2014 - List of books

Again yet another year when finding time to read was very hard but still managed to still carry on at least read enough to put up a list of sorts. No excuses this time as it was plain laziness and lack of time management. I started using the wonderful county library here and also got a Kindle towards the end of the year ( more on that in another post ) which considerably bumped up the number of books read.

As its such a short list have added some comments on some of the books

So without much ado the list

1. Leela's book by Alice Albinia : I really loved the previous non-fiction work by this author ( Empires of Indus) and picked this up with high expectation. That could be perhaps be the reason why I was very dissapointed with this one. This is a fictional tale set in modern India but its a sprawling epic threading so many different worlds with Ganesha as narrator and themes from Indian epics, re-incarnation, religious and class divide in modern India, homo sexuality and so many more things. Somehow the narrative lost steam very early for me and despite some good writing in certain stretches it was just not convincing enough for me.

2. Around India in 80 trains by Monisha Rajesh :  Indian railway stories is something I really love and I have devoured lot of documentaries related to Indian trains. But there is really no good book on train journeys across India. Thats a statement from this book from Monisha Rajesh an NRI from UK who comes to India to discover the country through trains. After finishing the book thats the one statement I agree completely with the author. The book is not without its merits there are few stray gems about how Indian trains and system works but its mostly average stuff with choppy narrative and mostly personal experience of a 2nd gen NRI and might appeal more to foreign readers than Indians I guess

3.The Messenger by Markus Zusak : Had started reading and then misplaced the book and recently found out, technically not fully read but planning to do very soon so will have it on this list :)

4. Myth = Mithya by Devdutt Patnaik :  This was a book I wanted to read for long and finally got around to reading this year. Hindu mythology and cultural practices and reasons behind it is a fascinating read. It was good to read about and understand so many things that are all around us as part of culture but to understand the possible origins to all these in such an easy to follow manner was what impressed me about this book

5. Skeptical Patriot : Exploring the Truths behind the Zero and Other Indian Glories by Sidin Vadakkut : Exploration of myth/history behind most email forwards with lots of humor thrown in

6. Seven secrets of Shiva by Devdutt Patnaik  - really enjoyed this one and looking forward to reading more such books

7.Goat Days ( aatu jeevitham) by Benyamin : This was translation of a malayalam book recommended by Vaidya. Downloaded the book on Kindle and finished it in 2 days. Its story of 'gelf' dream gone horribly wrong for a poor young man from Kerala. Having lived for a while in the 'gulf' and with so many of my college batchmates living there and interacting with folks there I was aware that it was not really all that rosy and so many folks have it really tough especially those doing blue collar jobs. But this was something else, similar in some sense to the book 'What is the What' ... its about story of dashed hopes and survival and ultimately its a great story about survival of human spirit. Even in presence of most adverse conditions the ability to pick oneself up and somehow survive the ordeal was really inspiring in a sense

8. The Devil in Us by Monica Bhide : Stories with Indian diaspora in east coast US, pretty dark ones involving guilt, loss and alienation

9. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn : guess everyone must have seen the movie by now, I wanted to read the book first!

10. The Martian by Andy Weir : Robinson Crusoe experience / Gravity movie type experience set in Mars, again thats just the gist but this was a fascinating read for the science involved and the general geekiness . Also a great story of survival and triumph of human spirit in face of gravest of grave dangers. Can't recommend enough!

11. Sachin - Genius unplugged by Suresh Menon : There was lot of hype around the SRT bio which seemed overpriced and possibly banal as Sachin is so non-controversial, so in spirit of things picked up this book which was compilation of articles/essays on SRT by lot of cricket writers

12. What if ? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Questions  by Randall Munroe - This author is creator of xkcd - enuff said!


So thats the list , 12 ... not bad considering I had read only 3 books by Dec 2nd week, so there was lot of activity  towards the end of the year like Dhoni - ODI innings!

As part of our annual tradition looking forward to the lists from my more well read cousins : @Vaidya  and @Indu .. over to you guys!

What time is it?

One of the major lifestyle changes I made after moving to US early 2013 is giving up on morning newspaper. When I used to talk to my friends living here earlier I found it strange they did not get a newspaper. I thought everyone started the day after reading newspaper and could never imagine a start to the day otherwise. So after coming here I found it very hard to adjust and indeed started a trial subscription of Seattle Times and within a few days realized why people do not read newspaper ... there was nothing worthwhile in it ( its worse than Times of India! )

So I do get the days news on twitter and catch up news online through multiple websites/apps and most of the content I read is interest based so I would get to know about all events and activities related to Cricket, Tennis and most of the India news and some major global events. The point of all this rambling being that I never get real local news related to the place I live.

So a few weeks back I totally missed the fact that Day Light savings time (DST) ended and clock was changed by an hour.

These days we use alarm on the phones (which automatically recognize Daylight savings time changes) and first thing I pick up in morning for news and other stuff is ipad which was also time adjusted and on a sunday morning I was up at 6:45 and felt wide awake and hungry ( the time had changed by an hour so my body clock considered it 7:45 the time I should have finished my morning coffee) and only when my wife pointed it out later I realized that the time change had occured.

To me all this DST thing does is mild annoyance on having to change multiple convential 'Clocks' at home and also adjusting my Wrist Watches and the one in the car. This also changes the sleep patterns and hunger patterns and being someone who likes to stick to time for most daily activities, these pattern changes are annoying for the first couple of weeks and then you forget it. Then  come next match , I need to move all these  devices back by an hour again and adjust to another daily pattern. Within 2 years I'm annoyed at this so wonder how all others are in the areas where they do this are managing. My annoyance is also partly because I dont see the whole thing making much sense anymore in this age where world is no longer an agragian economy where we are sunrise influences our start of day. There seem to be equally persuasive arguements for and against DST on internet.

But what triggered off this post was discussion I had with friend  with whom I catch up regularly and this time as well we chatted causually about various usual topics like our families, weather and such and then this DST topic came up and we started wondering if DST or even timezones makes sense in country like India. We discussed for a long time peddling several half truths both of us could remember and after while decided to settle it by checking internet later!

I found that India did follow DST at some point ( during World War) and India indeed had multiple timezones at some point and eventually settled on a single time. What I did not know until now was how much was the time variation across India.

quick google search tells me that : India spans longitudes of 68° at the western end and 98° at the eastern boundary and as there is a difference of one hour for every 15° of longitude, the two extremes differ by two hours. Thus, when the sun sets at 4 p.m. in Kohima, it sets at 6 p.m. in Porbunder.

For places in North East and places on western side, I'm sure this problem will be even more acute

As type this post, when I check the time in North East India is 6:10 and the time Bangladesh which lies to West of NE India is 6:40 and the time in Lahore,Pakistan is 5:40 but some places like Gujarat which lies west of Lahore is 6:10

One more interesting info : Bangladesh introduced DST 5 years back and advanced the clock by 1 hour during winter months ... yeah really!

So there is a genuine need and there were reports of demands from several areas in India for new timzone and DST but I would assume the offices/shops and life in general might be operating based on availble sunlight and the working hours might start early ( compared to rest of India) and might finish early and same with places on western side where the starting hours of shops/offices might be slightly later in the day accounting for late sunrise ( as per IST)

So even though we are on one single timezone, we probably have already factored these things in and do not require diffrent time zones. Another issue with having 2 timezones is the amount of effort and co-ordination needed and effort needed by Railways where so many things are done manually and already we have trouble with Indian Stretchable time and having multiple timezones is going to cause more problems.  There are lot of studies and theories which blame the timezone as responsible for the lack of progress and various problems plaguing these regions

There are also interesting suggestions like bringing in a new timezone for Eastern areas and another one was for advancing the entire IST itself by 30 mins to solve problem faced by East but not creating huge problem for Western side but with business and power centered on the western part of the country I dont think that idea will work out. We remain only major country other than China which does not have multiple timezones

All in all the conversation on this topic and some digging around on internet has made me some sort of self-styled internet expert on this .... now off to pontificating on other online forums

Clearing the cobwebs

Its been a while ... since I looked at this blog let alone posted something!

I had started the blog more than 9 years back and did use it fairly regularly and had a huge list of other blogs I used to follow and folks dropping comments and discussing things, blogs actually meant quality social networking and catching up with lot of cool and interesting stuff back in those days

But times have changed, the web and social media have changed a lot 

These days 140 characters and embedded bitly URLs are all it takes to catch up with things and discuss and share stuff with folks ... yeah twitter happened and made this process much more easier and quicker and is infinitely more smart phone friendly. It didnt help that I totally stopped using my personal laptop and started relying almost entirely on my phone and ipad to track news and catch up with stuff online.

Meanwhile life also happened, moved to a new city/country and started family life and time became increasingly hard to find and blogging seemed to be a lot of effort and hard work and the lazy me just copped out!

But still there is some joy to be had in being able to type long prose without fear of running out of characters, being able to just put your thoughts out there somewhere ... so hopefully will be back here and put up something ... 

Lets see!

2013 - List of Books

Not a good year for reading, sort of gave up reading for while  after relocating to US at the start of year. Netflix, Amazon Prime instant videos, reading The Economist magazine every week and having an ipad with insanely addictive games are some of the excuses.

With the necessary disclaimer issued, let me proceed to the business of revealing the List

1.Indianomix : Making Sense of Modern India -Vivek Dahejia & Rupa Subramanya

Picked this up as I had followed the writers on twitter, turned out be something on lines of Freakonomics set in India

2.Labyrinth : Short Stories

This was part of my conscious effort to read some Indian writing esp short stories. Some interesting stories, but at the end of the year don't remember much about this!

3. The Devotion of Suspect X - Keigo Higashino

This was a Japanese book and was a cerebral murder mystery. It is different from conventional murder mystery as the focus is on how the deed is hidden from cops and was a good light read.

4.Oath of Vayuputras - Amish

I actually liked the first book in the series as I picked it up before all the hype around these books and felt the guy was on to something even though the language was very ordinary. But it has been steadily heading downhill after that. Used this book to read during long flight journey and while reading kept feeling why does he write like this! What a waste of such a good premise. I always felt we had so much good material in our mythology and history and lot of stories were there waiting to be written. But this was a colossal waste

5.Good Omens - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Two awesome authors getting together to write about Angels , Demons and apocalypse and all that can go wrong. Hilarious stuff, enjoyed it totally!

6.Going Postal - Terry Pratchett

My first Terry Pratchett novel, picked it up after strong recco from my sis who has a huge collection

7. Irresistible Inheritance of Wilburforce - Paul Torday

My fav book of the year, delightful read. Unravels slowly but sucks you in!

8.Food in History - Reay Tannahill

Picked this on whim, but turned out to be a terrific read. The book explores the role of food in  human life as civilization progressed from early hunter gatherer days through various ages till the modern era. In spite of this being such an obvious thing the role played by food is not very well understood or known. The book was packed with a lot interesting insights into various historical events and how food influenced it. Focus is more on Europe but effort is made to cover the entire world, learnt so many interesting things while reading this

9.The Tiger's Wife - Tea Obreht

Set in Eastern Europe during Balkan war and covers the present and past as a girl remembers about her relationship with her grandfather and some of the stories he used to tell her.I'm yet to finish this at the end of the year, hope to finish this in a week

10.The Illicit Happiness of Other People - Manu Joseph

Thanks @vaidya for this gift. Book set in Madras of later 80s and is a story of  loss but is written by a satirist.


Finishing 10 books this year was a surprise for me given the slow start. But then I actually read 3 books in Dec when I got reminded that I need to blog about my reading list. Hope to get a Kindle in 2014 and switch to reading more e-books finally.

Thou Shalt Not Pass

These days most of our transactions are doing 'online' and you seldom stand in lines(if there was one!).

For most folks of my generation at first it was Banking and train tickets, then it slowly expanded to a whole lot of other bills and shopping . But still there was the domestic help or the watchman who would offer to pay the water bill, electricity bill, gas cyclinder etc, till i left India though i did open online accounts i still used to pay for these through these people letting them have their Rs.10/20 commission. My online purchasing started with books, I had heard about flipkart through friends, but kept advocating the 'experience' factor of a real world small bookshop that i used to visit often and i did enjoy some discount there as a regular. But at some point I started realizing that the discounts online and the comfort of ordering stuff lounging on my couch/bed was too tempting and i succumbed. Books were followed by T-shirts, other stuff and gradually electronics followed. 

Until this point I had only 2-3 websites which i used on a regular basis for e-commerce and there were a couple of travel websites and of course personal email and work mail/system login ...despite security concerns, laziness trumped and  I started using common  passwords both for most of  these sites invariably what i was using at that point at my workplace. At work we had to change password every 45 days. Setting a password was a fun activity and initially i took pride in coming up with smart passwords. But the trouble with password is that they are supposed to be 'secure' and of course 'secret' which is the fundamental expectation. So you can't really go about announcing it on Facebook or Twitter and gloat over the likes/RTs you get! But for my personal usage i kept myself to 2-3 passwords ( best of the lot i came up when setting passwords at work and for my bank account). Now the trouble started when one of my widely used mail accounts got hacked and thanks to being widely present on social media those days i got know instantly that spam mails were being sent and managed to wrest back control of the account. Now since i had used some of the same passwords for lot of things online, I didn't want to take any chances and set-up about creating more complex and complicated passwords and more of them so that not more 2-3 sites had same password. This was the  time the activities done online started increasing and so began the quest for unique yet tough to crack but 'remember-able' passwords

Setting smart and tough to get passwords slowly started becoming a democles sword ( ok, i'm exagerrating) ... I slowly started wondering if mundane will do, but again didnt want to lose the fun part of coming up with some interesting passwords. But after moving to the US of A, things started becoming lot tougher. I now had a couple of different bank acccounts, my workplace demanded seperate set of passwords for different applications, almost all utlity payments were online through seperate accounts with service providers, and i keep discovering lot more e-commerce sites all of which need their own ids and passwords. Since the start of this year i had to go through recover password routine for a couple of sites. But now i have reached the level where i had to recover my user id first and then get the password! I can't help thinking that there should be a better yet secure way ... I know there must be something, hopefully the widespread usage of that new thing is just around the corner. This post was triggered by a casual conversation with my mom who is just approaching 60s. She mentioned that she had to recover her mail password 5 times in last 3 months because she simply keeps forgetting and her memory is no longer what it used to be... if i'm having trouble in 30s I cant imagine what people in 60s and later must be going through and i really hope some better solution comes soon

2012 - List of Books

Finally I return to update the blog, had been struggling to put thoughts together since Twitter made it very easy to express things to the world. Anyway had started putting the year end list last year and cousin of mine prompted to do the same this year too and compare lists. So here goes...


Listing the books from Jan to Dec in the order of when i finished reading it

1.Dance with Dragons ( Song of Fire and Ice series  / also known as Game of Thrones series for those who follow the HBO TV series version) - George RR Martin

The book was just brilliant and this was the last of the series that is published as on today and with this begins the long wait for the next one from Martin in this series.

2.Boy Who Harnessed Wind - William Kamkwamba

True story of a boy from Africa who managed to overcome poverty, absence of formal education to become a successful rural inventor

3.Indian Summers by John Wright - Must read for any Indian cricket fan as Wright covers the early days of what was a Golden era for Indian cricket.

4. Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh - Thanks for the recco Vaidya, enjoyed this totally. Mind was blown :)

5. Amul's India : Based on 50 years of Amul advertising

Good fun to go through all those Amul Ads gave a sense of India as they touched upon almost all major issues/events

6.Burning Rubber by Charles Jennings

Solid book on Formula One, good read for all racing buffs

7. Rahul Dravid : Timeless Steel , a collection of articles of Rahul Dravid put together by ESPN Cricinfo

8.Adventures of an intrepid film critic - Anna Vetticad

Story of Bollywood in its entirety as a film critic decides to watch all hindi movies releasing in NCR in 2011. Not  really as interesting read as i hoped as the insights and conclusions were something most of us sort of knew :(

9.Stories by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio

Collection of short stories, yet to complete!

10.Behind the Beautiful Forevers - Katherine Boo

Easily the best book i have read this year and for quite a while, Katherino Boo brilliantly captures poverty and struggle in Urban India, hopes, aspirations and challenges along with how the system really works.

11.Cut Like Wound by Anita Nair

Pleasant Surprise this one, really enjoyed it part of the reason could be that this was set in Bangalore :)

12.Pundits from Pakistan by Rahul Bhattacharya

Thanks Vaidya for the B'day gift, very good read as the author covers not only cricket but opening up of border and hearts between two estranged nations for a brief period. Sights and sounds of Pakistan was an added bonus to the experience of reliving our best tour to Pakistan



My target at start of year was the usual 25 books, but with lot of things happening on personal front I expected the numbers to be much lower... but till i put this together didnt realise it was this low!

Hoping to do at least 20 in 2013 :)

My tryst with "Indian Summers"

Seems apt for the season, but this one is actually a book review of "Indian Summers" by John Wright. Before I get to the book, let me cover why I wanted to pick this one and how i picked this one up as that is also a good tale. I remember reading somewhere many years back that  during his coaching days John Wright was of the opinion that Anil Kumble would make a very good captain. Its another matter that Kumble eventually took over the reins and did pretty well and justified the observation of former coach who had watched him from close quarters. Also I heard from somewhere about this book which is basically made of stuff from a diary Wright kept during his coaching days so I was very intrigued to know what went on behind the scenes during a huge transformation period when India went from being an also ran team to a force to be reckoned with in turn leading to creation of a strong vibrant team, fan following and a huge cricket market that is there today.

But the search for this book turned out to be an arduous challenge in itself as most stores didn't seem to stock it, I had tried at small bookstore in Navi Mumbai ( where I was based then) where the owner was friendly and used to be give discounts, but no luck with this one. Tried  Crossword and Landmark bookstore, again no luck. I had started buying off flipkart by then and any book I wanted was there waiting with a generous discount but this one proved elusive. I wasn't daunted put a request to notify me when it becomes available and then forgot all about it. After a few months in a new city I happened to take part and win a quiz competition at my workplace and got Odeyssey bookstore voucher and the first thing I went and checked was this book. Again no luck, the guy was friendly and offered to write it down, he even recognized John Wright as our old coach and promised to talk to someone and get back to me. He never did, still I checked a couple of times but it was leading nowhere and after several futile online purchase searches I slowly forgot all about the book.

This IPL V season started and while discussing cricket with friends the usual who was the best captain ( the usual Dhoni Vs Ganguly) debate started and interesting this time during IPL there was a chance for face-off of several men who had led India and who wanted to lead India. While debating this I again wished if I had access to that book of Mr.John Wright where I hoped he would have shed some light on what really went on and how did Indian team team transform itself was it because of an aggressive skipper who managed to give it back to 'them' ( By backing his mates, giving more chances to people as some believe or by coming late for tosses, whirling shirt from Lord's balcony as some others believe). During one of those chats with Vaidya about cricket and captaincy a couple of weeks back I mentioned that I was looking for this elusive book for a long time. "Try flipkart" was the reply, I was pretty exasperated and wanted to start a lengthy drivel on my search for this book when tht was accompanied by a Flipkart link to the book which claimed it was indeed available. After quickly erasing all that i was typing I typed a quick thank you and promptly placed an order. But the order snagged somehow, towards the end the page went blank and order status was incomplete. Only then I noticed the book was priced at Rs.84 ... surely something was wrong, not again! But then I decided I will try again and ordered another book along with this and this time it went through. Vaidya did warn there must be some error somewhere as no one sells a hardcover for Rs.84 and they might ask for money during delivery. So called up my mom and explained this and told her to give me a call when book comes in case they ask for extra money. The book took some time to arrive and strangely nothing extra was charged. When I got home next weekend, this fantastic hardcover edition with a cover price of 18 Pounds was mine for just Rs.84. Surely there is some cricketing God somewhere!

Now onto the book, it was a pretty breezy read Mr.Wright sure has a good sense of humor and his whole India 'experience' thats what it actually is about is narrated pretty warmly. You cant help smiling when you read through many incidents which would bizarre/unbelievable for those unacquainted with India or Indian cricket. But Wright soaks it all up, learns how things move and slowly but surely changes the course towards something positive. He claims he was not all that soft as media believed and he did give players an earful and had picked up fights with high and mighty in the system but still its hard to shake off the image of the genial Kiwi quietly working behind the scenes and getting things done. However the book doesn't contain anything controversial and Wright is quite measured in his criticism. He is aware of the enormous responsibilities entrusted to him, the expectations from a nation of billion plus with very little sporting success. He is frustrated with the way things work and how an ineffective system is preventing a nation with so much talent from reaching its full potential.

Wright takes through all the major events during his term as coach and for an Indian cricket fan it is guided tour ( Like Directors commentary in Movie DVDs where lot of behind the scenes stuff is revealed) of  Team India's major campaigns which resulted in a lot of wins we are proud of. But Wright steers away from all controversial topics and takes care not to put up names or reveal who did what and instead subtly hints at lot of things. Some of things I liked was his narration of how he landed up in India to take up this job with no contract and not even an Indian visa! Lot of hilarious incidents like culture of players sitting in chairs and sipping tea during nets and munching sandwiches in gym while opposition players sweat it out! Concept of different team managers for every tour and getting people who had no clue as managers and how the concept of having selectors from a  Zonal system is turning the whole thing into a farce is well captured.
How he changed that culture with rudimentary support equipment and not much support from board is a story to read. There are lot of info that most people don't know like how Laxman was almost on verge of dropping out of the famous Kolkata test of 2001 because of a fitness issue and he also does cover the incident that became a 'hot potato' - Dravid declaring with Sachin batting on 194! The way he lost his cool and almost manhandled Sehwag ( just like every Indian fan would have) when he threw his wicket with a reckless shot, the book is replete with many such moments. But the relationship with Ganguly and other major players isn't covered in detail, Wright does point out quite a few things though. I thought he managed to strike a right balance between covering various issues while keeping lid on certain private behind the scenes stuff. Even though he doesn't give out much he leaves enough hints for a careful reader which is why I really liked this book.

Like my post - the book is also more on the overall experience and not just the cricket , the frustration and anguish and the talent and hope that is India for him. How it all comes together to make a great journey made a good reading experience as well. Highly recommended for fans of Indian cricket