Happy New Year to all of you. Thank you for reading and commenting ... no man is an island, and my thoughts might never return from the black hole of my conscience if they didn't find resonance in the light of your minds.

May the years to come be so much more beautiful than all those we have left behind. To good times and good cheer.

I have to say I'm a huge fan of JK Rowling. Granted I've only read maybe 3 or 4 of the 7 books and maybe have only seen 2 movies, but she is probably one of the most genuine celebrities out there. Her story of the success, the quietude of her strength and the faith in her life leading to something (see transcript of her speech at Harvard) are compelling and show her for what she really is.... human.

I also have to say that this video, more than any other reveals how self-important and money centered Oprah, and in general the US can be. Oprah through the set of interviews goes on and on emphasizing the 'billionaire' and JKR is just polite enough to ignore it, and she must cringe at how non-representative money is of her priorities and overall life. Oprah is so keen on getting her words in that it's almost painful to watch at times (esp in parts 2,3,4, and 5 of this set). It's almost like one person in this video has an IQ of 180 and the other 90.

I just wish she'd let JKR speak ... surely people would rather listen to her, but then again narcissism does not have reins.

Come what come may
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day

- Macbeth

Fragile



Fragile (Sting Cover) | Upload Music

Lots of people thanked me for saying women are the more evolved gender on aggregate. Was there ever a doubt about that? Don't think so.

Whats the most beautiful line you've ever written?

" ...Perhaps the dream

Is dreaming us

Soaring with the seagulls"

- STING

(why do I get the feeling, it has to be Sting to say something like this .... or Pink Floyd .... or the Beatles ... or Shakespeare :) .....)

A piece of brilliant writing is as timeless as eternity herself.

What is the most beautiful line you've ever written?

Driving to work this morning, I turned up the volume. My car stereo plays all the time, but is muted as I'm on calls almost all the time that I'm driving.

As the amplifiers came to life, the first verse of that favourite song came in through the speakers. For some reason every note reached my heart, as it had never done before. I turned up the volume. It doesn't matter .... nothing does, at moments like this when you recognize that emotion embedded in the creativity that was intended when Dave Gilmour wrote that guitar solo.

Sigh .... everytime I have to turn off the setero when Coming Back to Life is playing I feel like I have stepped back into Earth from interstellar space.

Of Pens and Ink

Click on the image to read.

Chelpark Turquoise, Pelikan

I'm not particularly thrilled with Chelpark's Turquoise Blue. I bought a pot of this blue and Violet (which I like more ... see below).

The best ink available in India is hands down Parker Quink Royal Blue (see below).

The chorus is written with my other black steel Pelikan with Violet Chelpark ink. The verse is written with my Pelikan Future model pen using Quink Royal Blue.

Chelpark Violet, Quink Royal Blue

If you share this hobby, you should check out and look at the plethora of other inkmeisters linked on his page.

http://penaddict.com/

Of course, the really good inks like http://www.jherbin.com/ and

http://www.privatereserveink.com/

are not really available in Bangalore.

Benaami - Anish Sarkar





Finished reading it a few minutes ago. A rich tale, constructed with great precision and detail. An intelligent, masterful effort to the end. It's easy to forget that this is a debut novel.

Great stuff Anish ... I can see the signs of a big budget movie embedded in this story.

JOHNNY GONE DOWN - Karan Bajaj



Heard about this from a friend. Pretty fast read. Pulp fiction - completely implausible plot, with the first person narrative relying on scene changes, danger and typical thriller genre plotmaking to keep you turning the pages over.

Monk Who Sold His Ferrari meets The Shawshank Redemption.


The protagonist lives by the mantra of altruism, which while worthy in itself, leads him to lose and arm and approach death several times.

Karan Bajaj is being hailed as the 'thinking man's Chetan Bhagat'. Not sure if the moniker sticks, or if another is required. Karan's writing is certainly better, but the theme of repeated altruism leading to repeated pathos is disturbing and keeps your allegory focussed on the 'pulp' in the fiction.

That said Harper Collins printed 100K copies, so there must be a market for these disturbing stories.

The transition is always so jarring. My brain has aligned with the order of Sunnyvale, no matter how boring and has begun to generate some alpha waves that are enobling to the soul of my well being.

I can ignore the noise, but what is to be said of the guy who has some labourers and carpenters working in the house behind mine for the last year who now insist on working well into the night. I scream at them at 1230, they stop. Only to begin again at 130. Whats to be done. When confronted the next day, there is no remorse, only defence. They couldn't care less. They know the law is too weak and the implementation is even more mortal ... and was, many years ago.

Location is everything, and hyperlocal location is even more. Karma be damned.

YAMAHA FG 700S

Superb guitar ... bought it on this trip and cabinned it all the way back.

After a longish break, I picked up the guitar yesterday and attempted to play a few songs ... not ones that I usually play, but others, just to amuse myself.

I was quite amazed to see how much of my voice had just disappeared.... somehow lack of practice simply reduces our voices to a narrow range, meant for professional discussions and politically correct talk, without any nuances, and a dry dry tone.

Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Yep, his name is a mouthful. The book is simply beautiful, a study in logic, decomposition and analysis. By no means a light read, the book is dense, written by a Professor in the style of a textbook, at least for the first few chapters where Mihaly presents his hypothesis and the attendant entities which are interlaced in their exposition.

The subject is a simple one, but given its ephemeral nature, it is likely that the net required to arrest it be a strong one. A strong net is duly presented.

Read slowly, take notes if you can. You will find the effort worth the while.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 21 - Andante

As a very very young lad, one of the first things that I noticed in our house was a Philips demo tape that was provided as an accompaniment to a cassette player once purchased. I had no idea what the tape contained, but I was transfixed. The music was so ebullient, so thoughtful, and so complex. I was in love with it.

Years later, I realized that the music was that of Mozart. To this day, children around the world are transfixed when they chance upon good classical music. It's no secret why ... it must appeal to areas of the brain that are somehow known to be acute and leading to 'Flow' or optimal experience (as researched by Prof.Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly)

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown




Having read Angels and Demons and the Da Vinci Code, I knew what to expect in terms of style. The book, as most people say, is not as compelling as A&D, which is his best work and DVC which comes a close second.

That said, the subject of symbology lends itself so readily to interesting stories that I'm amazed there aren't too many more such books out there.

Read it, if only to be illuminated, which is usually good enough for me.

Largely unpretentious, but also quite boring unless you are a Starbucks fan.

Absolute bull crap!!!!
Skimmed through it.... the back cover is all about how this guy has given 2000 talks to CXOs and is barely 30 himself. It seems like a brave attempt to sell his speaking calendar.

In the most basic terms, what this guy calls Flip is "innovation", but this book is all hot air, trying to patent a word at best and claiming that he has seen something that no one else has. In reality all he's trying to do is rename innovation and strategy to something he hopes will be associated with his ability to discover a pattern.

I'd be more interested in reading a book about how this guy became successful with no original ideas of his own.

Those who have a beautiful present wonder why people live in the past.

Came across this question .... which has probably been asked so many times through the history of the modern times in so many forms .... but I really don't have an answer. I had one at varying points in my life, but I don't anymore.

How do you want to be remembered?

Any pointers?

Awesome Ganesha Chathurthi

Ganesha Stuti followed by Khara Kadubu, Sihi Kolakatte, Khara Kolakatte, Kare Kadubu, payasam ... some pakodas and some rice.

Followed by 2h of sleep :)

The Art of Choosing - Sheena Iyengar

One of the best books I have read .... only wish I'd read it a lot sooner.

Books read 2010


Need to definitely finish Peter Lynch. Super book.

1. One Up On Wall Street - Peter Lynch (50%)
2. Dork - Sidin Vadukut
3. Periya Puranam
4. The Mind of the Strategist - Ohmae (50%)
5. Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri
6. Small if Beautiful - E.F. Schumacher (30%)
7. The Quest of the Overself - Paul Brunton
8. The Power of Intention - George Dyer
9. Speed Reading - Tony Buzan
10. Head First - Tony Buzan
11. Power of Verbal Intelligence - Tony Buzan
12. Simply Fly - Capt Gopinath
    
13. Ramana Maharishi and the Path of Self-knowledge - Arthur Osbourne
14. Lord of the Rings- Tolkien (50%)
15. Talks with Sri Ramana Maharishi - Munagala Venkataramiah
16. So what should I do with my life - Po Bronson
17. The Facebook Effect - David Kirkpatrick
18. The Difficulty of Being Good - Gurcharan Das
19. The Art of Choosing - Sheena Iyengar
20. Flip- Peter Sheahan (50%)
21. Its Not About the Coffee - Howard Behar
22. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
    
23. Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
24. Johnny Gone Down - Karan Bajaj
25. Benaami - Anish Sarkar
    

Change, that notion of undeniable duty, and that feeling of another compromise

I started a new job this week. Like all things new, it is demanding, and its painful, with very little apparent joy to begin with. There are days and events and upsetting interactions where you feel like you've just been dropped off to school on your first day with not a known soul in sight. Its not necessarily a bad feeling, just a strange, lonely one that you thought you'd forgotten.

Job changes used to be fun, when you almost always moved to a new job or role with more energy and almost always with company, from either your B School or Engg college. You never really worried about how you'd do, and you almost never wondered, if you'd like it. You just though you would.

Now, of course things have changed. You move alone, are reasonable sure of what you'd expect, and you know damn well why you are here. You are a lot more serious about your job 'cos you don't want to look like an idiot and you want to get stuff done at a reasonable speed. Deep in the visceral reality of your deliberate movements, your gait, your poise and your coping, you can't ignore the uncertainty that every cell in your body is feeling, as it taken in the new place, the new sights and the host of energies that float around trying all the time to learn how it can protect you, keeping you safe. The euphoria of pursuing something you crave is missing, as is the protective ignorance that you felt in your first job. Now, you know what to expect at some level and you know you could deal with the compromises you've made. But with all that cleared up, you still feel that pang of uncertainty, and a feeling of bereavement .... a bereavement of security that came with your position of hope that you held onto before you finally walked into a new situation. I guess what's worse is the bereavement of those opportunities, conspicuous by their absence, of paths that never opened when it should have, leaving you taking the path you knew you could, but didn't prefer to tread.

Very interesting story, and a great read.

Apology to Jhumpa

So I owe Jhumpa Lahiri an apology ... one or two stories were quite nice. If only she applied her skills to describing things other than just NRI emotions, she would be so much more readable.


Currently reading EF Schumachers "Small is Beautiful". The FIFA world cup with its boring draws is really interfering with my reading time ... in fact there's little or no reading time left these days.

Of Mattresses and Pillows


Contoured pillows have been around in the world for a long time, yet they arrived on recently in India. I always wondered why they took so long to produce in the first place. ... one of life's eternal mysteries. Didn't anyone in India pay a modicum of scientific attention to what a pillow should be shaped as all these years history? I bought one of these (Sleepwell Curves) ... I've had trouble with pillows in the past, thanks to my reading habit before dozing off and thankfully, the pillow works. Woke up this morning quite refreshed and with no neck ache.


Also did my share of R&D on mattresses.
In the past I've used both locally made cotton stuffed mattresses and Kurl-on coir-foam combinations. The Kurl on sagged in the middle exactly an year or so after the purchase date, conveniently just after the warranty expired (way to go, Kurl on).

All things aside. A single mattress, locally made and cotton stuffed will cost you about INR 1,000-1,500.

A decent matress (factory made - Sleepwell, KurlOn) etc these days will cost you approximately INR 10,000. Sleepwell gives the longest warranties and I'm not sure why Kurl On is so uncompetitive on the warranty front and still in business (awesome marketing perhaps).

Nothing lasts forever and every mattress is going to sag, so I'm going with the locally made one for now. Ordered one, with specially dense stuffing so we'll see how that goes. If it goes bad, all I've lost if INR 1K instead of 10K on a factory made one.

BTW, just went online and realised that Overstock.com now ships to India. And they have memory foam pillows for a fraction of what it costs to buy them here. Awesome. I'm ordering one today.

The Quest of the Overself - Paul Brunton




My favorite book by the author is "A Search in Secret India" which was an engaging, entertaining book. I was a fan immediately. Picking "The Quest of the Overself" off the JustBooks shelf, I was hopeful that this would be similar.

It wasn't.

This is Paul Brunton's textbook for the Western spiritual aspirant.

Brunton chooses antiquated English as his medium and couples that with a loopy indirect style for large segments of the book rendering this a difficult read from the start. The book begins with a 60 or 70 page defence of his earlier books (specifically "A Search In Secret Egypt") and an affronted Brunton continues to bristle for large runs stung as he perhaps was with a home audience who had passed their judgement simply on account of his choice of subject and his alien and fantastic proclamations.

In the second half of the book, Brunton gets to the core of his message and in these parts his style is direct and more refreshing, not to mention readable (thankfully). Towards the end, Brunton reverts to the jarring antiquated style suggesting that the front and the rear of the work were bolted on for the wrong reasons and mostly in the wrong mood.

All in all, this is a difficult read, but Brunton's description, exercises and suggestions are worth their weight ... antiquity or otherwise. A worthwhile but difficult read.

The Heart meditation is derived from Ramana Maharishi's teachings, but his meditations and exercises for visualization must have been original back then, making this a worthwhile effort on his behalf.

THE POWER OF INTENTION

The good thing about a library memebership is that it gives you something to do .... so I've been reading. I haven't been reading everything though ....

I've checked out 2 books which I've returned - The "Bourne Legacy" (which is written by some new guy, not Ludlum) and hence I just didn't have the patience to read it... maybe I will do it later. .... and "Chicken Soup for the soul" which I'd never read despite all the rave press which I found somewhat ... well, I dont know what to call it.


I've read the following.... a couple of Asterixs, most of "Unaccustomed Earth" (except the last 2 or 3 stories) and this one called "The Power of Intention" by Wayne Dyer.


"The Power of Intention" was first recommended to me by a good friend. The title was catchy and I'm forever pondering free-will v/s destiny so I gave this a go.

I have to say I was quite impressed. There are a lot of ideas in the book which I'd applied as a child, but either seemed to have forgotten or had allowed to be washed away by times relentless force of tribulation.

That said, it is a good read nevertheless. The summary is simple. Think positive. Don't think negative thoughts. Easier said than done, but sometimes it helps to be reminded on simple truths.


That said, the book is not an easy read. Ideas repeat and the book begs shortening and a lot of editing. The author loses you mid sentence several times as most ideas are constructed on the foundation of "what is not" rather than "What is". Speed readers will find themselves going back to the beginning of sentences over and over again. Very frustrating.


Give this a go. You're unlikely to finish it, but it would be helpful if you are receptive enough.

Unaccustomed Earth Update


Ok, I got past the first 200 pages and then returned the book to the library. Information overload... ok, I take that back... Bong diaspora information overload. Most of her stories now resemble plot elements of any Hindi movie sans the emigrant bong milieu.

Why is she so wordy? On average, 30% of the page contributes very little to the story, and the century for ruminating over every word out of boredom has passed. This is the age of computers and televisions and ruminating over the details of a room or garden that add nothing to the story are just onerous now. BTW, she is stunningly beautiful

"So take these words
And sing out loud
Cause everyone is forgiven now .....
... cause tonight's the night the world begins again"

Unaccustomed Earth

Borrowed this from a JustBooks outlet near my place. Unaccustomed Earth is a collection of short stories that follow in the wake of the wildly successful "Interpreter of Maladies".

While Interpreter ... was the work of someone focusing on getting the story to hit home, Unaccustomed Earth (which is also the first story in this book) is an exercise in abject indulgence. Granted I've read the first, and longest story so far, but here's what seems to be happening ... Jhumpa is certain we will read everything she writes because she's a Pulitzer winner and therefore she painfully trudges through incesseant details about a child walking from one room into another, or a man putting luggage into the trunk of a car, etc etc.... worthless trinkets that add nothing to the narrative and serve no discernible purpose except that they maybe rid her of the need to ask herself if the detail is necessary, causing her to break that ephemeral and Pulitzer laden train of thought.


It's a very tiresome read, made egregious by the fact that the story lacks the punch required to make the effort worth the while. Come on Jhumpa, EDIT for Chrissake!!!

A quick note to all those asking about my well being and presence.

Yes, I'm here as I always was. Not singing too much - I don't know why, I guess I haven't been inspired too much musically.

Hope everyone else is doing great.

The fan whips up a frenzy of thoughts
In reflecting a stray beam off its blades
A stray ray of light that wanders in
Oh, so small a thing at 3AM

If the beam would retract into its source
Would the blades stop whirring
So time'd retrace its inconsiderate path
Leaving me asleep

Never had this kind of insomnia.... waking up at night and being unable to sleep thereafter. Usually its falling asleep really late, but this is more worrisome.