The book-mongering ways of a bibliophile - Systematic Book Purchase

I have this habit of walking into Crosswords(the book store) , the moment the yellow signboard catches my eyes. I just cant seem to resist. The soft amber light that emanates from within, the silent music from between the pages, the smell of new paper and prints, the illustrious flood of colors that surrounds me when I walk between the shelves, the smooth feel of a new paperback and the weight of the credit cards in my wallet, that establish in me a capacity to own almost whatever title I want, (ignoring the bills that will follow later) all hypnotize me beyond the realms of my will and suck me into that shop of well-woven tales.

I agree that the books out here are pretty expensive. Initially, I never thought twice before purchasing a book from here. But lately, I have developed a systematic method of getting to my books. Read on for some subjectively worthful gyan on Bibliophilegiri.

Step 1: Decide what book you want to read
The first step is deciding what book to buy. Rather than impulsively picking up books from the shelf after judging it buy its cover (something I still occasionally indulge in), I prefer to research and close in on books that are worth reading. I try to search for books across genres, rather than sticking to one popular genre. You obviously will find lists made up by people on blogs and elsewhere on the net, suggesting the top 10/100/1000/ etc. books one must read. I prefer avoiding following such lists, though I don't avoid glancing through them. If I see a book popping up time and again on multiple lists, I give heed to it. First, I research it on Wikipedia etc., read about the book, (not the Plot), about the author, about other books the author has written, reviews, so on and so forth. And in the process, I learn about similar/related authors, with similar/related books, and then I research them and enter a never ending cycle of literary information. While i am reading through all this stuff, I pick up books that I would want to read. And then its time to move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Get price quotes
Getting price quotes can sometimes be tricky, if you aren't using the right sources. I have a specific process that I follow to get my prices. If you know of someplace where I could get my books cheaper, please comment. Anyway, I start out with getting a quote from Indiaplaza.in. Next I get a quote from Landmarkonthenet.com. Usually, the prices in both of these sites are matched evenly, the difference not being much. But landmark is slightly more expensive, when it comes to shipping. The clubbing-of-multiple-orders feature kinda sucks on this site. But you have a wider range to choose from on Landmark. Landmark is a site that specializes only in books. Indiaplaza is a general shopping site, with a strong section on books.

I usually know how much to expect a book to be priced (developed from years of buying). So I know whether the book is overpriced on any/both of the sites. I say this because some of the books out there are priced right through the roof. For eg. a book that costing for Rs.400 in crossword, may cost Rs.700 online. Now why, I don't know. But this is something I have experienced in the past. If I find the online cost cheap (dfyob -{go figure}) , i buy right away, else I visit crossword. At crossword, if I find the book, I mostly find it costlier than it was online. But there are times when the books may turn out cheaper (Plus you get to indulge in on-the-spot-random-buying) .

If I find the book expensive at crossword too, its time to hop to the Lamour Library. Well, Lamour is a Library (as already mentioned before) that doubles up as a second-hand book store. So if I find a book too expensive to purchase from my primary sources, this is where I go.
The downside is that I may not get the book immediately or may not get it at all. This library will usually have all the popular books, but not the rarer ones, that you may find considerably easily online or in crossword. The upside is, you will get books almost as good as new at sometimes rip-away prices and othertimes quite decent prices.


Step 3: Buy the book
This is the kinda easier step for me :) . Credit/debit card, zindabaad. (Dont take me for a rich brat who can lavishly spend on his reading addictions. This is hard earned money we are talking about here.)

Step 4: Read the book
The most exciting part! The best part! Read it! This part can get tough sometimes, considering the rate of arrival being greater than the rate of reading. But I take it as a challenge to finish reading all the books I can read.

For those who want to read, but don't want to spend:
For those who have a reading budget of a church mouse, and dont have a desire to own a library themselves, join a library and ignore this post.

I guess this post makes it cockclear that I belong to the 'other' group of individuals.

The Diwali Blast...

13 more blasts in Assam! Seems like Diwali will never end. The fireworks have been on throughout the year. The Muslims have this perennial problem with religion-bred-terrorism. There are a majority who are peace loving muslims. But because of a certain section of demented extremists, it is diwali for India every day. You dont know where the next blast is, maybe just around the corner. You don't know whether you will make it back home in your office clothes, or in a polythene bag, with your clothes.

The other day when returning home, I stopped at the red light of the Inorbit signal at malad. Just in front of me stood a bike, with its bearded rider. The back of the bike had a sticker of the trademark Shiv Sena tiger, all growling and wild. Suddenly, this guy in front of me yanked out the side-stand, left the bike leaning on it, and walked away. Just imagine leaving a bike just like that in a busy junction. He walked towards a few bhel-puri stalls on the pavement and disappeared into the crowd. I was bewildered. In many of the blasts that had happened all over India, the bombs were planted on bikes and cycles that could be easily abandoned in a busy place, without anybody even getting a whiff of what was conspiring in the shadows. The engine serial nos/registration nos. can be easily filed off to prevent detection and tracking. I looked at the bike and the small carrier box that it had fixed below the pillion seat, and considered possibilities of what all it could carry. Bomb kept coming back to my mind, like I was stuck in a loop! Bomb. Bomb. Bomb. Bomb. The Shive Sena sticker on the bike and the beard on the man made me even more uncomfortable. Maybe it was a muslim extremist who was out to frame Shiv sainiks in what would be known as the Inorbit Signal blasts. Maybe the Shivsainiks had finally decided to retaliate by entering the blasts business themselves. Whatever it was, it kinda scared me.

After a few anxious moments of craning my neck to see whether I could spot the alleged bomber, I saw the man re-appear, emerging from the crowd like a water in a Sahara desert tap. I was relieved. He probably had gone to the loo for a leak, and had inadvertently scared the crap out of a genuine alert citizen ;) of this country.

Jokes apart, many people today would have reacted to this situation in the same manner. This just goes to show the subtly developing fear psychosis in our people. In a country where we could just go about anywhere, without even thinking twice, we now live in constant fear of the next blast. When would it happen, where would it happen, who would die etc.

What are the rulers of this country doing? Where is the security? After the 7/11 tragedy in the US, could anyone even burst a single Lavangi within the country? If they could do it, then so can we. If not immediately, eventually. But there has to be some positive movement toward that eventuality. That positive movement, my friend, is what I never get to see in this country of mine. I may sound like a synic, but believe me, this is optimism.

Beat the Bhaiya movement - Dirty Politics

The hottest news that you find the so called News channels airing these days is pretty obvious. There is no news as hot as 'Beat the bhaiya' news. I dont blame the news channels for focusing on the Raj v/s Bihar altercation. The whole issue is absolutely ridiculous. How in the world could not the Marathi Manoos see the selfish politics that Raj is playing out here.

Just the other day I read about a group of maharashtrians beating up a group of North Indians. One of the North-indians died. The whole episode was absolutely shocking. The same local trains, where everybody travels like Jalapeños pickled in a Jar of Sweat, without thinking twice about the native state of the person standing right in front of you, stepping on your feet. You 'adjust' and carry on. That is what the Spirit of Mumbai is all about. Reminds me of that underwear VIP underwear ad, ('adjust maadi' on youtube, which perfectly captures not only the Spirit of Mumbai, but the Spirit of India. Tolerance has been one of the outstanding factors of Indian Society, and one of the fast deteriorating factors too. Where is Gandhian philosophy (actually a lot of which is borrowed from the Bible) vanishing? People were raving about Gandhigiri some time ago, when the Munnabhai series of movies were being screened. We must ask the same people, where is the Gandhigiri now? Is this all a facade?

Raj Thackeray when arrested, refused to defecate in an Indian Style latrine. He said he was not used to it. He preferred to constipate himself and pollute the court air, with political gaseous emissions and his hard headedness. Why doesn't he squat like his fellow Marathi manoos does. He would if he really cared. But he doesn't give a damn. Id rather call him a smart politician. He knows best what he is doing out here. If anyone would know better, it would be Raj Thackeray who knows that he is in the wrong. But this is all a game, this is politics. Do you think that the Cheif minister does not know what is happening? He surely does. Don't you think that congress, the ruling party in the state is actually allowing this to happen. Yes, they want Shivsena to be split into two equal halves, not one big party, and another small band of losers. They want Raj to get popular, so that guys from Shiv Sena cross over to MNS. How else could they stop the otherwise formidable-in-maharashtra Shiv Sena.

This tactic works in a reverse way also. It keeps Mayawati and Laloo Prasad out of Maharashtra. And who suffers in the bargain. The poor north Indian Bhaiya, who is here just to make a buck and feed his family back home.

There is this issue of overcrowding in Mumbai, but then that is the incompetence of the government that is the root problem. I wont rave about what the Government should do, as I am in no position to. But there have been other countries who have handled the situation much better, and have been able to actually get their countries/cities out of a mess.

The solution lies much deeper. At the roots of our system. In our hearts. We need to improve at an individual level and change our attitude towards what we call our Nation. We need to spread the message of love, and work hard together to get solutions to the problems. Our protests must be against corruption and the decay in society, rather than the release of Raj from jail. Our protest must be against the corrupt politicians, rather than against poor bhaiyas.

Give the North Indians a Break, stop the "beat the bhaiya movement" for God's sake!!

Four Damn Days!

Four days! Four damn days! And I almost did nothing... those four damn days! Diwali, falling just after a Sunday means a long weekend. And this time Merrill Lynch was generous enough to give us 2 holidays. So the 2 day weekend became Four days long. Four Damn Days!

More than 40% of which I just slept through (obviously, including the nights). There were a bevy of pending things that were plaguing me (and still continue to), and these 4 days were supposed to help me attain Nirvana. But now they're gone and I didn't even feel it.

Four damn days... gone!

Scooting Around

Just a couple of weeks ago, as Harvest approached, the much awaited outdoor-trip-plan was being discussed again by none other than the ex-syntelite buddies (group of friends from my old company, Syntel) . Our group is now scattered across IT companies. Infosys, Syntel, Accenture, Capgemini and Merrill Lynch. We keep in touch through daily e-mails. And through emails, we were discussing about having an outing. In the good old days, when we all were on the same payroll, we were known as the ABS globe trotters, because of our travel-mongering ways. It had been a real long time since we hung out together again. We knew that we wouldn’t have all the old guys along with us. But even if we had three to four, it would be fun.

Sometime back in august, we had planned for a trip to Thailand. But when Sunil realized that his passport was to expire in 3 months, we had to abandon those plans (you need to have a 6 month valid passport when you are entering Thailand). Now the destination being discussed was Goa. Goa is a place where I would always go, without thinking twice. In the last 4 years, I have been there 4 times, and this trip would take my average to more than once a year. Finally after a lot of persuasion, dropping out, excuses etc. four of us managed to commit ourselves to the trip. Out of the 4, I was the one who was the most reluctant. The reason being that we were planning to go out on a Harvest Sunday. Initially, I disposed the option of going, but some persuasive calls later, I changed my mind. It was after a real long time that I would get to hang out with old buddies, and I thought it would probably be worth it.

We started off the journey in Konduskar Volvo. The journey was pleasant enough, because the Volvo was really a volvo. On my return journey,

Collective Blogging

I am a collective blogger. Yes, I am. Confused? Well, let me tell you what collective blogging is. I don't know if this term actually exists, but the following is my meaning of what collective blogging is. Blogging multiple post on the same days, or blogging with greater intensity over short periods of time, followed by long arid patches of no-blogging. If you take a look at my blog or better, if you plot a trend line of the no. of posts v/s time, you will see something that looks like the mouth of an old shark with a few remnant teeth. Spikes followed by large flat plains.

The primary reason for this kind of behavior is that I usually write my stuff offline, and am very irregular at sitting and writing my ideas out. There are a million in my head, and a million things I want to say. But then the outlet of these ideas into the electronic world of the internet is very small. Most of them die or wilt away just waiting to be written. That is sad. Very sad, both for me and my poor ideas/thoughts.

Most of them come when im riding my way to work and back. So many of them. But when I reach work/home, I enter a new world, where most of my ideas go find a small dark corner to sleep. I am working on strategies to keep them alive, and convert them into blog-entries. So hopefully, there will be many more blog entries in the future, and not collectively, but consistently.

The Psycho Canine Gang

For the past few days I have been seeing the sun much lower in the east that I ever get to. My MDiv examinations are scheduled way up in the morning at around 7:00 am. I am a perennial slugabed, since my office starts later than other offices, and this time change in my schedule was really unwelcome. But fate had is such that I would need to get out from under those cozy sheets much earlier than I should have otherwise had to.

My exam timings are from 7:00 am to 10:00 am, after which I get some time to come home & have my mor-noon brunch. I can then leave for work. My examination hall is my local church, just 5 minutes as the wolf runs. The early morning bike ride helps me get rid off a bit of my slumber. But what really wakes me up is the Psycho Canine Gang.

As I ride into the compound of my Church building, (my church is located on the second floor of a commercial-residential building with other workshops & shops.) a gang of around 8 dogs attack me. I go to church on Sundays, & other days, but never so early. These dogs usually are silent & leave me alone. If one of them starts barking, I start whistling profusely, and this seems to pacify the mongrel. It then usually shuts up.

But this was different. Early in the morning these dogs seemed to go Mad. They surrounded me, gnarled and barked at me obstreperously. The first attack was when I was attending the first paper. The attack was led by a white bitch, (the other dogs were probably her kids) and these dogs knew no fear. I know that I am not an intimidating person, and friends would call me a teddy bear rather than a grizzly, but all said and done, I am six plus and almost weigh a quintal. No dog would take any ‘Panga’ with a person of this size, or at least that is what I thought. But these dogs were crazy (as I have said before). I had to stop my bike even before I got to the parking area and get off it, lest I find, stinky canines buried into my calf muscles. Initially I started whistling profusely. (I always whistle to pacify dogs that bark at me, and most of the time this tactic works). Most of the dogs went quiet, but one of the crazy dogs along with the white bitch seemed unaffected. The barking continued, and the dogs closed on me, one of them just behind me. I knew I had to get my hand to a stone, or atleast act as if I had found one. I did, and whack, I flung the stone at one the white bitch. I missed, and managed to scare off the other dogs. They kept barking and I kept looking for stones to fling. That is when the watchman of the building arrived with a stick & drove away the dogs. They seemed to recognize him and obliged with half-silence. There were muffled growls that still showed some defiance. But I wasn’t harmed by those dogs that day.

Later when I left after giving my exams, I observed that the dogs were all sleeping. None of them even turned to look at me. I wasn’t surprised. Because in the past, I always have seen the dogs sleeping, least bothered about me. Then what in the world stirred them up this morning, I though to myself. As I cautiously left the compound, trying to make as less noise as possible, the watchman waved at me, with a smile on his face.

“Darneka nahi, kattha nahi hai. (Don’t be scared, they don’t bite)” He said cheerfully. “These dogs are harmless”. I stopped the bike and paused to talk to him. I asked him why nobody drove these dogs out of the compound? He said, that the madrasi who owns a workshop in the basement of the compound regularly feeds these dogs. He has done this to put in place some kind of a security system. This, so that people don’t dare to venture into building compound. Now what kind of security system in the world was this? A bunch of mongrels?

Then I asked him about why these dogs attacked me in early in the morning, and let me go later on when I was on my way back. He told me that early in the morning, these dogs are un-fed. That is when they start behaving rabid. Anyone who enters their area is barked at. But later after the madrasi has fed the dogs, they cool down. They go to sleep. They aren’t bothered who comes or who goes. Cause they are full.

I thought of complaining to the municipality, but then after my exams were done, and after my altercations with the Psycho Canine Gang became a thing of the past, the desire to do so slowly went away. But one day I will get them. I will get the PCG, for what they did to me.

Journey to Sword Warriors 08

The last few weeks, in fact months of my life have been extremely busy. Not that I was strained out or under tremendous pressure, but just plain occupied. On the 2nd of October, we had a program in church called Sword Warriors 08. And in the weeks preceding this day, most of my time was spent in preparation (thankfully not last-minute as always).

If you have been a part of this program, you would know what I am talking about. If you haven't, let me introduce you to Sword Warriors.

Sword Warriors is a Youth Event, in which the primary focus is on intellect and the knowledge of the word of God. In SW 07, the event had teams working on presentation on the Theme: Science and the Bible. Teams were given topics like 'Age of the Earth', 'Creation v/s Evolution', 'Archeology and the Bible' etc. They had to make presentations on their topics, and also submit some documentation that supported or had a detail study on the topic they would present. The teams submitted the documentation a couple of weeks before the event and were studied by the judges and marked accordingly. Then on the day of the event, the teams presented their topics with the aid of PowerPoint slides. The event was largely successful, and everybody liked this innovative format of Sword Warriors. UBMC Chembur was the winner of Sword Warriors 07.

After the success of SW07, we decided to have SW08. It was but natural that we thought of having the program in the same format as we had the previous year. But there was a hitch here. The topics in 2007, being about the Science & the Bible, were extremely interesting. How could we find topics for SW08 that would match up to the previous year? Most of the topics that we could come up with in our brainstorming sessions would be perceived as boring by a young audience. We could not organize a program that would come out as outright boring to the youth.
Thus we thought of changing the format of Sword Warriors 08 this year. This year, Sword Warriors would be a quiz competition instead of an Information search & presentation competition.

Every body approved of having the game in such a format. But now, we had to think about how we could bring in variety to the game. After some brainstorming sessions, and contributions of ideas from some guys, we had a few games in front of us. We divided the games amongst ourselves, and started developing and working on them. There were some classic general knowledge & GK rounds that we planned for. Three of the games were visual games, and one was a surprise game called Shapeshifters.

But there was one game that I had in mind, and wanted to have in SW08. The game did not have a name then, but it was based somewhat on Klueless3, a game developed by IIM Indore. This game eventually was named 20 chambers, (we even thought of naming it Swords & Secrets, Cloak & Dagger or The Quest). 20 Chambers is a game that has 20 levels. Each level has a puzzle/riddle that a team must solve in order to get to the next level. Along with each level puzzle, the team gets 3 bonus questions that they can solve to gain some extra points. There were numerous rules, power cards, and other bonuses that teams could play around with, to maximize their scoring. We started working on the rules of this game, and once we were done with it, the result was very satisfying. Evey body who read the rules, appreciated the game.

We were overjoyed that God was continually leading us through all the conception and event definition phase so wonderfully. We were sure that he would take us through the event in the same way, though we weren't praying as much as we should have been. But we always saw him in control of everything and anything related with SW08.

I had to work vehemently on 20 Chambers, as making the level riddles, and collecting the bonus questions was a brobdingnagian task in itself. After weeks of toiling, we saw most of the riddles being completed much before time. I don't know if it was a mistake, but we took a dangerous decision of increasing the number of levels for the game to 30 chambers from the initial 20 Chambers. The last 10 chambers were more difficult to make and demanded more questions. The bonus questions had to be tougher. Our total work for 20 Chambers increased by more than 50%. The cost of 20 Chambers increased by 50%. And the best part was on the day of the event, the maximum no. of levels/chambers that the teams crossed, was just 15. The other 15 chambers went untouched. The effort used for the last 10 chambers could have been used to work and develop the other games/sections for the event. But we believed that things were happening as per Gods plan, and the 30 chambers attempt also was allowed by God. Probably so that we aren't too confident of ourselves and our strength, and depend on him more.

The final 4 days before the event was a complete slog. We were around 4 to 6 people who were working consistently over a period of 2 months. But now we needed every person at our disposal. It always has been the YES story, that at the end, when the pressure has reached mounting heights, everybody rushes in to help. This is just what happened even this time. Everybody rushed in to bail us out. The weekend before the event, we were up all night always. Organizing and making quiz questions, browsing the internet, designing stuff etc. It was tough and challenging, but extremely exciting.

Also, we had to make electrical buzzer systems for 2 playing arenas. The 3rd one would be the arena for 20 Chambers. Ivan uncle bailed us out here. In spite of his busy schedule, and the delay in giving him the raw materials/hardware, he made the buzzer by sitting up late into the night one day before.

The event was on a Thursday, a public holiday (Gandhi jayanti). The final onslaught began on tuesday evening. Many others and myself had decided to take the day off on Wednesday. We knew that there would be a lot of stuff to do a day before. We started out with shopping on Tuesday evening. Looking out for large boxes for 20 chambers. We wanted boxes that would look like old medieval chests. We were planning to settle for puny shoe boxes, as we had no idea about how we could get boxes that looked like treasure chests. And we needed 9 such boxes. From where in the world could we get 9 such boxes? But God is great! Annette and Bonny ventured into shoe shops, but were unsuccessful in getting shoe boxes. While trudging back defeated to base (church), they thought of asking the guy at Kiran Printers (just below our church hall) whether he had any spare boxes. He pulled out large boxes for A4 paper (which if decorated aptly would surely look like miniature medieval chests). We couldn't believe that we actually got such boxes. And later on the girls did a brilliant job of decorating the boxes. Painted them black with black blackboard paint, (which gives a matte finish). And then they gave it a metallic finish with brazen bronze powder mixed into this paint. The effect was so awesome that there were people fighting over the boxes even after the event was over. The adjoining picture shows the piled up boxes. Trust me, they look much better in real life.

My house the night before was filled with members of the YES team, all working on various tasks. Every inch of the house was occupied. The kitchen floor, the bedroom, living room, balcony etc. Only the toilet was spared. Following are some pics of the preparation in full flow one night before:

Ann & Shimona working on the Quiz questions in the bedroom. They were really under a lot of pressure to get this done ASAP.




Serena and Sarojini sorting out 'bonus question sheets', with complete concentration and focus.


Me working on the bonus questions for the last levels. The last burst...


Suraj came in late, after a long day at college, but worked like hell to get shape shifters done with his excellent talent with shapes and dimensions. He uses the only floorspace left, the balcony floor.


Elroy looks sloshed after working on GK questions all night, and now on shape shifters. He had to rush to the venue at 6:00 am the next day to set up the buzzer system with Bonz.

John entertains and provides food, before he sat down to slog on level sorting


Chrislyn and My mom use the kitchen floor, as they break their backs on the tough job of segregating level clues.


Sairith, Edi and Myself (L-R) discuss Reveal it, before Sairith & Edi took off

Other than the boxes, there were a million other things to be done, like getting prints for 30 chambers, cutting out the extra clues, printing the cards, sorting stuff into envelopes, finalizing the bonus questions. One would be able to grasp the magnitude of 30 chambers only if he/she was actually present when we were preparing for the game. There were around 2000 cards, that had to be sorted out for each team. There were around 25 different card classes. More than 10 different variety of cards, Hundreds of Level puzzles and hundreds of extra clues, all in high color laser prints. And then there was the great scorekeeping excel sheet. Filled with a bevy of formulae, this excel was completely automated, to enable the score keeper to keep extremely complex scores, built on a complex set of rules without entering a single number. Making this score sheet was a gargantuan task in itself. The sheet was 50 mb in size without the entry of scores. I have in my professional life, never ever seen an excel that is 50 mb! Getting all this done truly needed extreme forms of perseverance by the whole YES team. By the time it was the morning of the event, my body was burning with the lack of sleep. In the past 3 days, I had just slept for a total of 8 hours, averaging around 2.5 hours of sleep a day. And we had a whole day in front of us, where we had to execute all we had prepared. We hadn't even visited the venue the previous day as planned. The buzzer systems would be wired at 6:00 am. Our team was low on sleep and high on stress, as well as high on excitement and faith. The days of working hard for so long, would now be tested, would now be tried. Our efforts and prayers would pass through fire.

How would we come out? How would the event come out? What happened on the all important day? Was SW08 a success? Would 20 Chambers be criticized, or would it be loved? How would people react to reveal it? So many questions... Read all about it on the post ' The day, SW08', coming soon.