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Showing posts from 2014

The (Pulitzer-Prize-winning) Goldfinch

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Usually I wait to review a book till after I have read it. But here I would like to capture what I feel before finishing the book because somehow apparently the ending is so awesome it is worth the drudgery. Actually even if the ending wasn't supposed to be awesome. I'm going to finish the book. Because I'm so close. 90% complete. I read the first 100 pages trying hard to get involved with the characters and the story but could not. It took me about 200 to 300 pages to get into the story even though there isn't any story to be honest. It's just our lady wanting to write a remarkable piece of literature that some told her, is about descriptions and on and on she goes describing. She describes a scene for some 30 pages and some 100 pages later our protagonist will remember that incident and yet again our writer describes it for 5-10 pages more like as though she has set her mind on using a thesaurus exhaustively such that there are no more adjectives, descriptive

Sheroes in Hyderabad 2014

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I happened upon an event this Saturday and it turned out to be a great one! BlogAdda has some passes to Sheroes in Your City events across the country for members. I registered for the event in Hyderabad at Radisson last Saturday. And to be honest, I wanted to go just because I had not been to a conference as such. I am not an entrepreneur and didn't really consider it an option for myself. But the event was thoroughly inspiring for me! So I can only imagine how anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit would have felt! For all those of you interested, there are some more coming up, check here . (I only have one picture and the light is bad but here it is anyway) To begin with we had TiE Hyderabad president (one of the sponsors of the event), Murali Bukkapatnam who spoke on entrepreneurship and why people choose it. A very informative and inspiring speech, he quoted Tagore on freedom, a few Sankrit slokas on women empowerment and even a song by an African woman that asks for n

Lego Art

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It's about time someone made things out of Lego, no? When I was growing up I didn't have Lego blocks exactly but a friend had them and they give these infield possibilities to build anything you like. It's extremely interesting and inspiring for young. Or so I thought. Recently when I was trying to buy something for some kid and thought of Legos, I found out that all the infinite possibilities have been reduced to only one single possibility per box you buy. And it's Lego that retains are the infinite possibilities that it sells as infinite sets of boxes, and deprives the parents of infinite money and children of their imagination which was what in the first place made Lego blocks so fantastic. I digress, but I think it's important to point out. Anyway, now that I explained how Lego lost its intrinsic brand value let's move on to the originally envisaged infinite possibilities of the generation that grew up with regular Lego. And it made me wonder how awes

BlogAdda and Akshaya Patra fighting hunger !

The possibilities: I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with  Akshaya Patra   and   BlogAdda . Across India you hear a similar theme in every class of people (except the rich): I work hard to provide a good education for my children so they gave a better life. A better life is what we all want for our next generation. And a better life they get, through education.  Now imagine a classroom full of children eager and willing to learn giving that extra something to make that extra distance. Now imagine this classroom full of children dull and bored and cannot hear a word you say because they are hungry. Now imagine this classroom full of students half empty because they prefer cleaning cars and serving tea for some food. Now imagine the entire class empty and the kids working here and there earning a few rupees, falling into crime, a generation lost! Why would the children clean cars if it didn't give them a means for satisfying their hunger? It's not like they love cleani

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

4/5 rating Behind the Beautiful Forevers | National Theatre Katherine Boo, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist went to a slum in Mumbai next to the airport called Annawadi and spent three years there living and learning with the slum-dwellers who are mostly rag-pickers. After her return to New York, she wrote a book, a non-fiction narrative about the lives of the people. I haven't read it. The book was adapted into a play by David Hare who spent time with Katherine and then in Annawadi. It's playing in London at the National Theatre,  Nov-Apr . I went to it this weekend. The audience was largely non-Indian (not even of origin) and also for some reason the average age was much higher as well, say 50. So the people sitting next to us got an interesting perspective I guess. The first half was very well done. The choice of music was the highlight. The sets were used beautifully to create various effects like a flight landing close by and at one point it literally rains plas

Fighting classroom hunger - Akshaya Patra

The possibilities: I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with  Akshaya Patra   and   BlogAdda . In ancient India, the gurukula system of education was the most prominent. Most people associate gurukula system with a residential education system and we do have a few now. At school level they are considered expensive because you need to pay for food and boarding as well. But the other thing about a gurukula was that it was a self-sustained unit. It taught children not just science and arts but basic survival skills, including cutting fire wood, cooking food and sharing with everyone. The self-sufficiency comes from their own work. Each student shares responsibility to grow grains, vegetables and to cook and clean. The gurukula makes its owns pots and pans out of clay and they work and live together. I do understand that it is difficult to transfer all those operational features from a forested area abundant with natural resources into today's urban land. But some of it can still b

Going to school...

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I might seem like I am just saying this because I don't like change, but I feel that schools today are a bit over the top, trying to give information to children rather than educating them. I loved school as a child ! I loved it that I could meet all my friends and hang out with them. Classes weren't very difficult and teachers wanted to teach you and guide you and be part of your lives as people. I was trying to remember how I fell in love with school and I remembered I wasn't always like this. I hated school once upon a time. Just as any child made to go somewhere and be told to do things made me hate school to begin with. Well, hate is a strong word, may be more like dislike. So one morning when I was six years old, it was pouring like crazy. My autowalla did not come to pick me up. And surprisingly I was very upset that I was getting late to school and I just had to go to school! My dad got dressed but he said it's raining so badly may be it's not a great

Alone is Berlin

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By Hans Fallada I've never heard of this book before I noticed someone read it when I was travelling back from Berlin , this summer. Later I realised it's one of the classics to describe Hitler's Germany and how people lived in fear of him. It was the first anti-Nazi book after the world war written by a German. So I read it. It is a very strong story. It starts very innocently. And describes slowly but surely how everyone takes sides, and everyone has to, at some point choose a side. Those that feel they can gain an advantage using open support of the führer use it like the Persickes. Those who are cowards are used. Those who can leach onto other people's fears use it to their advantage even if they are not in any way linked to the party, like Enno Kluge and Borkhausen. And then there comes a time where everyone is snitching on everyone else because everyone is afraid. So afraid, even high ranking inspectors of the Gestapo are not safe. Everyone is it som

The Long Song

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Miss July, my dear readers, was a mischievous soul who made the mistress scream till she was so tired that when Miss July finally turned up she would be enraged but in no position to punish Miss July. The mistress, Caroline Mortimer wasn't always so easy to provoke. She used to be a happy soul who loved the idea of going around the plantation under the beautiful summer sun. Soon enough the heat of sun, which is harsh unlike in England, and the dust of the land got into her and settled within never leaving. It had made her annoying. The way Miss July narrates her story, like how there were so many different versions of just her birth, and her condensing voice against all those condensing voices, is an interestingly meandering way of telling a light story. You see, Miss July was born a slave. Though she didn't look it, she had a white father who was an overseer of her slave mother. She was separated from her mother at a very young age and came into her mistress's

Freeze your eggs for your company ?

A couple of days ago in the morning news I picked up that Facebook (and soon Apple) provide a core benefit that allows you to freeze your eggs for free. I think the article was called freeze your eggs free your career, or something catchy like that. Of course, there was some outrage around this. My Facebook feed is full of outrage and re-sharing of this news. Well at least some good news that we now know Facebook is not reading our posts then.  Now my knowledge is only as good as what's reported and we all know news is always sensationalised. Any how here is what I think:  The issue is that it's a core benefit. If you have a core benefit it implies that it's something you need for a comfortable life. For example, medical cover is needed for you in case you fall sick and you of course want to get better. On the other hand, it's in your company's best interests  to make sure you get better soon and get back to work. But at the same time, you are not expected t

Anne Frank's Diary

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I'm disappointed with myself for not having read this before and I believe I should have read it at school. It should be part of school syllabus or at least flagged and encouraged at school to young teens and preteens. It is across Europe and even in India, it was in school curriculum for my mother. I wonder what happened in my case. Anyhow I began reading it upon my return from Berlin. While I'm in no way qualified to review this book, neither it's contents nor its author, I can talk about how it made me feel. Like a million others, for all these decades, at the end of it, I wanted to hug myself and cry. That was the effect mostly of the epilogue rather than her diary. The epilogue tells you that this energetic optimistic opinionated teenager that you spent days with, discussing her innermost thoughts including her plans for the future, had had that future snatched from her and from you. You, Kitty, lost your dearest friend. She is smart, funny, intelligent a

The Heathrow Minute

In love with airports I must be. But not usually. They are not destinations and they are not places where you want to spend time, unless I hear of it's the Dubai airport. Killing time doesn't put me off, but people watching is certainly boring at airports unlike railway stations. Railway stations, I love! Heathrow airport is a beauty and I didn't know it till today. Till today I thought it was a chaotic mass of people and flights. Today I witnessed the Heathrow Minute! While an aeroplane is evidence of amazing engineering, Heathrow is evidence of incredible logistics. And today I think I witnessed it. My flight was in queue and I could see flights in front of it, and flights cutting the queue from other fringes of the fishbone sort of network this was, and the flights in front of us were cutting others in other fringes. They all went one by one on to this long long runway. And when one flight starts moving very quickly on the runway, another already takes its place so

Ten Days of Travel: Venice

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Pretty and pretty busy. As I mentioned earlier K and I ended up in Venice on a weekend. At least thankfully it was two weekends before Clooney and Amal decided to get married. (I heard they shut the grand canal for their wedding, I would have been royally photography hollywoodly pissed with them. Imagine planning ahead and spending so much money just to know that the biggest attraction in Venice is closed.) We reached Venice late evening on Friday but by the time we stood in the queue and another and got waterbus tickets, it was an hour and the water bus itself took an hour to take us to our bnb because we stayed in Lido, an island off the Venice islands at we reached there at 10pm. We took a Rolling Venice card by the way. It's an under-29 card that gives you discounts etc. The one hour water bus journey from the train station through the Grand Canal under the Rialto bridge and the Bridge of Sighs, out into the sea near San Marco and stopping every 3 minutes,

Ten Days of Travel: Florence

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On a 'fine' Wednesday morning K and I took a fast train from Rome to Florence. It rained a lot during the journey and on our way to find our little airbnb-booked guest house. Cute it was. And raining the morning was. And sleepy we were. And nothing to do till 11am to go for the renaissance tour by the Florence Free tours. (So you can imagine how early we woke up). The renaissance tour introduced us to some of the beauty of Florence with the sculptures and paintings of the great renaissance artists including of course, our favourite Michaelangelo. The tour started at Piazza San Marta Novella and walked through to the Florence cathedral, and the church of Santa Croce. The Florence cathedral is a different kind of beauty, a renaissance church in all its glory. It had a dome that is at odds with the rest of the structure because the calculations were slightly off and the dome had to be constructed differently with an octagonal base. The guide also pointed out Flor

Ten Days of Travel: Vatican

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On Wednesday, we spent most of the day at the Vatican. Not really. You can go to the Vatican museum (including the Sistine Chapel) and Saint Peter's Basilica without issue even though they are within the Vatican border. But we can't go beyond that without permission. The museum is really vast and it's recommended to take a guided tour. The only one that was available was at 8.30 in the morning. We took it anyway, assuming we can also do the basilica before lunch. As it turns out, the basilica is closed on Wednesday mornings. The Pope gives audience and gives sermon at 11 am and it doesn't have a scheduled end time. So we ended up spending a good 4.5 hours in the museum. The guide said Wednesday mornings were the best time to visit the museum because of less crowds with the basilica closed, but we didn't understand that until after an hour after the tour ended. The guided tour lasted for about two hours. The guide showed us some amazing sculptures of people a