Books – Random Ramblings

Book Review : The Nine Lives of Pakistan by Declan Walsh

The Nine Lives of Pakistan:
– Dispatches from a Divided Nation

The cover shows an iconic image of Pakistan in the backdrop ; the ubiquitous truck trundling along the rugged mountainous landscape. They actually call it ‘truck art’.

The byline says “Dispatches from a Divided Nation” . It could well have been fragmented nation or a fissiparous nation that is so full of contradictions and so unstable; makes one wonder if it is really “Inshallah” that it is still existing as a nation.

Having broken off from Bharat in 1947, the nation was further cut to size in 1971. Both the birth of Original pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh had been violent and bloody. Right from the time of inception, its borders were fluid and ambiguous on all side except may be the Arabian Sea in the South.

Though the founder or The father of the Nation Mohammad Ali Jinnah favoured democracy rather than theocracy, the raison d’etre for a separate nation for muslims made no sense to establish a secular democracy. That probably is an inherent contradiction that has been the albatross around the neck that Pakistan has not been able to shed off.

The destiny of the country is controlled by the Army, Allah and America. It is this factor that kept in Zia in power though he was regressive and dictatorial. He was against freedom of press, emancipation of women and free multiparty elections; all that are considered cornerstones of a modern state.

Invasion of Afghanistan by the Russians saw a confluence of interests of Army, Allah and America . When the crisis was over in 1988, Americans were no more interested in propping up a martial law administrator and the soldiers of allah actually became the chief enemies of USA .

It is against this backdrop that the author, Declan Walsh analyses the happenings in Pakistan. He was in Pakistan from 2004 to 2013. His exit from the country came abruptly when he expelled from the country by the omnipresent, omnipotent , omniscient ISI . He didn’t even know what hit him and why .

Despite the 1971 debacle and the frequent interruptions to democracy by martial law , there was some order and some method in madness.The author singles out one incident that marked the beginning of the nation coming apart. It was the attack on Red Mosque (Lal masjid), Lahore by the army. Operation ‘Sun Rise’ ended with the killing of Abdul Rashid Ghazi. It also signalled the long drawn out war by the islamic terror outfits against the State of Pakistan.

The chapters are organized by important events and each event is described through the main player in that event. The Sieze of Lal Masjid is portrayed through the life of Abdul Rashid Ghazi.

The second chapter is on Jinnah highlighting his inability to lay down a clear way ahead for the nascent democracy .

The third Chapter is about Anwar Kamal Khan; a pashtun politician from PML. He is forced to take on the Taliban who were becoming too powerful in his native province. The chapter starts with establishment of the Durand Line that cuts through the Pashtun tribal areas and further south through the Balochistan region, politically dividing ethnic Pashtuns, as well as the Baloch and other ethnic groups, who live on both sides of the border. It demarcates Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan From a geopolitical and geostrategic perspective, it has been described as one of the most dangerous borders in the world . Talibans have shaken up the Pashtun society and pashtunwali to its core.

The fourth Chapter is on Asma Jahangir, the redoubtable social activist. She showed courage to taken the mighty army and the ISI. A chain smoking, anti-army woman is hardly an image one associates with an Islamic nation like Pakistan.

The Chapter ‘Good Muslim ‘ is about Salman Taseer, a millionaire and a secular muslim throws up the eternal question “who is a good muslim ?”. It is a question that always bothers the community. Salman Taseer (known to indians as a one time partner of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh ) is among the rare breed called ‘secular muslim’ . He spoke for Asia bibi , a victim of the notorious blasphemy law; and he was shot down by his own security guard. the law punished the murderer, but the public hailed the culprit as a true muslim who shot an apostate as per the law of islam. Now who is the true muslim?

No book on Pakistan is complete without Waziristan; and it is best described through the life of ‘ Col Imam ‘ as he was known. Col Tariq Khan was a popular jihadi in the 80s who , due to quirks of fate , himself was kidnapped and killed by the terrorists years later.

The chapter on Karachi reminds one of Bombay mafia wars. Then there is the chapter on Balochistan , the one which ultimately proved to be the undoing of the author. Pakistanis are too sensitive to the insurgency in Balochistan and wouldn’t want any journalists meddling with the issue.

The last chapter is on Jinnah’s property in Mumbai. The author is clearly emotionally attached to Pakistan , with all warts and all. There is an obvious bias against BJP and RSS . Like most western media and indians thinking in english, some how hinduism is considered non-secular, whatever be the reason. Even jihadi violence is attributed to Hinduism . The author whines at length about a BJP man (called a hindu supremacist) standing in the way of JInnah’s house in Mumbai being handed over to Pakistan ! Meanwhile Jinnah’s house was burnt and razed to dust by Balochi militants at Quetta.

Quaid E Azam Residency at Quetta, damaged by earthquake in 2008, attacked by Baloch militants in 2013 and restored in 2014. Now it’s a tourist site.

Quaid E Azam Residency has been restored. Can the Economy and Political structure of the nation be restored ever ?

Book Review : Dharmic Nation : Freeing Bharat, Remaking India by R. JAGANNATHAN

The book is on the issue of decolonization. It is very well written and touches all contemporary issues on nationhood, politics, religion and culture.

It systematically demolishes the myths propagated for decades , by the left liberals ; Desi and global.

R Jagannathan is a convertee from Secular to Dharmic : not because he is a bigot or was a bigot , but because the word secularism, a word coined by the West, totally loses the original meaning when applied to India. Secularism in India has become nothing but a tool for Anti Hindu propaganda. Swarajya , the Magazine he is the Editor of, stands for Right Liberalism.

When I started highlighting paragraphs while reading, soon I found that I was stopping at every other paragraph to do so. I have expressed some of these ideas in my own blog and it’s no wonder I tend to agree with these.

My own blog post on the Indian brand of Secularism written about 5 years ago

The book is organized into clear comaprtments , in xxx chapters:-

1 A Unique Pluralist Idea under Attack

2 Are Hindu Rashtra and Hindutva Narrow Concepts?

3 Savarkar Got It More or Less Right

4 Our Constitution Written in the Wrong Language

5 Freedom of Religion—or What Passes for It

6 Defining Hindutva

7 Varna–Jati and the Complex System We Inherited

8 Why Hinduism Must Become a Missionary Religion

9 The Demographic Challenge Hindus Face

10 Love Jihad and Other Issues

11 Creating a Hindu Ecosystem for Conversion

12 The Case for Hinduism Lite

13 How the System Works against Hindu Interests

14 Ram Janmabhoomi, Kashi, Mathura and Deity Rights

15 Small Gains, Big Challenges in ‘Free Temples’ Movement

16 The Roadblocks to Equal Rights for Hindus

17 A Return to Dharma for All Indians

Shall touch upon some of these chapters. Wherever I quote from the book verbatim , I have used red italics.

About Secularism and Pluralism

Secularism makes no sense in Bharat as no Indic Ruler ever persecuted followers of other faiths nor interfered with governance , till Abrahamic religions came into the scene. What we see in Bharat is ‘Pluralism’ that has evolved over millenniums of liberal thinking. It is this pluralism that is under attack today by the left liberals. Typically it is the western idea of a nation that lays down acceptable standards for food, clothing, language, thinking and almost every aspect of life style.

Plurality is inherent in Vedic civilization,while the western concept of a nation cannot absorb the phenomenon of multiple languages , food, culture, faith etc.

India’s sense of nationhood is civilizational in character rather than a Renan equivalent of the nation-state.

The same idea found resonance in Eck’s book, India: A Sacred Geography, where she notes that India is a ‘land linked not by the power of kings and governments, but by the footsteps of pilgrims’.

There is a lot of reference to Veer Savarkar one of the clearest thinkers, a great patriot and unfortunately the most misunderstood Indian. Veer Savarkar was a freedom fighter who spent his formative years from college days on actively fighting the British . His days at India House, London and his daring escape from British custody must have placed him at par or at a higher pedestal compared to Bhagat Singh and Subhash Chandra Bose. But his ideas and contributions to language , literature, culture, social reforms have been systematically underplayed and he has been vilified by our left-liberals, and christo-islam lobby. Why ? because he worked for Hindu Unity and questioned the conversion activities of Abrahamic faiths; it did not matter that he himself was a rationalist rather than a practising Hindu.

But the time has come for every Bhartiya to realise the greatness of our Pitrubhumi or Punyabhumi as Veer Sarvarkar refered to Bharat. (akhand Bharat).

Savarkar’s Hindutva was not about the religion, for sure, but it was about protecting Hinduism for those who want to practise it any which way they want.

Colonialism, apart from the physical, social and economic indignities it heaped on the conquered, did more harm by capturing the minds of the colonized.

Thanks to two different colonizations of Bharat over the last 1,000 and odd years, one being Islam and the other British (including their Christian faith), we have internalized all their critiques about us. We—essentially the elite—have grown to believe that Hinduism is mostly backward and possibly evil, that we are fools to worship ‘idols’, or even monkeys, snakes and trees, that we are nothing but caste, caste, caste, which again is purely a system of oppression, that western ideals represent the new, inclusive universalism that all modern peoples must embrace (liberty, equality and fraternity), and even that India is neither a country nor a civilization. It is just a collection of odds and ends in terms of religious and other things that define a people as one.

Yuval harari ,in his book history of mankind expresses similar sentiments; colonization of minds ensure that the colonized people indulge in self flagellation long after the colmoisers have left their shores.

Christian universalism and the determination to convert all people to believe in the ‘one true god’ destroyed Hellenism in the ancient world, and African cultures in the modern world.

Our elites have been taught to look at every issue through Abrahamic lens be it the idea of nationhood or be it a practice followed in a temple like Sabarimalai. We are trapped by the Europeans Centric idea of universalism as understood (or misunderstood) by the West.

The author uses very strong words comparing the Abrahamic faiths to multinational corporations or imperialism.

About Freedom of religion

In the Abrahamic tradition, God is bottled or stagnant water, not the fresh and clean stream that quenches our thirst and keeps moving along continuously. Freedom of religion is about an individual’s right to make choices, not about the right of large and powerful religious multinationals seeking to hack the human mind and impose their own agendas.

The author has previously written for or edited publications such as The Financial Express,^[5] Business Standard,^[6] Daily News and Analysis, The Times of India and BusinessWorld

His business sense compares the abrahamic religions to multinationals going after profits; read numbers.

When Coca-Cola and Pepsi battle it out, it is the smaller players that are squeezed out since market share for the big two can be grown only by focussing on winning converts from the smaller players. India and China are the biggest markets for growth of Product Bible and Product Koran. China is a closed market, and growth can happen only surreptitiously, and that leaves only India as the biggest market worth exploiting.

If they are not merchandise , why market it aggressively ? Today in Tamilnadu and Andra Pradesh, there are full time preachers whose only job is to harvest souls. Who pays them ? and why ?

He also highlights the nature of indic thoughts that, so much threatens the West that they have studies on ” Dismantling hindutva / Hinduism) “

This synthesis is what we call dharmic, even Hindu, a culture of diversity and accepted difference that goes beyond tolerance, and whose definition transcends the conventional meaning of ‘religion’. It is a civilization whose core tenets are blurry, but the broad contours are clear: it is about each one finding their own path to higher truths, to elevated spiritual realms, or even discarding the idea of God or religion and instead opting for a code of ethical conduct that transcends religion (as in Buddhism, for example).

On Ideas lost in Translation

if one accepts the idea of Bharat, how is it that words and expressions unique to our civilizational identities find no space, when French Revolution terms like ‘liberty’, ‘equality’ and ‘fraternity’ do? Why are words like ‘dharma’ (upholding a cosmic order), ‘ahimsa’ (non-violence), artha (wealth), nyaya (justice), satya (truth), moksha (freedom from rebirth), antyodaya (serving the poorest man), sampradaya (broadly denomination), ‘varna’ and ‘jati’ missing?

Sai Jai Deepak in his book India that is Bharat elaborates how many concepts pertaining to Bharat have simple been lost in translation.

You may translate religion as dharma ..but dharma cannot be translated to religion. Dharma is much more than what a western mind understands by religion. So are words like Varna , ashrama, aparigraha nyaya , sampradaya, shastra.

On Hindutva

The author goes to great lengths to explain what hindutva is and more importantly what it is not.

Hindutva is about protecting the global minority communities rather than about threatening any local minorities.

Gandhi did not have to become George in order to draw inspiration from Sermon on the Mount; but then abrahamic religions need headcount ; they need to convert people from other faiths. While Gandhi could sing about jesus or Allah while he remained a Hindu, he could not dream of Ram or Krishna after conversion to any of these abrahamic faiths. There in lies the danger.

The author argues for Hinduism to become a missionary religion; after all it has something for all. For the educated elite in Developed countries ,it has meditation, yoga and Advaita. For the masses you have movements focussed on Bhakti like ISKCON.

The last chapter suggests some steps for the way ahead.

Hindusim or the Vedic Civilization has place for all and can accomodate all. But In Bharat, exclusivity in matters of faith and belief do not add up to ‘freedom of religion’. It is about a bifurcation of humanity into ‘us and them’.

Words like ‘kafir’ , ‘pagans’ or ‘heathen’ should be banned or outlawed just as calling Dalits by their caste names is legally treated as abuse. There cannot be any ‘us’ vs ‘them’ .

Ambedkar exhorted the SCs to ‘educate, agitate, organize’ to claim their rightful place in India and elsewhere. This is what Hindus must do over the current and next generation or two, to achieve equality in a world loaded against them in every way.

Both Christianity and Islam are conceived as ever-expanding faiths, with the ultimate goal being to bring all humans under one universal faith (their own). This is nothing but imperialism in matters of faith, even though cultural pluralism exists in almost all faiths.

The author concludes with the ancient aphorism

Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah.

Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitah. Dharma protects those who protect India’s dharmic nationhood. The countdown for India’s dharma-based Second Republic has begun.

Intelligent Investor – Book

The Streetwise Investor: Steering Clear of Investment Traps Pitfalls and Other Dangerous Lures – Charles Fahy .

I came across this book in the Army War College Library about 20 years back when I was not much into investing. Later I tried looking for it , but could never trace it; and on Amazon, it cost over Rs 2700/-, a book of about 200 pages.

Recently , going through some old diaries , I found some notes that I had then made.

Here’s a digression right at the beginning; Mhow enjoys the privilege of hosting three great institutions of the Army; and along with it comes the privilege of having three great libraries, in a radius of about two Kms.

One of the most important aspects of library management is procurement of books; right numbers and content for the available budget.

These days budget seems to be generous and often there is pressure to expend the amount before the year end. Book vendors are called in Feb and latest books are ordered and sadly, many ‘competition’ books are bought as that’s the phase when people look at books when preparing for some entrance exams.

Ironically, after gaining entry to an educational institution, reading stops.

In the earlier days , there was more time and less money ; so, procurements were well considered. Some of the best books are in the old libraries in a dusty shelves.

Let’s come back to the book , the streetwise investor.

What I liked about the book was the focus on an investment system rather than any tips and tricks.

He goes on to prove again and again that a human mind is hard wired to lose money. One needs to identify or evolve a system of investing and follow that to accumulate money.

He uses interesting illustrations to show how the Chinese Whisper phenomenon turns a sell call to buy call and how the media amplifies these signals to create irrational spikes.

Obviously, the ideas are tailor-made for the American system, but can be well related to Indian environment; and in any case we have almost moved to the American system in earning , spending and investing habits.

Some pearls of wisdom:-

1. Human nature will always tearaway at your investments if you don’t have patience and a good accumulation system.

2. Remember the difference between investing and speculating.

3. Don’t be greedy.

4. Before investing, make certain all your basic needs are provided for and that you have ‘extra’ capital for your financial program.

5. If you decide not to handle your own portfolio, choose a broker or money manager who uses a low risk, long term accumulation system that offers consistent performance over a five year or a longer period of time.

6. Continue to educate yourself.

Some ground rules

1. Pay down debt. Pay off the 12%, 18% on higher credit card interest. Your money can’t earn that on a guaranteed basis; so pay it off .

2. Save money and build your liquidity by using any possible tax-deferred system such as pension account.

3. Remember the human nature flaw. Don’t give in to greed and impatience . Long term investing will prove to be your most successful ally. Don’t trade the markets unless you are experienced at it. Use a system.

3a. Corallary to the above; when you have bought into what you think is a ‘buy’ market and you are too early, don’t lose your cool.It will recover and go to new highs. If you have bought quality stocks, they will follow the market.

3b. If you must trade the market,learn to buy in, when it seems scary.

Veer Savarkar

In the last two three years , there have been a number of books authored by Indic writers , not to be mistaken for Indians writing in English. Some people call them right wing, though it doesn’t make much sense to me.

Before going in to Biography of Veer Savarkar by Dr Vikram Sampath ,it is worth going through a brief biodata of the author himself.

Dr Vikram Sampath was raised in Bangalore and completed his schooling at the Sri Aurobindo Memorial School and Bishop Cotton Boys’ School . He was trained in Carnatic Music since the age of five; among his teachers were Jayanthi Kumaresh and Bombay Jayashri. Sampath graduated from BITS Pilani with a degree in Electronics Engineering, and later with a master’s degree in mathematics.

Against the wishes of his professors, who wanted him to pursue a PhD in topology (an avatar of pure mathematics) , he shifted to finance and obtained an MBA in Finance from S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research. In October 2017, Sampath received a doctorate in ethnomusicology from the School of Music at University of Queensland, Australia.

His first love of music ; and as can be seen from his qualification in Science and Finance, one wonders what motivated him to write about Veer Savarkar , a name that would automatically slot him into Right Wing. A point to note is that his first book was on Wadiyar Dynasty of Mysore, second on Gauhar Jaan who was India’s first classical musician to record on the gramophone and the third was on the life of Veena maestro S. Balachander. The common thread running through all these subjects is the love ‘India that is Bharat’ .

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar or Veer Savarkar is not the kind of household name in our country as Gandhi or Nehru; though it should have been.

Veer Savarkar had founded the Abhinav Bharat , a revolutionary movement in 1904. It was a secret society founded on the lines of Mazzini of Italy towards an armed struggle to win freedom for the country.

He served for 15 years in Andaman and by the time he was interned in Ratnagiri Mahatma Gandhi was already leading the Congress.

Everybody knows , that Indian National Congress was sharply divided into moderates and extremists.

It is the story of moderates we hear; Gandhi, Nehru , Patel and so on. There were contributions from thousands of others who believed in different paths to liberation of their nation . They were great patriots , no doubt, but their stories were given a quiet burials by their own countrymen, as the British did not approve of their methods.

Among extremists , Lala Lajpat Rai , Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal of the Lal, Bal and Pal fame are known to some extent. Who all have heard of Madan Lal Dhingra ,VVS Iyer, Vanchinathan, Neelkanta Brahmachari,or Thirumalacharya ?

Continue reading “Veer Savarkar”

Book Review: Suheldev – Amish

A brief Comparison of Two Historical events of great significance

	First Battle of Panipat	Battle of Bahraich
Year	1526	1033
Belligerants	Timiurids under Babur and Ibrahim Lodhi	Raja Suheldev and Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud
Force Levels	Babur – 12,000^[1]–25,000 soldiers ^[2]^[3] 15–20 field guns^[1]Lodhi20,000 regular cavalry^[3] 20,000 irregular cavalry^[3] 30,000 infantry armed with swords, pikes, bows and bamboo rods^[3]^[2]	Salar Masud 1,00,000 Raja Suheldev and Confederation of 21 States 1,20,000.
Outcome of Battle	Babur defeated Lodhi and captured the throne of Delhi	The Turkish army was routed and every single barbarian marauder was killed in the battle.
Impact	200 years of Islam’s Tyranny .	160 years of peace .

Almost every Indian would have heard of the battle of Panipat but a few would have heard of the battle of Bahraich

This book by Amish Tripathi is an attempt to fill that huge gap in our knowledge of history of Bharat.

The book starts around thousand years ago, in 1025, describing the looting of Somanath temple by Mahmud of Gazani. The temple is defended by a small force led by Prince Malledev of Suhasti (100km from present day Lucknow) Every single defender is brutally killed by the Turks and the temple is looted and destroyed.

This raid is followed by a period of sporadic raids and plunder by the Turks. The kings of small States make peace with the Turks , at an to enormous cost , to be on the winning side as the invaders were considered invincible.

Raja of Suhasti, Mordhwaj thought otherwise. He made a valiant effort to unite the hindu kingdoms against the islamic invaders , to defend Bharatvarsh.

In the course of his efforts to unite the kings, he travels across the country , sometime in stealth , with only a small contingent of soldiers , along with his son, Prince Suheldev.

In one such trip , he encounters a band of Turkish marauders, that he manages to defeat with very little casualty to his own troops.

That’s the time the Prince Suheldev makes up his mind to wage a guerrilla warfare against the Turks , till such time a united front could be established.

Years passed; the king continued in his efforts to create a confederation of States while the Prince and his band of soldiers made a name for themselves ,in the border villages as the nemesis for the Turkish Barbarians.

In 1033, the King dies and Prince Suheldev succeeds him.

Around the same time the nephew of Mahmud of Gazani, Salal Maqsud invades with an army of over 1,00,000 soldiers.

This time , his aim was not to loot and scoot but to rule over Bharat and establish an Islamic State.

The Chola empire under King Rajendra Chola was too powerful and the Turks intended to subjugate the northern kingdoms first and thereafter gradually expand southwards.

King Suheldev had forged a formidable alliance with 21 Kings and a large army was mobilized to confront the barbarians.

King Suheldev chose the plains near Bahraich to take on the Turks as the terrain was protected on both sides from possible outflanking moved ,by forests and a Lake.

What followed was a complete rout of the invaders. For once, the Turks were paid back in their own coin; there were no prisoners taken and every one of the invaders was killed in battle.

Till today ,the grave of Salar Masud stands testimony to the botched invasion. Ironically there is a cult following of Indian muslims for this barbarian while a memorial for Raja Suheldev is still in the making. That’s the typical Indian brand of secularism.

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On 16 February 2021, the foundation stone of Maharaja Suheldev Memorial was laid in Bahraich, Uttar Pradesh, through video conferencing by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the project that would include the installation of an equestrian statue of Maharaja Suheldev.^[23] The Government of Uttar Pradesh, headed by Yogi Adityanath, celebrated the day as the birth anniversary of Suheldev and issued an official note on stating, “King Suheldev had fought, defeated and killed the Ghaznavid general Ghazi Saiyyad Salar Masud in a famous battle held on the bank of Chittora lake in Bahraich in 1033.”^[24]

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Like all Amish Tripathi novels, the style is racy , descriptive and totally absorbing.

The book has been written not by one writer ,but a team of writers. The genesis of the story and the final writing was done by Amish Tripathi while composing of the first draft was left to a team of writers, who were given the general idea and recommended reasearch materials.

Keeping with the spirit of the book,

I sign off with

Jai Maa Bhaarat!

Glory to King Suheldev and Glory to Mother India.

Book Review : Battle of Vatapi: Nandi’s Charge

For me Kalki (R Krishnamurthy) has been the bench mark for historical novels and I can’t help it.

Have read Akilan, (Vettrithirunagar ) Ko Vi Manisekaran, Sandilyan , Balakumaran and Vikraman (longest list of historical novels)

Nandi’s charge is the first book ,I have read in English , that is based on South Indian history .

Be that as it may, most historical fiction tends to become action and adventure stories based on the adventures of spies . Often spies had to cross the proverbial seven seas and seven mountains just to hand over an olai.(a message)

The kings were confined to their palaces. Romance in the royal families also didn’t make much sense as they married to meet the political compulsions and that too more than once.

So Ponniyin selvan has a soldier-spy (redoubtable Vandiyathevan) a devotee spy (Azhvarkadiyaan) a bikshu spy (Naganandi) etc.

Arul mozhi varman himself is neither a king or the crown-prince and so could indulge in adventure and romance across two countries.

Then authors resort to the king moving about incognito..like mahendravarman as a soldier ‘vajra bahu’ in Sivakamiyin sabatham and narasimhavarman as sivanadiyar in ‘partiban kanavu’

Coming to the the book ‘Nandi’s charge’ the plot is fairly simple. Three tasks are assigned to three soldiers for a common purpose of weakening the enemy before the campaign.

The idea of three parallel threads running concurrently makes an interesting read. Well, going to realms of fantasy, if the three protagonists had had communication through Instagram, the visuals would have been terrific.

Kannan’s exploits is all about guerrilla warfare (the word is from Spanish originated in 19th century; wonder what was the Tamil word in 7th century and whether it captures the essence of the warfare conducted by trained soldiers against other trained soldiers in certain circumstances )

Adventures of the other two teams ; Elango and Sangamitra ; Muthuvel and Sadaiyan ; are a kind of catch me if you can type escape and evasion stories.

Each of the stories by itself could have made a stand alone novel as these characters never meet each other after the first chapter!

The author, right at the time of introduction seems to like Elango and Kannan more as compared to Muthuvel. We have Sangamitra for Elango and Indumathi for Kannan while Muthuvel is left high and dry with Sadaiyan , the lovable , little thief.

The minor unit tactics of Kannan and his teams are absorbing. From military point of view also the moves appear authentic. Just a thought ; an ambushing party taking up on itself to perform cremation of it’s victims would be a huge drain on time and energy besides giving off a huge smoke signal.

There is also the capturing of a fort wherein the main action is cutting off the reinforcement. It makes an interesting read, as any battle seen from the comfort of a secure place is always captivating.

There would be some issues debatable , but just as in a game of chess, if neither player makes a mistake , we are going to see a boring draw.

Normally , any body of troops engaged in a tactical move, as against purely administrative move would follow certain drills. When encountering a water obstacle, normally infantry crosses first, secures the far bank called the bridge head and then other troops including cavalry follows. The logic is that cavalry cannot hold ground. But then, one might say, in the ancient days, what was cavalry but horse-mounted infantry?

There is jungle lore, watermanship, and plain bloody infantry tactics with all that mud,sweat, and blood.

Over all an engrossing read !

The Psychology of Money

The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

This a book much talked about and much reviewed and I don’t intend an attempt to evaluate the contents. The idea behind this post is just to record the impressions it cast on my mind.

There are many popular books on investments or how to get rich or how to succeed in a business. This is definitely not in that genre. There is no magic wand to get rich and more importantly there is no need for one

In my mind, money , or lack of money , is something that affects every facet of your life. Ideally, one should not be , forever engaged in making money or in guarding your wealth, and yet when the need arises there should be enough to meet that need comfortably.

If this be the aim, it does not necessarily mean making tonnes and tonnes of money. Mahatma Gandhi , once he switched to the Ashram mode of living, around 1904, never owned any wealth. Yet what a great fund raiser he proved to be!

Well, that’s for Mahatma; a common man has to understand enough about earnings, savings, investments, insurance and taxes to attain ‘Financial Nirwana’.

Yes , that’s what I call it; ‘Financial Nirwana‘ to organise your financial affairs in such a way that you get what you want ,when you want and yet do not have to take so much risk causing you to lose sleep over it or allow it to rob you of the precious time that you would rather spend with your family or in activities close to your heart.

The book covers the behavioral aspects related to earning, spending and investing. While these are activities related to external environment, there is more to consider on internal factors. What drives your behaviour is the ideas you value; the idea of freedom, contentment and happiness.

Aparigraha (non possession) is considered a great virtue in ancient Indian philosophy. Does it mean renouncing all wealth? Mahatma Gandhi interpreted the idea to mean holding the wealth as a trustee rather than an owner.

In this book , the author tries to differentiate between need and greed. He suggests that, big cars, big house or rich life style are acquired at a great cost only to impress others, quite unsuccessfully at that, and a decent house, decent car and a decent lifestyle are what one really needs. Of course ,the word ‘decent ‘ could have an elastic interpretation to mean anything in the range from a 2BHK (Two bedroom house) to a penthouse.

The book is organized into 20 chapters; eighteen of them on simple ideas leading to financial Nirwana, 19th is a summary and the 20th covering his own course in life.

There is nothing really new or earth-shattering revelations. Most of the issues are known to most people but seldom followed in real life. The book starts with the idea that, on hindsight, it may appear that many people have made crazy financial decisions. In reality, when seen from the point of view of these individuals, every decision had been backed by reasoning prompted by the situation they were in. The author says Finance should be taught from psychology point of view rather than as a technical subject.

There is a lot of anecdotes covering the aspects of savings, effect of compounding, need for a caution and so on.

The book also talks of the need for contentment. This sounds so unamerican ; the idea that one should limit his wants (not needs) . But that is where the idea of balance comes in . If you go on blindly chasing wealth , you miss out everything that wealth can give you including the most important thing, Freedom.

“THE HIGHEST FORM of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, “I can do whatever I want today.”

The book touches on the relation between money and the degree of happiness it can bring .

Virtues of moderation is highlighted.

Aiming, at every point in your working life, to have moderate annual savings, moderate free time, no more than a moderate commute, and at least moderate time with your family, increases the odds of being able to stick with a plan and avoid regret than if any one of those things fall to the extreme sides of the spectrum.

I am so tempted to quote from the book extensively , and if I give in to that temptation, I am afraid ,I’ll end up copy pasting half the book.

Here are my notes on the book ,for someone interested in details.

A point to note is that modern trends in world of personal finance (to include Equities, insurance, retirement plans ) is still something new for most of us.

As social system is changing , all we have to support us whether during active working life or in post retirement life is just our ‘financial prudence‘.

A must read book for all.

Book Review : Man The Unknown

Alexis Carrel 28 June 1873 – 5 November 1944) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques. He invented the first perfusion pump with Charles A. Lindbergh opening the way to organ transplantation.

This book man the unknown was one of the five books Dr APJ Abdul Kalam always kept at hand.

When men and women of science focus their attention on humanity as a whole instead of restricting themselves to their narrow fields of expertise the outcome is absolutely illuminating, educative and at times shocking !

The book is of just 300 pages and any attempt to summarise it wouldn’t do justice. I have quoted certain parts verbatim to give a very brief indication of what the book is about . I am afraid , the review may not make much sense till one gets hold of the book and at least skim over the pages. The book is definitely worth not just skimming over but reading and re reading even if one does not agree with everything the author has to say.

The book is organized into eight chapters.

The introduction says

THIS BOOK is having the paradoxical destiny of becoming more timely while it grows older.

Today, the way our social media is playing havoc with our lives driving people to violence or depression, the book is more relevant now after almost a century after its first publication.

The first chapter deals with how human civilization (mostly the western civilization) focused more on the study of inane objects mostly because it was possible to measure , weigh and experiment. We lack knowledge of ourselves due to the complexity and the inherent difficulty in studying empirically.

The second and third chapters cover briefly the human body and physiological activities. These chapters are written as how a scientist would explain complex subjects to a lay man.

The fourth chapter is on mental activities. Here two issues are highlighted; firstly that mind and matter cannot be studied separately and secondly that moral sense is far more important than intelligence. Doesn’t sound very scientific ?!

The fifth chapter discusses the process of ageing. But the author goes beyond solar time and analyses chronological age along with physiological and psychological age.

Sixth chapter is about adaptive functions. It talks of how a human being adapts and changes physiologically and psychologically to challenges from the environment. I wonder if anyone is studying this aspect in the light of the challenges humankind is facing from the current pandemic.

The seventh chapter is about individuality of each human being. There are many politically incorrect statements on the concept of equality . Each individual is unique and he or she should be treated as such whether from the point of view of employability or health-care or for rights and responsibilities.

The last and the most important chapter is titled “Remaking of Man”. Here, the author gives out definite steps to create a society of individuals free from the the clutches of blind technology and grasp the complexities and wealth of our own nature.

I give below some of the powerful words from the book that indicates the author’s line of reasoning.

A book definitely worth reading.

E-Books and Audio books

The internet, to a great extent, has thrown open all resources to the world , to acquire knowledge. The days of intellectual tyranny are over. Anybody with time and inclination to learn, can learn just about anything, with no conditions attached. One is not disadvantaged by lack of money or lack of a teacher. … Continue reading “E-Books and Audio books”

I do not suggest that authors or teachers should be deprived of their livelihood or importance . They too need to pay their bills and they should be given due recognition for their contribution to the society. The importance of intellectual property rights just cannot be questioned. But simple joys of learning a language, reading classic literature, learning to play a musical instrument or software programming cannot be denied to anyone just because of lack of funds or lack of a school or teacher.

Today , we have plenty of resources on the net for learning anything from baking a cake to web designing. The resources are in the form of audio/video clips or ebooks in different file formats.

I am particularly interested in the contents originally created as printed books and are now downloadable as digital files.

A phenomenal effort has gone into digitization of every recorded thought that humankind has produced through ages starting from the first cave paintings . As information technology kept evolving earlier formats are now getting obsolete. But the beauty of working in bits and bytes is that any information once digitized in some format can be converted to any other format, without the need for retyping the entire contents.

We have a plethora of ebook readers ;devices and applications; Kindle, Kobo , Boox , Nook and so on. One problem is that every device uses a different format for file system. For a price, you can get any book on any of your devices in any format.

But then , books are expensive , physical or digitized and that’s why we have libraries. There is an universe of books legally available in the public domain that just needs to be downloaded to your device. The problem is that most of these are in the form of pdf files. The pdf format owes its popularity, as its name implies, to the portability across platforms. Pdf also implies that the fonts size and margins are fixed . So the reading experience on hand held devices is not very good.

So, what we need is e-libraries storing digitized books downloadable in different formats . Particularly useful formats are Epub and mobi/azw (used by Amazon Kindle) formats . If the contents are free to be accessed and are available in the public domain why should there be any restriction on which devices or applications to be used ?

There are a number of free and paid applications available for reading digitized contents; Calibre, Eboox and FBreader are some of the popular applications.

Of these, Calibre is a complete library rather than a reader app. It is so feature rich that it caters to all information requirements of a knowledge lover . It has a built in conversion tool for converting contents from any format to any other format; say from pdf to epub or mobi.

In case of Indic languages , there is one more layer of complexity added as converting from pdf to epub is not possible unless the text is created using unicode as against ASKII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) . For those interested in knowing the difference between ASKII and Unicode , here’s a link.

For displaying Tamil characters , earlier a system called (Tamil Script Code for Information Interchange (TSCII) ) Character Set. Any document created using this system cannot be converted to epub format. For that you need a newer encoding system.

In a layman’s language ,we need our eBooks to display the contents in easily readable way. The paragraphs should easily flow when fonts are enlarged or compressed. The margins should be adjustable. For all that there is a need for our techies to make the eBooks available at appropriate formats.

In this area I intend making a few good Tamil books available for readers in user friendly formats. Please try out https://sibha.in/books_world/ and https://sibha.in/books_world/public/tamil.php . I intend adding a title or two every day.

Cheers !

Brave New World : Aldous Huxley

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Book Review : Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

The book, Brave New World ( BNW) was first published in 1932. It is a dystopian novel often compared with George Orwell’s 1984. It is always fascinating to guess where we would be 100 or 200 years from now. How often have we heard the clichés “what’s the world coming to ?” or “where are we heading for ?”. A Hindu will often say , we are well into the Kaliyug. Dystopian novels try to visualize this Kaliyug.

George Orwell’s Animal farm narrated the story from the October Revolution in Russia till Stalin’s brutal dictatorship. The way communism was taking shape, George Orwell visualized a world order in which three super states governed the world. There was single party rule under the watchful eye of the Big Brother.

Brave New World was written between the world wars when World War – I was still referred to as the Great War. The communist challenge or the Eastern Bloc was still far from a political reality. The free world was expected to march on powered by Science, Industrial Revolution and Capitalist Economy. The old order was changing; Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had successfully abolished the caliphate and sultanate establishing the modern, secular Republic of Turkey . The character Mustafa Mond , the World Controller in the novel, probably takes inspiration from the Turkish statesman.

It is extremely difficult to appreciate a book written almost a century ago unless one can understand the political,social and economic situation of that period.

Somehow this is one book, I have never come across till I read Homo Deus of Yuval harari wherein you see frequent reference to the BNW. Obviously Yuval Harari was quite inspired by the idea of this Dystopian society. One advantage of reading a good book is that it leads you to many other good books.

The plot is set in Gregorian year 2540 , when children are produced in assembly line , nobody is ever unhappy, the humankind has found solutions to all problems like famine and pestilence , through science and technology. Early indoctrination ensures that all citizens conform to the officially approved ideas. Classes are created deliberately for distribution of labour and early indoctrination ensures that people are happy with the class they are slotted into and there are absolutely no class conflicts.

The motto of the State is “Community, Identity, Stability” . Every effort is made to ensure that there are no non conformist ideas. Art and literature are discouraged. Citizens are encouraged to consume like mad, to keep themselves occupied with trivial games and to take liberal doses of soma to keep depression away. Soma is a anti-depressant drug that has no side effects and the name obviously is inspired by Hindu Mythology. The idea of class based division of labour is also probably inspired by Hindu civilization. After all , be it Plato’s Republic or the Communist State there are classes / castes and the entire idea of an organized religion ; yes communism is also a religion, is to sustain the noble lie as spelt out in The Republic.

The society makes great use of hypnopaedia for conditioning the citizens in their childhood. It is funny how we use the words training, conditioning, creating awareness or brainwashing. If a particular trait is desirable in a citizen we call it training or creating awareness and when your enemy does the same to his subjects it would be called brainwashing. Be it communism or democracy , it is generally agreed in closed door meetings that letting the citizens think on their own is detrimental to stability and welfare of the State.

The subjects of the Ford State ( the Brave New World ) learn a few things in their sleep through hypnopaedia. These are axioms like “ Civilization is sterilization”, “Ending is better than mending.”,“I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love …”,“The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less …”,“I do love flying. I do love flying.” They called it conditioning not brainwashing.

So, we have a painless society that has solved all problems through Science and technology. Everyone is for everyone. There are no families, and hence no family problems. All citizens are categorized in grades from Alphas (the brahmins) to Epsilon ( the shudras) . Then they have the soma to remain perpetually happy.

Sometimes I feel, the present generation , or millennial as they are called , are slowly but surely moving towards this state. I am not trying to be judgemental but just trying to follow the new value system. They just want to be cool and to chill; keep worries away. They would avoid or delay having children so there are no emotional ties. Then you have surrogate mothers if required. Recently I came across a tweet (don’t know if it is one of the parody handles , but it looked real , reproduced below.

It is not just the millennials, but the elites in general ,in every region , steer away from religion, traditional family values or the traditional ideas of rights and duties as different for different individuals of the society. The generally accepted ideas are that no one owes anything to the family , to the community or to the nation; work hard and party harder, and just be cool about everything!

If the pill gave the women freedom from unwanted pregnancies , the test tube will finally free them from pregnancies altogether; No father, no mother , and no families. That would be a monstrous society indeed ! But then you have soma to ease your minds.

Such books make better and better read as decades go by! 🥂