Birthday, Bihar Trip, Books and Deadlines

A blog post after almost two months does not indicate my diminishing passion for blogging but highlights the hectic professional life I had in last 2-3 months. A marathon writing session, boring sessions of number crunching and perusing some serious statistical concepts.. These things took so much control of my free time that I did not even manage a ‘happy birthday post’ on my birthday. Yes, I celebrated my birthday last month and this was my first birthday as a minimalist and guess what.. I had to treat my friends in a five star hotel

In between I had an eventful trip to my home state Bihar.  Spent almost 48 hours in car and travelled more than 900 kms.  I was accompanied by an intern, a british girl of Indian origin who was having her first trip to Bihar.  Bihar was facing a drought like situation when I started for Bihar but the rain welcomed us as soon as we moved out of Patna and it poured heavily for next two days. The result:  we were driving on water clogged Bihar roads, and it was a tough task for the driver to negotiate the  water filled potholes  suddenly appearing under the wheels. Fortunately  the new Bihar government has made tremendous change to road conditions in Bihar and we could still manage to reach our destination. Though it was itneresting the see expression on my co-traveller’s face while the driver negotiated the rough weather and bumpy roads. The highlight of the trip was our car breaking down around 11 pm on a deserted road and rain pouring down heavily. Imagine someone having the first trip to the ‘notorious’ Bihar and being in this situation. I must say that my co-traveller was really a courageous girl to take that trip considering the image she construed from the different books and media clips.

Meanwhile I finished the second book in Millenium trilogy ( a best-selling series translated from Swedish), The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.  I must say Lisbeth Salander rocks. She is the most intriguing, sensuous and engrossing charachter I have came across in recent times.

My Reading List, 2008

Fiction

• Sacred Games By Viikram Chandra
• Bandicoots in moonlight by Avijit Ghosh
• The Girl with Dragon Tatoo by Steig Larsson
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Non-Fiction

• Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith
• The Cult of Amateurs  by Andrew Keen
• A Perfect Mess by David Freedman
• Super Crunchers by  Ian Ayres
• Wikinomics by Tapscott and Wiliams
• How to change the world by David Bornstein
• Stick to drawing comics, monkey brain! by Scot Adams
• Getting things done by David Allen
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
• Madness and Civilization by Foucault

Half Read / Unfinished Books

• Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Hot Flat and Crowded by T. Friedman
• Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Thanks Srey for the gift.)
• India: The Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya
• Phantoms in the brain by Blakeslee and Ramachandran
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Tribe by Bruce Parry

Surely I could not read a lot of fiction this year and spent a lot of time on  non-fiction/ pop-economics. Though I wanted to read some good fiction titles. I bought many books last year and I think I need to speed up my reading to consume them this year.

Probably the most effective complaint letter ever written by any passenger..

I just finished a hilarious book “Entry from back side only” by Binoo K John on Indian English and its journey from ‘early days of British Raj’ to modern days. Apart from an erudite description of this journey, the book contains some rare gems picked from different government documents and letters written to editors. But none can beat the following one.. I think the most effective complaint letter ever written by a passenger. Mr. Okhilchandra wrote this letter to railway authorities describing his ’suffering’; the letter resulted in installation of toilets in Indian Railways.

I am arrive by passenger train Ahmedpur station and my belly is too much swelling with jackfruit. I am therefore went to privy. Just I doing the nuisance that guard making whistle blow for train to go off and I am running with lotah in one hand and dhoti in the next when I am fall over and expose all my shocking to man and female women on platform. This too much bad, if passenger go to make dung that dam guard nor wait train five minutes for him. I am therefore pray your honour to make big fine on that guard for public sake. Otherwise I am making big reports to the papers.

I think we must thank Mr. Okhilchandra for causing ‘installation of toilets in Indian Railway’ and for the letter mentioned above.

 

Technorati Tags: Indian English,Indian Railways,Humour

My Reading List of Last Year (2007)

Though I could not read as much as I did last year, and left many book half finished, or just untouched on the shelf. These are books I did manage to finish, apart from the compulsory reading required by my job.

Fiction

• Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal
• Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille
• The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• The Innocent Men by John Grisham
• The Broker by John Grisham
• The Last Song of Dusk by Sidhart D. Sanghvi

Non-Fiction

• Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
• The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C K Prahalad
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
• The way of the Sufi by Idries Shah

I bought several books last year and many of them are still waiting to be finished. I read a few pages and somehow could not finish them. Hope to finish them soon this year.

Half Read / Unfinished Books

• Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Cuckold by K Nagarkar
• The Moral Mind by Marc Hauser
• Foucault’s Pendulam by Umberto Eco

Let see how much time I get this year to satiate my desire to read. Getting Thinds Done by David Allen and The Perfect Mess by E Abrahamson and D Freedman are the two books which I am finishing this month. Two books advocating completely contrasting approach to manage your worklife.

Technorati Tags: Books, Reading, 2007

The Righteous Men

I was looking for a good thriller to engage myself and just going by the blurbs picked The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne. “The biggest challenger to Dan Brown’s crown” by the British newspaper The Mirror. And after reading the book, I concur with The Mirror. Really one of the best thrillers I have read lately.

When I pick a thriller, I expect it to make me finish in one go, make me glued to the last page and tempt me to go to the last pages to find out the truth. This one fits exactly. The novel belongs to ‘The DaVinci Code’ genre and Sam Bourne convincingly uses ‘codes’ ‘cabals’ ‘conspiracy’ and ‘Christ’ to make ‘The Righteous Men’ and a cash cow for publisher and author.

‘The Righteous Men’ is based on the jewish folklore ‘The Righteous Men’, which says that world is safe because of the noble acts of 36 righteous men and killing of these 36 men would lead to destruction of world. The Chruch of Reborn Jesus wants to remove these 36  men to facilitate the Second Coming of Jesus.

Though like, The DaVinci Code, this too disappoints towards the end (you can easily figure out what is going to happen), but it is a good read. Anyone who has enjoyed The DaVinci Code, would love this as well.

Technorati Tags: Sam Bourne, The Righteous Men, Thrillers

My Growing Anti-Library

Frequent visits to Landmark and not much time to read.. result a fast growing anti-library (collection of unread books). I am planning to spend all of this weekend reading and trying to finish some books which I started reading but left midway. Reading is the best activity for this weekend as my plan to visit Pondicherry and enjoy the peace of Sri Aurobindo Ashram  now stands canceled and after 9 days of fast (juices and fruits only) I am not very keen on any outdoor plan, so reading is the best indoor activity.

But the problem which book to finish first, should I go for Richard Dawkins’ best selling The God Delusion or finish Umberto Eco’s pedantic verbose thriller Foucault’s Pendulam? Paulo Coelho and Martin Amis seem to be scheduled for some in-flight/airport reading. Michael Foucault’s Madness and Civilization is surely not meant for pleasure reading (the same can be said about God Delusion, but that is half read ..).  

The Secret – Is it going to work?

Last night I finished the much hyped Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret. Frankly speaking I could not find any thing new about ‘The Secret’ or Law of Attractions. But, yes, a few thing impressed me. The whole marketing strategy of this book and the layout and design. The book make you touch and feel when you see it in the bookstore and the name itself adds some charm to it.
Now coming to the content or rather to ‘The Law of Attraction’ on intellectual level my brain refuses to see any reason why ‘The Law of Attractions’ should work (all the reference to Quantum Physics and the claims are very vague.). Though one cannot deny that if you have been really dreaming about something and you want to achieve it, you are sure to move ahead, but this book talks about something more.
‘The Law of Attraction’ says visualize a cheque coming into your mail box and you will get it. Think and Feel about driving a car, getting desired partner and you would get them. Interesting. What if all of my friends start dreaming about Salma Hayek, will the universe (governed by The Law of Attraction) create multiple copies of Salma Hayek so that everyone can be happy? What if, everyone starts wishing to be the President ? No answers.
But yes, Creative Visualization works ( or it seemed to work to some extent and I am sure there are some laws which might be governing its efficacy so it does not grant any of your stupid wishes, for sure it did not grant any of mine). There were things which were impossible, I could only dream about them. They turned into reality and I have no idea how. So I do not see any harm in being positive. But for sure, I am not going to rely on ‘The Law of Attraction’ and visualize that I am turning into a bullet proof human being when somebody has put gun on my head, better rely on some other skills.

Technorati Tags: Books, The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, The Law of Attraction, Creative Visualization

Education, Schools, Teachers, Grades and Life

After a long time, got an opportunity to read a Hindi novella ‘Bigade Bachche, Sabse Achhe’ (Spoilt Kids, The best Kids) written by V R Jogi and P G Vaidya. A very simple story (it seems that you are reading a book written for 5th graders), yet a thought provoking story.

This story seriously questions our education system which puts too much emphasis on mugging up facts and figures and obtaining good grades in examination instead of acquiring real knowledge Those kids who could not perform well on these parameters are thrown out of the schools, no one bothers to look into the problem and find out why they are not able to do it. Aren’t we supposed to provide more attention and care to these students rather than labeling them as ‘failure’ in early impressionable years which stunts the proper growth of their personality and make them suffer from inferiority complex. These kids are forced to follow a system which is designed more for the convenience of operations/executions rather than for identification of the existing talents in an individual and providing it platform to nurture that talent and excel there.

Its a story of a teachers who runs a school for those who have been thrown out by formal education systems or those who cannot attend those schools for any other reasons. A teacher, who transforms the life of many and shows us an alternative to existing system.

Recently there has been a significant increase in incidents of teachers crossing all the limits when it comes to punishing students and inflicting inhuman corporal punishments. Frequency of these incidence is raising at alarming level and it shows that our teachers need comprehensive change in their attitude and way of teaching. I think this book should be included in B.Ed/M.Ed or teacher training programs just to show that how a teacher affects its student and to make them think.

Though this book is not that you will enjoy reading it on train/plane or if you have been raised on staple diet of Cook, Archer or Rowling, it raises a serious issues, addresses a grave problem and also put you on the track which can lead you to solution.

Technorati Tags: Education, Concern, Rural Education

Small Is Beautiful

I just managed to finish Small is Beautiful by E F Schumacher, a leading economist of 60’s and 70’s who raised some very serious questions about economic policies of development and promoted theory of people centric development instead of ‘goods centric development’.

Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization and discipline.

Small Is Beautiful is one of those rare books which have potential to guide humanity to the next level and provide you enough practical wisdom to equip us to successfully achieve this. Published in 1973, it is rated as one of the most influential books after World War 2.

The book is divided in three parts viz. The Modern World, Resources and The Third World. Schumacher has brilliantly describe the Production problem in the first part. Natural Resources which are being treated as income, should be part of capital, which are using without any discretion.  He also put serious question over the universal belief and application of  of ‘Bigger is Better’ and ‘Economy of Scale’.

…if we make a list of all the most prosperous countries in the world, we find that most of them are very small; whereas a list of all the biggest countries in the world shows most of them very poor indeed..

What scale is appropriate? It depends on what we are trying to do.

In second part of his book, discussing Resources, he points out that Education is the most valued and most needed resources for development. Though he stretched the concept of education to new dimensions and put focus on development of ‘whole man’. The insight he provides clearly makes you think over the current education system, which has failed on many counts.

This book also introduced the concept of Intermediate Technology or Appropriate Technology. Most of today’s technologies have been developed by developed countries and are not suitable for adoption by developing countries or poor countries as first these technologies are quite expensive and second they fail to utilize the skills of natives and local resources resulting in unemployment and imbalanced growth, while Indigenous Technologies are not competent enough in modern context, the Intermediate Technology comes in between.  His paper on Intermediate Technology resulted in formation of Intermediate Technology Development Group which works for developing people centric technology which helps in balanced growth.

Such an Intermediate Technology would be immensely more productive than the indigenous technology, but it would be also immensely cheaper than the sophisticated, highly capital intensive technology of modern industry. At such a level of capitalization, very large number of workplaces could be created within a fairly short time and the creation of such workplaces within the district, not only in financial terms but also in terms of their education, aptitude, organizing skills and so forth.

I have been quite familiar with his works through http://resurgence.org, yet this book is a real treasure of wisdom and insight. Highly recommended (if you give weightage to my opinion) for those who are looking for thought provoking take on current economic policies and on economies.

If you have liked Fritjof Capra’s Works, Silent Spring and other books in this genre, surely you would not like to miss this one. And for those who have not heard of this book and want to move out of clutches Sheldon, Cook, King for a while and indulge in some thought provoking reading, this is a worth a try.

 

Technorati Tags: books, ecology, bookreview

Seven Mags I loved When I was kid

1. Chandamama - We were waiting more eagerly to get this magazine from newspaper wala then our results. Beautiful stories of Kings, stories from ancient epics with written with clear motive of promoting values and culture in children made this magazine immensely popular among kids.

Recently, Chandamama’s last 60 years issues have been digitized, so those who want to gift their children a good read, devoid of gory action and violent fantasy, this is a great option.

2. Champak – Loved it. Cheekku (the rabbit), Meeku (the mice) and their adventures were superb, since 1968 this magazine has established itself as the number one Children’s Magazine of India. A part of Delhi Press Group, they followed their group policy of not promoting any superstitious or bhoot-prate stories, but clean healthy entertainment for kids. Even today, I get my hands on any issue of Champak, I make sure to find Cheeku’s column and read it.

3.Lotpot – Full of laughter and great comic strips. The stories were invariably successful in bringing laughter and making you go ‘lotpot’ . No advertisement and reading material from cover to cover at price of Rs. 2 (At present it is being sold at Rs.5). Though the paper was not great but stories were. Motu, Patlu and Ghasita’s always used to find themselves in trouble in whatever they did. Though Ghasita was not the main hero of the Motu Patlu strip but his hair style and Haryanwai accent made him my favorite character.

4. Nandan – Unlike many children’s magazine of that time, this one has backing of a one of the leading media house of country Hindustan Times Group and has some of the biggest name as its contributor. Edited by Jayprakash Bharti (one of the biggest name in Children’s literature), it had/has strong focus on indian mythology and presented stories from Puranas and Upnishads. It was more structured and well presented compared to its competitors in 80’s, there you had Crosswords, Find the Difference (Kaun Kitna Buddhiman), a very popular Tenaliraman. The Pari Katha Visheshank was its eagerly waited special issue by its readers. Vishwa Prasidha Kahania provided its reader the best of childrens literature from world over translated in hindi.

At the moment, it has gone numerous changes and is being edited by Mrinal Pandey, I just recently checked one issue from my brother, and found that the new avataar is no longer as fascinating. Earlier Nandan used to be full of stories and stories only. Now, they have started putting articles (probably following other mags), interviews and other pieces but somehow it doesnt reminds one of the old Nandan we were fond of.

5. Madhu Muskan- If anyone of you have read it, you would vividly remember, Daddy jee, Chustram Sushtram.. Great comic and great mag. I dont know whether it is being published today or not but it was really one mags I wanted to read again and again. I even had a collection of around 5-6 years of Madhu Mushkaan, but some of dear friends loyal to borrowed reading, betrayed me.

6. Suman Saurabh – Aimed at teens and probably only magazine in Hindi in late 80s and in 90s which went beyond storytelling and provided useful articles. Again from the stable of Delhi Press Group, I loved its Jasoosi Katha Visheshank (Detective Stroy Specials) and Vigyan Katha Visheshank (Sci-fi Specials). It is still going strong.

7. Balhansh – Though this was quite new compared to Champak, Chandamama and Nandan, but it can be categorized as more balanced reading experience for kids. Published by Rajasthan Government, it kept the allround growth of its reader in mind. While Kavi Aahat made people go hither and thither fearing his poems, Havaldaar Tholaram was no less then a mixture of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond with grey matters borrowed from the likes of Kaanti Shah and Raakhi Sawant, taking care of goons and evildoers as well as problems of common man. It has some great informative articles which were not very common at that time in children’s magazine as most of the mags provided only stories and comic strips, the focus was not there on interesting or informative articles.

Now let me know, which were your favorites …..

Technorati tags: Nandan, Champak, Lotpot, Childrens Magazine, Books, Magazine