai movies hitting movie screen after the success of Paruthiveeran. Adukalam tells the story of cock fighting in interiors of Madurai. The main achievement of this movie is the blending of artistic and commercial elements so beautifully. Dhanush and all the supporting cast does a good job.

Take Your Cross, Follow Me.. On Twitter!

2011-03-22T22:05:00.001+05:30

After reading my last post on writing bestsellers, one blogger friend suggested writing about Tweet craze... and follows this one..

"This post is dedicated to all the leaders dethroned in Egypt and Tunisia, thanks (partly) to twitter campaigning and to one leader from India who ranted on twitter forgetting his position and got kicked out sometime back."

Jesus had just 12 followers... whereas I have 1.2 million of them...- Charlie Sheen

Charlie Sheen holds the Guinness world record for reaching 1 million followers in record time... Charlie Sheen! Of all people.... Where the world is heading? Sheen, who is considered the bad boy of Hollywood, who went on from acting in classics like Apocalypse Now and Platoon to B graders like Terminal Velocity to C graders like Hot Shots and Scary movie 4, (not even the first part, mind it!) entered televised serials and managed to get kicked out of even there, has more than a million followers. Not only that, he gets paid for tweeting.. and his followers earns him money reading his product endorsements... (These days I believe about apocalypse in 2012.)

Followers used to be disciples who closely observe a teacher, living with him, learning from him, imbibing his philosophy into their life and using their life to spread his message. Like Vivekananda, 12 disciples of Jesus, (ottukodutha Yudasum, thallipparanja Pathrosum adakkam) and Asoka, they are special, dedicated individuals, hell bent on a cause. But in Tweet-world, (most of the) followers are peeping toms, getting Voyeuristic pleasure in observing the private life of celebrities and ogling. And tweet wisdom, as I had mentioned in an earlier post, is like a droplet on the leaves of an early morning... dies when sun shows up. Forgettable...

The only good thing about tweets is that fame seeking celebrities can use it as a platform to stay in limelight. When you don't have work to show tweet something outrageous. And it is splashed all over the next day. This has made many a gossip mongering journos virtually jobless. Previously stars did not have a platform to tell their part of the story. There was every possibility of whatever they say being convoluted to suit the requirement of press. Twitter is a swift blow for them.

These days another bad trend is catching up- of Trending topics. Many people think trending topics are the pulse of thought of people all over the world. They makes their marketing strategies based on them, makes news stories out of them only to be fooled when the interest fades and they fall into oblivion. Last few days the leading trending topic is a 13 year old singer, Rebecca Black, who shot to some fame after posting songs on Youtube. then the parents planned to cut a video of the singing child and it backfired. The song was so bad and idiotic that tweets has not stopped flowing from all over the world condemning the poor child. Some even mentions killing her... Gross...

Incorrect Politics..

2011-03-18T20:53:00.000+05:30

Tavleen Singh is a famous journalist who covers national politics for newspapers like Indian Express and India Today. Political And Incorrect: The real India Warts and All, is a collection of columns she had written in last two decades, from 1987 to 2007. As it is a collection of political essays written when the actions are unfolding, the reading becomes much interesting. The changes that our country went through in two decades, from inefficient Nehruvian socialism, with licence raj and all, to Rao and Manmohan Singh's brave opening of barriers causing the uplifting of economy, the failure of every successive governments to do their basic job, governing and the inefficiency in dealing and finding any solution for our major crisis, Kashmir and imported terrorism is elaborated...

The views expressed by the writer are very much out of politics. Her major grievance towards most of the successive governments is their disinterest to govern and wasting valuable time in trivial political matters which in no way is useful to the public who elected them, in first place. But at the same time, she condemns the government's effort to find a solution to Kashmir, which is basically a political issue, by giving them better governance. There are articles about the pseudo secularism of Congress and Leftist parties, that the author feels, is the main reason for the rise of Hindu extremism. Another point she elaborates much in these essays is the dependence on dynasty politics and the adverse effects it had and even has now on Indian subcontinent. The book asks lots of questions to politicians, media and common men on the current state of affairs.

I would strongly recommend this book to every Indian (especially to our leaders) to know where we have faulted in past and how we can improve.

How to write a bestseller with minimal effort...

2011-03-09T21:53:00.002+05:30

Recently I happened to read a wonderful blog post by my blogger friend, in which, after getting inspired by a German bestseller, she was planning to write a book on the life of a cleaning lady. After reading this one, I too felt a sudden urge to be an author of a best seller.

There are many advantages of being a best selling author. You can give your valuable (?) opinion on any matter below the sky- politics, terrorism, fashion, movies- you name it!... Whatever stupidity that you say will have a seal of authenticity. Press wallas will be anxiously waiting for any thing that falls from your lips, that can be put on front page and made a controversy of. Only skill you should have is to tell things that are shocking at face value and by which at least the sentiment of one national party or religion should get wounded. There will be much revolt and bashing against you on media and public, but there is no need to panic, because you will be safe behind the veil of "Freedom of Speech".

Another best thing is that you can have your book made into a movie. Your celebrity status will touch the sky if it happens. And definitely that low-head who ventures to rewrite your master piece on to celluloid will take some liberties and you can sue him and his producer. Like, in your story, the hero will be riding a vintage Rolls Royce through the streets of Norwegia, but producer, unsuccessful to get hold of the former and unable to locate the latter on an atlas, decides to change it to a Volkswagen in Switzerland. You can shout on the roof tops that your story is compromised and it is totally butchered. Even if this does not give you an immediate financial gain, because you will surely lose the verdict, as, any judge, who has at least a naya paisa worth grey cells inside his head (and who is definitely not an avid reader of yours, like millions of like minded public with a sound intelligence), can see through your claim, it can give you much coverage in media and you can always don that victim look.

But writing a book is not an easy task. It needs at least some minimum effort. From finding a topic, to finally getting a publisher, (this issue does not come if you have a best seller in your name already.) the energy, money and time to spent is huge. You can rent a ghost writer, but shouldering the weight of a ghost throughout your life is not an easy task. What if he blackmails later? (Most probably this will not happen, because if any one claims that he is behind that "obnoxious weed" of a novel, public will take care of him.)

Then I came upon this news story. A professor in Britain, wrote this book titled, " What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex (Blank Inside)", which is 200 pages long, but totally blank! You are not surprised? OK, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking about Lajja (Shame)by Taslima Nasreen. To make record straight, let me clarify. It is not blank as that novel. This one is actually, totally white. Not even an ink stain in any of those 200 pages! The professor painstakingly researched for decades and finally came to the conclusion that men thinks of nothing apart from sex. So he went ahead and "wrote" this masterpiece, which became an instant hit through Monster.com.

Now the easiest way to make some quick bucks is to translate this book into 56 other languages (like the advertisement for Paulo Coelho's Alchemist). But there is no scope here, because the author is translating the book himself to 56 other languages, with the help of Google translator and he says it is far more difficult than his research of two decades. (When the last update came he is working on 56th translation and plans to google search and find any other language is left.)

But I have certain topics that can be used for writing best sellers like this in an Indian context. "What politicians think, apart from Corruption" will be good for a start. Another one can be "Harish's Mammoth list of sincere politicians". Equally profitable titles will be

"Intelligent thoughts of Rakhi Sawant",

"Aiswarya's Thought worthy quotes",

"Acting techniques from Fardeen Khan"

"Success story of Piyush Chawla"

"Safe ways of travelling in Bangalore"

.... so on and so forth...

Ip man: A Martial Arts Biopic

2011-03-07T20:07:00.001+05:30

Ip man or Yip man as he is some times known, was a master martial artist who taught Wing Chun to public for the first time. He was the teacher of several well known martial artists, the most famous being Bruce Lee. I happened to watch this Chinese martial art movie Ip man, partially based on the life of legentary master. I love the genre from a long time. Actually before watching Hollywood flicks, I had been a regular viewer of Hong Kong action flicks, especially that of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Movies like Big Boss, Operation Condor, Shaolin Temple, Iron Monkey and Drunken Master used to amaze me with the lightning fast, gravity defying action.

Donnie Yen in the movie

Ip man, although a biopic, follows the regular Kung fu movie pattern. The fights and drama are a bit restricted, but the overall style is like a Wong Fei Hung legend.

Ip man leads a peaceful life in Fushan with his wife and kid. Though many adverseries come to test his talent, he is reluctant to exhibit his skills, as his wife does not like it. But everyone acknowledges that he is the best. And then bad times strike. Japanese invade China, and Ip man becomes homeless like thousands of fellow Chinese. He works as a laborer. A Japanese general is hell bent on arranging fights with his soldiers and Chinese, and many Chinese masters take up the oppertunity to kick some Jap ass. The death of his good friend and another fellow master on the hands of Jap soldiers causes Ip to retaliate. General wants him to teach martial arts to Jap soldiers when he saw him singlehadedly bashing 10 soldiers. He declines causing the wrath from General and subsequently goes into hiding with family. He also starts coaching common people to defend themselves. Finally Ip is cornered and forced for a final showdown with the general.

The story drags in certain parts and the treatment forces us not to take the story as a serious biopic, atleast in the initial scenes. The acting part is wonderful. Donnie Yen impresses with his restrained acting style and peaceful looks. The supproting cast is also good although there is nothing much for them to do other that getting kicked by Yen for most of the time. Sammo Hung (remember My lucky stars?) is the action director and action is nothing short of awesome. In the initial part of the movie, action is mellow and mostly comic, showing Ip's uninterest in exhibiting his skills. He just blocks the punches and defends most of the time and when feels that things are getting out of control, finishes the fight abruptly. But on latter part, when he is out for revenge, the action turns violent and totally offensive. The scene were he beats up tn Jap soldiers is the most surprising part. Too good.

Seems they have made a sequel where Ip goes to Hong Kong and establishes a school there and eventually meets Bruce Lee. Waiting for a chance to watch it...

On other news, last week I happened to watch a Kannada adaptation of a play by Tagore, one that criticises the politics of the land. Although interspersed with contemporary politics, I was not much impressed, I should confess.

The Bruises

2011-03-06T11:53:00.000+05:30

All of us get wounded in our life, physical and psychological. The world that we live on is a place having special expertise on inflicting them. People don't behave the way we want to, incidences happen that we feel are unjust to us. But we just lets them and walk off. Very few people care to record them and last week I happen to read a memoir of wounds inflicted by society on him by an extraordinary person.

It is a long time since I have read a Malayalam book. And I am happy to return back by reading Murivukal (The Bruises) by Soorya Krishnamurthy. He is the person behind Soorya Stage and Film Society, which organises the longest and most prestigious art show in India, the Soorya Festival. In this book, Krishnamurthy narrates many incidences from his illustrious life, many of which leaves a lump in the throat of the reader.

What leaves behind in mind after reading these snippets of memories are an array of human characters, each performing acts that shocks you in varied degrees. Artists who have no problem in performing for an empty audience for a whole night, an artist who want to abort her child if her performance is scheduled that year, the son who abuses his mother and the mother who defends him telling he is a puritan, a naked saint who demands more money when photographed and the photographer who does not click the pictures of kids whose parents did not pay him in a prize distribution function... It is a must read.

On laughter and forgetting

2011-03-04T19:22:00.001+05:30

Decades before, in Bohemia, a communist general, Gottwald, took over the power. Standing near to him when he was addressing the nation for the first time, on a balcony when snow flakes were falling, was Vladimir Clementis. To protect the leader from snow, Clementis keeps his fur cap on Gottwald's head. The photograph of Gottwald, fur cap and Clementis on the balcony with snow falling around them became popular. Years later when Clementis was executed, charged with treason, the propaganda department deleted him from the history, and also from the photograph, leaving his fur cap on the head of Gottwald the only spot of him in history.

In "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", Czech writer Milan Kundera elaborates on two of the biggest enigmas of post modern world, laughter and forgetting. This is not a conventional kind of novel. It consists of seven totally different narratives, but altogether bound by the themes of laughter and forgetting. In between the stories there are snippets of memories, political satire and philosophical banter. Novel analyses variations of forgetting and laughter. Natural forgetting, like the wife after her husband's death trying unsuccessfully to remake him in every man whom she meets, and induced forgetting, like the one were Clementis is totally made to remain forgotten from public minds. Induced laughter, the one made by humor or jokes, and natural laughter, the angel's laughter, or serious laughter that comes by itself.

This is Kundera's third book that I read. The effect of "Life is elsewhere", the novel about the life of a poet, a novel that I read during my teens, is getting worn. Think its time for a re-read. "Testaments Betrayed" that I read last year, is a collection of essays. In this one Kundera makes a parallel between the history of Novel and European classical music. The part about music went above my head. But the part about novels were fascinating. Ultimately the discussion reaches Kafka and betrayed testaments are that of Kafka, whose works were published posthumously, although his instruction to his friends was to destroy all his notebooks.

Gang leader of the day

2011-02-26T20:14:00.001+05:30

"You can't fix nothing, you never worked a day in your life. The only thing you know how to do is hang out with n-----s like us"

Some time back, Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist student, entered a building in a black neighborhood of Chicago to ask some questions to the gangsters selling crack, for his graduation project. They mistook him for a rival Mexican gangster and kept him captive for a whole night. While being released, J.T, the gang leader, told him the only way to get to know about gangs is to hang out with them. Sudhir Venkatesh accepted it and went on to live the next decade hanging out with the same gang, Black Kings. The project revealed lot of unknown facts about gangster life, its psychology, the impression it leaves on others who has to live with them and most importantly the economics of the operation of a gang.

"Gang leader for a day" is Sudhir's first hand account of his dealings inside Robert Taylor Projects in Chicago, USA, with the gangsters, hustlers, middlemen, squatters, housewives, cops, prostitutes and more. The story got its fame when featured in Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner's best seller Freakonomics. In Freakonomics, the authors where trying to make connections with several seemingly unconnected facts. And Sudhir's story was featured in the topic, Why do gangsters lives with mothers?

Sudhir Venkatesh shatters many prejudices that outsiders keep about gangsters. That they are uneducated, rich, violent, do not care about community or education and much more. The life Sudhir saw was that of very organized criminals. They are reasonably educated folks, do not like violence as it can affect business, they try to keep a good relation with community and give a helping hand every now and then, albeit keeping them in terror when needed. And all of them are not rich, only few on the top of the ladder are filthy rich, while others are trying to get the top of the pyramid, alive in one piece.

The book makes us sad at the plight of people living in projects, but inspires the way they copes up with the most resigning situations. The corporate business structure followed by the gang is very similar to any major business corporation. The human story is touching. Sudhir's candid confession of the moral dilemma when encountered with crimes is captivating. The writing style is as good as any good book of fiction.

The book also made me remember this Hindi movie that humanizes gangsters, Phas Gaya Re Obama, in a very comic way, but.

MST3K: Showcasing the worst.

2011-02-21T22:29:00.001+05:30

Have you ever had to sit through a movie that goes down way below watchable tag? Something for which awful is an understatement? I am not talking about duds like Drona or Sanctum... what I mean are things that are much, much worse. Movies in which not even one scene, one shot or one dialog makes sense. Worst lot of actors, bad direction and pathetic in every department. I had watched a Tamil movie some years back with one of my friend, something called Veerasami. It was a one man show, directed, written, acted, edited, composed and God knows what else by veteran Tamil actor T Rajendar, or T R as he is popular. The three hour movie is such an experiance, we were laughing our hearts out, scene by scene. There were only few scenes when we did not laugh and that were the comedy scenes. But after the movie, we felt very light hearted. It seemed a worthy effort.

I relived this experiance recently when I watched an episode of MST3K on youtube. MST3K or Mystery Science Theatre 3000, is a very popular comedy TV series of 90s which made fun of B grade sci fi and horror movies. Many movies from 50's to 90's that would have been fallen to oblivion got a new lease of life through this series. Most of the movies featured are regulars in the worst movie lists. The format is like this: A poor janitor is tricked and send to outer space by two evil scientists, (in later episodes it is an evil woman who does this.) as a plan to dominate the world. In a space ship, he is made to watch the worst movies ever made. The plan is to unleash the worst movie that makes him insane to the mankind and make them zombies. To escape from getting insane, the janitor Joel, (Mike in later episodes) makes some robots which can converse with him. All this story is told in the title song. In each episode Joel and robots are made to watch one bad movie. After the title song and a funny introduction, the movie is started. Below the screen Joel and robot are visible as silhouettes. While the movie is being played, they makes a funny running commentry on the movie.

The episode that I watched featured this movie called Hobgoblins, touted as one of the worst movies ever made in history. The creatures are puppet like aliens ("palm sized big foot" in Mike's words!) who can cause anyone's wildest fantasies come true, but the hitch is that the fantasies turns disastrous killing the person. The creatures hiding in a film vault of an abandoned studio, is released by the new security guard. They follows him and get to his friends, who incidentally are the most weird people on earth. Lots of things happens, which makes the plight of audience no less bad. But the running commentry of Mike and Bots keeps you glued..!

There is a scene where an army returned guy gives the security guard a lesson on combat with garden shovels! The fight goes on and on and Mike quips, " Wow, I think I can watch this thing forever."

Check these scenes out for a sample of what's ahead if you feel like watching it:

Alone in a small world..

2011-02-18T20:21:00.001+05:30

Few years back a pilot saw a man struggling in ice in Greenland and saved his life by picking him up. He was arrested immediately after landing. The person was Hamidur Rahman, a Bangladeshi engineer, who was trying to walk 200 kilometers, to Canada, in subzero temperature, with just a stove and wet matches to keep himself warm.

The documentary play, "A Small, Small World", tells the tragic tale of Hamidur Rahman collected and edited from interviews, videos, letters and snippets of talks from people associated from various phases of his life. The format of the play is very interesting and unique. Two actors enact different scenes from the life of Hamid, like chameleons going under the skins of characters from around the world. A miniature set is kept at a corner of the stage and via a cam the images are projected life size on the white screen. The actors introduce themselves with their names and as Suthradhar in Sanskrit plays, narrates the story through the eyes of different people. They even interact with the audience. A personal feel is given when audience are made to sit close to the stage, instead of the distant galleries.

The play is enacted by two wonderful actors, a German and an Indian. Konradin Kunze and Abhishek Majumdar. (Alka, your good friend :). And I should say he is amazing! Nothing short of amazing! Loved him in that interrogation scene where he sits on chair as Hamid and Kunze slowly zooms the camera towards his face and slowly into the eyes, and then the screen is filled with fear and angst from the mind of the illegal immigrant. No words!)

The google earth scenes where also very effective. Abhishek stands near the screen and Kunze, projects the map of the country where Hamid is next heading to with the help of Camera and a small globe, just the size of a tennis ball. The zooming effect of Google Earth is replicated on screen. But the master stroke comes in climax when all of a sudden a real clip from Hamid's life, one that we saw just a few moments back is played and the effect on viewer's mind is just catastrophic.

Hamid moves from Bangladesh to Malaysia, to Germany, to Denmark, Greenland and just fails to reach Canada, all in search of a place to live. The play uncovers the struggle of a common man on a time of globe trotting, for his basic right of a place to live his life. Hamid consumes antidepressants and succumbs to death, but the unanswered questions he left on our face is just haunting....

Art of/and Understanding

2011-02-13T17:54:00.000+05:30

"Modern art is just some colour thrown on a canvas."

"The book is a classic one. I could not follow it."

"These movies are not made for public, who can understand these?"

Pablo Neruda

Certain comments I have encountered in many places!

My doubt is that, is an art form bad or good just because it is some thing that is difficult for you to comprehend? Or is it necessary for a work of art to be simplistic that every one can identify with that, the moment they encounters it?

My opinion is that every work of art needs a certain level of understanding, an effort from the viewers side to appreciate it. For some it may be minimal, like a screwball comedy movie, or a hip hop song. But for some, you need some preperation, some back ground knowledge of the times it was made or on many times, a second effort to appreciate it fully, like a novel of Kafka, or a piece of classical music. Many people are very allergic to give an exercise to their brain and when they comes up on something for which a minimal cerebral effort is required they lap it up.

I was reading Neruda some times back. I am not much into poetry, but this one was fascinating, though a bit tough to visualize the imagery used. Then I happened to read his biography and was amazed to know that the laymen of his country Chile, took these anti capitalist anthems to heart because the images in the poetry was taken from their day to day life and Pablo Neruda worked among them. So it is not a universal law that such art form, intellectual, if I can say so, has a very less patronship. With strategical marketing the appreciation level of public can be raised.

Abstract art

Another of my doubt is whether art should mimic life? Like is it necessary for a picture or a verse to show reality as it is, or even it should give a meaning? Like an instrumental music is not natural and if vocals are not added to it, it never emulates a meaning. But it is an art form. Like wise is it necessary that a pattern on a canvas to give a meaning to spectator? Or can I just appreciate it for the mix of colurs or the intricate design it shows. Or even a collection of words that does not make any sense, but feels good to hear... ?

If my knowledge is correct, abstract art borders on these concepts. I think it was Burgess who said that if he is writing about a Bengal tiger, what is wrong if it has five legs or talks, after all it is a figment of his imagination...

Jim Morrison: Beyond The Doors Of Perception

2011-02-11T20:42:00.001+05:30

The history of rock music is interspersed with anarchy, craziness, poetry, restlessness, violence, histrionics, excesses, radical politics, discontentment, drugs, sex and alcohol... and the name of Jim Morrison is on the top. James Douglas Morrison, or Jim Morrison as he is known to his fans throughout the world, or Lizard King as he was known to himself, is one of the most contraversial rockers and the main reason for the psychedelic rock band, The Doors to be one of the best in its genre. In his 27 years of existance, in which his musical career accounted less than a decade, he had been a poet, vocalist, rock star, movie buff, selfish, arrogant, bully, maniac, drug addict, alcoholic and the most influential and iconic singer of his time. In his final days he was living in oblivion, in a foreign land, whereabouts not even known by fellow band members and died a mysterious death as shocking as his entire life....

In this biography Jim Morrison: Life, Death, Legend, Stephen Davis tries to uncover the mystery surrounding this strange and much mistook persona, with a little success, but in the end falls short because of may be the deficiency of authentic material. Any one close to Morrison was dead or hated him. And the poet himself never exposed himself fully to anyone (if you does not count the obscenity charge against him after a concert in Miami). He always kept several pockets of secret friends totally separated from each others. So in the end Davis ends up throwing more mystery to the already dark story with many loose threads hanging.

Jim Morrison was the son of an admiral, who maintained accute strictness in his family. Jim grew up to be an acadamically bright bully and prankster, who hated authority. His practical jokes bordered on extremes. He became addicted to movies and books in a very young age. A sighting of an Indian family injured in an accident left a deep impression in young Jim's psyche. He claimed that one of them had entered into his mind then. By the end of adolescence, Jim had started reading Neitzche, Rimbaud, Blake, Huxley and contemporary beat writers. He was much hooked on to movies and ended up pursuing a graduation in movie- making against the wish of his family. Although his graduation movie was disliked by majority, those who liked it really loved it. A despaired Jim took on to poetry, drugs and alcohol- excessively. His friend Ray Manzarek decided to form a rock band with him after he heard Jim singing one of his poetry on a beach. Jim decided the name to of the band to be The Doors, after Huxley's book The Doors Of Perception. Initially they struggled a lot but with the addition of John Densmore and Robby Kreiger, the band started evolving. Jim's poems where the soul of the band.

On stage, the psychological books that he used to read gave Jim a lot of chance to experiment with the audience psyche, an art that he perfected over time. His drunken antics, swearing and Greek god looks got him a huge fanbase. After performing in several bars, finally they got a chance to work with Elektra records, with whom they cut all their records. The name Elektra gave Jim a chance to flex his Oedipus Rex complex on stage. This time around he met Pamela Courson, with whom he maintained a relation through out his life, though he had countless on- off relationships with many women.

He was much loved and equally hated for his stage persona. His drunken antics and stubbornness, no care attitude and disheveled life style constantly embarrassed those who loved him. By a few years he became distanced from his band members. When they decided to sell a song to a motor company to use in an ad, he severed all personal ties with them. A song on Vietnam war, The Unknown Soldier, made the Nixon administration to consider The Doors as one of the adversaries. The author believed this ended in much negative publicity to the band, especially with the Miami incident when Jim allegedly exposed himself on public, even though there was not a single photographic or videographic evidences to indict him.

His public performances also were never predictable, some times he created magic on stage, but other times he was pathetic. He became disinterested by the end and wanted to pursue his real ambitions, poetry and movies. But due to his rockstar image he was never considered a poet by his contemporaries although posthumously his poetry was taught in several universities. He moved to Paris in his final days, with his love Pamela and was one day found dead in his apartment, probably due to a drug overdose.

His grave is one of the most visited site in Paris. Even after death Jim Morrison never became obsolete. His anti establishment, chaotic verses and dare devil life style continues to inspire millions, for good or for bad.

Sanctum: THE disaster movie

2011-02-07T20:52:00.000+05:30

Caution: If you are planning to watch Sanctum after seeing the poster claiming it to be from the Director of Avatar and Titanic, James Cameron, you are for a disappointment. Because Sanctum never rises above a B grade flick. Except in an initial ariel view of a gigantic cave in Papua New Guinea, in which our main actors descends for exploring, only to find out it is a really bad idea, it never makes you feel "Wow". The characterisation is nil, dialogue cheesy, situations pretty cliched, acting wooden, suspence predictable.

But on the brighter side, Sanctum is never pretentious, it never tries to be anything it is not and fails in the attempt. And one part of the story, the love- hate relationship between father and son is pretty good. Actually that is the only part in the plot that stands out. Other characters are the most boring people I have ever seen on screen. Another strong point is visuals. Pictuization is quite eye capturing. Background score jarrs, especially in the suspence scenes. The story gives out a message that, whatever happens in your life, you have to go on. Which is quite inspiring at times initially, over done later on. The one thing I cannot make out is how Cameron is connected with this half baked mess! May be he rented them the set and equipment of his initial hit movie "Abyss". Unable to pay rent, the crew may have agreed to share the profit, if any (which I doubt! There were 15 people in an evening show on a sunday!).

Sanctum delivers what it promises. It is a disater movie and quiet a disaster it turned out to be.

Travel with salmons...

2011-02-04T05:43:00.000+05:30

How to travel with a Salmon is a collection of essays, or parodies as the author calls them, by acclaimed writer Umberto Eco, written in a period of two decades. The essays are satiric, humorous, irreverent and takes on the issues of living in the post modern world of consumerism, vanity and excesses. Most of the essays are written as a parody of Do yourself books- How to travel with a salmon, How to eat ice cream, How to write introduction for books, How to write introduction for art catalogues...

There is an essay that parodies science fiction novels and hilariously uncovers the ugly face of red tape and bureaucracy. The essay How to travel with a Salmon, is about the authors unsuccessful attempts to preserve a costly salmon bought on his way to a city for some days stay. To add to the spoiling of fish, author had to pay an exorbitant bill for all the bottles of alcohol that he displaces from the minibar, to store the fish. How to buy gadgets is a piece on those shopping catalogues, which tries to sell things that are never useful or even practical. How to take intelligent vacations, makes fun of people who tries to show off their class by reading heavy books.

So instead of wasting your valuable time reading my blog post, treat yourselves by checking out this wonderful and funny book.

Flashes of insane thoughts...?

2011-02-01T20:42:00.002+05:30

The lizard on the ceiling boasted to the man beneath: "Weight of this ceiling is safe on my shoulders..!"

The angry man shouted back: "Get off my ceiling, you filthy reptile."

Precisely the moment lizard got off, ceiling fell!

I am not sure whether the man got a chance to curse his foolishness for making a pillar-less ceiling, there by giving a chance to the reptile for shouldering its weight.

****

I know why the flap of my ears are open outwards. If it was inwards, I would have turned insane hearing the shouting of my brain.

****

Marriage and funerals- two rituals that I find very boring. Sometimes I wonder if I can sit through at least mine.. !

****

Recently I saw myself,

naked,

on a mirror on the wall.

Realized that I am watching myself,

after many years,

may be a decade.

And I cannot recognize him,

this stranger,

on this mirror on the wall...

****

People say they are afraid of uncertainties...!

Then why are they afraid of Death,

Which is the only certain thing in life...

****

The title of Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction should be Pulp F#ction..

Yeah, it was a bad joke,

I mean, It was a f*$#@in bad f$#@ed up joke, you muffin...

A fist full of SMS

2011-01-27T21:23:00.000+05:30

"What the hell is happening? Who called from my phone?"

Sudden shouts that came from the sitting room caused ripples throughout the house. Seethamma, who was busy boiling tea, shuddered at the voice. It was a rare occation. Rajagopal Master, her husband was a man of cool temper and if he is making this noise, matter is serious. Seethamma ran towards the sitting room.

Akash and Anu had already reached there. Both of them where quite perplexed seeing the usually quiet, amiable Master fuming with his mobile phone in his hand.

"Who called and finished the balance? Tell me the truth!" Master's sound boomed again. His friends had compelled him to buy that phone. For years, when the whole population of the village was basking in the new found sensation of cell phones, SMS and SIM cards, he resisted the compulsion from friends, former students and family. What good was mobile phone for a retired school teacher like him? He used to maintain that it was for business men, who need connectivity on the go.

It took his friends, his former colleagues all now in the same age of autumn as Master, almost three years of continuous persistence to make him consider buying himself one. And Master, a careful spender, or miser in Seethamma's own words, used to be very particular in recharging it. Only once in a month, not more than Rs 30 and that too if there is a full talk time offer. He had charged for Rs 50 last day, and Rs 20was cut immediately thanks to the devotional pack that Seethamma activated. He was quite irritated by this waste of money, but Seethamma was a very devoitonal kind of lady who will not budge in that particular matter.

"I send an SMS for a quizz programme." Akash admitted.

"SMS is free for us, isn't it?"

"No daddy, not for contests." Anu chipped in. "Rs 10 gets cut for every SMS." There was a sound of blame in her voice.

"But Dad, there was a chance to win a DVD player, if the answer is selected."

"But what guarantee is there that you will get the right answer? I have seen some of your answer sheets and am sure you are not the type who wins quizzes." Master mocked his son.

"No Daddy, infact I got it right!"

"Tell me what was the question?"

"Who is the PM of India?"

"What?"

"Hm.. and the options were, Manmohan Singh, Obama and Tendulkar."

"What a silly question? Who does not know the answer? Every indian will get it right and what are your chances of winning against that many entries? These are tricks by companies to loot money from customers, traps set to cheat fools like you. What a waste of money? So are you sure you have send only one SMS? "

"Daddy, I sent an SMS to India Too Have Talent!" It was Anu's turn now.

"?"

"Daddy, it is a reality show in TV. We can vote contestants through SMS and those who get more votes win." Aakash was taking revenge now. "The first prize is a flat in the heart of the city!"

"So what do you get after helping them?"

Anu's lowered gaze was answer enough for Master. "Oh! So these people are building flats with SMS from my pension money and you are helping them loot me. What about last 10 rupees?"

"I send an SMS to Queen of Kitchen, the program on cooking in Indianet Channel." Seethamma softly told.

"You too?" Master was embarrased and all the more angry now.

"The prize was one day's supply of vegetables to the whole family. I could not contain myself. Please forgive me!"

Master's face mellowed and he became quiet. He noted in his mind to offer some sweets to temple and burn a candle in the nearby church, for good luck with the contest.

Some spicy history...

2011-01-25T21:29:00.001+05:30

What was the prime cause of discovery of Americas? What led to the conquest of Sindh, thereby causing the emergance of Mughal Empire? What made the discovery of one half of the globe possible? What initiated the inflow of hundreds of literary works based on sea voyage in different periods by different authors from different nationalities like Sindbad and Robinson Crusoe? And what caused us to study Geography in secondary classes? The answer is a dry berry, pungent leaves and some black twigs..

Spices caused a maritime revolution in the world. The continous flow of them from East to West from time immemorial, through different routes changed the history of mankind. But spices are not a useful or inessential commodity. They does not have any health benefits, any huge medicinal value or any aesthetical value. Then what was the reason for this humongous trade flow? The answer lies in their exotic nature, the mystery surrounding them. Spices were believed to originate from faraway lands, from the edge of the world and they were just a bit less than inaccessable. The moment this aura left them, the price came down, eventhough demand remained same.

The first known evidence of spice trade starts from the period of Greek glory. Alexander's conquest bought spices to Greece. Then most of it came from Arabia. The trade route was by land. Arabia imported it from India and mysterious spice islands in far east, which was not discovered till another thousand years. After Greek, Romans carried forward the trade. Some historians of the time even blames the import of spices for the decline of Roman empire. After Rome, the sea routes totally fell into the hands of Persians and later Arabs. Chinese also had their share of adventure initially, but soon became bored and contented with inland trade. Portugese where the ones who put a stop to Arab monopoly, courtesy Vasco de Gama. Along with them Spanish, although they took the wrong turn and ended up in Americas suspecting the natives as Indians, courtesy Columbus and the wrong calculation of earth's circumferance by Ptolemy. The entry of Europeans introduced new dimensions to the trade- of violence, greed, plunder and religious zealotry. The colonialisation of East by West was initiated by them. Then came Dutch, English and finally French. But by then exotism of spice trade was wearing off. New novelties like chilly, tea, coffee and chocolate took their places. Slowly once invaluable pepper and cloves, took their places in sealed covers in super markets.

The Spice Route: A History by John Keay, traces back the route in which these exotic goods travelled in the last three millenia. Most part of it is not recorded, and had to be revealed from connecting the dots left by shreds of evidences, anecdotes and guess work. The best quality of the book is that, the author although narrates a serious subject, keeps his wit intact. The prose flows with relentless pace till the termination of the story and keeps the interest level intact. One caution though, it is better to keep a dictionary by your side while reading it, if you insist to follow the history of the spice route word by word.

And the good news is that my Indirank jumped to 79 today from 74. Thanks to Indiblogger.in and indibloggers for their support.

On this occasion enjoy this romantic song from the movie Ghulami (1985), which I personally feel is the best hindi song of 80s:

Inside the studios

2011-01-24T20:28:00.000+05:30

Remember those distant times when your family ventures out on an evening after a celebration, to the nearest studio for having a photo session? The good news is that people still do that, if you can believe this wonderful documentary "City of Photos" directed by Nishtha Jain...!

The crew ventures into 'the friendly, neighborhood' studios of Kolkatta and Ahmedabad, to see what goes on there. On one side they are in a struggle to survive from the digitalization of the medium, and on other they are using digital photography to the most for keeping the limited patrons loyal. The movie tries to take a look into the psychology of capturing a fleeting moment of the face on a frame. The bizarre background choices patrons choose, the need to look like a star, to be beautiful for a prospective marriage, camera shows it all. The most peculiar observation is the fetish shown by people to take pictures with calamities as the background- a train wreck, a cyclone or even twin tower explosion. The changing trends in props used in studios is also dealed. A starking contrast is made over the photographs of destructions and joyous celebrations taken by same photographers. This witty, and same time heart tugging documentary is definitely worth one hour of your life.

And just for record, I watched this latest Malayalam movie starring Dileep and directed by Shafi, "Marikkuntoru Kunjadu" (Mary had a little lamb). The only reason this one is a bit better than Dileep's last movie that I watched, "Pappi Appacha", is Biju Menon's act. He looms above all others portraying a role that he has never attempted before. Otherwise movie is a washout. Situations from all Dileep's previous movies are rehashed and remixed, with very less comedy situations, and what turns up is a boring watch. Laughs are too far in between, heroine is just lame, co-actors wasted and Dileep is loud and repetitive.

Growth: An organic concept

2011-01-23T10:52:00.000+05:30

GROWTH

The magical word which makes everyone in this world excited. A small kid, a sprout, a family man, an entrepreneur, a shop keeper, a contractor or a politician. An organisation, a sports team or a nation. The aim of every one is to grow. To touch the horizon of greatness, of success.

If you consider the phenomenon of growth as a natural process, it is very interesting to note how contrasting it is with the idea associated in present days with it. These days, everyone aspires for an overnight growth. Companies want to triple their growth rate every quarter, moms want their kids to be taller, stronger more mature than peers. A business man wants to earn profit the next day he invests.

But if you observe closely how an organism grows, it is clear that growth rate is directly proportional to the life of the being. This may not be a very exact observation, but a very near to exact one. It is also a very gradual step by step process. A kid takes years to become a matured person, taking one step at a time to observe and start reacting to its surroundings and developing its mind and body from the time it is conceived in the womb. The turning of helplessness into confidence takes a time of atleast 20 years. Also important is the inputs that it intakes. Nutritious intake of food in right quantities, at right time, continual education required to develop the mind, all complements the process.

Now if the parents want their kid to start running in the age of one and to defeat Viswanathan Ananth in ten, it is just over ambition. (Athimohamanu mone Dinesha.. as Mohanlal says in a masala movie). If they force feed the kid with more nutrients and over pressure to excel, it will cause more harm to the kid finally.

In other systems also this theory should hold well. Like if you take the case of a start up, careful planning with achievable goals combined with a proper execution with sufficient inputs, qualitative and quantitative, and ethical transactions with their vendors and suppliers are essential for a wholesome growth. Otherwise the result is premature death.