Books that I've been reading and other news

1.My Name is Red-unputdownable would be an understatement-We Indians would perhaps like to think that we know all of Islamic* folklore that there is to know like Leyla & Majnun,Alif Laila etc but these are just the tip of the iceberg.This book makes one realize that there are so many other beautiful tales from the Islamic world which we know nothing about, for me it is almost like the discovery of a rich new lode of stories to dive into.Ever heard of Husrev & Shirin ?
2.Where wisdom shall be found-Harold Bloom-discusses the Greeks-Plato,Homer,Socrates then goes on to compare Shakespeare & Cervantes then Montaigne & Bacon in the next chapter(Subsequent chapters deal with Emerson& Nietzsche and finally Freud and Proust)-I have not read any of these writers and will abandon it shortly.
3.The Buddha series-Osuma Tezuka-again rediscovering the Buddhist folk tradition or the Jataka tales-I still need to get used to the sparse black & white style of Tezuka and the in-jokes (Siddhartha the young prince is bored after a day spent watching fire eaters and dancers.So he requests for-"two bulls,a long hemp rope and a barrel of ink" and in the frame in which this happens, a retainer is shown saying-is he going to draw manga?)

Books lined up-Ramesh Menon's Mahabharata-A modern rendering and Roberto Bolano's 2666

PS-I'd be heading over to MDI,Gurgaon for the next two years for my MBA.It was a better end to an MBA season where I plummeted lower and lower as it progressed.The excitement is waning after the initial euphoria but the good part is that I still have another month to go before session starts.Gurgaon looks massive and quite far from Delhi when seen from Google Earth.I've been warned against it's food,air,water,malls,Jats and expats.Lets see what it has in store for me.

*for want of a better word for kingdoms ruled by Islamic monarchs from Asia minor to India in the medieval times

Into a limbo large and broad, since called The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.
John Milton,
Paradise Lost
I was writing a post about leaving Bangalore,which got delayed and I had to abandon it.In Jampot now,and it's still not clear which B-school I'll be joining.It has been a week of indecision and inactivity and heat and sudden rains.It is a little weird to realize that office will keep going on as usual and somebody might already have taken up my desk.Have been reading Satanic Verses and Catch-22.There is nothing blasphemous about the controversial chapter concerning Prophet Mohammed in the book,I had assumed there would be some slight innuendo or some such derogatory reference but there is none or perhaps I have not encountered it yet.Catch-22 is a brilliant book with some very well thought out characters and some lines are way too beautiful to be ever forgotten-

"Do you know how long a year takes when it's going away?" Dunbar repeated to Clevinger. "This long." He snapped his fingers. "A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you're an old man."

"Old?" asked Clevinger with surprise. "What are you talking about?"

"Old."

"I'm not old."

"You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?" Dunbar was almost angry when he finished.

"Well, maybe it is true," Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?"

"I do," Dunbar told him.

"Why?" Clevinger asked.

"What else is there?"

PS-My garden is in bloom even in summer(Zinnia & Sun plant according to Mom),makes for great photographs-I can't have enough of photographing my garden from my room. and there is a Bulbul pair making a nest in my garden,photos will follow.

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?

At home now and technically 'chilling' out though it is quite muggy here in Jam.People tell me that it is pretty cool now but all I know is that I start sweating if I don't sit under a fan.You really appreciate ACs here.Maybe I have become the extremely sensitive to weather asinine Bangalorean.I was wondering why we don't have power cuts here in Jam,then the power went off yesterday and it dawned on me-its impossible to breath without a fan or an AC here.At the steel plant here during most of the summer,all work is stopped between 11AM to 4PM because even the sheltered portions of the plant become as hot as 50 deg Celsius or more.

So all that can be done is done in the evening and the rest of the time is spent reading or sleeping indoors.I have been reading Moby Dick,Gravity's Rainbow and Beyond Belief in turns so that I don't get bored of any one book.I somehow always end up concurrently reading two or more books and this might seem strange to people who swear by one book at a time but somehow I end up finishing books faster this way.I am also very desperate to read Paradise Lost but unfortunately all these fancy bookshops in Bangalore do not bother to stock it.All I could locate was a massive 'collection of Milton's works' or something of that sort which was anyway beyond the price range.So,whoever you are,please mail me a copy.

Spain won in style and quite decisively.They broke their jinx of not having any silverware for the past 44 years.For me the find of the tournament would be Fabregas-his passing is beautiful and elegant and he created that vital space on which the likes of Villa and Torres thrived.The penalty taken against Italy was very clinical too.With this win I broke a personal jinx too.It would so happen that every team I supported lost in the football world cups or Euro championships.in '94, the first I remember seeing; I was supporting Germany being a fan of Klinsmann.They lost in the quarterfinals.Then in '98,it was again Germany and they lost again. in '02,I switched to Argentina being now a big fan of Batistuta,they were in some 'group of death' and didn't even make it to the second round.That was enough for people to start saying that I am jinxed and that whichever team I support is gonna lose. With Argentina out of the way,I supported Spain and they lost to South Korea in the second round.Then Italy collapsed in the quarterfinals.I started getting taunting calls from all my friends.(you know who you are) They supporting the safe bet- Brazil.Then in '06,it was Argentina again and they were playing some amazing football right throughout the tournament.This time,watching the world cup in the hostel common room was amazing.Unlike cricket in which there would be a collective mourning after an Indian loss,hostel had this different groups of people supporting different teams-the German supporters,the Brazilian supporters,the Argentinian supporters and that would spice things up.The '06 world cup ended in July coinciding with the exams and it was pretty tough concentrating in that almost carnival atmosphere.It seemed as though the jinx would break when 80 mins into the Germany-Argentina Quarterfinal Klose headed in a winner and all was lost. Consequently I bungled up my Digital Communications paper.Yesterday was weirdly familiar with Klose still at the helm of the German attack but thankfully there was no equalizer and I could finally after a 14 year wait see my team win :-)

PS:the only thing better than tennis under lights is probably swimming under lights

In which we do asinine* tags for wont of better things to do ..

The tag goes like this:
1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.


and so:
1.Python Cookbook**-Martelli,Ravenscroft&Ascher(O'Reilly) -which contrary to all expectations is not about exquisite cuisine or fear of snakes.
2.Done- a book of 800 pages no less
3.The fifth sentence-
def workdays(start,end,holidays=,days_off=None)
4. The next three sentences-
if days_off is None:
days_off =5,6 #default to saturdays and sundays
workdays=[x for x in range(7) if x not in days_off]

5.Found this tag on Space Bar's blog and I tag Ankita,Dreamcatcher(who is pretty jobless anyway),Deepika,Solitary Reaper and Indira.

*isn't asinine such a cool word?Roll it over in your mouth and say it slowly.So deliciously condescending.***
** Accusations of being a geek/IT type will not be entertained.
***I sound more and more like my favorite bloggers.****
****welcome to the labyrinth of recursive footnotes :-)

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you're from. And while you may have some problems being "normal," you'll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it's epic films, important novels, or vivid comics... Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Recently....

Its been a crazy post Diwali November.Getting adjusted to the new house.Falling sick repeatedly due to diarrhea.Planning for January.Work getting a little hectic.This weekend I was completely engrossed in traveling and attending Grihapravesh-es.Have been listening to a lot of classic stuff-The Doors and Sabbath and esp Led Zep (OK what do call a Hippie's and a carpenter's ideal date?--- tripping on Doors ( apologies to Saanjh :-) ) ) .Also I am mostly dead on Orkut but pretty much there on Facebook ( due to company intranet filtering and 'coz I hate Powerscrap) with all its myriad applications which ask you to characterize people , poke your friends, put up your fav comic on your profile and do thousand more fun things.Really you should check it out.*

I have been buying books left right and center since the last five months and lately I have been able to catch up on reading instead of just admiring the bookshelf.

Books bought recently:

1.The diaries of Franz Kafka
2.Gravity's Rainbow
3.Madame Flaubert
4.A clockwork orange
5.Brave new World
6.Nirvana's Biography
7.Step across this line
8.The ground beneath her feet
9.A father and son
10.The code book
11.Dubliners
12.Above average

Among these I have only managed to read A father and son,Above average and Brave new world.All the rest are in unread or half-read stages.I was impressed by Brave new world and I would say it pretty much beats all other Dystopian themes by quite a margin.I like the irony and the grey ending of the book and they way that issues like purpose of life are explored without firmly sticking to one.Another post I did on Dystopia some time back here
Hopefully I would have something interesting to say next time around.Most probably I would be putting up some older posts which are in draft just 'coz I have put enough effort into them to delete them.

*I think that lately, all I have been doing is pimping various sites.I know people come to my blog just to navigate to other cooler pages but what to do, hardly anything interesting happens in my life. I have been told that everything that I do has an air of recklessness to it-including this blog.

Reload

Its been long ...almost a month and a lot has happened....A somewhat memorable b'day followed by an amazing trip to Goa and a hectic period of seminars and back-breaking project work(my project-mates will most probably say that all I did was recite inane stories,take 'power' naps and generally fiddle around with the laptop).A lot of trips to CCD's and random restaurants happened.The sem so far has been pretty roller-coaster.Also finally began reading Ulysses and am absolutely loving it.

Also, thanks to Uatu I finally could lay my hands on Sandman.Most amazing stuff and I am already head over heels in love with Death :-D.What a character!Actually I would place Death along with Dagny Taggart as my favorite female characters in any form of literature(for clarification, I hate Ayn Rand's philosophy but love her characters,Hank Rearden being my fav).My Orkut profile pic has dream and death sitting together and gives my profile a slick look me thinks.My roomie is worried 'coz just today I listened to Beethoven's 9th some 7 times...somehow I am finally coming to terms with some of the addictions that I have: currently Beethoven's 9th,coffee, Orkut...the most dangerous being Orkut.I am on auto-pilot most of the times on Orkut and would have scrapped people without knowing and have joined communities without actually being interested in that particular topic.I am seriously addicted,suggestions for de-addiction anyone?

College has almost come to an end and I might just have attended my last classes without realizing it......and can't help feeling extremely nostalgic about our dept. who have been extremely sweet this sem without harassing us too much about attendance and internals and stuff...compared to CSE,we have teachers who 'understand' our 'problems' and give us extensions on deadlines.Just in case somebody from any other branch is reading this...my friend Avinash has attended only about 10% classes in all of engineering..thats like he has attended only about a semester out of eight.So there... that I guess would put all arguments about superiority of branches to an end.I would follow this post with a few posts on the various characters that inhabit our dept. and college in general and another one on my fav subjects throughout engineering...so geeky technical post alert on subsequent posts. Maybe I will do a Goa post too.....

PS:The pic-Miramir beach,Goa...the greatest holiday destination in India and if you have not been there yet, you are seriously seriously missing out on something.