2 States - 2 dull !

I recently finished Chetan Bhagat’s ‘2 states’. Before I talk about the book, I have to frankly admit that I am not a fan. The only book of his that I have read so far is Five point someone and only because it said something about IIT on the cover and I was (and probably still am) IIT-crazy. The book was decent while the movie was way better, so I kind of understand why Rajkumar Hirani was saying that Chetan was taking away credit from his script writers. That being said, they should’ve acknowledged Chetan’s contribution. I think Bollywood and Kollywood (and all the rest of the woods) are kind of loose on the plagiarism concept (thanks to Anu Malik and Deva and others who are every now and then ‘inspired’ by other people’s talents)!

There is however one thing I will always credit Chetan for and that is bringing English books to the masses in India. His simple writing has turned many people towards reading English books and I realize it every time I get an orkut invitation from someone I don’t know and notice that they have Chetan Bhagat’s books as ‘favorites’ in their profile’ !

Coming back to ‘2 States’, as all the promotion says, it’s the story of his marriage i.e. how a Punjabi boy married a tambram girl with the blessings of both families.

- The ‘South Indian’ in me got annoyed everytime I read the words ‘Madrasi’, ‘Blacks’ and everytime he made fun of ‘Carnatic Music’ but felt strangely proud everytime South Indians were referred to as ‘educated’ (I never realized that people had such an impression and was pleasantly surprised to learn it)
- The ‘Tambram’ in me got irked when he described the bride being in a Madisar (9 yard sari) before kasi yatra. For an author married to a tambram girl and having supposedly had a tambram wedding, this is indeed a very careless mistake.
- The ‘foodie’ in me did not like the fact that Chetan fails to appreciate the South Indian (keeping aside a description of a dosa as ‘not bad’) and/or the tambram cuisine
- The ‘girl’ in me found it downright annoying that while Krish (the hero) works like crazy for months to convince the girl’s parents and Ananya (the heroine) does almost close to nothing to convince Krish’s parents.

Elaborating on the last point, I think I have been pampered with too many tamil movies (some of them quite good) where both the hero and heroine work with the other’s family for tying the knot and Chetan, on the other hand, is probably used to movies like DDLJ where the guy jumps through a 100 hoops to get on the good side of the girl’s family and the girl literally does nothing. Should I maybe consider this flattering and assume that smart, beautiful women never have to try too hard?

For example, imagine a situation where a desi guy introduces a desi girl to his ‘conservative’ mother. What is the first thing any normal desi girl would do? Say a polite Namaste or even hello and probably the ‘smart’ girls would immediately touch her feet and ask for blessings. Well, Ananya, a tambram from another conservative family, tries to shake her hand!! Apparently studying in IIM makes you less ‘street-smart’!

What I also found surprising is that both of them fail to update the other about the dos and donts before meeting the family, which is the probably the first thing one does before introducing the prospective son-in-law or daughter-in-law to the parents who are most likely to be overly critical of every single thing they notice since the power of decision making was taken away from them. How can you be with a person for more than 2 yrs and not even pick up a few bits and pieces of their mother tongue? English is the bane of our existence, I suppose!

On the whole, I didn’t enjoy the book. I think there is a downside to reading a book that involves South Indians, tambrams and singara Chennai....a lot of it becomes personal and the writing being monotonous does not help.

''Appeal''ing Lawyers ?!

I never read the synopsis of a book (the few lines at the back that you read through that help you decide if you actually want to read the book) unless it is by an author I have never read before. I just finished the book, The Appeal by John Grisham and while I was thinking about the book, I turned it over and I was kind of shocked to see a sentence in the synopsis exactly voicing my thoughts - a story that will leave readers unable to think about the electoral process or judicail system in quite the same way ever again.

I love Grisham for the lack of sensationalism in his books. In fact, a few of them were considered so mundane that many of my friends refused to read or complete those books. Ofcourse he does have books where the hero, a smart lawyer, gets away with stealing millions of dollars from the bad guys but I am referring to those that make you learn, then pause and close the book for a while when you think, contemplate and wonder about why certain things are the way they are. The Appeal was one such book.

It starts with a trial between a chemical company, that dumps toxic wastes and contaminates drinking water (remember Erin Brockowich ?) causing cancer and other illnesses in people and 2 lawyers who defend the victims. The jury awards the victim around 43 million dollars as compensation. The victim in this case is a woman who has lost both her husband and child to cancer. There is a rather a gut-wrenching scene on the day of the verdict when the woman visits their graves and relives the memories of seeing both her dearest ones waste away in front of her eyes. At that point, it made me wonder how the 43 million dollars was going to be of any use whatsoever to her. Leaving the emotions aside, it will probably give her some financial stability and eventually, maybe even the strength to start a new family.

But the book runs on a different and rather dangerous course where the chemical company appeals the verdict in the supreme court and decides to get its way by electing one of its ''own'' to as the supreme court justice. The choice of an unsuspecting candidate, the mud-slinging-on-opponents campaign and the obscene amount of money involved really made me sick to the stomach. I agree that undeserving candidates and dirty elections are not unfortunately uncommon in a democracy but bringing a supreme court justice into the loop is scary, downright scary ! Irrespective of everything that happens today, the law always gives people hope and the supreme court is probably the highest place of refuge - sanctum sanctoram !

Liability laws seem to touch two extremes since there is a fine line between guaranteeing quality and consumer discretion. For example, a customer suing the coffee company for the coffee being too hot, according to me, is a mockery of the system. On the other end, prescription drugs, drugs that a normal person without medical knowledge would take purely based on the trust in the doctor, are subject to a higher degree of liability. Since the doctor's word carries a lot of weight, they are another bunch of people who constantly live in the fear of being sued. Yes, one should not make any errors when dealing with people's lives but they are human too ! Apparently most doctors in the US are heavily insured w.r.t liabilities (or in other words, the limit to which they can make errors ! I can't even believe liability insurance actually exists!).....why is going to a doctor with a really high liability insurance not a comforting thought ??

Mass-tort lawyers abusing every opportunity they get with class-actions is another example (Grisham has a book on this topic too - King of torts - would make you hate money-hungry lawyers even more, if you don't already). It refers to greedy lawyers trying to make the most out of a verdict i.e if the chemical company paid compensation to one victim, the mass-tort lawyers would try to gather as many victims as possible and will try to negotiate a settlement with the company, for example, 100,000 dollars per victim. In the end, they would take a sizeable percentage of the settlement as attorney's fees.

The other disturbing angle was the chemical company's choice to immediately shift base to Mexico as soon as there was the slightest chance of litigation. When a country like the US, with its laws, juries and trials cannot protect its people from toxic carcinogens, what happens to those in Mexico ? How are their lives any less important ? Was this the same logic that led to the Bhopal gas tragedy ? The company's page on the subject is laughable, its actually a very cruel joke ! Reading about it only causes more pain due to the helplessness that one feels ! Why is it hard to understand that industrial promotion should promote human survival and not otherwise ?!

Somehow it always boils down to money....something that was intended to be just a replacement for the barter system so that one can get goods even if one did not have the goods to exchange and today it drives the quality of the goods and lives of everyone associated with it....the system's biggest irony indeed !

Go, Kiss the World !

Welcome Address by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting to the Class of 2006 on July 2, 2004 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India on defining success.

I was the last child of a small-time government servant, in a family of five brothers. My earliest memory of my father is as that of a District Employment Officer in Koraput, Orissa. It was and remains as back of beyond as you can imagine. There was no electricity; no primary school nearby and water did not flow out of a tap. As a result, I did not go to school until the age of eight; I was home-schooled. My father used to get transferred every year. The family belongings fit into the back of a jeep - so the family moved from place to place and, without any trouble, my Mother would set up an establishment and get us going. Raised by a widow who had come as a refugee from the then East Bengal, she was a matriculate when she married my Father. My parents set the foundation of my life and the value system which makes me what I am today and largely defines what success means to me today.

As District Employment Officer, my father was given a jeep by the government. There was no garage in the Office, so the jeep was parked in our house. My father refused to use it to commute to the office. He told us that the jeep is an expensive resource given by the government - he reiterated to us that it was not 'his jeep' but the government's jeep. Insisting that he would use it only to tour the interiors, he would walk to his office on normal days. He also made sure that we never sat in the government jeep - we could sit in it only when it was stationary. That was our early childhood lesson in governance - a lesson that corporate managers learn the hard way, some never do.

The driver of the jeep was treated with respect due to any other member of my Father's office. As small children, we were taught not to call him by his name. We had to use the suffix 'dada' whenever we were to refer to him in public or private. When I grew up to own a car and a driver by the name of Raju was appointed - I repeated the lesson to my two small daughters. They have, as a result, grown up to call Raju, 'Raju Uncle' - very different from many of their friends who refer to their family drivers as 'my driver'. When I hear that term from a school- or college-going person, I cringe. To me, the lesson was significant - you treat small people with more respect than how you treat big people. It is more important to respect your subordinates than your superiors.

Our day used to start with the family huddling around my Mother's chulha - an earthen fire place she would build at each place of posting where she would cook for the family. There was no gas, nor electrical stoves. The morning routine started with tea. As the brew was served, Father would ask us to read aloud the editorial page of The Statesman's 'muffosil' edition - delivered one day late. We did not understand much of what we were reading. But the ritual was meant for us to know that the world was larger than Koraput district and the English I speak today, despite having studied in an Oriya medium school, has to do with that routine. After reading the newspaper aloud, we were told to fold it neatly. Father taught us a simple lesson. He used to say, "You should leave your newspaper and your toilet, the way you expect to find it".

That lesson was about showing consideration to others. Business begins and ends with that simple precept.

Being small children, we were always enamored with advertisements in the newspaper for transistor radios - we did not have one. We saw other people having radios in their homes and each time there was an advertisement of Philips, Murphy or Bush radios, we would ask Father when we could get one. Each time, my Father would reply that we did not need one because he already had five radios - alluding to his five sons. We also did not have a house of our own and would occasionally ask Father as to when, like others, we would live in our own house. He would give a similar reply, "We do not need a house of our own. I already own five houses". His replies did not gladden our hearts in that instant. Nonetheless, we learnt that it is important not to measure personal success and sense of well being through material possessions.

Government houses seldom came with fences. Mother and I collected twigs and built a small fence. After lunch, my Mother would never sleep. She would take her kitchen utensils and with those she and I would dig the rocky, white ant infested surrounding. We planted flowering bushes. The white ants destroyed them. My mother brought ash from her chulha and mixed it in the earth and we planted the seedlings all over again. This time, they bloomed. At that time, my father's transfer order came. A few neighbors told my mother why she was taking so much pain to beautify a government house, why she was planting seeds that would only benefit the next occupant. My mother replied that it did not matter to her that she would not see the flowers in full bloom. She said, "I have to create a bloom in a desert and whenever I am given a new place, I must leave it more beautiful than what I had inherited". That was my first lesson in success. It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

My mother began developing a cataract in her eyes when I was very small. At that time, the eldest among my brothers got a teaching job at the University in Bhubaneswar and had to prepare for the civil services examination. So, it was decided that my Mother would move to cook for him and, as her appendage, I had to move too. For the first time in my life, I saw electricity in homes and water coming out of a tap. It was around 1965 and the country was going to war with Pakistan. My mother was having problems reading and in any case, being Bengali, she did not know the Oriya script. So, in addition to my daily chores, my job was to read her the local newspaper - end to end. That created in me a sense of connectedness with a larger world. I began taking interest in many different things. While reading out news about the war, I felt that I was fighting the war myself. She and I discussed the daily news and built a bond with the larger universe. In it, we became part of a larger reality. Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Meanwhile, the war raged and India was fighting on both fronts. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then Prime Minster, coined the term "Jai Jawan, Jai Kishan" and galvanized the nation in to patriotic fervor. Other than reading out the newspaper to my mother, I had no clue about how I could be part of the action. So, after reading her the newspaper, every day I would land up near the University's water tank, which served the community. I would spend hours under it, imagining that there could be spies who would come to poison the water and I had to watch for them. I would daydream about catching one and how the next day, I would be featured in the newspaper. Unfortunately for me, the spies at war ignored the sleepy town of Bhubaneswar and I never got a chance to catch one in action. Yet, that act unlocked my imagination. Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

Over the next few years, my mother's eyesight dimmed but in me she created a larger vision, a vision with which I continue to see the world and, I sense, through my eyes, she was seeing too. As the next few years unfolded, her vision deteriorated and she was operated for cataract. I remember, when she returned after her operation and she saw my face clearly for the first time, she was astonished. She said, "Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair". I remain mighty pleased with that adulation even till date. Within weeks of getting her sight back, she developed a corneal ulcer and, overnight, became blind in both eyes.

That was 1969. She died in 2002. In all those 32 years of living with blindness, she never complained about her fate even once. Curious to know what she saw with blind eyes, I asked her once if she sees darkness. She replied, "No, I do not see darkness. I only see light even with my eyes closed". Until she was eighty years of age, she did her morning yoga everyday, swept her own room and washed her own clothes. To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

Over the many intervening years, I grew up, studied, joined the industry and began to carve my life's own journey. I began my life as a clerk in a government office, went on to become a Management Trainee with the DCM group and eventually found my life's calling with the IT industry when fourth generation computers came to India in 1981. Life took me places - I worked with outstanding people, challenging assignments and traveled all over the world. In 1992, while I was posted in the US, I learnt that my father, living a retired life with my eldest brother, had suffered a third degree burn injury and was admitted in the Safderjung Hospital in Delhi. I flew back to attend to him - he remained for a few days in critical stage, bandaged from neck to toe. The Safderjung Hospital is a cockroach infested, dirty, inhuman place. The overworked, under-resourced sisters in the burn ward are both victims and perpetrators of dehumanized life at its worst. One morning, while attending to my Father, I realized that the blood bottle was empty and fearing that air would go into his vein, I asked the attending nurse to change it. She bluntly told me to do it myself. In that horrible theater of death, I was in pain and frustration and anger. Finally when she relented and came, my Father opened his eyes and murmured to her, "Why have you not gone home yet?" Here was a man on his deathbed but more concerned about the overworked nurse than his own state. I was stunned at his stoic self. There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create. My father died the next day.

He was a man whose success was defined by his principles, his frugality, his universalism and his sense of inclusion. Above all, he taught me that success is your ability to rise above your discomfort, whatever may be your current state. You can, if you want, raise your consciousness above your immediate surroundings. Success is not about building material comforts - the transistor that he never could buy or the house that he never owned. His success was about the legacy he left, the mimetic continuity of his ideals that grew beyond the smallness of a ill-paid, unrecognized government servant's world.

My father was a fervent believer in the British Raj. He sincerely doubted the capability of the post-independence Indian political parties to govern the country. To him, the lowering of the Union Jack was a sad event. My Mother was the exact opposite. When Subhash Bose quit the Indian National Congress and came to Dacca, my mother, then a schoolgirl, garlanded him. She learnt to spin khadi and joined an underground movement that trained her in using daggers and swords. Consequently, our household saw diversity in the political outlook of the two. On major issues concerning the world, the Old Man and the Old Lady had differing opinions. In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Two years back, at the age of eighty-two, Mother had a paralytic stroke and was lying in a government hospital in Bhubaneswar. I flew down from the US where I was serving my second stint, to see her. I spent two weeks with her in the hospital as she remained in a paralytic state. She was neither getting better nor moving on. Eventually I had to return to work. While leaving her behind, I kissed her face. In that paralytic state and a garbled voice, she said, "Why are you kissing me, go kiss the world." Her river was nearing its journey, at the confluence of life and death, this woman who came to India as a refugee, raised by a widowed Mother, no more educated than high school, married to an anonymous government servant whose last salary was Rupees Three Hundred, robbed of her eyesight by fate and crowned by adversity - was telling me to go and kiss the world!

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

Thank you very much; I wish you good luck and Godspeed. Go, kiss the world.

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My 2 cents:

- Last year when I was in India, I saw a advertisement that said ''Tuitions for classes I to VIII'', I was baffled....why do you need tuitions ?! With kids spending 8 hours at school, and at least 3 hours watching TV, when would they do something else if they had tuitions for 2 hours ?! And why does one need tuitions after those 8 hours in school ?? why cannot they simply do their homework and be ''normal'' ?? Parents, yes, its a competitive world but remember childhood is precious and your kids remain innocent, care-free kids only for a few years, please do not rob them of those. This is why homeschooling is music to my ears. If you want your kids to read, don't ask them to, take a newspaper and sit next to them and read.

- I really liked the example with the car driver being addressed as Raju Uncle. Kids keep watching you parents all the time, they are what you do. I hear of schools in India that offer horse riding, piano lessons, summer camps but do they teach the meaning of Namaste or how to respect fellow beings ? (A friend of mine once explained to me the meaning - the divinity in me salutes the divinity in you, and ever since anytime I say namaste/namaskaram, I feel good). If schools are not doing it, at least parents should. I once heard a teenage kid complain that all her father's friends sweat and stink !! I was completely shocked, yes, I was not really fond of all my parents' friends either when I was a teenager but the worst that I have thought of them is that they were boring...who among our parents have grown up with deos and perfumes ? Why do you need those in a country where people shower everyday or even twice a day ?! I am not saying that personal hygiene is trivial but kids need to be taught where to draw the line; to respect people and see them beyond fancy clothes and cosmetics.

- During my first month in Germany, I saw another student in the common kitchen area adjusting one of the ventilators. When I noticed that he was standing on a stack of books, that gave him the height to reach the ventilator, I squirmed in my place. I couldn't take it after a few seconds, so I rushed out, got him a chair and asked him to use it instead. He gave me a puzzled look when I went to on to explain that books represent knowledge and more or less Godliness. After all these years, he still remembers that and mentioned it to me when I met him in one of the social networks.

- ''Oh my God, I did not know you were so fair": hehehe, I think it will be generations before desis get the importance of fair complexion out of their heads. Everytime I go on a vacation to a warm place and come back tanned, all my colleagues are jealous of my ''beautiful tan'' as they call it while amma tells me on the phone with a sigh ''ennadi ipdi karuthu poita....''......hehehe......

Something that keeps/kept nagging me:

Why were both his parents in a Govt. Hospital ? The reason I ask this Q is because everyone from India knows that you cannot trust a Govt. Hospital for treatment especially, in case of life or death situations - bitter truth. I personally know of no family member who has been in a Govt. hospital for treatment and I come from an average middle-class family. So why are his parents, with 5 sons, probably at least a couple with income, in a cockroach ridden hospital ? Did they insist on going there themselves ? Were there no other choices available in the vicinity ? I don't know but I would really like to know.

On another note, Govt. hospital staff being overworked and Govt. insurance lagging behind private medical facilities is becoming an issue not just in developing countries but also in developed countries; both encouraging medical tourism for those who can afford it while the others are left to their destiny. I have been reading a lot on this topic, will bring them together to publish a post.

Anyway, I did not intend to ramble on so much but once I start, its always difficult to stop. Take all the good values from his speech, spread them, implement them......to kiss the world, you should first imbibe the world as yours :) !

The Harry Potter Spell

I am jealous of J.K.Rowling....everyone of us has at some point thought about magic, witches on broom sticks, vases hanging in mid-air and food appearing out of nowhere....in spite of all these thoughts, she was the only one to see the potential in them, give them shape and finally make truck loads of money to become one of the top 15 rich people in the UK.

When I saw the first Harry Potter movie of the series, I had not read the books. To this day, it somehow remains my favorite since like Harry, it was amazing for me to see how far the world of magic has been pushed to - a complete country with its government, school, hospital and of course, people...umm...actually, witches (no, am not swearing !) and wizards. It was really interesting to see the buying of a wand, the first broom stick lesson, the first quidditch match and many other firsts.

Sequels are generally very critically reviewed because of the expectations generated by the predecessor(s) and when one promises in advance that there would be 6 more sequels, there are more expectations accompanied with a few suspense-robbing assumptions like the bad guy will obviously die only in the last one and consequently the hero should be kept alive until then !

The second part was decent, nothing to complain about. I thoroughly enjoyed the 3rd book- writing a story about traveling back in time is very difficult; keeping track of time, characters and plot and all at the same time...was brilliant. I enjoyed the movie equally well. The fourth part had the excitement of a 20-20 match, fast, gripping and having a magical tournament was again another brain wave from Rowling.

Die hard Harry Potter fans or fanatics (like my sister-in-law, who cajoled me into reading these books in the first place) might disagree or might even get offended by what I am going to say but I will stand by my statement - The charm is lost from the 5th book onwards and no wonder many thought Harry Potter 5 and 6 movies were not good. I actually wanted to leave halfway while watching 5, the movie was a joke although it was supposed to be scary since Lord Voldemort (the bad guy) had returned with his full power at the end of part 4.

I read the seventh and final book this saturday, 600 pages (oh...God..) and I consider it a wasted saturday. All I learnt from and enjoyed in the book was English, British English. I think Rowling has made enough money out of it and is busy with other activities now that she just put together something while watching her kids do homework.

All said and done, Harry Potter and his gang have definitely entertained me in the last few years. If you argue saying its childish, well, yes, but so is Tom and Jerry and that makes me laugh any day. And if you argue saying its pointless, well, yes, but so is ice cream :D ! If you have a few hours to spare, watching movies 1-4 might be a good idea but if you are just getting into the habit of reading books, you might want to stay away from the 500-600 page drivel.

Chaos in Jurassic Park

I laughed at my husband, when he picked up the Jurassic Park book by Michael Crichton in the library. I did not quite understand the point of reading the book after having seen the movie multiple times and more so, after all these years. The next sunday, he turns to me and says ''Lets watch Jurassic Park'' and watching a good movie again on a sunday afternoon is very easy and so we did. After the movie he said ''The book was better than the movie, even though I enjoyed the movie more after reading the book''. When he, someone who is stingy with compliments (not w.r.t me :D), said that, I was intrigued, so I decided to read the book.

He was right, the book made for a very good read. I completely loved the theories of Ian Malcom (played by Jeff Goldblum, remember ''The Fly'' ?) which was explained so much more in detail than it could be done in a 127 minute movie (never realised the movie was over 2 hrs !) and since I had seen the movie I could imagine him explaining everything written in the book.

What was really interesting about Chaos theory: How the initial conditions manifest themselves in the exponential growth of error (Butterfly effect) and hence the outcome. Consider throwing a ball - depending on the starting position, point of contact, surface, initial force and gained momentum, the ball may end up anywhere and if one can determine how exactly the ball would move, I don't think cricket and many other games will exist. Just like friction, we do need chaos !

Nonlinear systems: Using weather as an example was brilliant. Ever wondered how many times we complain about the weather forecast, blame Murphy's law, curse our luck in this context ? Simple answer: Weather is a nonlinear system and we try to analyse with it our linear equations and laws of Physics and hence the results being right is just a matter of probability.

Concept of fractals: A normal day - wake up, go to work, come home, sleep is a fractal because if you look at it in a few months, or a year, it always looks the same. However you still cannot predict what exactly will happen tomorrow - you may be late or take the day off. This is what makes it difficult to describe a fractal in fundamental mathematics (Euclidean geometry).

I came across this link when I was reading about chaos theory online - very very interesting.

When Malcom says ''Scientists focus on whether they can do something but they never stop to think if they should do something'', I couldn't help but think about Einstein and the atom bomb and his quote "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.", discussed by Stephen Hawkings in ''A brief history of time''. Although Einstein proposed that the United States should develop its own nuclear bomb, fearing that German scientists would beat them to it, he was publicly warning of the dangers of nuclear war and proposing international control of nuclear weaponry even before the first atomic bomb had been detonated. Unfortunately the former took the front seat.

Some facts I learnt (from the book and otherwise):

Turtles abandon their eggs

When a lion takes over a new pride, it kills all the cubs so that it gets a chance to disseminate only its genes and the females do not spend time rearing cubs from another male.

Lizards and reptiles are cold blooded animals. So a snake will die if he is out on the beach at midday.

Steven Spielberg is making a film - Pirate Latitudes - out of a posthumously published novel by (the late) Michael Crichton.

Crichton was 6 feet 9 inches tall. He was socially awkward but was married 4 times !

And like any other book-movie combo, there were differences in the script but I don't think anyone ever complains about that (except maybe Harry Potter fans!). Although the action in the movie is a lot more enjoyable (seeing a velociraptor is obviously more effective than reading about him..rather her - thanks to Spielberg for that), the book definitely is worth reading.

The Learning Curve

I should have been warned when I saw the pink bubbles with a shapely girl on the cover but I was'nt since the title ''The Learning Curve'' intrigued me ! I had picked up an extra book along with the set of books I had chosen in the library and when I realized it at the automatic check-out counter, I was too lazy to go and replace it and too conscientious (:D) to leave it somewhere.

I should have stopped when the author went on for 5 minutes about mascara and eyelashes. I should have stopped at least when I read ''She poured herself into the jeans'' (oh...dear Lord...all right, all right, we get it, she wears tight jeans). I should have definitely stopped when the hero looks at the heroine for the first time and the author chose ''three hundred rockets roared up her'' to describe this ! But I went on....foolishly went on....I think one part of me wanted to know how (badly) it ends and another over optimistic part of me kept hoping that it was going to get better.

The book is about a primary school teacher in London, who is caught in a love triangle between a colleague and a pupil's parent. Needless to say, the pupil, a 10 yr old boy, like in all Yash Chopra movies, tries his best to get his favorite teacher and father together and in the end succeeds, while the colleague turns out to be an evil master mind. The story should actually be done and done in less than a 100 pages but exactly like a Yash Chopra movie, it goes on for hours, sorry, pages and pages, only the songs are replaced by extremely annoying descriptions of what the fairer sex apparently likes to do and lengthy discourses about how to balance career and family !

I have a sneaking suspicion that this was written for teenage girls who squeal with delight when they meet their girl friends (and do it everyday !), wear matching pink clips in their hair, dream of boys that look like the Hulk and can never get a single math problem right !

This is not even a book review, I am just trying to get the book out of my system and improve my learning curve....phew...mudiyala!

Medical Tourism

I liked ''Foreign Body'' by Robin Cook for 2 reasons - one, it invoked my interest about Medical Tourism and two, the book was set in India.

Medical tourism, in the context of this book, refers to people coming from western countries to developing countries like India, Thailand etc. for treatment mainly because of the weak medicare system in their countries and the out-of-proportion medical inflation causing treatment expenses to sky rocket. While these patients save a few bucks, the private hospitals in India make a lot since treating these patients pay them at least twice as much as the localites. In general, it can be anyone traveling to any country solely for the purpose of medical care. A German going to India for an ayurvedic back massage would also fall in this category, for example. Apparently, Medical tourism is very close to and is expected to even overtake IT by 2010, in bringing foreign exchange into India. A google search brings up many more interesting articles on this subject and thanks to Robin Cook, I was hooked for a couple of days.

The book was set in New Delhi and although I have not been there in 11 years, I still have a lot of memories from visiting Delhi almost every year when I was in school. Added to that is the perspective I got about Delhi from a foreigner. There are so many things that we take for granted, things that totally catch a foreigner by surprise and although I have heard many such stories by now, there is always something new. The one story that always cracks me up is of someone boarding an autorickshaw in India for the first time and in all cases, it inevitably ends with ''I was hanging on to dear life'' :D ! The book dealt with the contrast between the opulence of 5 star hotels and the destitution of slums, the conflict between religious superstitions and technological advancements subtly without losing focus.

In spite of all this, what makes the book less gripping is the fact that the book begins with the plot and ends with the well-expected confirmation instead of the usual Robin Cook style of beginning with a medical mystery which on unraveling reveals a dark plot. It is a series of unexpected deaths of American tourists that on investigation leads to a group funded by a private hospital in the US to sabotage the medical tourism concept since it takes away billions of dollars from the American medical system. As always, there were a rigmarole of medical terms, none of which I knew or had even heard of; there was a time I used to look them up but somewhere along the line I gave up and forensic pathology is not really an inviting topic !

The book is a decent read if you are interested in this subject, but is in no way his best work.

I have no home but I have a lawyer....

When I read the synopsis of John Grisham's book - The Street Lawyer, I was confused. It talked about homeless lawyers and although I understood the term as lawyers for the homeless, I still could not grasp why they needed lawyers in the first place ! Wont they have enough trouble finding a place to eat and sleep ?

The book is not a fast moving thriller that makes you want to read chapter after chapter (even when you know you are unbelievably late for bed and your henceforth ensuing workday is not going to be great) ! The book is about an American lawyer, who just like any other lawyer, works 90 hours a week in a big firm, dreaming to become a partner one day and taking home a couple of million dollars a year and how his life drastically changes because of a hostage situation.

The escape from death suddenly gives him a whole new perspective and he regrets being a part of the rat race. His restlessness leads him to public interest law and it was this part of the book that totally shook me.

I have just jotted down what I learnt (from the book and the follow-up internet research I did), along with my feelings (in Italics)

There are millions of homeless people in the US and nearly half of them are African-american. If a developed country like the US has this many homeless people, what is happening in the developing countries ? I am really scared to even look up the numbers in India.

There are people and families that actually freeze to death, not because they were out skiing or they lost their way in a snow storm but simply because they do not have a shelter or a place to live. I cannot imagine taking out the trash in my pyjamas in winter. This makes me glad that India is protected weatherwise, to a large extent but images of people sleeping on platforms in Nainital came to mind. I was there in November a few years ago to meet a cousin and I remember how cold it was even inside the house.

Numerous crack babies are born every year. I did not even know what this term meant until today. They refer to babies that are born to mothers who consumed crack heroine (commonly known as crack) while they were pregnant.

75% of the homeless are either addicted to alcohol or drugs and/or involved in prostitution. Being ''clean'' for 24 hours is considered a record. When these people have no money for food where do they find money for drugs or alcohol ? Is it like a barter system with the latter leading to the former ?

There are lawyers who help the homeless and naturally for free. They fight against the Govt. that makes homelessness a crime - cops chasing away or even worse, arresting people sleeping on parks or bus stops. They fight the social security system to make sure these people get the benefits they deserve. I somehow still have difficulty wrapping my head around ''Fighting the system''...I thought it was a curse reserved for the developing countries.

There are shelters and soup kitchens that feed hundreds of people everyday. But there are millions of homeless, what are the others doing for food ?

Even in these shelters and soup kitchens, there are always too few volunteers and too many homeless people. Why can't every firm/university have a ''volunteer day'' every quarter ? When the Govt. can spend time and money making new traffic rules, tax rules, rules against smoking in public, why is someone dying from hunger not an important concern? I am going to remember this everytime I touch a morsel of food.....I really am.....

Just like no place is immune to disease and sickness, there is also no place immune to hunger and poverty. If only each one of us donated some time, money, care and attention to it (and there are numerous ways to do it !!), maybe one day...one fine day....we can drive it out and make this world a better place to live ! It may sound cliched, dramatic but I wish for it to come true with all my heart and soul...I really do....

Adiga's White Tiger and India

''There is danger for him who taketh the tiger cub, and danger also for whoso snatches a delusion from a woman.'' - Sherlock Holmes agrees with this and so do I.

him - Aravind Adiga, the author of the booker prize winner, The White Tiger
Delusion - my picture-perfect India

Thankfully, I have an outlet, my blog, to stop the danger from manifesting itself in my temper or elsewhere :)

To be fair to the A man, the book is kept simple, is well-written and would make a good read for many. I only wish I agreed with him more often or he had chosen a subject that was less dear to my heart.....if you have not read the book and want to, here is where you should stop.

The book is about an Indian from a small town in North India who turns an entrepreneur and his journey to get there; filled with different experiences, many of them disturbing but not totally untrue and hence all the more disturbing !

1.Balram's (the protagonist) life starts in a huge poor uneducated family who work all their life for blood-sucking landlords - not so bad, I know the population, illiteracy and working class problems prevalent in India

2.He moves to the city and becomes a car driver - oh..well, the story is getting better

3.He contemplates murdering his boss - now that's a twist.....

4.He actually does so and gets away with it - oh...dear God....

5.He uses the money he stole from his boss to become a entrepreneur - this is definitely going to become a movie and win an Oscar as well, following the footsteps of slumdog !

Let me look at each of these steps in detail and then I can probably explain (also to myself) why my filters were working at full speed !

1. Balram's father is a rickshaw driver and dies from TB. All his life he has supported his huge family and finally dies due to lack of money and medical attention. This snippet actually encompasses lack of proper labour/regulated wages rules, exploding population and lack of affordable medical facilities. To spice this up, there is the added dowry problem that is prevalent and the vicious circle - even a poor family expects dowry for a son since they need to give it for a daughter !

Why is his family illiterate ? Why are they unable to equip themselves for any trade ? Why is the rickshaw driver or for that matter, his father, insistent on having a huge family when they can hardly feed themselves, leave alone the other family members ? What is happening to the birth-control campaigns ?

Why is there still dowry when the Govt. has umpteen rules against getting and giving it ? Why do people insist on doing it ? Yes, there are many unanswered questions, many issues and many changes that are long-due but it drives me mad when someone just points it out in a flurry of words and more so, point only those out that hurt me and my delusion of my India....

2. Balram describes the life of a driver in Gurgaon - waiting outside shopping malls, expensive restaurants....waiting and waiting never knowing when the boss is going to return and only dreaming about the expensive places which are probably 10 feet from where he is standing but still unreachable....

Isn't it part of a driver's job to wait and drive around a person ? What would happen if security personnel get sick of watching over places and baby-sitters get tired of taking care of kids ?

It is true that the economic disparity drives a lot of crime -what would someone do when he doesn't even have money to buy food and his neighbour is spending the money for his month's worth of groceries on a perfume ?! I remember seeing a video on how much 500 rupees was worth to people from different walks of life - for someone it was branded underwear while for someone else it was a month's school fees.

Also, throughout the book, the way servants are treated in India is ridiculed. I fail to understand how this is different or any better, in any other part of the world, be it a developed country or otherwise.

In India, it is true that there is a distinct separation of the so-called working class. But I remember how the maid who worked in my house had her meals with us, how she got new clothes and a bonus for every celebration.....we had a personal relationship with her....! It is sure different in developed countries where the relationship is based on wages but how many people actually socialize with their drivers ?! Are'nt there exclusive clubs and golf courses where such people are not even allowed to be members even if there is a chance ?!

3. Balram is fed up with his corrupt boss and his ways. He cant help thinking that there is no harm in taking the money his boss makes through illegal means. He figures the only way he can get away with what he steals is by killing his boss - the time the news takes to reach the authorities would give him a headstart.

I could have thought of Balram as Robin hood. But all he wanted to do was to start a business and make money so that he would stop being a servant, so that he can go to 5-star hotels and other places where he was never allowed to set foot in. He simply wanted a ''free lunch''. I agree that years of suppression, and of seeing his family struggle made him probably justify his end - the author calls it freeing himself from the rooster coop.

4. He murders his boss, takes the cash and takes a train to South India.

I know one sees this often in movies but is it really that easy to get away with murder ? I believe the author himself is not sure of this and hence the disclaimer inserted in a sly way at the end of book that Balram, inspite of his success as an entrepreneur, can still get arrested any day....

5. Like many others, he makes Bangalore his haven

He starts his own call-taxi business, which will obviously prosper in Bangalore given that all MNCs have to transport their woman employees home at god forsaken hours only because their American colleagues always choose to schedule meetings at their time.

I wouldn't have been surprised if the story had taken a turn and said that Balram murdered one of the women he was transporting just because she refused to marry someone like a taxi-business owner....am sure glad that dint happen.....

The only place where I agreed with the author is his description of how drinking coffee and tea are totally different.

Its a ''raw'' book and makes a good read if you have a long flight but I wouldn't read it again even if someone put a gun to my head.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a book review, just my views and exclusively mine only !