total timepass...

Let me start with what's top of my mind about this book, it's not easy to read. Its quite a philosophical and "big words" book, that makes reading it strenuous and needs your full attention. So it's definitely not your typical read-to-relax book. Its a book which takes a look at a very difficult question and tries to share all the philosophies available on the topic to help you decide for yourself what you believe in. And gives you loads of examples on the way to understand the drawbacks of these existing philosophies. The basic question the author is trying to answer is - What is justice? What is the right thing to do? As simple as this sounds, its one of the toughest questions to answer in an airtight manner. Lets start with a very simple example - you are the driver on a train and you see three workers working on the tracks. You have the option to divert to another track where there is only one worker working. You will end up killing the workers and can...

Recently on Facebook, I read one of those 'You know you are from xyz if...' articles. It was about belonging to the Indian middle class of the 80s and the 90s. One of the statements stuck in my mind -'You know you belong to the Indian middle class if you still save plastic bags for future use'. And the surprising part is, even though I have been out of India for so long, I can still never throw away plastic bags from a trip to the grocery store. They are stored away for future use, always! So I definitely am still middle class:). But reading that article made me think about a lot of other things I do which are very alien to the western world I live in. I always always switch off extra lights in the house, only the one in my room is the one on. I save wrapping paper for future use:). And so on.. All this is middle class too, right? We all grew up in the times of Doordarshan where social ads dominated TV time and talked about conserving energy and water. I remember...

I finally saw a Hindi movie in a theatre after suchhh a long time, and thankfully I wasn't disappointed (surprisingly too!). Fitoor is based on Great Expectations, stars Tabu, Katrina, Aditya Roy Kapur and is shot primarily in Kashmir, with some parts in London and Delhi. When I went for the movie, I had no clue what it was about. But just before the show started, I glanced at one of the reviews and wish I hadn't. It would have been fun to see how much time it took for me to figure out its 'inspiration':). As I said above, I enjoyed the movie. Given that Great Expectations has been one of my favourite books since I was young, that might have something to do with that;-). Anyways, first things first - Fitoor is an artist's canvas. So pretty, so perfect - whether its Kashmir or Katrina. The snow and chinar and lakes and havelis of Kashmir; the paintings of an artist; or the beauty of its lead characters. Highlighting beauty everywhere was one of the goals of the...

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...