total timepass...

This is the first book on psychology that I have read and I must say it is some heavy reading - it took my almost 5 months to finish it!! Its an amazingly well written book, quite simple in its language but just because the content is so much and so deep, it takes a longer time to mull over it and finish it! Its written by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel prize winner, and his works cover both economics as well as psychology. The overall foundation of the book is that the human mind is not always rational. There are biases which affect how it works and hence its important to be aware of its failings. The book is split into 5 sections covering a lot of these tendencies, each section then split into small chapters of 10 pages. Each chapter in turn covers a small part of how our brain functions, detailing it with multiple examples and experiments from daily life which ring true and bring the theory to life for an amateur reader. The book is very very interesting, especially all the examples...

An English colleague of mine recommended reading this book as a good first introduction on the eccentricities of English behaviour, what it means and why it is what it is. The author is a English anthropologist who is trying to look at her countrymen from a distance and make sense of it. (It takes her also quite an effort, I must say!). I would highly recommend reading this book to anyone who has stayed long enough in the UK to be confused and is curious enough to look for answers;-). Its a longish book and will take patience to finish. However, its written in a light funny way and will be an enjoyable read for sure. The author looks at many different aspects of the English way of life - work, play, pubs, social interaction and so on - and based on the behaviours in these situations, comes out with a synthesised list of reasons why they are what they are. The picture below is the outcome of the book. I think its still too cryptic to get it fully just looking at the picture, you nee...

The book, 'Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography' gives a narrative of the sub-continent's history looked at through the lens of its geography. Its nothing really new in terms of the history, I have read a couple of books which narrate it better. The difference of course is that this book brings in the geography as an essential player in the narrative, plus its very easy to read. All in all, time well spent. So rather than writing a book review, I thought it might be more fun just listing some of the interesting facts that I read in the book which I had not known before. And here they are: Early civilisation The Indian subcontinent was attached to Africa and Madagascar when the continents started drifting away Saraswati or Ghaggar was an actual huge river in Rajasthan which dried up leading to a big change in Indian history The Vedic people and people of the Harappan civilisation were not the same people There was no Aryan invasian in...

'And then there were none' is an Agatha Christie whodunit play. Its already been made into a Hollywood movie as well as a Bollywood one. So when I got an opportunity to see the play in the theatre, I was expecting it to be not as entertaining as if I hadn't known the story. And how wrong I was!! The play we saw was in Leeds (and I must say the theatre was quite grand and larger than some of the ones I have gone to in London). The setting of the play is 10 'little soldiers' who all land up in an empty house on an island off Devon in the UK. They were all conned into coming there in a suspicious way. They are get stuck there, isolated and unable to get off the island. And then suspicious things start happening. Also, each of them is accused of having abetted a murder which they all deny in the beginning but somehow seems to be connected to their being on the island itself. Slowly, as the story unfolds, one by one, all of them start getting murdered. And as we lea...

I recently saw the play ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ (hopefully I got the name right!) and I am still trying to figure out my views on it. We went in thinking it would be a light hearted mystery play and it was anything but that. The option we had passed on was ‘The Book of Mormons’ and I think that also had a part to play in the fact that I wasn’t impressed:). The play starts with the murder of a dog, and the neighbour autistic boy Christopher gets involved in it. The play is then onwards about Christopher - a teenager staying with his father and whose mother is dead. He is shown as a relatively intelligent boy, but with his own social problems. He is obsessed with finding the truth about the dog, and on the way, he uncovers secrets about his own family - about his father and his mother. But more than that, this journey helps him discover himself, his strengths and what all he is capable of. I generally don’t like movies and plays which are about rediscove...

I have an existing bias towards thick books - an inherent assumption that they have something more substantial and concrete to say. Sense of an ending is the best example of why my bias is completely biased and incorrect:). Sense of an ending is a very thin novel, or a novella as they say. It recounts the story of Tony, an old man now as well as his school friend Adrian and ex-girlfriend Veronica. The tale is in Tony's own words and covers a period of more than sixty years. The story is split into two parts, the first details Tony's childhood friendship with Adrian and his doomed relationship with Veronica. And the second part details circumstances where Tony and Veronica come in contact again, interact again, open old wounds; all this uncovering a different version of the first part of the story. I can write about the book's story but that would spoil the pleasure of discovering it yourself, for all who may want to read it sometime. Suffice to say, the story is slow,...

(Spoiler alert) I hadn't watched the original Tanu Weds Manu and so had no context of what to expect. And I think that was a good idea, I went in the theatre with no first impressions, and came out completely shaken. What a movie! I do have some issues with it, but to be honest they are my own. The movie by itself was amazing and a must watch. TWMR (couldn't they think of a more creative name?) starts 4 years after the marriage of the boring UK doctor, Sharmaji with the fiery Tanu from Kanpur. Their marriage has soured so much that Tanu gets Manu put into a mental asylum and returns back to Kanpur. At this point you would assume that their marriage is over, and that is where you are wrong! When they both come back to India, the movie is a riot. Manu goes completely overboard with trying to get over Manu - acts crazy, flirts with her ex-boyfriends, paints the town red with their renter and god knows what all. She is just so crazy, you are never sure what she is capable o...

Piku is a tough one. To be honest, the movie is well crafted - the dialogues are individually funny, the acting is top class (Irfan and Amitabh as expected, and Deepika upping her game) and the story flows well too. But something doesn't add up! Piku is the story of a Bengali girl, Piku and her father, Bhashkor da. Her father has constipation problems and hence behaves like a difficult person - loud, irritating, eccentric, quarrelsome and so on. So in one word - highly irritating. Piku loves him and takes good care of him, but it also means balancing her own life is tough for her. Finding a boyfriend, getting married, being on a date, work et al. And so she acts as tough and difficult as her father. Then of course, is her colleague Syed; the local taxi owner (and the only normal person in the movie), Irfan - whose taxi drivers refuse to drive Piku anywhere! and Pike's aunt, Moushmi Chatterjee who provides entertainment with her very multiple marriages. All these character...

Its been a year of very different and interesting movies I must say. Byomkesh Bakshy, Piku and now Tanu wed Manu returns. Some may disagree with the last one, but I found it to be a class apart from the regular Bollywood fare. Anyways let me start with Byomkesh Bakshy - the movie blew my mind away. I went in with a clean slate, I had managed to not see any trailer and no idea at all about the look and feel of the movie. And for me, that turned out to be the deal clincher. Of course everything other than the look and the feel was perfect too, the characters, acting, story, music, dialogues. It all came together so perfectly. The story is about a new age detective in Calcutta, Byomkesh Bakshy. With his sweetheart getting married to someone else, he focuses his attention on finding out who killed Ajit Babu's father. This search takes him to Dr. Guha's guest house, the local politicians Sikdar & Sukumar, a Japanese temple, the local cantonment, a chemicals factories, Chin...

We recently saw a play called 'Dara' at the National Theatre in London. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dara portrays the struggle that had taken place between Shah Jahan's eldest son, Dara and his youngest son, Aurangzeb for the Mughal crown. We all know who had won, but most of us don't know how he had won it. This play is a story of what had happened between the two... Dara had been his father's favourite forever, his chosen heir. While Aurangzeb had always been one of the other sons, younger and ignored. This childish rivalry had taken the shape of adult hatred, to the point that Aurangzeb killed Dara and enslaved his father for years to get to the crown. The play details scenes from their childhood to adulthood; interactions between the brothers, with their sisters and father; of Aurangzeb's love for a Hindu woman; his getting together with his brother Murad to beat Dara; Dara's running away but getting caught due to his naivete; and then Aurangzeb ...

The play "Dear Father" stars Paresh Rawal and was playing recently in London. I wasn’t able to find any reviews of the play and went for it purely because of the star power of Paresh Rawal. He is a great actor and so this would be a great play. Dear Father is a comedy-thriller-suspense-social-message play all rolled into one. It is based on the lives of a son, his wife and his father, which is turned upside down when the father (Paresh Rawal) ends up in hospital after falling from their terrace. A cop (also played by Paresh Rawal) lands up at their place, and what follows is a dissection of the last few days of the household leading up to the father’s accident, and also an unraveling of the issues between the three that had cropped up over those days. This play actually felt at times like a saas-bahu serial except that there was no saas but a sasur:). The issues were the same, the father had a lot of time at hand and found mistakes with the wife. The wife did not like t...

I don't like watching Hollywood movies much. And the reason is that they make me think (and sometimes make me feel sad). Much longer than having watched the movie. And Imitation Game is one such movie. For one, it was about something I had not heard about till now. About Turin, about his contribution to the World War, about his machine, about how even though they broke the German's code, they decided not to go all out with their breakthrough, but balance out the short term gains with the long term aim; decide with their brains and not their hearts. It was very very interesting, and I think the director and the actors did a brilliant job of it all. Benedict Cumberbatch was perfect for the role and he did it justice. It was all perfect. But what I was left thinking about after the movie, was just the last 10(?) mins of the movie - what happened to Turin afterwards. The movie was about the Turin machine, and what happened after was just mentioned in passing. But that was a...

Its a bit late to review a movie seen two months back, but I think Interstellar requires one. It was a Christopher Nolan movie. I would not hold the same standards for a lot of movies, but I think his movies need to be more.. and Interstellar wasn't! To be fair - it was amazing at a lot of levels! The visuals, the creativity in the vision - linking space travel, a grim future, black holes, singularities, gravity between time and so on requires a lot of courage and vision. But it failed. And for me, it failed because it tried to do too much! By the end of it, I was confused about what the movie was trying to say and do. Was it trying to give reasons for ghosts and superstitions? Was it an emotional movie on relationships? Cooper and his daughter? Amelia and her father? Amelia and her boyfriend? Was it a science fiction? Did it want to talk about the great human spirit? Or just show an awesome visual movie? Did it have a message on the fraility of human character? Or the import...

Quiet is a book which talks about introversion, and introverts' perception in today's world where extroversion has become the personality ideal for everyone. Its a very interesting book to read, based on many researches carried over the years on this topic, but with a geographical limitation of being a very American book. Many interesting examples are discussed to make it real, and its very easy to relate to what's written. The author starts with how extroversion has become the aspirational personality type in today's world. All cultures across the world used to be 'cultures of character' not so long ago - where everyone knew each other and one'e character was what took him/her forward in life - and now they  are moving towards a 'culture of personality' - where people do not know each other but form impressions based on what is presented to them. She then goes on to break two myths. The first is that all leaders of the corporate world are e...