The heightened sense of awareness might really just be your numb toe (at 15000 feet)

Back from a trip to Manali with the folks.They are right when they say that you need to be in the right mood to take a vacation and even though I tried switching off,it was not the most memorable of trips.Though really glad that there is one more state which goes off my list of 'not visited'.I now have 8 states( The Seven sisters and Madhya Pradesh) on my TODO plus throw in a few UTs (Andaman being a major one) :-)

Crossword was having a sale and there was an extra discount for StanChart Creditcard holders so couldn't resist (even though I prefer Landmark over its somewhat inadequate collection) and this:
was the end result of the major splurging which happened.The books are:
1.Pamuk's- Other Colours and Istanbul:memoirs of a city
2.Joseph O'Neill's- Netherland
3.The private Lives of the Mughals of India
4.The history of South India

Pamuk is fast rising up the ranks in the list of my favourite writers.Istanbul is definitely one of his finest works in my opinion. Reading books about cities gives me great pleasure even if it is only just a backdrop for the story ,Istanbul and The Black Book lionize the city to such an extent that now,I dream of walking the streets of that city some day,I dream of standing on The Galata Bridge and gazing at the Bosphorous ferries.
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After reading Cuckold,I have started liking the whole idea of the historical novel,very minimal effort is needed in holding up the plot as the reader is generally aware of the subject at hand, the writer is free to concentrate on certain specific characters and the general style of his writing,he generally doesn't need to bother himself too much with the authenticity of the setting as most of it is 'already out there'.

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It is really surprising but Delhi happens to be the only city where I see Hindi signs(which include traffic signs,building names,municipality signs etc) giving English signs some competition.(Somehow 'Bhoomigut Paarpath' for subway has got a nice ring to it )In Bangalore,the usual practice is to only have the English sign or the English Sign+the Kannada sign in a smaller font.The really frustrating thing is that the normal BMTC buses in Bangalore carry only Kannada signs indicating just the start point and the final destination.In Delhi,the stoppages along the route are mentioned on the sides of the buses which I think is a really prudent thing to do.In Jharkhand,you get to see very few bilingual signs and usually,the Hindi signs outnumber the English ones(though this is changing quite rapidly)

What have you been reading?