A collage of many worlds

This article has been in the drafts for years now and so the only way to push it out is to do a lazy edit.

Here I try to honour and spend a few moments appreciating a few books I read in the recent years. I don't expect to be able to do full justice to few mentioned and the many that aren't.

Why are they here? When I see these names and try to recollect their content, their emotional appeal and the overarching theme, I find those lodged deeply in my current world view, forming a collage of many distinct worlds.

Being super lazy to write detailed and exciting reviews, I am going to write only as much as I feel like, trying to point out what I gained from the book.

2021

Ivory Throne (Manu S Pillai) - The distinct nature of the Travancore throne, the royal system of the past and its remnants in the present. The Ammachis, the matrilineal system, the role played in the temple culture, British era, independence etc.

Prashnopanishad - A logical Q&A based treatise on some of the easier philosophical ideas covered by the Vedas.The very idea that Indian philosophy is just gods, rituals & chants is bullshit as some of these conversations point to highly logical body of intellectuals who do not succumb to emotional jingoism that plagues modern Hinduism.

Man's search for Meaning (Viktor E Frankl) - Almost a self help book, but strongly flavoured with historical aspects of the Nazi concentration camp days. It strongly resonates for its core message of creating a meaning for one's life. 

2022

Guns Germs and Steel (Jared Diamond) - A strong narrative setter for geographical determinism, which may even be seen as a poor excuse for colonialism. But definitely a great source of insights for obsessively curious folks who wonder why the world is the way it is now, and not any other.

Dersu the trapper (V.K.Arseniev) - This is a warm narrative of the wild human meeting the cruel civilization, Siberian winters, reminscent of the steppe nomad lifestyle. 

The Overstory (Richard Powers) - Deeply philosophical and often hard to understand. But the overall takeway is a deep spiritual connection to possibly one of the most important life forms on earth which we have learnt to ignore or disrespect: Trees.

2023

Anti fragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) - I didn't expect to enjoy such a book. But I did and found myself excitedly following convoluted arguments just because I could connect to them myself. Lots of new insights, ways to think and tools for dealing with risks in life. It is not exactly a reference book, but a great source of inspirations to argue and wrestle with.

Anarchy (William Dalrymple) - Possibly the last book I will read of William Dalrymple (I switched to podcast for rest) as he summarizes the whole English conquest of India. As always filled with details and wonderful arguments on why things happened the way they did, with lots of fingers pointing at chance and human fraility, rather than marked superiority of any race.

At the feet of living things - This was a wonderful set of small articles that introduced me to some Indian naturalists/wildlife researchers and their impactful work across the country. The articles cover various geographies and species around India and hence also serve as a travel inspiration. I don't recall individual stories readily anymore, but the images of snow leopards stealing from sheep pens in Ladakh, depleted fish species of Lakhadweep, social patterns of Bonnet Macaques in the Bandipur forest altered by human contact, dugongs of Andaman etc are some strong ones I retain.

Breath (James Nestor) - While reading it was occassionally repetitive, it contains some very solid recommendations which have found their way into our lives. In short, it takes a deep dive into breathing well, and at the end, you might as well find yourselves breathing in its contents deeply.

Lords of the Deccan - A historical bonanza, revealing so many details about the general region I occupy in India, that I wondered why this is not included into school curricula. We need to have a deeper understanding of our past kingdoms, rivalries and cultural pursuits which to this date defines modern culture and politics. Without that, the whole question of why the South is the way it is today, why even India is the way it is today is inexplicably lost, trying to rely on relatively unrelated events which have received a far beneficial treatment at the hands of subsequent power brokers and thus historians as well.

Space Odyssey (Arthur C Clarke) , Foundation (Isaac Asimov) & Three Body Problem (Cixin Liu); individually and collectively generate a very strong mental image of humanity going through technological and societal reorganization at the face of new challenges. 

Together alongside the "Rama" series, they continue to shine bright in our imaginations providing valuable insights into what we are capable of being.

2024

Chip War (Chris Miller): Gave a high level overview of the history of semiconductor industry and why US is/was the pioneer in this field, and how the economics and subsequently the geopolitics shifted. Very relevant for the state of the current world.

Naalukettu (MT Vasudevan Nair): A simple story set in rural Kerala undergoing a social shift that is affecting the matrilineal system of the Nair households, healing various past wounds and in the process inflicting new ones.

Salt Fix: A book hell bent on changing the narratives on the impact of salt consumption on health. It argues hard to stop demonizing salt and to keep consuming it in healthy amounts. I was amused and digged deeper on certain points and am convinced that salt is a friend, while sugar is wolf in sheep's clothes. The central role of salt in the highly complicated water retention and nervous systems is now a core part of  my understanding of how our body works.

Why aren't we dead yet?:

Another health related book which takes a deeply scientific (yet not too hard to imagine) view of why our body has evolved the way it has, and why the hell we are still alive in this world that constantly tries to kill us for food. I felt deeply grateful and appreciative of our natural systems and this world model always rises to action when considering administration of medicines of any kind on self or family members.

Lost Decade(Puja Mehra), Accidental Prime Minister (Sanjaya Baru): I usually don't find contemporary politics interesting as the narratives can easily be manipulated to suit various incentives. But I was attracted to the first book from a pure economical point after hearing about it in the "Seen and the Unseen" podcast. The subsequent journey down the rabbit hole, trying to find balancing voices led me to the next book. Together, these books create a few narratives of a period in my life where I wasn't really paying attention to politics as I was busy starting with my career. The arguments & events from these books help me navigate and understand more such narratives on political lines without losing objectivity.

2025

Honjin Murder series (Seishi Yokomizo):Highly acclaimed and out of curiosity, I picked this up. Not disappointed and went on to read many of the repetitive stories of the genre and still don't regret it (except maybe the high price). Won't rate it over the top, but it is still a decent murder mystery series to pick for a long journey.

Before the coffee gets cold series (Toshikazu Kawaguchi): Yet another popular Japanese series. Having read all of the books, I now feel they are overrated, repetitive at places and highly priced. But individually as books and stories, some of them are well written and cause deep emotional pain. No regrets picking it up and maybe the world view I carry from it is simply to appreciate and enjoy people around you while they last (or while the coffee is still warm). Alludes to some deep zen philosophy of being in the moment.

Empires of the Steppes (Kennel W Harl): I am a clinically diagnosed steppe culture fan, based on the number of books & YT videos I have consumed on the topic. I even use the Chinggis, Turk, Penchegs, Bulgar, Hun analogies and strategies in regular life very frequently. For me, this was a prize find at a Mathurbhumi offline store and I was in a flight of fantasy, devouring the insights about hundreds of unknown stories from the Steppes for weeks together. The content is so vast that this book takes a permanent spot in my otherwise fleeting collection of books to facilitate re-reads.

The Dawn of Everything (David Graeber, David Wengrow): This book aims to dislodge various mainstream ideas and arguments regarding the history of human freedom, self-determinism and military wielding governments using a combination of recent archaelogical evidences and reviewing past events in new light. I was impresed by to the sheer audacity of the claims. I constantly find myself wondering about the world, had the alternative systems actually survived and become mainstream. I can generate a verbal storm on this and still not cover much of the work as it is a big volume of researched work with socio-political arguments. But now very much part of my world model when I think about why some tasks work well with centralized control and some don't, why some people in some situations give up their freedom willingly, while some resist, what guides religions, governments and people with authority in general.

2026

The Fabric of the Cosmos (Brian Greene): I have always been at awe with the advances in theoretical physics, quantum physics and cosmology beyond what was learnt in bits & pieces in high school curriculum. But it was rather a hard subject to get into, until I got my hands on this book. It does a good job of explaining basics, and layering up to complicated findings and possible theories.

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire (Alex Von Tunzelmann) : Only after I picked this book and read various passages did I realized that I knew almost nothing about the British view of the Indian independence movement. Tells a detailed story of the British aristrocracy and Lord Mount Batten before getting into the association between Edwina and Nehru,and then gets into extensive details about the nerve wracking process of Indian Independence. I appreciate the events and the politics of the day better now with more objectivity and less dramatic characterization of individuals.

More on the foundation

 I wrote about the Foundation's first book.

But as I now am starting on the last book in the series Forward the Foundation, ( minus the complete robo series ), I find myself at loss when considering to write about all these. It is too much.

But I think I want to say something about it now.

There is a particular chewy, sticky quality to the story, especially when protagonists change dramatically within a book itself. But it didn't last long. It turns out that the original trilogy had this hallmark nature, when the author didn't have a clear background or ending in mind. But once he was coaxed by the publishers to connect the multitude of his work into a web of stories, it started losing much of what makes it stand out from the rest. I must admit, I haven't read a lot of science fictions, but I think you can get the drift already.

But it was interesting enough, to make me keep reading all the books, in the order of their publication, except of course the robo series, which I plan to read separately. You see there are certain events and threads connecting these series, and it became quite evident first from the Foundation's Edge. Having no knowledge of the robo series, made many references to it quite mystical for me. Maybe when I read those, that itch shall be scratched.

But so far, the prelude to foundation and the forward the foundation seem subdued, a kind of filler book. Still, the riches of a mind blowing connection to robo events, keeps me on the track.

Happy reading.

Following the clock

Typical day:

5-6 AM wakeup -> Afternoon rush

Evening

At close of work, either go to gym, or get to reading/helping with homework/cooking.

Post dinner, get school work done, get reading.

Put child to sleep, and if I survive, get back to reading

Else, continue with step #1, the next day.

I observe that books and some form of exercise are the regular habits, which can be classified as good.

The regular digital habits, on the other hand required some monitoring and introspection:

a) Twitter(X)

Scroll through a list of regular people whom I follow, with very very limited political exposure (unavoidable, unless I want to be proverbially living under the rock).

With interesting events happening, I might over 40 mins a day scrolling and retweeting. Otherwise it might be within the 30 mins window.

Main topics I find myself reading/responding are: Fitness, travel, wildlife, world events, very specific trolling incidents outside my lil echo chamber. I had over the last two years trimmed the list of people I follow significantly, weeding out inactive or toxic accounts for people who consistently post relevant, informative or creative content. Biggest examples would be Sandeep Mall, Science Girl etc.

b) Youtube

I don't use the standard Youtube app due to the ads, and rely on the Youtube Vanced app [boohoo, this is now gone, and I'm subjected to the horrors of watching ads] for my video binging which I try to also avoid when my son is around. After all, we are lecturing him to restrict his screen time, all the time. 

On a average, I find I use Youtube for 30-40 mins a day. Rarely it can go beyond an hour if I sit late night to finish watching some long pending ones, or get into a YT Shorts binge-until-burnout.

Again, the contents mainly seem to either personal finance (quality/novelty over quantity here), medieval history (mostly related to something  I am reading/playing/listening), documentaries of something being manufactured or cooked, and sometimes fitness/workout videos and comedies or movie based stuff. 

c) Finance apps

I have off late got myself out of the personal finance/investment whirlpool by removing the Stock broker and Mutual fund apps from phone main screen. This significantly helps with not worrying about markets, investment levels and missed opportunities. So these app take hardly 2 min on a average every day, considering that these aren't opened at all most of the time, and when opened for checkpoints, I do spend some time analyzing trends.

Apps: Kite, MyCams, KFintech

d) Chrome:

This is too generic, and its usage widely depends on what I am googling. Regular websites would only be Farnam Street Blog, HackerNews etc, which are bookmarked. Most others are irregular investment related ones or yes, one minor whirlpool known as LinkedIn.

e) Steam:

This is a relatively new habit of mine, by virtue of getting Age of Empires 2 Defnitive Edition on my laptop through Steam ( paid for, really!). Not only have I spent 120+hrs already on the game (with 2+hrs in each session, leaving me mildly numb in the right arm afterwards ), but I have been induced to find and install a few more time draining Free-To-Play games. Off late, I uninstalled all of those additional ones as these were just straining my arms and eyes and plainly boring/violent games which my young son gets inspired with. AoE2 is relatively benign/boring/exciting depending on level of play and time sunk into it. Playing with a context, and strategy makes it rewarding especially campaigns which provide some historical stories also. Plain fighting it out makes it a burnout game though.

Ahem, after which, I found the "Uncharted Waters:Origins". It was a craze, engulfing many hours of my life until when I reached Level 40, and the satisfaction is saturated.  I find myself more gravitated to the non-digital activities to cope with higher hours on the work side.

f) Podcasts:

This is almost exclusively reserved for use while driving ( that too when I'm alone ), but there are also podcasts which I need a OneNote to take notes with too. These I re-listen after the car episode to distill the information, in the good imitation of Farnam Street advice on good reading practices.

Some of the podcasts I'm listening are:

a) The Knowledge Project of Farnam Street fame. Not bad, but not daily digestible content either.

b) Huberman lab. Wonderful topics, but need dedicated attention, filtering and note taking, plus followup.

c) Empire. This is my favourite go-to podcast because of the history, adventure, facts, relatable events with unknown backgrounds, funny banter of my favourite author and the ability to travel all over the world in my mind. But I have been slow on catching up the pace at which they release pods.

d) The seen and the unseen. Again, a masterful show. I pick topics I want to listen, because these are 2-3 hrs deep dives, but completely worth it.

Foundation-Part 1

' The Foundation Series' was originally a series of 3 books written in the early 1950. It was later on expanded with sequels and prequels after nearly 40 years of the original series' end.

I believe it is a hallmark series of science fiction, and millions of people in many generations were entertained and influenced by its storylines, technological predictions and underlying themes.

In fact, having read the very first book 'Foundation', I was surprised and embarrassed at not having read it earlier. Here I am attempting a re-telling of the story purely from memory, and I might miss or mix up things, and SPOILER alert for those plan to read this soon...

The story starts off in the city/world of Trantor, which is the capital of the now dying Empire. We are not given much context of when in the future of human race these events are set, but it is made to seem quite advanced into the future. The surprise is that human beings still seem to be the dominant species and have long colonized and settled multiple worlds(planets) across the Milky Way galaxy.

The Empire seems to be the central ruling power for almost every world in this realm, in spite of various political aspects involved. We are also introduced to the Harri Seldon, a psychohistorian who states that the empire is in a state of decay and that he was working on a plan to revive it sooner than it would be if he didn't interfere.

He set up what later comes to be known as the Seldon Plan ( known only to a secretive group of scientists ), and sends out young scientists to a fringe world, which gets named the Terminus.

Eventually, after many years, this fledgling planet (known as Terminus) is just a library of sorts that needs massive support of all neighbouring worlds. The only resource this planet is rich in, is the scientific findings and inventions based on Atomic energy which only Terminus controls. Soon this prosperity gets it into conflict zone with its neighbours  and thereby triggering the series Seldon crises.

The first of this crisis comes in the form of a neighbouring world Anacreon trying to annex Terminus to gain the Atomics. This crisis is successfully mitigated by an internal power shift and external alliance with other neighbours to prevent any one world being stronger by huge margins.

After many years, the crisis repeats itself with a much stronger Anacreon planning an attack with more sophisticated weapons acquired from the dying empire. By now, the Foundation has made itself a religion by forming a religious hierarchy for its technological advancements, and expecting strict obedience and reverence of the Foundationers. Using this influence on the soldiers and common folk, the Foundation manages a spectacular last minute victory by turning this fear of defiling the gods against the rulers of Anacreon.

The next crisis boils over once all other worlds become wary of the missionary power of the Foundation and either bans them altogether or in completely under its sway with no way to claw out. It is in this wiggle space that a conflict looms ahead, and Foundation defeats it by the charms of a Trader. This begins the deviation of Foundation from a scientific religion to a purely trading power. The aggressor Korell is purely restrained by the threat of an embargo of trade goods.

to be contd..

Sailing through the ages over stormy oceans

The latest book I have been reading is "The Island Civilizations of Polynesia" by "Robert.C.Suggs". It was originally published in 1960, and I believe mine is that very same edition. I got it from Bookworm shop as a worn out second hand copy. Sad to say, the book came to parts while I was trying to read, and I plan to try and glue it back after I am done reading it. 

Now onto the key take-aways. I had later added some more content I could quickly research from Wikipedia and other sources to try and make this an interesting reference.

 The Polynesian islands were populated by people originally from around South East Asia.

The Melanasian islands, New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia had land bridges at some point, whereas the polynesian islands never had. At least this what I recall from the initial sections of how the islands weer populated. So this means the far flung Polynesian islands were majorly populated by a sea faring folk, braving unknown vast oceans and perilous shoals and reefs. The islands themselves were seldom hospitable, and so it must have taken many centuries of deliberate and accidental exploration to finally settle all islands worthy of being settled.

All this was studied on the basis of lots of data comprising of Anthropological data, Linguistic data, and finally lots of ongoing Archaeological evidences that is slowly setting the pieces in its right places. Of course, looking across such a vast swath of time, all evidences tend to have a huge margin for error, which is kind of taken for granted in this line of business.

Around the time of Word War II, the linguists of the world had researched and identified that the Polynesian language originated from Proto-Indonesian, and each island has since developed its own dialects. By figuring out the similarity between the various dialects, we have been able to underscore or sometimes question the different ages at which the different islands were settled and where the settlers came from.

Image source

Now I'll like to talk about some interesting tit bits I could remember about the various islands themselves:

The island known as Marquesas in the modern day, with the name attributed to its colonial discoverers, is believed to be the oldest settlement in the Polynesian triangle. By comparing various artifacts found on this island against those found on the other islands, a lot of migration path information has been derived by the archaeologists over the last century.

The Samoans ( I always read it first as Samosa ) developed a centralized village system with leaders claiming title rather than lineage, whereas their neighbours the Tongans developed a lineage based isolated family units. The Tongans were fierce warriors and often used as mercenaries in Fiji. This difference is mainly owing to the differences in the natural habitat of the two islands. While Samoa had huge tracts of fertile land capable surrounded by all other resources like clean water and quarries, Tonga had an its resources split across the islands. The split caused family units surrounding that area to become the sole source of this resource to the central authority, and they traded or fought for the remaining ones.

The Samoans ended up building huge fortified villages and large temples for their deities as the local leader was capable of feeding a huge number of workers for lengthy periods of time due to the huge surplus in food production. The Tongans were largely left to producing the bare minimum required and became adept at fighting wars.

Samoa and Tonga were the Western Polynesian islands from where the culture spread further to the east to the likes of Tahiti and Hawaii.

I didn't feel much elated about the Tahitians and Hawaiians as they seemed to build quite a good centralized society banking on good fertile lands, building large temples and fighting brutal wars for resources and politics. Every day civilization for you.. But of course the big islands had their own share of old stories of settlement, death and wars by which the dominant settlement was achieved.

The story of the Easter Islands is a complete different thing of its own. It has always been mired in controversy over the Moai statues. The wild theories themselves are so much fun to read. But the author here being a professional, quickly dismissed all of them and got to the business of using stratigraphic data to established the mode of settlement and probable ages. He quickly explains that unlike the other islands to its west, this eastern island was settled directly by the inhabitants of Marquesas Islands. Also, due to the lack of any proper vegetation and the islands being largely volcanic in nature, the unique statues and other petroglyphs paint a completely different landscape.

Then came the very interesting myths of the Moa birds and the Maori on the New Zealand, and their valour against the British colonizers. It all provided me lots of interesting topics to look out for further reading.

The varied stories of the Polynesians keeps telling us that the same set of people from the same areas or sometimes from the same family, end up in so many different ways, shaped by their land and their times. The arrival of the Europeans which we all consider as a major interruption in all such cultures wouldn't be the first, as they went through the cycle of discovering new lands, and often leaving old ones behind. But then they are not comparable as the former was more permanent, directed and intelligent erasure of roots. The journeying and discoveries only lead to expansion of culture in comparison. Needless to say, the arrival and settlement of the Europeans, often for the purpose of whaling, trading and general missionary purposes simply decimated the population with communicable diseases and forced eradication of culture.

I am not really exposed to any current day political elements or sentiments of the Polynesians. But seeing that some islands are still under the control of the British or the French, I can't stop wondering how hot things are in the idyllic vacation islands of the world.

seeking the warmth of the pages

I set out on a cold Monday morning on my bike on a 12km long ride through a sparsely crowded Bangalore, which is currently in its milder state due to the pandemic and the cold.

I had never used this route and having gone around circles a bit ( which is customary in Bangalore ), I finally found myself in front of Bookworm on Church Street.

Needless to say, shaking off the pandemic laden emptiness and cold, I entered the warm house of books. Books all around, shining with warm titles and covers, immediately makes one feel at home.

Since its been ages (or feels like) since I visited a book store, I spent quite a bit of time exploring the latest best sellers on prominent display. Since the store was almost deserted, one of the staff members came around asking if I was looking for anything specific.

I had just recently cleaned up and rebuilt my To-Read list in GoodReads and still had hundreds of books in my list. I wasn't sure if I would really read many of the newly added titles, so I cautiously read out names for him. Some of them were found tucked away, or had to be dug up. This went on for quite some time, until I had a very large bundle of books to carry.

But since my list was large, the books which were available were being brought forth. After a while of doing this, I finally decided to check out some new titles outside the list. I managed to pick a few small historical titles.

Then I dumped all the books on a table and sat to filter out mentally what I would like to read in short term and which ones I would anyway read in the long term. I finally ended just dropping just 2 out of the 20 odd books I had taken.

Phew, what a heavy load I ended up with. Even after shedding a few old books by returning them for 50% discount, the backpack was quite tightly packed. Then I rode all the way back home, marvelling on how I would read some of the titles.

Reaching home, I had the usual pile up after cleansing myself. My son made a 'building block' pile with the colourful books and then focussed on his new books, whereas I went ahead with arranging mine.

So I thinking I am loaded enough for quite some time with a variety of topics.

creative ventures

I see a lot of creative ventures from people in this lockdown.

And since I am not even a regular person on the social media, I know I might be talking about what everyone knows.

But my blog, my thoughts.

Notable are a few like a school friend of mine who is about to publish his own debut book of poems.

There is another friend who has started a VLOG since she's been stuck in Kerala for long.

My wife has developed an interest in gardening and is seriously doing lots of experiments with a variety of plants.

Many folks discovered their talents in singing, dancing, photography etc. which they hadn't really explored prior to the pandemic induced lockdown. I am seeing all these through the very small window of social media called Whatsapp Status.

Even my son has developed his speech and other mischievous skills alongside.

So creativity and development is in full bloom all around.

And yeah, its the same for me too: strategic and creative tasks at work, tonnes of books read, things pondered, written, taught..

books from goodreads statistics page

Since I have the practice of recording the books I read on Goodreads, I get some interesting statistics everytime I record a book. It does list the short books published locally though.

Since I have been foraging on books from the Juggernaut app as well, there are quite a lot of them which are on Goodreads though.

Looking at my statistics as of today, here is a list of books I have read. I'll try to put a few notes I could recall on that book. It might be more of a mental activity to remember the book, but if any of the readers of this post find any of them interesting, you may take up further checking on Goodreads/Amazon or your local bookstore.

The Shortest Book seems to be "The Angel of the Odd" at just 12 pages. I recall this book from the many short story books I was reading from Juggernaut which were available for free.

The Angel of the Odd (Edgar Allan Poe) -> This is the story where a man questions the concept of luck in the regular logical arguments mode, and is faced with a terrible fantastic adventure as a consequence. This adventure described in a  sequence of mishaps leaves him doubting his own convictions about the importance of luck. I recall the book especially for the comic narrative. As with all short comic books, the entertainment is in the flow and narrative.

The Longest Book seems to be "A Falcon Flies" at 704 pages. This was from a collection of British books I purchased from a local Bookstore in Kochi.

A Falcon Flies(Wilbur Smith) -> This is quite an interesting book since it introduced me to the colonial British involvement in the African continent. I hadn't really read any books on this topic prior to it and there were lots of new ground to cover like connecting the history and sequence of events leading to the story and characters. The book itself seems one off a long series with a similar theme of British adventurers on African soil, with some sympathizing and aligning to the plight of the natives, while others playing at various spectrums. Overall, it felt like a good travel read. Oh yeah, let me add - this is a work of fiction.

The Most Popular one seems to be "Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking". This was one of those 'thinking' books I read and that was quite recently too. I even was trying a more involved way of reading such books, inspired by "Farnam Street".

Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Malcolm Gladwell) -> This isn't the first book I have read of this author and I really liked many concepts in his previous books. In fact when I tried to recall them, I had difficulties doing it. It was one of the reasons I decided to try new techniques from Farnam Street while reading "Blink". I wrote on the margins with a pencil with my thoughts and wrote crystallized thoughts on a small notepad after I finished a short reading session. Needless to say, I found it quite a nourishing way to read.

Now about the book itself; It is an interesting take on topics like judgement, split-second decisions, bias, fast learning etc. Being a complicated topic with no stiff borders and definitions, I believe the author did a good job overall. He introduces the concept using an interesting example of an art fraud which goes undetected through scores of months-long scientific analysis but is caught in a moment by some art experts. He then investigates what made it possible for them to do it. Though he starts of with some over-the-head promises like "Anyone can do complex intuitive judgements without years of practice", at the climax, the book didn't seem to do anything like that.

What it in fact provides is a better awareness of some concepts like the unknown bias that affects everyone,  how stress makes even the most clairvoyant and fair person myopic, and provides some terminology and techniques to explain yourself to others when you perform an intuitive judgement. I found the term 'thin-slicing' very useful. He also has a very interesting case of why too much information inhibits decision making skills. I could really apply these to daily personal and professional tasks. Hence I enjoyed the book quite a lot.

Stopping it here. Will put out another post peppered with thoughts on a few other books.

Reading in the time of Corona

The months of lockdown also meant months of reading hundreds of magazines and books from free eBOOK apps and physical ones. I was extensively using Magzter and Juggernaut apps on the phone. I continue to use the latter while the former was stopped after its free version ended. Since there was a deadline, I also read feverishly and later sat down to vomit it all out to a diary to see how much I could recall. Now I am just digitizing some of those notes .. for fun.

In fact, as of today, I have 40 books marked Read in Goodreads, compared to the usual maximum of 20 a year. This doesn't count the hundreds of magazines and books which are not in Goodreads. If I try to recall the genre of magazines, I can quickly recall Architecture, Landscape, Science, Travel, Technology, History, Facts, History, Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, Indian Mythological Fiction, Health Foods, Crime and even some Malayalam Literature.

There was this article I read about the Archer fish, originally found in the Sundarbans.
The fascinating aspect of this fish is that it beats refraction aspects and manages to shoot perfectly at insects high above the water line even while its eye is below it.

Then there was the article on the Basilisk lizard that has perfected running over water with a mechanism of running. It helps it to survive and gives more options of escaping compared to other similar organisms.

I also came to know that Band Aid was created by an employee whose wife kept having cuts and bruises at the kitchen. It was prepared by sticking pieces of gauze with anti-septic stuck on small tapes for easy application.

Also I realized that all dogs are the same species though they vary in lots of characteristics. This is because they are able to inter-breed between breeds.

The invention of MRI is a disputed one between some American and British scientists.

The head feels rotating in the direction opposite to the actual motion as it is still undergoing the cancellation action ordered by the brain to retain some kind of equilibrium.

The reason air is invisible is because it doesn't alter the photons which pass through it. Other materials like water in it does it and causing it to translucent.

There were some tough science topics also that I read about a lot like the Corona Virus, T-Cells, Lymph nodes, generation of antibodies, and the history of deep bores into the Earth. Looking at the vast topics these are, I can justify not having written down lengthy notes at that time.

Then there were the stories of exploration of the Angel falls, detailed full magazines on Ladakhi architecture, garden landscaping ideas and stories on sustainable living environments.

Since I am not able to locate the other notes, I might keep putting more posts on what I am able to recall, more as a memory recall exercise than anything else.

Reflections and Refractions - Part 1

Even though hind sight is perfect, all sight is based on reflected rays.

Some are reflections of what happened, but most of them are refracted at multiple surfaces before it gets reflected back to the eye.

There is no real way to know which is the case.

2019- The year that began just like 2014; With a broken leg, bedridden, dependent on others, biting down the pain and humiliation.

Anyway, as months passed, the pain of lying down gave way to pain of attempting to learn to walk, whereas the humiliation of depending on others just reduced as self sufficiency crept in slowly. It was a mix of self-sufficiency, self-pity, new hope, forgiveness and gratitude.

Through the year, as life always promises, events weren't simply monotonous or predictable. They weren't even in shades of white,grey or black. Each revisit and reinterpretation could give new colours, hence making the activity useless if one is only interested in painting them statically. As mentioned in the Kannada movie "Lifu Ishtene", those are DVDs worth watching again and again, giving various aromas & tastes at various stages of life.

One judgemental aspect is that those days give me a good idea of people around me and how the relationships are structured. On the other side, it also cut me off social connections & activities, isolated me from the buzz of work place & sent me into a personal disarray.

I even managed to catch up on my reading with some crazy reading schedule, having nothing else to do for couple of months. I was able to squeeze in a couple of months worth of reading into a couple of days.

But overall, I could say that my pain subsided and limited itself to some weird set of nerves, strength regained, dignity rebuilt & overall outlook towards myself & people around me transformed. This feat required the constant support and patience of my parents, my wife, my son, the household help, my physiotherapist, my books, the doctor, some friends and my physical trainers later on at the gym. Anyway, with me able to do mundane activities without support, 'officially' I had recovered, though I knew there were miles to go before I really recovered or made up for the incident.

But,  short pause.. ,( there is a always a but and a short pause ) before the pain reduced and recovery started, whatever hopes I had that things could only get better, were shown to be misplaced. This was done by a series of inroads the great crab made into my family, coming uninvited as it always does. With my own flesh throbbing with pain each day, I could really not accept the full physical and mental agony of those whose flesh was being bitten off daily, bit by bit. Even more difficult to deal with was the inability to extend a helping hand or leg for that matter.

My family, who had accepted the task of patiently taking care of me while dealing with my absence from key responsibilities, were dealt a double and triple blow with these culinary habits of the crustacean. Those were tough times when the days looked gloomy, but most importantly that was also a reminder for me to speed up the recovery cycles and stand up to face the new invader.

Needless to say, weakened already by physical and mental agony, the new invasion led to many sleepless nights sunk in gloomy thoughts and dealing with apprehensions. It took quite a bit of distractions by office work, physical exercises, and social visits to break out of this labyrinth. Those were one of those moments where only action can generate enough break the chains that can restrict even a mighty elephant.

Looking back, one can always paint even the smallest of struggles with glorious adverbs and comparisons to give a self satisfaction. So I might be giving myself too much credit where undeserved, but maybe some credit is due, I let such statements be.

It was in this condition that I turned my focus to the minor yet irritating affairs of the rented house in which we were living. I could easily make a list of problems like dirty water, cockroach infestation, crowded & dusty surroundings, absence of clean parking space, regular spikes in maintenance costs, arguments between residents, a case of theft etc. These are just regular matters in life in affordable rented apartments in Bangalore, and I would have let it be. But given the many problems we were facing, this was one that was under my control to address. So I jumped at the opportunity to make a difference.

So we quickly, without much preparation set up a plan to shift the house to somewhere 'ideal'. It was stressful to negotiate with the owner who didn't like the idea of a breaking of the agreement along with with neighbours who had tentatively agreed to take over for a relative, and finding the ideal home in the ideal location with 10s of filters. But I must admit, those involved planning activities with my family were rewarding distractions from the otherwise gloomy days. We really enjoyed the activity with even my parents who built networks with elderly people in the locality were able to identify lots of key properties and localities.

Needless to say, within a month, under a hectic set of negotiations, we were able to make a withdrawal with minimal losses. What awaited us was a refreshing new location and a new way of life. I was and am still thankful for the decision to move from that muck ( actual & imagined being merged here for creative purposes ) at that critical point of time.

30th May 2019

*INTERMISSION*