In Fantasy Land

The six-legged dragon is spewing dark fire black as night, chilling your bones contrary to the heat you would expect to be seared with. As it flies across the hills of mist, light seems to fill the underdog and even his silhouette as he lifts his eyes towards the sky to see the dragon better and say a silent prayer. But is that simply a prayer or did he raise a wand in the air and say something more potent, one wonders as the dragon is shot down from the sky, hit by an invisible arrow. The Black Creature's hound's shrill cries envelop the air as he hits the ground along with the dead dragon. The dragon was vile but even viler was this hell's child for whom the beast was not just means of transport but something he had always used to spread terror, rooting fear deep into the minds of hapless humans.

Haven't we all read something like this at some point in our lives? Haven't we all lost ourselves in vivid imagery of this sort while watching some movie or the other? Haven't we all wondered? It may not have been...well this fantastic all the time. It could have simply been a story of boy meeting girl in a setup that you can only dream of and that of the events that follow, stuff that even nightmares are not made of...finally resulting in a climax that is so far fetched as to make you visibly cringe.  

Be what it may, fantasies often end up giving you that escape route you have always been looking for. The madness in this world notwithstanding, there is enough and more that goes on in our own minds for us to need some mechanism to forget everything. Driven into a different world, we laugh and cry with its inhabitants, barely managing to hold our sides at jokes that would otherwise have been outrageously bad, being free with that lump in the throat at events in their lives that seem equally preposterous. We forget our own worries somehow and even the most insurmountable of odds for us look like child's play for the characters that come alive in this fantasy world.

The characters are all etched so clearly, in black and in white with hardly any scope for the grey in between. There are silent characters and those who are hilariously loud...people too good and those who can't be any more of devil incarnates. Life goes on however, despite the extremes and you are swept along on the journey to fantasy land not wanting to come back...ever. Alice managed to lose herself, didn't she? And wasn't there a platform Nine and Three Quarters for Harry and his friends to escape to Hogwarts? Didn't the kids meet Aslan more than once on their journeys to Narnia? Didn't Peter Pan start living in Neverland?

And then you are back...back to the skulduggery that reality is. All the filth hits you as the unscrupulous ways of life take you away from the sweet and tangy fantasy, as you get mixed in the greys, not being able to decide the good and bad of it. How you wish things were as simple here, being able to call a spade a spade, being able to have no pain that can't be healed, no problem that can't be solved! 

As the mind wanders those lands today trying its best to break free of the monotony, I thank all those books and movies that have taken me to my own Narnia, my own Hogwarts, my own Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, my own Age of Legends where I am the Dragon Reborn, my own Gotham and Metropolis and Star City and Central City where I know all the superheroes on a first name basis.

Just how hungry starts getting foolish

It has been ages since I last wrote a review of any sort and it has been one remarkable book that has made me take this up after such a long time. Titled "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" after the famous concluding words of Steve Jobs at a B-School convocation, the book tells the stories of 25 IIM Ahmedabad pass outs who made it big as first generation entrepreneurs. The book contains stories as implausible as the ones of Naukri.com and Shree Renuka Sugars to ones as different from the league as GiveIndia and Ekalavya School.

All 25 stories in the book are as similar to each other as they are distinct which goes on to show, in my mind, the talent of the author, Rashmi Bansal, an entrepreneur herself. Rashmi writes a popular blog Youth Curry and is the founder and editor of the youth magazine JAM. In this book, written with as much fluidity as is found in her blog, Rashmi uses a generous dosage of her own insights, opinions, and views without introducing any bias in each of the stories. These insights, often expressed employing very matter-of-fact mannerisms (read, in italicized Hindi), are what make the stories believable and at the same time, grand and singularly unique.

The arrangement of author's thoughts is well brought out as it starts from her own notions and expectations about the entrepreneur and his/her story. Moving on to the facts, the author provides clear insight into the background from which these entrepreneurs started out. She then moves to the interview approach which is more like a free flowing thought expression than a Q & A. Even though it is obvious that the author had a certain set of questions she posed to all interviewees in the book, the way she has avoided putting the questions down and the manner in which she has stopped short of publishing responses to all such questions for all interviewees shows a fair amount of discretion.

The final section on advice for entrepreneurs is really icing on the cake as it puts across the personality of the entrepreneur and his/her story in a nutshell. Drawing from their own experiences, the entrepreneurs very succinctly put across their take on the entire journey and the struggle to achieve what they have. Although the takes are as different from each other as chalk and cheese, they still provide a profound perspective into the decisions that the concerned entrepreneur took and what anyone in a similar scenario should logically go for or avoid.

Notwithstanding the insights and views included in the book's narrative by the author, there still seems something missing as far as an independent take on the entire subject of entrepreneurship is concerned. An additional chapter on the author's own opinions, though not holding a torch to the other chapters which necessarily deal with all these fascinating stories, would still have gone a long way in threading the thoughts and ideas together. As of the moment, though there are many of them and this should be appreciated, they are just floating in the air right through the pages. For all you know, such a chapter may have just answered the question that the title of this blog post poses.

Before getting started on this book, I had thought that I will be able to truly relate to two specific stories where I have been personally associated with the protagonists at a professional level. However, it was a pleasant surprise to finally discover that my bonding with the book's stories ran deeper. To say that the book was inspirational and provided motivation would definitely be an understatement. I could almost see the past, present, and future of myself and so many others like me in one story after another and that, Ms Bansal, is quite creditable from where you stand as a debutante.

For those in the middle

                       

Has Indian English writing really come of age or is it just that we have moved into writing something that they can identify with? They, of course, have to identify with what goes on in the books because it is only then that the Indian writers will be recognized, greeted on the world circuit, given royalties for the never ending sales, approached by movie makers and of course, be known like never before. Perhaps, RK Narayan did not find the need to do all this as he made the readers venture into the streets of Malgudi. Perhaps Anurag Mathur did, as he greets his readers first with the neon lights of New York in "The Inscrutable Americans" and then with the starving millions of India in "Making the Minister smile".

The point is that I am not trying to say that the author is naive enough to portray the customs officials at Delhi's international airport as betel leaf chewing and spitting buffoons or to show that a student who has cleared exams like the GRE or TOEFL to gain admission to a US university is not even able to draft letters in flawless English, forget manage speaking perfectly.

The point is that he has to bring out the satire in this form to make it acceptable to the audience he intends to get his message across to. Here again, the assumption that the books are intended for the Americans or for the Indians would be rather an oversight. The section that would have enjoyed these works the most would probably be the ones in the middle, the pseudo Indians who have their own version of the great American dream and of course, the pseudo Americans who actually know the difference between Taj Mahal and Taj Mahal Hotel.

As Gopal, the protagonist of "The Inscrutable Americans" journeys across his one year stay in America, trying hard to study, avoid beef, and get laid, the readers are entertained, no doubt...but all the more so if they can identify with the characters. The book is really appreciable for those who can understand that most of the things (racial violence, sexual frustrations, loneliness) that the book shows actually happen but at the same time, there are things that have been put there just to bring out the irony, to hit them where it hurts.

In "Making the Minister smile", Chris is shown following a similar pattern, just that his domain is not academic but the thick of Delhi commerce and the intertwining politics. As the author demolishes deeply held ideas about India and Indians by exposing the truths (as he sees them, perhaps) about the fidelity of Indian women, of the lack of food to even feed the middle class, or introduces the readers to the idea of a television and radio in each of the homes in the slums, it might seem that he is trying something novel and to a majority of Americans, it might as well be novel.

However, the people who are going to read his book, as the author must have known, already know these things as facts. The only eyes that the book is going to open for them are the eyes of mirth and laughter for they are the ones who will be able to appreciate the subtlety with which Anurag Mathur has got the satire working for him...how he has touched their heart when he shows things happening that they have always been trying to convince others of.

When read as parts of a series, the two books are interesting readings in deed. Not only do they try a jab at the incomer (the Indian in the first and the American in the second), but the things that are said about the host countries' social fabric are quite intricate as well. Delhi politics, trade unionism, America's racial problems, the supposedly sex starved (or overfed??) American youth...all these things make the books a racy reading for even those who might not really understand what exactly is going on. All the same, the books might help form inaccurate opinions given the amount of popularity that they have already gained and given that all readers (attracted by the popularity) may not be able to appreciate the reasons for introducing satire and logic or their placement in the stories.

Quidditch...on the rocks

By this time, half of the world knows who gets killed in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" and the other half is fast getting filled in with the help of some rather unkind zeal on part of the first half. But readers of this blog need not worry for this post is NOT a SPOILER. All that the post shall try to do is to give a dispassionate (and rather partial, as per my individual views and inferences) overview of the way the sixth book in the legendary series is placed and without going into the nitty gritties of the story at all, try to interpret the phenomenon that Harry Potter has undoubtedly become.

Since it is hardly any use mentioning the popularity of the series, it might be a better idea to think of the reasons for the same. Ever since the first edition of the enchanting series came and readers got addicted to the tales of a young boy studying magic in a school for magical folk and playing a strange game called Quidditch, while defending the Philosopher's stone from the dark side, the story has just been one roller coaster ride after another. We have all seen that boy, Harry Potter, brave five years in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry along with his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger and we have all been entertained by three movies that have come up so far on the series (with the other books being covered, as well).

The young and the old have all been giving rave reviews to the way in which JK Rowling, the high profile author of the Harry Potter series, has been giving shape to her characters and story, year after year...all aimed at one grand finale, the seventh book of the series that she is working on right now. In the meanwhile, there has been an evident shift in her story telling style over the six books that have come out so far. Starting from an out-and-out kids' book, the joy and kiddish mystery that the first book stood for has been, to a large extent, replaced by the chilling sequences of the latest that shall probably appeal more to the slightly older generation...not that the kids aren't interested any more...the craze is to be seen to be believed. Even the latest book had crowds of children thronging the book stores right since midnight when the book was to be released with book reading by the author from a castle in the UK marking the occasion.

The Half Blood Prince takes the Harry Potter story forward to Harry and friends' sixth year at Hogwarts. With Voldemort having risen to full power in the last book and the dark side consisting of Death Eaters becoming more and more powerful, it is now time for Harry to grow into what the prophecy intends him to be...the chosen one who can challenge the dark Lord himself. It is also time for people all around to be growing out of their childhood into the stages of adolescence and of course, the consequent series of infatuations and affairs. Amidst all the evil and the natural cycle of emotional maturity, the lesser things like magic and house rivalries between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and even Quidditch have to take a back seat.

The Order of the Phoenix had already set the tone for something similar and with the declaration by the author of a high profile death in Half Blood Prince, nothing less in terms of the darker overtones would have been expected of the latest, either. The book does fulfill all those expectations but unfortunately, it does only that. In fact, it seems as if the book has been written with the single purpose of killing that high profile character. Apart from very little clarity (it has actually been dealt with quite well, but in too subtle a manner for the younger readers to appreciate) on the reasons for the character's death, the book hardly advances the story any further in an apparent manner.

The relatively lame beginning and shortage of joyous distractions (like Quidditch) in the middle had to be compensated by a fitting finale which was not present at all. The totality of the book was sacrificed to create proper impact through the totality of the series and the fitting of the book in the scheme of things. The book, rather unfortunately, has been reduced to a repetition of an already proven formula. Throw in one evil guy, one match of Quidditch, one suspicious act by Snape, one kind act by Hagrid, one unraveling of mystery by Dumbledore, one Harry, one Ron, one Hermione, and some spice in the form of romance budding amongst the growing teenagers and voila! You have Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

Fable in a fable

You are sitting in the middle of a magnificent, lush, green garden. This garden is filled with the most spectacular flowers you have ever seen. The environment is supremely tranquil and silent. Savour the sensual delights of this garden and feel as if you have all the time in the world to enjoy this natural oasis. As you look around you see that in the center of this magical garden stands a towering, red lighthouse, six stories high. Suddenly, the silence of the garden is disturbed by a creaking sound as the door at the base of the lighthouse opens. Out stumbles a nine-foot-tall, nine-hundred-pound Japanese sumo wrestler who casually wanders into the center of the garden.

It gets better. The Japanese sumo wrestler is naked! Well, actually he is not totally naked. He has a pink wire cable covering his private parts.

As this sumo wrestler starts to move around the garden, he finds a shiny gold stopwatch which someone had left behind many years earlier. He slips it on, and falls to the ground with an enormous thud. The sumo wrestler is rendered unconscious and lies there, silent and still. Just when you think he has taken his last breath, the wrestler awakens, perhaps stirred by the fragrance of some fresh yellow roses blooming nearby. Energized, the wrestler jumps swiftly to his feet and intuitively looks to his left. He is startled at what he sees. Through the bushes at the very edge of the garden, he observes a long winding path covered by millions of sparkling diamonds. Something seems to instruct the wrestler to take the path, and to his credit, he does. This path leads him down the road of everlasting joy and eternal bliss.

The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari



I have never been one of those who are easily impressed by the self-improvement or the get-rich-soon books. In fact, it has always been the reverse and I have made no bones about laughing at those who read such books, believing them to have just too much spare time at hand or mentally challenged. I always wondered that if the authors really knew techniques such as these, why were they still writing books, of all things. I had picked up this book, one of the latest and more popular self-improvement books (in fact, I was not really sure if it was that when I laid my hands on it) only because of the first reason I mentioned, that is having quite some time on hand.

Having gone through the book in two seatings, however, I realized that the succinct manner in which the book is written and the effective way in which it conveys its message is something that can not be found so easily in any other book of the same class. The fable above is the only thing that the book talks about. It uses this amazingly simple and unbelievably absurd fable to give a list of principles that will help improve the quality of life. Robin Sharma is no sage and he does not tell us something that none of us knew...at least the Indians know most of what he is speaking of and have actually employed most of the principles mentioned in the book as a part of their routine lives.

However, it is clear and apparently obvious that the book is not meant for India or Indians. Robin Sharma, in a seemingly calculated move, makes sure that even the protagonist is the typical workaholic American with dollars to spare for the eastern new age fads...Yoga, Gurus, and books like these. Julian Mantle, a hot shot lawyer gets burnt with his work filled life and after a heart attack that rings the warning bells for him, he sells off all his possessions (including a Ferrari and thus the name) and goes for an odyssey to the east.

After roaming about much of India, he finds peace and enlightenment through the teachings of the sages of the Sivana who live in isolation in the deep reaches of the Himalayas. Having committed to spreading the wisdom that he has gained, Julian comes back to America and pays a visit to his one time colleague and junior lawyer who was pretty close to him during his materialistic days. As Julian gives this discourse and pours out his heart and knowledge to his newly-found pupil, the readers of the book travel along with the two on this odyssey to a supposedly tension free life that promises nothing short of the elixir of everlasting youth.

Unlike other such books where after a decent beginning, much of the rest would have been lost in some disconnected rambling, the best part of this book is the way it connects the ideas spread across the entire (200 pages long) book through the fable above. As Julian tells John, his pupil, the secrets of life, he tells him that each element of the fable above represents one of the factors that need to be considered if a sattvic life is to be experienced. While the garden is compared to the mind, the lighthouse represents the purpose of life. Similarly, the sumo wrestler represents kaizen for self improvement and even the wire cable he wears represents the will power of human beings.

The book goes on to describe not just the ideas as represented by the elements of the fable but even gives some practical techniques to implement the ideas. The summary at the end of the chapters, mentioning the fable element, the virtue, and the techniques to achieve that virtue is another effective tool used by the author to tie his strings.

I am not sure how helpful the book is going to be in improving anyone's life (though some of the ideas are really common sense and do seem to be helpful). The important thing, nevertheless, is that the book brings together many of the things we already know but have no time to think about in cohesion. Even more importantly, all this is done in style and the use of the fable within a fable is a master stroke that is earning Robin Sharma the millions he rightly deserves (well, perhaps he does not deserve millions for telling us what we already know but that is what he is getting, fortunately or unfortunately).

From tags to...

The game of tagging people on their blog spaces has been on for quite some time and I must say that the ingenuity of the person who started it for the very first time needs to be appreciated. The very methodical nature by which he/she chose the topics for these chain blog posts, viz., books, movies, and music, is something in its own class. Almost no body would mind writing about his/her favorite books, movies or music and anyway, that is what most of us who write blogs do.

What beats me, however, is the reason why this person started the chain blog thing. In case of a chain email, I can understand the commercial motives in probably trying to earn some money through scrupulous (as in advertising) or unscrupulous (as in stealing confidential information through viruses, et al) means. But, how different bloggers mentioning their favorite books, movies, or music can benefit anyone is beyond my comprehension. The only thing that I can think of right now is that it may live up to the ego of the starter and I guess that is reason enough, or is it?

The weather outside my room being heavenly, I am currently very highly motivated for another round of the inviting pillow and mattress routine (just got up an hour ago). As such, I don't really want to get too much into the psyche of the original tagger. Instead, I will just do my job and since I do not basically enjoy getting my neck on the line, I won't specifically tag anyone. However, any of the people whose blog links exist on the left panel of this page are welcome to carry the chain ahead if they wish. :-)

Number of books I own:

As Karan, the person who tagged me said, are you serious? There are too many to have a count of. The last count I did was when I left high school and took back my books (and comics) from the neighborhood library I was a partner in. They returned me some 350 comic books, nearly 35-40 novels (of the likes of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, etc) and about 20 odd classics (which belonged to my uncle at the time). Over the years, there have been many additions to this collection and I have absolutely no idea where it stands right now.

Presently reading:

[Reading again]
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

[Reading for the first time]
Dilbert and the way of the weasel

In the pipeline:

[In my possession]
Atlas Shrugged
Fountainhead

[To buy/beg/borrow/steal and read]
Harry Potter and the half-blood prince
The Monk who sold his Ferrari
Five point Someone

Recently read:

The Da Vinci Code
Angels and Demons
Digital Fortress
Deception Point
(Yes, I was on a Dan Brown spree!)


Some of my favorites:

Gone with the wind
The immensely intricately etched characters of Scarlett and Rhett were the irresistible features of this epic saga that spanned across the American civil war. It appealed to me primarily because of the emotional strength of the female characters which is what I also appreciate in real life (all girls reading this post and swooning over its writer please note :-))

Yes Minister (and Yes Prime Minister)
Comedy at its subtle and satirical best! The television soap was good but the way readers of the book are exposed to the diaries and letters of the charcters in this political comedy is something that really completes the picture. There could hardly be any better way to portray the politics of a country as much in discussion as the UK but more than that, the treatment of the subject is exquisite...nothing banal about it at all...typical bureaucratic class at its best.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
The play of fantasy and at the same time, some back-to-the-roots fight between good and evil appealed ever so much to the readers of this book. More than anything else, the book made an impression on me not because of what it presented but because of what it promised to present in near future. This has now become a hallmark of JKR's Harry Potter series: each book reveals some things and promises to reveal so much more the next time around.

Lord of the Rings
Yes, I am rather given to the fantasy bug and I really like the magical creatures and the stories of good versus evil where the good finally defeats the evil and all is well but that is how I am! The darkness of the villains in this epic, though not in the same league as you-know-who, was enough to justify the supernatural blessings that were showered upon the ring bearer and his troupe. I really digged the elves and the kings and dwarves and all the others!

Tale of two cities
One of the first classics that I ever read, it actually exposed me to the dark side of man and how even fantastic motives like liberty can turn man to monster and how vengeance can take ugly shapes. This book reduced the naivette with which I used to view the world and given the early period in which I read it, it was also the first book to introduce the ways of the west to me and was a sort of first entry for me into the European way of life and what an entry it was!

The usual crib and some more

The post-a-day run seems to have run out (literally) and I am back to keeping irregular rendez-vous with the blog. However, it is not too irregular, either considering that I am still able to write about almost everything that has been happening out here in my life and around.

A one-off quiz that I took at one of those livejournal quiz sites put me down (or should it be up?) as a life blogger, essentially someone who writes about what has been happening in his/her life, whether or not that is interesting read for others. I don't know how far it reflects on my blog or on myself, but then again, questions at the seriousness (and the need for it) of blogging keep popping up every now and then. I keep wondering if I should start testing my PG Wodehouse memories and try to re-style some incident (real or fictional) a la Woodie just for the heck of fulfilling that long-hidden desire to write. On the contrary, should I continue to write about things that happen in my life, just as they are...or should I go back to writing about, in addition to the events themselves, my feelings regarding those events and associated people?

Probably, the last one is out of the question, what with the feelings of others involved and all that...but as between the first and the second choices, I am often confused. That is the reason why my blog is home to movie and book reviews (based on whatever little understanding that I have of them), too and not just my raves and rants...and yes, the occasional blurting out of what I have been thinking, even at the risk of sounding like a "serious blogger" and thus putting off some people, certainly adds to the diversity.

Updating the blog regularly or not, one thing that I have been doing regularly nowadays is to not let a second tick by without doing anything enjoyable. Continuing in the same mode, Dan Brown series seems to be over, with the last of my collection, "Deception Point", getting wolfed down last evening. Although science and its discoveries do make their entry into this novel, but the political overtones make it a tad different. I must say that such political thrillers should be best left to the the likes of Jeffery Archer and Co. and Dan Brown should have focused on what he does best, science, religion, symbolism, and of course, thrills.

The story is all about NASA, which is on the brink of being privatized and since it is election time, the NASA is not alone in getting the mud heaped on them. The President of the United States has to save his office from the allegations of overbudgeting and loss making that have been brought forward by his primary opponent in the presidential race. A big help comes to the NASA and the President when a discovery is made of a meteorite with fossilized remains of extra terrestrial life, proving beyond a doubt, the worth of all investments made in the NASA.

The President, in order to bring all doubts and cynicism to rest given the volatile time of impending elections, engages the help of four civilian scientists and the White House's liasion officer, who incidentally happens to be the daughter of the President's opponent, and an embittered daughter at that. The book's title leaves no room for doubt as to what happens next but the way it happens is Dan Brown's forte. He tries to keep the identity of the villain hidden and probably succeeds, too but only for the naive ;-). My logic behind outguessing a Dan Brown novel stands vindicated after yet another of his character-building-followed-by-partial-demolition exercises.

The Joe Satriani show is finally happening in Kolkata on Sunday (at the Ravindra Sarobar stadium) and tell you what, I have got the tickets. Widely touted as The GOD of Guitar, Joe Satriani is credited with tutoring guitar greats like Steve Vai and others including lead guitarists of bands like Metallica, amongst many more. This is probably the first time that I shall be attending a concert by an international artist and it will be interesting to observe the difference between them (or at least the sole representative of them, whom I will be watching this Sunday) and the exponents of Indian classical music, whose numerous shows have graced my graduate college (IT-BHU), situated right in the seat of the Indian classical music, Varanasi. More on that, however, in the next post on Monday.

Monday also promises to be an important day at work. The mid term review of our summer projects is scheduled for Monday afternoon and all the summer trainees in the TAS division are to present a half hour each presentation on what they have done so far and what they shall be doing in the remaining month that they are here in the company. The audience of the presentation is expected to be quite high profile with directors of the company, senior project managers and of course, the HR team planning to attend. I have just kicked off with preparing the presentation. Trying to make it look a little different from what others are going to present (I am sure that in the midst of all IIM students, it will be difficult to score much on the presentation style alone), I have decided to take some risk and go a little informal, making a statement through cartoons and some bold contours on neutrally colored and level plains of presentation slides.

In the meanwhile, the fingers of my left hand (especially the little finger) continue to play tricks with my brain's pain cells and the first few minutes of guitar practice every day get wasted in gingerly checking if I can still handle those strings without some permanent damage to my 'pinky' (this is the term my guitar instructor has for the little finger :-)). French classes are going to happen tomorrow and day after and I have not gone through anything that was taught the last weekend :-). Rohit is in town and I will be meeting him tomorrow and the first question that he is going to ask is about the alumni freshers' meet, which I haven't done anything about :-). 

Now that my cribbing is over, I can peacefully go back to preparing my presentation...Dilberts and Dogberts of the world, here I come... :-)

Too much for a lifetime

I hope that I am not taking up things that are beyond my capacity to handle them. It has been five straight days since I watched a movie and for me, this is quite a lot. The initial days (it has been more than a week, actually) of the guitar lessons are turning out to be quite a task, what with the notes, the cycle of C, the fingers and the chords. At the same time, the French classes scheduled for the weekend are already giving me jitters as I am not sure how much of what was taught last week will I be able to recollect and retain when the time comes for the next lesson. On top of everything else, of course, is the reason why I came to Kolkata, which is, despite what anybody else might think, my summer internship ;-). With the new phase of the project having started and the new team working with seemingly unstoppable enthu, things do not seem to be following a straight line anymore.

The alumni freshers' meet for IIMK in Kolkata is due this month. When Vaibhaw from the Alumni Committee had asked me to take care of it, I had said yes without giving it a thought as I was in a hurry to do a lot of things...pack my stuff, submit assignments, take home end-term papers and what not. Now that I have started making the arrangements and actually calling up people, I have realized that it might turn out to be more than I had bargained for. There are hardly any alumni in Kolkata and even all the freshers are not going to be here in May. As for our batch, there are just two people...Sandipan and me, waiting for Rohit who was supposed to be here this week but has not contacted any of us so far.

I guess that this much of cribbing is enough for the day so shall move on to some thing different...not too different though. I am still in the Dan Brown mode and after finishing a higly engrossing "Angels and Demons" (and giving myself a small break...just enough to re-vitalize my taste buds), I started off with "Digital Fortress". Recommended by a lot of people as delicious fare for the computer-savvy, I had great expectations from the book. To say the truth, it did fulfill most of them. There were a number of references to viruses, worms, 64 bit encryptions, cryptography and powerhouse parallel processing. And more than that, there was the typical Dan Brown thrill-a-minute caper that made the story that more interesting.

However, the book did not excite me enough to finish it off in one sitting, as had been the case with the earlier two. One primary reason for it can be that I may have got used to the tricks of the trade. The character building of the villain of the piece has become too much of a common trait to be a coincidence now. Brown seems to have this habit of building up the qualities of the character who turns out to be the villain in the latter half of the book. And not just this...you can also find the villain to be not a villain actually...just a person who does what he/she believes to be right and in the process, crosses the line somewhere. These people, as Dan Brown shows them, are not inherently bad, but have been forced to do things by the situation and their convictions which often make them prone to be mentally disturbed, too.

Digital Fortress is the story of NSA (National Security Agency for those who haven't read much of Ludlum) and its high profile code breaking Cryptography division which is held to ransom by an ex-employee via the threat of having developed an unbreakable code, a code with mutation strings that can not be out-guessed even by the fastest of parallel computing that NSA is capable of unleashing. Unfortunately for the reader, the suspense is too thin to be of any sustainable interest and not just the villain, but even the fate of the unbreakable code and the climax of the story are quite predictable...certainly a little timid when you compare it to the twist-a-page nature of his other two books. Anyways, the next in line is Deception Point by the author...if things go as peacefully (sic!) as they are going right now, I just might be able to finish it in this lifetime. :-)

Godspeed!

I had to wait for one entire day before I was finally called upon to make the presentation and it did turn out to be pretty low key, not at all what I had expected. Probably, the decision had already been taken and the presentation was of academic interest  only, as they say of the last cricket one-day in a series that has already been won and lost. The proposal to adopt the UK system, it seems, had already been rejected and the UK guy might have been trying to salvage his position by studying my presentation and trying to draw parallels between their system and ours. At 6:30 PM, when I finally gave my presentation, it was not too detailed and of the 50 odd slides that I had prepared, I was asked to cover only the selected few that had created some doubts in the mind of the intended audience of the presentation. From my end, I would say good riddance if this project dies out here and I am sent on to another by the start of next week or better still, by the time office ends today. I have decided to meet my Project Manager today..let's see what he has to say.

While I was waiting for the presentation, I decided to make some good use of time and got on with the e-book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Widely publicised as the prequel to The Da Vinci Code (actually, the stories have no relation apart from Christianity, of course and the books are just part of the same series with the symbologist, Robert Langdon as the common protagonist), the book scores over its more famous cousin in terms of thrills but as far as the symbology (which really made The Da Vinci Code so popular) is concerned, this book is certainly a poor, and yet somehow fitting, cousin.

Based on the eternal conflict between religion and science, the book tries to trace history in the backdrop of the current times. Right from the times of Copernicus and Galileo to the modern times of the nuclear bomb (and even more serious, harmful , and as the beginning of the book says, factual technology called the antimatter), science and religion have been at loggerheads. The analogies drawn right through the book are impressive. I particularly liked the part where one of the staunch church believers admonishes science for its reluctance in accepting a greater power in things that it has not been able to explain. He says, regarding the beginning of the universe, that scientists are ready to believe a mathematical near-impossibility of perfect conditions for the genesis of creation but are not able to see a bigger hand in the creation of those conditions. Well said, I believe....given the Time Zero's non-explicability in the Big Bang theory.

Religion supporters go on to argue that science is taking the soul away from the human race by making the entire lot cynics and unable to appreciate the finer things in life, unable to submit to a bigger power. Surprisingly, little has been said about the point of view of science. In a pretty lop-sided story for most of the part (except the end, perhaps), science is shown to be the villain of the piece and the brothers of Illuminati (another sect that factually exists) shown as the Satanic cult that is all set to destroy the church. With illustrious members like Galileo, the Illuminati (the enlightened ones) are shown to have infiltrated the Masons of the current times (with the Masons having some more illustrious members as Winston Churchill, Roosevelt, and even George Bush) and thus, preparing the world for the tomorrow that shall accept Science as the new God and the only God capable of miracles.

As for the chills and thrills, apart from arranging four churches at four ends of the cross, with an obelisk each as company, the story does little else. However, this is sufficient to keep the viewer glued to the book (or the computer screen in my case). The imminent destruction of Vatican City can be stopped only by a symbologist from Harvard and a scientist from Europe, an unlikely team that, as expected, does the unlikely and in the end, all is fine...well, except for a final twist, which I shall abstain from disclosing (for people who still haven't read the book and want to).

The guitar lessons are becoming more difficult now and it does need a lot of patience to keep tugging at the strings as if there is no tomorrow when I can see my instructor play Floyd and Maiden with such ease. The finger tips have had quite some wear and tear and they should be thankful for the two day break that I shall have this weekend. I am likely to go to Sandipan's place for the weekend and will be back to the PG only on Sunday. Tomorrow also marks the beginning of my weekend French classes at the Alliance Francaise...after all, I need to be able to communciate to the French supermodels once I am in Paris, what say! :-)

A pi in the face of adversity

Piscine Molitor...one of the best swimming pools in Paris

Piscine Molitor Patel...son of the small time zookeeper of Pondicherry Zoo, and one with the most astonishing survival story.



Yann Martel exceeds himself and any other writers of a similar genre as he describes 'The Life of Pi'. The book is a treatise on so many things. It delves into the rationale behind zoos, the psychology of animals, the importance of religion and faith in one's life and above all, the life of a stow-away, the things man can be compelled to do...and so much more that after reading the book, the reader is mentally exhausted because of having to take so much in. Yet, the story doesn't drag, once it has entered its flow. Admittedly, the first fifty-odd pages move slow as we are introduced to the character of Piscine but as soon as the protagonist's nemesis, Richard Parker, comes into being, the complexion of the story changes completely.

Piscine Molitor Patel has been so named because of his father's friend who has this special affection towards swimming pools in general and Piscine Molitor in particular. The way the author builds up the reason for Piscine's name is truly creative and engaging...well, not while he is building it up, but absolutely captivating when the conclusion is reached, actually prompting the reader to go back to the text once again and re-read the build up. Piscine attends the local school where his name is changed to 'Pissing' by the kids and he has to endure many a bad days because of it. Finally, when he changes school, and is asked to give his name in the first class, he boldly walks up to the black board and writes clearly: "My name is Piscine Molitor Patel, also known as Pi. Pi=3.1417". This is how Pi is born and this is how it all starts...The Life of Pi.

Pi's father does not trust Mrs. Gandhi and her iron rule and as soon as the emergency grips the nation, he starts planning to get out of the country and move to Canada with his family. The nail is driven into the coffin when Tamil Nadu Government is taken over by the center and the Patel family decides to leave for Canada by a Japanese cargo ship. The ship also carries many animals of the Pondicherry Zoo, to be sold off in Canada and America. The story, walking at a leisurely pace so far, goes into overdrive as the ship, carrying Pi and his life, sinks, leaving only five survivors. Pi is one of them and the survivors list additionally contains a Zebra, a Hyena, an Orang-Utan and Richard Parker, a Royal Bengal Tiger.

Aboard a lifeboat, the partners in peril sail forth as the ship sinks beyond hope in the middle of the Pacific, with no one to turn to...no light to shine forth. Thereafter, the story is one of trust, faith and extreme resistance to adversity that Pi shows. With the hyena making short work of the Zebra and the Orang-Utan, Pi knows that it is his turn next...nut what he doesn't know is that he also has the company of Richard Parker, the tiger, who not only finishes off the hyena as dessert but is looming as a bigger threat to Pi's survival than the ocean and its vastness.

Elements of animal psychology are explained in detail as Pi decides to tame the tiger with tricks, treats and punishments. It is a game of upmanship, of Alpha and Omega, of the greater predator trying to overwhelm the smaller. Pi sustains...but at what cost! A vegetarian believer is turned to eating raw fish, crabs, worms, human flesh and at a point, even a tiger's feces. Pi and Richard Parker survive...the survival kit on the lifeboat helping Pi to live and let Richard Parker live because a Royal Bengal Tiger is all he has for company...all he has to let his hope live. In the middle of all this adversity, Pi does not lose faith and a firm believer that he is, he keeps praying several times a day...to pass time...to let his mind be free???

Pi and Richard Parker meet many things on the way...fish and turtle that turn into their food...another blind stowaway who tries to eat up Pi but is eaten up by Richard Parker...dreams and delusions that refuse to die away...blindness and absolute famine...a carnivorous island that burns and eats up all life forms in the night...

The story concludes as Pi's lifeboat reaches the coast of Mexico. Richard Parker gets off and without as much as even a goodbye, makes his way into the forest. Pi is saved by the Mexican villages and nursed back to life after a 227 days stint on the open sea.

On the negative side, the story does get to be a bit of a drag at times, especially in the opening part where we are introduced to the life of a Zoo and its inmates, about how Pi's faith is nurtured and groomed by people he encountered in his life and who became the shapers of his destiny.

Notwithstanding the above, the book proves to be a good reading not just because it is exciting and thrilling to want to know what happened next in a survival story, but more so because it describes the game of brain vs brawn. The insights into the enterprise of Pi and his immature and risky exploitation of the animal psychology, to try and dominate a tiger are absolutely fascinating. The writing style is good..with most of the story told in first person, the reader is able to identify with the thought process of the protagonist. There are flashes of brillliance in an even otherwise good story...especially in the last part where Pi is trying to convince two Japanese officers, investigating the sinking of the Japanese ship, of his story. The disbelief of the Japanese, their external politeness and internal mistrust, the satirical tone of Pi, the new story that he tells them that is so much similar to the old one and yet so much more believable, and above all, the final report of the Japanese...all make for some very interesting reading.

This book does deserve the Booker Prize (Man Booker Prize now) and I am glad I did not make a mistake when I gifted the book to one of my very dear friends on the basis of its reputation alone.

Of yin, yang and the free sex

"The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown is all about the balance...the balance between the sexes. Rooted deep in the foundations of the most popular religion on earth, the novel is a work of fiction that bares apart the foundations on which Christianity stands in the world as of today. The excellent part about the book is its use of what the author calls symbology. Even in a country like India, people are aware of most of the symbols that the book mentions. The crucifix, the cross, the very unique architecture of churches, and above all, The Holy Grail are symbols that even a non-Christian but educated Indian will identify. This book goes one step ahead and actually tells the readers the significance behind the symbols and what they actually stand for.

At the very outset, the book claims that it is an authentic work based on truth and as such, the different analogies and symbolic explanations provided by it come across very strongly. The basic premise of the book that is brought forward by the explanation of these symbols and their hidden meanings is actually an aberration as far as the teachings of the church are concerned. Directly opposing the very premise of Christianity, the book claims that Jesus Christ was like any other human and had been immortalised just to encounter the Pagan worship prevalent in the society. The author tries to explain that Pagans were not necessarily Devil-worshippers but were the original worshippers of nature and Gods like the Sun God. However, with Christianity taking hold, Pagans were made the scapegoats and Christ immortalised to make Christianity prevail.

The ploy of the church had to face stiff resistance from the fact that there were proofs of the mortality of Christ (it will be unfair to the readers of the book to disclose the exact nature of those proofs). These proofs were held safe by The Templars, followers of the Pagan faith and King Solomon's faithfuls. A secret group is said to have been formed, called the brotherhood, or the Priory of Sion, that is given the responsibility of safeguarding these proofs. The group is believed to have many members, the prominent among them being The Grand Master and three others who follow the Grand Master and share the ultimate secret of the location of these proofs. The book goes on to mention distinguished names in the history of art as the previous Grand Masters of this Priory of Sion. The names include heavy weights like Issac Newton, Victor Hugo, and above all, Leonardo Da Vinci.

The book begins with the murder of the three followers and the Grand Master, who are collectively in charge of the secret. To ensure that the truth does not remain buried forever after their deaths, the Grand Master, Jacques Sauniere, decides to leave clues for his grand daughter, Sophie to enable her to find the location of the secret proofs. The cryptic message that The Grand Master leaves is based on the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and thus partially(there are other associations of Da Vinci with the book, too), the name The Da Vinci Code. The proofs being so sensitive and mysterious in nature, Jacques instructs Sophie, through his last message, to contact Robert Langdon, a Professor of Symbology at Harvard. Robert and Sophie, in the following portion of the book go on a treasure hunt based on the cryptic message and further clues kept in place by the last Grand Master. There are several other characters in the story, including the villain, The Teacher, who is the one who gets the Grand Master murdered and wants the proofs for himself.

The primary reason because of which the book appeals to the reader is that it sends the reader on a wild goose chase after a secret that is so well hidden for ages. It gives the protagonists as well as the readers, the same platform, from which they go ahead. It is not that the clues provided by the cryptic messages of Sophie's Grand Father are not solvable by an average Christian who has some knowledge about the religion and more importantly, the lore. When the clue actually gets solved and the reader is able to view the truth, it looks too simple, even for the ones uninitiated to the world of symbology.

The other good thing that this book does is to bring to life the various master pieces of art that have fascinated the human beings across borders and across generations. The famous works like The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa, symphonies of music maestros, etc form the basis of this book and the sheer revelation of hidden meanings in these works of art might force the readers to even a second look on these masterpieces. The way this book reveals the meanings of some of the most common concepts and understanding that we have of the Christian way of life and even the English language, as such, is amazing. For example, did you know that the word 'sinister' is actually a manifestation of the Pagan suppression that the Church practised and that it did not originally have a negative connotation? Similarly, the horns of the devil are actually symbolic of the Greek God of fertility who was worshipped by Pagan followers the world over, that is, before the church decided to project the devil as a horned creature.

All this notwithstanding, the theme of this book, as I mentioned in the very first line of this post, is the balance between the sexes. The book talks liberally about the yin and the yang and how the balance between the left and the right is vital to the survival and growth of the world. It also talks about the sacred feminine, the Goddess, who has been neglected by the church. The book stresses the fact that the male dominated church actually disturbed the pefect harmony that existed and should have existed by belittling the sacred feminine. The church made witches out of women who were progressive and even the midwives were not spared because of the technical skills and knowledge that they possessed. The church made the priest take the vow of celibacy and made sex, expecially, free sex, a thing to be frowned upon and discussed only within doors. This was in direct conflict with the spirit of Hierros Gamos, the sacred game that celebrated the joy of free sex and actually made it a ritual.

I know that it might ring a bell in the minds of the Osho followers and some might even think of the other Sadhus of India who have had the notorious distinction of advocating free sex. Though the book does not explicitly mention this, I believe that this might as well be an indicator of the closeness of Indian culture and the Hindu religion with the Pagan faith. In fact, the Goddess worship is so very prominent in the Hindu mythology that half of the things that the Secret society, the Priory of Sion, is shown to have believed in, is actually an open belief-turned-fact in India. The game of free sex, Hierros Gamos, is also not very different from the Raas Leela that Lord Krishna of the Hindu faith is said to have indulged in with abandon.

For the Indian reader, therefore, the book makes even more sense, not just because it is a good work of fiction carrying the thriller element along. Indians do love their spices, even in the books they read. More than that, however, is the association that they feel when they see a direct relation between their faith and the actual origin of one of the most popular religions in India (not popularly practised, but still popular because of the long English occupation of India). In fact, personally speaking, while reading the book, I even felt a sense of superiority and respect for my faith which was the original faith, the faith that had to be suppressed by Christianity, the world's so called most popular religion...the faith that refused to die in front of all opposition...and the faith that took in so much and gave out so much despite the oppression, despite the mistrust.

The Ludlum betrayal

I have hardly read any Ludlum novel without finally wondering why I went for it. It is not that I don't like the books or I am one of those looking-down-at-the-potboilers types. On the contrary, I do like the stuff that he writes but more often than not, his books disappoint once I am through to the end. They never really leave the reader with the joy of reading a PG Wodehouse, the fun of reading a Spider Man comic, the mind-numbing feeling of reading an Ayn Rand, or even the cheap thrill of reading a Sidney Sheldon. What I mean is that even if you take the Star Wars novel that I am currently reading after having done with the Ludlum caper, I am sure that I will have a much better experience after I have finsihed reading it, all the time thinking about Jedi masters and their light sabers figting against the dark side and all the rest of it.

The Tristan Betrayal by Robert Ludlum is a little different from his other works but the difference, unfortunately, is not positive. The book goes one step ahead with the second half of the book destroying the user's interest peel by peel after a painstaking process of forming those layers in the first half. The book starts with the modern Moscow (well, not really modern, some 13 years ago) when the communist powers in Soviet Union are doomed to an end and democracy has seen its first dawn with the eyes of Gorbachev. The book depicts the unrest, anxiety and confusion prevailing in the Moscow city briefly, and yet, with panache. The story unfolds to let the reader know that there is only one person known as 'The Conductor', who can actually prevent the situation from going bad and give that final push to the Russian democracy and prevent the fanatical communists from dragging Russia back to the darkness.

The only person who can convince 'The Conductor' to do so is Stephen Metcalfe, the honorary Ambassador from the United States. He is called to Russia by his old friend, a reputed and celebrated General in the Russian Army. The real reason for the effect that Ambassador Metcalfe has over 'The Conductor' is what forms the basis of the story. It is hidden from the reader till the very end and though it will be unfair to disclose something like this in any review of the book, I must say that the reason falls flat on its face when it is finally disclosed. Instead of a well crafted and thrilling finish that the story and no doubt, the author, was capable of, Ludlum decided the end to be a low key affair which, in my humble opinion, robbed the book of one too many loyal fans.

The story in The Tristan Betrayal goes into the flashback to show that Metcalfe was an American secret agent working in the Second World War on the orders of Corcoran, who reported to Roosevelt himself. Metcalfe is shown to have quite a reputation for being a shameless womanizer and it is this quality (???) of his, added to the fact that he, along with his brother, is the owner of the celebrated US business giant, Metcalfe Industries, that enables him to make a foothold in Nazi occupied France as Daniel, a 'Ladies Man' who goes about stealing Nazi secrets from the beds of the mistresses, wives and sisters of Nazi officers.

He is as successful as he can be, till his base in Paris is exposed to the enemies and they kill all his colleagues. The person responsible for this expose and the cruel killings of the American 'spy' base is the dreaded 'Violinist' (too much of music, The Conductor and then The Violinist) who is shown to be a nightmare over the entire story until he actually dies at the hands of Metcalfe, like a stupid villain of the Hindi movies.

Anyway, to cut the long story short, after the not-so-successful Paris stint, Metcalfe is given another assignment by his boss, Corky, to go to Moscow and re-kindle his old flame, Swetlana, who is the prime ballerina in the Bolshoi Theatre. The purpose, Corky says, of this assignment is to find out if the Nazi Officer who has Lana as his mistress, is actually someone who can be turned away from Hitler and used as an agent. However, when Metcalfe lands there and is able to re-affirm his affections with Lana, he finds out that the German officer can not really be converted and that this was not the real purpose of his mission.

His mission is to actually provide the Nazis and ultimately, to Hitler, false information about the Russian Army. This information has to be passed by Lana to the German officer as Lana is the daughter of a high ranking Russian General. To do all this, Metcalfe has to lie to Lana and since he is actually in love with Lana, he can not really go about all this lying business without a twinge (just a twinge, mind it…he is in the league of James Bond, of course, the ruthless womanizer) of guilt.

The information to be conveyed to the Nazis has been forged and falsified to give the wrong idea to Nazis that The Russian Red Army is actually weak and thus, to entice the Fuhrer to attack Russia and go to his doom and take the communists down with him, in the process (one arrow and two targets, what???) . The plan works but only after a sacrifice by Lana, who has to get herself arrested and executed by the Russians for selling military secrets to the Germans to convince Hitler and his Generals of the authenticity of the forged reports that were passed though her.

As I mentioned earlier, all this looks fine and is quite interesting, too and the reader is actually waiting for the suspense to unravel and tell him about the real secret that has been carried all these years from the time of The Second World War to The 1990 Russia and how this secret actually relates to both Ambassador Metcalfe and 'The Conductor'. However, the way Ludlum treats this secret actually belies the craftsmanship with which he has woven the rest of the story. Ultimately, the book is good and might interest the first timer or the average Ludlum reader but to hardcore Ludlum readers like me, who have hardly left any Ludlum book unread despite the now-tiresome formula that almost all his books follow, the book is a big let-down.

Rain Rain go away

The sun baked and water starved streets of Chennai have been receiving more water than they could have ever hoped for in the month of May. It has been raining cats and dogs for the past three days in Chennai and if weather reports are anything to go by, this will continue for another few days. Personally, the rain caught me yet again in the full. So there I was reaching office, fully wet from head to toe one more time.

I have started on the Spiderman novel and believe me, it is interesting. The only minus is that I am reading this after I saw the movie. It does take the fun out of reading, somewhat. The reader is not really able to identify with the events as they are told in the book. In fact, his mind wanders once too many to the events that are yet to come in the book but those that he has already seen in the movie. And that was how I was thinking of the Green Goblin even though I was reading the introductory scene of Harry and Norman Osborne. Pretty disturbing, eh?

Today is my Grand Father's birthday. He turns 79 today. I really am fortunate to have him by my side. He is my idol and even at this age, he is better than most people half his age. He is fit, is an active lawyer, tends his gardens himself and really good when it comes to talking to people. Whether it is the small farmer in the village or the highly qualified doctor from the nearby town, he has both of them interested with his conversation. Not only can he talk to them in their respective dialects, he can also talk sense to them. He knows what interests the doctor and at the same time, he can freely talk to the farmer about his problems. I just wish that I will have this ability myself some day. After all, I do carry his genes...