City on fire

Wheneveer terrorism strikes India, I usually want to blog about it. Though I haven't blogged every time it did, the number of posts on terror seems to be on the increase. Now Terrorists invade Mumbai! Even in my wildest of dreams would I never have thought that what happened could actuall be done. What the terrorists did was something beyond my imagination, and I know that I have a wild imagination. What if I was at CST that rueful day? What if I was shot on the back of my head, and my face was blown out on the other side, and my family had to come find this faceless corpse of mine lying on a CST platform, next to 57 other corpses, faceless for them. How would my family take it? Worse, what if one of my near and dear ones would have received a bullet as a gift from those brainwashed diabolic radicals? How my blood would boil then. How my spirit would fume. Yet, however much I am infuriated by this attack, it is goober peas compared to the sorrow that the victims and their families go through. We, the unaffected would never understand, unless we are the affected.

I fold my hands in humble prayer, close my eyes and thank God for keeping me and my family safe on this vile day, the day that the devil danced a jig in front of the Taj. And I pray that the families of the victims would be comforted; their losses are too immense for comprehension. I pray that the politicians would stop waltzing with medusa, and pullup their slimy pants. That the scales would fall off the eyes of our blind leaders, and that the corruption that is eating to our country like an african-flesh-rot-bug would be axed at its neck. I pray that God would have mercy on all of us, because if there is someone who can save us now, it is him.

What poverty is in India...

Today, the Times of India carried an article titled "How poor is poor in city?" on the first page. On reading the article I discovered that a person earning above Rs.540 (i.e. approx 11 to $12) a month is tagged as not poor in Mumbai, and for rural India, it is just Rs.328 (approx $7). Can you even believe that! For $7,in America, you will only be able to buy a burger with fries and coke. That is one meal. And you expect someone to be considered above the poverty line because they are just earning this flimsy amount. If you aren't an Indian, then don't consider this to be a disparity in cost of living across the globe. This just shows how dumb the Indian government is, or maybe how low it can stoop, to manipulate number of poor persons in the country. I spend 500 bucks every time re-fuel my bike. I spend 500 bucks when I visit the mall/theatre etc. I spend much more than 500 bucks when I'm at a bookshop. And they call these people "Not poor"!! Like Captain Haddock would have said .. A bunch of Macrocephalic Two-Timing Tartar twsted baboons!!!

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Book Review (10/10)

After reading the Kite runner, I was impressed with Khaled Hosseini. His ability to churn out a tale of such depth and passion, driven by his love for his country enchanted me. Obviously, after every first novel, readers expectantly & impatiently wait for the second novel from the author with expectations that are high (obviously, if his first one is a good one). Many novelists fail to deliver the same quality in their second book for obvious reasons, one being that the first book was a story they wanted to tell, and the second one was a story the chose to tell. Chetan bhagat for example went hurtling down in the quality of his books. 'One night at the call center' miserably failed in comparision to his first book (not in terms of book sales, but in terms of book quality. His book sales were driven due to the success of his first book). I dont understand how his books manage to sell faster than hot pancakes. Coming back to Hosseini, I expected him to be a one book author. A doctor, writing part time, and writing about a subject close to his heart, Afghanistan. He already had told a tale about his home country in the first book. What more could he tell now. I thought to myself, if he chose to write a book on any other subject other than Afghanistan, the chances that his book would fail would be big.

But all of these doubts were put to rest when the book was out. "A Thousand Splendid Suns". I can easily say that this is one of the most emotionally moving stories I have ever read. I have never shed a tear over a book, but shed dozens over this one. Hosseini manages to pierce your heart with a thousand swords, and keeps twisting and yanking them throughout the story, and inflicts pain equivalent to what a lady would experience when giving birth to a thousand splendid sons ;). In case you don't feel the pain that the protagonists of the story feel, you certainly are a person with a heart as hard as a rock.

This is a story of two afghan women across generations who are from different backgrounds, but suffer a similar fate. The story of their pains, their sorrows, their friendship, their struggles, their country and their hope (or lack of it). Hosseini wonderfully starts with two separate stories, and then goes on to merge the stories together. It is a love story, between two lovers, and between two friends. The ability that Hosseini possesses to bring to life images in the readers mind is astounding. The resplendent image of old Afghanistan to the intimidating character of Rasheed ,the nuances of his mannerisms to fear he projects, the turmoil in Mariam to the determination in Laila. Everything is wonderfully woven, considering that the writing style of Hosseini is comparatively simpler. You almost feel that you yourself are present in the rooms in which the characters interact, and unfold the tale. The backdrop for the story is the History of Afghanistan. it flaunts itself like a large velvet curtain of vivid colours hanging behind an incredible performance on stage. When you are made aware of the horrors that the people of Afghanistan had to go through, you will certainly shudder. It is like a lesson in the History of Afghanistan, camouflaged with a story of profound strength.

The last part of the story, or BOOK IV, is a part that moves without the turmoil present throughout the book. But this is the part that made me cry the most. Read it, and you will know why.

There many areas about the book that I would like to write about, but that would spoil the fun for you, in case you haven't read the book. This is one of those books that you cant even think of not missing. A book that will help you love your near and dear ones better. A book that will essentially teach you or show you how fortunate you are to be living in a place with almost no turmoil or sorrow. For the brilliance of Hosseini's story telling, for his ability to create a storm of emotions in the reader, for his projection of the History of his country so well and for many other reasons that has made this book a best seller, I give it a score of 10/10.

Letter to Ravi Subramanium, author -If God was a Banker

I just read the book "If God was a Banker" on Sunday. It was one of the few 250 page + books that I completed in one day. Today, I visited Ravi Subramaniums website, and posted him a message. Surprisingly, I got response from him today itself. Below is the letter I wrote to him, and under that is his reply.

Hi Ravi,

I just finished reading your book 'If God was a Banker' yesterday, and couldn't put it down till I finished the whole thing. Congratulations to you on a well written book. I picked up the book in the morning and was through by the end of the day. You have managed to weave a very interesting story and one refreshingly different. Since the previous books I read were "The Calcutta Chromosome" & "A thousand splendid Suns", I initially felt that the book had no writing style, and was too plain Jane. That was a bit difficult to adjust to at first. But once I was into the book, I got used to the style. And the story made up for that area that it lacked in.

In addition, I wished that the cover design for the book would have been better. The cover design was far by the worst I had seen yet. There is a great improvement in the cover design of your new book. I feel an attractive cover design can attract potential readers.

Regarding the plot, there are a couple of points that already have been mentioned in your blog. For eg. Sundeep did not force any woman into an illicit relationship. Nor did he indulge in any kind of sexual harassment. Thus he should not have been held responsible for those acts (though they were morally wrong) as the female partner was equally at fault here. She choose to sacrifice character for material gains.

Also I didn't understand why Aditya helped Swami in establishment of BOCA in the BPO business. It would be obvious that BOCA would be a competitor of Adityas enterprise. You have mentioned that Aditya helped Swami generate business by using senior contacts at NYB etc. It was like aditya is taking a pie out of his own share and giving it to Swami. Would anyone really do that. You also mentioned that BOCA comes out as on of the top BPO firms. And then at the end of the book, even adityas firm comes out as one of the top. I found it slightly hard to digest how aditya could bring both his and Swamis firm to the top, when they were competing entities.

Just small areas that I found not clicking. But that doesn't take away any credit from the storyline or from the book. Good job on your first novel! Looking forward to reading your next one. And all the best for your third one!

Cheers,
Alistair

Following is the response that I received from him. It only shows on his timeliness, and how he values his fans. Hats off to him. He just won a fan for life.

Hi Alistair

Thanks for writing in with your thoughts. I am really glad that you liked the book. Yes you indeed have raised some valid thoughts. Do read my next one and write in with your thoughts.

My third book, Devil in Pinstripes should be hitting the stands in Q2 2009.

cheers

Ravi

I will soon be putting up a review on this. But if you plan to visit a bookstore before that, don't forget to catch your copy of "If God was a Banker".

Trojans from Hell

Damn it! Im rewriting this post again because of the reason I am writing this post in the first place. What an irony! My damned PC seems to restart on its own without warning me, and the stupid blogger autosave feature did not kick in! Writing 2 paragraphs, and having to rewrite that again immediately is irritating, and that would still be an understatement. Is it a virus? Is it a hardware malfunction? is it a phantom playing tricks or is it one of my split personalities who kicks in for a second, hits the restart button and vanishes.

Around a year ago, my lappy was plagued with an army disgusting demented viruses and trojan horses (If I ever lay my hand on a virus writer...), all of different shapes, sizes, functions and names. They did not attack all together, but eventually. How they sneaked upon me, even I cant say, but they sure took me by surprise. It started off with little annoying problems like my cursor suddenly running about the screen uncontrollably, a couple of IE windows opening etc. Then the symptoms slowly started growing in magnitude. OS hanging, sudden restarts, not saving files when I save them, disabling certain softwares, making me, the admin user a guest user without any authority. All the other attacks, I bore silently. But taking away my admin rights was just too much. I had to fight back. But the trojan army was always one step ahead.

For starters they disabled all my anti virus software. They left me like an AIDS patient, without any immune system. My WBCs had been hijacked. I decided I wont give up, and gave up my PC to an expert. He started using his special anti-virus programs, his special tools etc. Some of them were terminated, but others still lurked. Some bold and defiant got detected, but could not be removed. Others craft and sly, lurked undetected (we realized this later). After my friend Richie toiled over my lappy, after hours of formatting and reformatting, he managed to clean up my laptop of all its crap. But in the bargain, I lost my genuine windows installation.

Now the ugly head of this black army seems to be slowly rising again. I did some virus scans, and updated my anti-virus. But the restarting problem still exists. Sometimes I wonder whether it is a hardware problem I'm dealing with here. Initially I absolutely had no clue about why may laptop used to go kapoot. But a couple of weeks ago, I found the trigger. Or at least I think I found it.

Whenever I press the arrow keys or the backspace keys in rapid succession, my lappy just goes out cold. Strange. I noticed this while playing Dink Smallwood (a postworthy game thats gonna get a post of its own soon). Whenever Dink had to slay a bonca or a slayer (considered to be dangerous enemies atleast early on in the game), he had to run about and make quick turns. That meant hitting the arrow keys in rapid alternating succession. Plonk! Out cold. This happened so many times that I stopped playing Dink for now. But the problem still persists. And as long as it does, I cannot play Dink! Damn!!

Anyways, Keep checking back to see what happened in the war between me & this unknown enemy of mine.

Subconcious Plagiarism - Cryptomnesia

A few months ago, my sis Annette & and her friend Jennifer, were working on a pop-up greeting card. Both of them were doing a course in Early Childhood care (& now are Kindergarten {sounds better than K.G. ;) } teachers at schools), and this card was part of their assignment. Ann & Jen showed me the semi-complete card, and asked me how it was. The card had a drawing of a small chick hatching out of an egg, with pieces of eggshell flying all over. Something like the hatching of a superchick shot using a split-second-camera. I liked the idea, but technically, the drawing was wrong. The chick was standing in the shards of the hatched egg, one leg in one half and the other one in the other half. And above the chick were some more fragments of the cracked egg. If one tried a logical reconstruction, one would come up with an egg and a half. I pointed this out to them, to which they said, the drawing was copied from a book. I criticized the quality of the books they were referring. But this wasn't enough, I had to give them some advise on how they could improve the drawing. I personally love cartooning, and by habit pay attention to the little nuances of cartooning. I would let myself down, if I wouldn't be able to come up with some original ideas to better the drawing.

After a minute of thought, I was lecturing both of them about how the drawing would look much better, if a piece of the eggshell would rest on the head of the chick, like a cap. It would give it the appearance of an Anne Geddes baby. I knew it was a small suggestion, nonetheless I was proud of it. My sis smiled at me, and then said, "Well I know where you got this from". I was surprised. I told her it was a completely original idea. She insisted that she knew where I got this from. I told her that I probably would have come across something of this sort in a cartoon show or something along the way. She still said, she knew exactly where I had got this idea from. Then she pulled out one of her journals (the kind she shows all of her family after completion). She flipped the pages, and turned the journal to show me one page. It was exactly the image I suggested a few minutes ago. I was shocked. It was the exact image I had picturised in mind a few minutes ago.

I could bet my life on the fact that I thought my idea was kinda original. Atleast not the carbon copy of something that I had seen a few months ago. But the evidence was against me here. This was the first time I realized how powerful the subconscious is.

My point is that this happens, and it doesnt take an expert to know that it does. Along the way, as we keep picking up ideas and concepts developed by other, snowballing down the hill of information, we lose quite a bit of what comes at us, but a lot of it gets tightly packed into that huge snowball of data. Somewhere deep inside in that vast sea of experiences, it gets hidden under some more important concepts/ideas/skills that the brain has to remember. But it still is there waiting for its time. When a trigger of some sort goes off, this thought is pulled out by the subconscious, now hazier than before, it easily gets thrown out by the brain, which deceives itself into making the person believe that the idea is original.

As I was googling for "Subconcious Plagarism", I came across the following-

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Friedrich had been accused of plagiarism, when the book that he wrote,
I couldn't agree less that this is obviously more than true. But the above statement in isolation may not be complete, especially when discussing SP. If your memory is too good, it would be conscious plagiarism. For it to be subconscious, the memory needs to pass out from the conscious zone into the subconscious zone.

The first time the term "Subconscious Plagiarism" came to me, It came to me in thought, as an original idea. I had never ever before read the word anywhere, anytime. But I know that to have an original Idea today is extremely difficult. Somewhere, somebody has already thought about it. And something as obvious as Subconscious plagiarism could never go unnoticed. So I decided to find out using Google. When I Googled it, there were some vague mentions of Subconscious Plagiarism, but no concrete definition of the same was found. In highest probability, In fact I was almost sure that this phenomenon/habbit/behaviour/whatever it is, must be documented somewhere in some Psychology book of some kind. Then I came across Cryptomnesia.

Cryptomnesia is the actual scientific word for Subconcious Plagarism. Following is the Wiki definition of Cryptomnesia:

Cryptomnesia, or inadvertent plagiarism, is a memory bias whereby a person falsely recalls generating a thought, an idea, a song, or a joke, when the thought was actually generated by someone else. In these cases, the person is not deliberately engaging in plagiarism, but is rather experiencing a memory as if it were a new inspiration.

Read the whole article on wiki. Worth reading!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptomnesia

To sum it up, everybody sometime, somewhere may experience bouts of Cryptiomnesia. Human beings are wired up that way, to use past experience to better future experience. But if we are aware of this behavior that the Human brain exhibits, we will be more cautious the next time that "Original" idea pops up in our mind.

The Calcutta Chromosome - A novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery - Book Review

As I keep reading more of Amitav Ghosh, the more I am in awe of his intelligence and ability to weave a story so intricately, yet with such gargantuan coverage of the chosen subject. Yes, ghosh always selects a particular subject, mostly in (colonial) history, and his novel ends up with half the history ever known about it. The kind of research that he puts into his books is flabbergasting. The Calcutta Chromosome is one of his older books, and probably one that isn't so popular, in the sense that he wasn't as famous as he was when the "Sea Of Poppies" was released. So the chances that you will see this book at Crossword or some other bookstore is comparatively less.

I was on my usual book-stroll (in the Lamour book store.I usually book-stroll with the intention of finding a steal of a deal in second hand book shops.) one evening, when my eyes caught the words "The Calcutta Chromosome", well camouflaged in a messy pile of vibrant faded paperbacks. I latched upon it, yanked it out of the pile with glee, and found a Hardcover version of the book staring back at me with a blank expression. My fingers, without awaiting pulse signals from my mind, flipped open the cover and my eyes working in tandem, searched for the price marked with graphite on the Title page. (Second hand books usually have their prices written on the title page in pencil.) Rs.180! A steal of a deal!! In moments I was away, with the book tucked safely into a polythene bag, my heart bobbing and my lips singing, as I biked my way home.

You would wonder why I chose to rave about how I purchased this book. But for a chronic bibliophile (like me), everything from the sperm to the germ in the life cycle of the relationship one has with the book is of utter importance. If you are one, you would infer my reasoning.

Getting to the review, the book starts somewhere in the unmentioned future (probably 2020), from where the core of the story is (1995). Antar, an aging programmer, put on a no-consequence job, to get him through to his retirement seems like a drab protagonist to have for a book with an intriguing name like this. No, he isnt a false protagonist either. He is just one of the many who would bear a lot of importance to the tale. Antars deals with a futuristic computer called 'Ava', who flashes him with images of objects, which Antar has to identify, and teach Ava how to identify in the future. It is when he comes across an I-card of an old acquaintance (Murugan a.k.a. Morgan), who has been missing for the past couple of decades, that he is tempted into digging more into the matter and finding out what happened to him. And then the fun begins.

The story starts unfolding in parallel threads, in different time zones, with a range of over a century. The history of malarial research, life of Ronald Ross, strange Laveran rods (in context of the time), supposedly false conjectures on malaria, path-breaking discoveries, dodgy indian bearer-boys, undercover secret groups, haunting cerebral syphilis, parallel intelligence, its all in there. The research that Ghosh has put into the book is exquisite and extensive, like always. He has dissolved the borders that exist between real history and the fiction of his tale, at least in my mind. Sometimes there are pages of unconventional history woven into the tale, and rather than making the book boring, for me it made it wildly interesting. I did a bit of my own research on Ronald Ross (after I completed the book), searching for similar views as that Ghosh has expressed on Ross, but was unable to find any (on the net). The negative hoick that he has given to the otherwise untarnished image of Ronnie Ross, had my mind in knots and to some extent still does.

The title cover says "A novel of Fevers, delirium & Discovery". And the book surely lives upto the title. Indeed, the fevers and the delirium will really give you the spooks. Some places it almost runs through like a horror story. This book had me scared. It has something ancient, something of the past, something like a ghost, totally unknown, strong, without form moving behind the curtains of the story line and making a strange and haunting signals at the reader. Even as I write this blog entry late in the night, thinking about certain parts of the book gives me the shivers.

To talk about some dicey areas in the book, the book may not qualify as pure science fiction. The science explained is somewhat stretched and fictional in parts. But entertaining enough. Also the story is like a rubik cube. Almost everybody is connected to everybody. Its like a small world with people bumping into the same people everywhere. This may appear somewhat filmy, but then thats what the whole book is about. If you read through the whole thing, you will know just why everybody knows almost everybody.

All in all, I am a die-hard AG fan now, and that will surely bias the way I rate this book. I would love to rate this book higher than I have, but I guess ill have to settle with a 8/10. So if you haven't read it, go get a copy now.