Bookworm

The eternal wisdom says reading is the best habit one can inculcate. Is it time to question this?

The spark that triggered this blog is a fb post by one of my dearest friend. He got irked by many ppl for apparently treating him to be unwise due to his lack of reading habit.

While I would like to be a wise and well-read bookworm, unfortunately I am not. I read my first book after my engineering and in recent times hardly read a couple of books per year. I recently finished listening to my first audio book. My first experience on Audible was a pleasant surprise and I couldn’t have picked up a better book than ‘The power of Habit’.

The origin of books

Since ages books has been the sole tool of information transfer and information consumption. We had a tradition of oral knowledge transfer but we switched to book/leaflets since the dawn of history. The term history kinda exists to an extent due to the book/record keeping habit of our ancestors in forms of books or paintings. Since time immemorial, other than a lecture and personal experience, the only way to consume knowledge was books. It makes complete sense that to be knowledgable, we had to consume books.

The current trend of data consumption

A lot had changed in last century and something drastic has happened in just the last decade. We have different alternatives to books to consume data.  I daresay, we have better ways to consume data now than books.We now have the high-speed Internet! Imagine a person needed to learn cooking, while buying a cook book was the only option few decades back, YouTube would be the best option now. There is no better way to learn cooking than seeing it and reproducing it. The play/pause/rewind option gives us liberty to pace our cooking , making it more advantageous than learning it even from TV.  When it comes to fiction stories, the movie/tv and web series adaptation of story books is preferred option for many than reading the novel. The yellow pages has gone obsolete, the phone book is obsolete. The lifestyle TV channels are a better option than a Lifestyle magazine. We now have YouTube channels which gives out the gist of books and discusses in detail. The current technology of books on Kindle and Audible is slowly changing even the most ardent fans of paperback and voracious readers. The liberty of carrying your whole library around in just one device is a readers fantasy. I finished a book of close to 500 pages and 106 chapters in less than 10 hours! I could do this because of Audible. The bonus was I didn’t have to spend dedicated time for this. I listened while doing my house chores, while I was commuting and while I went to bed (in timer mode). I consumed a book without dedicating a slot for reading.

The Challenges

A book takes around 9 months to write and on average 9-10 months to publish it seems. The process of 15 months means a lot in real world. We had an author talking in my workplace today and she mentioned the book had become obsolete by the time it went from conception stage to publishing as it took 10 months to do that. We had Chetan Bhagat in Cisco where he mentioned that books today doesn’t just compete with other books but it competes with other audio/visual mediums and social media. Why read a book when you can see the movie adaptation in a year? Why read a book when you can see what your friend is doing on Facebook? Why read a book when you can see cat videos on YouTube! Why read a book when you can browse fun memes on 9gag. A book competes for a reader’s attention against every distraction.

The Habit

Reading is still a habit I would prefer to instil in my son. The habit on its own might no more be the sole form of information consumption but it has way too many benefits to ignore. The biggest reality with the current generation is their short attention span. The ads in each medium are investing a lot to catch our attention. The content creator is being paid for getting attention of the user. The free apps are free cause they reap the benefits of getting our attention.

Reading inculcates a  discipline. Some books can be a portal to a different world. The creativity needed to visualise and create an own world in our mind while creating an empathetic connection with the characters of a book for hours/days is unparalleled.

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.“ – Carl Sagan

Good Morning!!

My morning now happens at 6.15. I catch my cab at 7.30 and its a good half a km walk to the stop. The chilled early morning makes me nostalgic of my UK stay. I used to walk close to a kilometre then to catch a train at 8.12  to office. There used to be a series of events every morning, I used to see the same set of faces doing the same set of things everyday repeatedly.  I now, regularly see the same events repeating everyday- the kids waiting for their bus, the same auntiji walking her Pug, an uncle walking his Labrador , people waiting for their office transport, some on their brisk walks and others doing yoga in the park.

Its been just 3 months since I have availed the office transport and I am loving it. I would really encourage everybody who has this option to use it.

Pro of office cabs

• Its the most Eco-friendly option
• Its a very Eco-nomically friendly option
• Its more disciplined to wake up early
• The Traffic Jams /Pollution doesn’t matter anymore
• My office timings are not at the mercy of the Rain Gods
• My office culture is good enough to be considerate of Cab timings, we get an early exit from meeting/training!!
• A delicious evening snack waiting for me everyday!

Con of office cabs

• Hate the sound of early morning Alarm.
• Non-flexible time , you cant go late or stay few mins late in office
• Did I say, I hate the sound of early morning alarm!

My cab ride to office span a good 11KM and last around 20 mins. The not so early morning Bangalore is all about catching the bus. There is relatively less traffic and I see so many people with there loved ones waiting for the bus to come. The whole cycle of life can be seen in these bus stops. The pattern starts like this- husbands come to drop their wifves to stop , The next progression in family happens and young mums come to drop their little kiddos to school bus. I don’t see many dads coming to drop their kids.  We can see the next milestone when Dads come back to drop their adolescent kids to bus.  Only the college kids are by themselves till they study and get a job I guess.

The most funny part is the similarities between working professionals and kiddos. The kids have a school bag and grown ups have a laptop bag, the kids have there kiddish tiffin box and the grown ups a Tupperware dabba. The kids do have an enthu about going to school but most grown ups are grim about something waiting for them in office.

Are we screwed!

I am  reading Dan Brown’s ‘Inferno-A novel’ and it really got me thinking if human’s are due for a near-extinct event. Most things that I have mentioned below are more or less from that book . This blog is for the sake of my lazy friends who can’t endure books.

A Good Run :

The humans are having a good run from last few decades. We are having nearly peaceful democracy in most of the geographically biggest countries. Consequently, we don’t have any dictator on a killing spree or some in-progress colonization. We have no kings waging wars on each other. To put into perspective of what I am talking about, Nazi Regime has killed about 30 million and Churchill and British Empire has killed close to 1.8 Billion humans.[Source].  Medically we have increased the average human life span by at-least a couple of decades. Humans are now living longer than ever![Source] Just a century back, the five leading causes of death were:1. Pneumonia and influenza . 2. Tuberculosis. 3. Diarrhea. 4. Heart disease. 5. Stroke. [Source]

The Impact :

No matter how much we crib about how much corrupt our govt is, how the humans rights are violated everywhere and how much ever of ‘Bharath Nirman’ is happening all around… We- as a species, are collectively having a better life than probably most part of history. Now lets see some facts.. The graphs will shed some light.

The human population is growing within a confined space and its also screwing up the survival of other species. The human population is increasing exponentially but worse is the fact that other species are getting to the brink is extinction exponentially too.

What next:

This is where it gets interesting. WHO considers that 4 Billion is the ideal population which can ensure that human species  survival in the long run. The population to stay constant is impossible. We know its growing but at what rate you ask? Around a century back an economist/mathematician Robert Malthus proposed a theory of population.[Source] As seen from the above graph, it’s taking less and less time for the population to double, in Billions, the growth is growing at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256… At this rate, the human population will grow way too beyond the sustainable point and will cease to exist.

Denial:

Fine! So what do we do next? Let’s refresh our FB page! Denial is the critical part of Human coping mechanism. Without it, we could all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle like getting to work on time or refreshing our FB page. We hardly bother about the fact that we might have to evacuate Bangalore by 2023[Source].

Ignorance is indeed bliss.

Bleach!

First of all big thanks to Mrs.Pai for introducing me to ‘Bleach’. I know Deepti is cursing me for watching this obsessively all the time over last few weeks but I also know that she is secretly happy that I loved her recommendation so much.

Now about ‘Bleach!’ If you are remotely interested in Japanese Manga series or more simply if you like any kind of kick ass action, This is a series for you. This series is about a teenager called Icigo Kurasaki , who gets to be a ‘Soul Reaper’. His job now is to kill evil souls called Hallows. This is where the series starts but new forms of life called Quincy, Bounts, Aarrancar and Vizards are intorduced to us in subsequent seasons.

Let me try to put into perspective what ‘Bleach’ is all about by a “fictional” and “completely imaginary” analogy. I want to make it clear that this series doesn’t have any references to the western comic heroes and I am using them only cause more people are familiar with Spider and Super Man.

Using your imagination to the fullest, visualize Peter Parker and Clark Kent(that s super man without his costume) having a fight.

Stage 1:
They start fighting in a human way without using any of their super powers. They beat the shit out of each other.

Stage 2.
Peter Parker can’t take it anymore.. He thinks its time to up the ante and uses his power to crawl and spin a web and comes close to making Clark Kent eat dirt

Stage 3.
Clark Kent can’t take it anymore and he turns the heat up. He tears off his shirt to unleash the power of red and Super Man beats the shit out of Spider Man

Stage 4.
This is not over yet.. Peter Parker injects himself with a serum that transforms him into Hulk! He is now Angry..and he transforms into Spider Hulk!! This huge hulk with awesome spidey sense and spidey reflex beats super man to pulp! You just start to think that Super Man is conquered without the use of krypton but then fight reaches the next level.

Stage 5.
Super Man uses the AllSpark that he possessed and transforms  into Super Optimus Prime! YEs!! The Optimus prime from Transformers but Super!

Now.. This is how a typical fight in ‘Bleach’ is set. Fights are always one-to-one and things gets escalated in a nice pace. Things are revealed in such an unexpected way that it completely blows you away. A small kid suddenly turns out to be a Super Human Soul Reaper. A Cat turns out to be a princess and a Captain. It’s like a climax of an Action movie but this movie never ends!! The action just gets better and better. It never gets boring and you are bombarded with more and more and more and more action. The background music keeps up with the action and does complete justice.

I just started few weeks back and right now I have already crossed the 200th Episode! If you have any remotest interest in action then you should not miss this.

I end this blog with an Epic Battle between Icigo and a Squad Captain Kenpachi Zaraki , This is the video which sums it all. Enjoy pure action. 

You can watch more at : Source 1 or  Source 2

Just married!

Plato states that humans originally had four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them. Prima facie this might sound too ridiculous but as a metaphor we indeed are looking for a soul-mate who completes us.

I would say I am extremely lucky to have found a person who completes me in every sense of the phrase. Knowing Deepti has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I didn’t plan on falling in love with her, and am sure neither did she plan on falling in love with me. But once we met, something beautiful was created like an instant chemistry, a connection. Like the phrase we often hear in the movies, “We just clicked”. I am not saying that everything has been peaches and cream.  Contrary to popular belief… I can be really difficult at times but she has been very patient in handling me. She laughs at my rude and mean jokes (well.. at-least before marriage this is happening).  We fight silly at times, yet we fell in love, despite our few differences. Marriage is not just finding a hand that perfectly fits yours, It’s also finding the one who is willing to hold your hands no matter how unfit it may be.

All these days I believed that “We don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it” but last few months with Deepti have made me realize “We don’t know what we have been missing until it arrives”.  My ‘rest of life’ starts now as I am tying the knot with my lady and about to start a new chapter in the story of my life. I am ending the previous chapter with the most clichéd line – “and they lived happily ever after.”

If fate doesn’t make you laugh, then you don’t get the joke

Bones – Season 6 – Episode 9 – “Adelbert Ames, Jr.”

This was one of the best episode of Bones ever. There was less of forensic investigation but more about the emotional turbulence for Dr.Temperence Bones. The conversations between Bones and Micah were absolutely brilliant. Micah tells Bones about an experiment he heard about in a lecture, in which a scientist gives a subject glasses that make the subject see upside down, but after three days, with the glasses still on, the world rights itself (and when the glasses are taken off, the world looks upside down again – for three days).

Adelbert Ames, Jr did these experiments in early 19th century. This just goes to prove that perception is not an absolute thing. The subjects initially have a perception of the normal world. They are given glasses which shows them the upside world but in just 3 days, Human brain defines itself a new perception of the world and convinces itself that the world being viewed now is the new ‘normal’. In just 3 days, The subjects feel normal seeing the upside down world. He doesn’t feel that he is seeing the upside down version of the normal world. When the glasses are taken off after few days. The originally upright world now appears upside down to the subjects. The mind again takes just 3 days to get back to normal.

For Bones, ‘Love’ is the glasses that turns her world upside down. When suddenly she realises that She had loved Seeley all along, Her world turns upside down. She tries to come into terms with that and even expresses herself only to realize that she has lost her chance. The is again like taking off the glasses. The same life which appeared normal before appears upside down now due to the rejection. She tells herself that she can adjust. I believe that’s what everybody does. End of the day its all in the mind. Some ppl are strong enough to convince their mind and move on. Some weak-minded people cannot convince their mind to move on. It’s not easy to let go of a person but you just need to convince your brain that ‘All izz well’. Having been through this phase I know that it’s easier said than done. Sometimes fate throws at us some cruel jokes, Despite best efforts we cannot come up with a story to convince our brain. Unfortunately, Some people change drastically and some dramatic events over a small period of time turns your life upside down. Life as you know ceases to exist. Being as filmy as I am, I came up with a convincing story for myself, I could only come up with one rational explanation which would explain the events that happened in my life. I convinced myself that sometimes a person need to go away only cause they love you too much and they are leaving you only to keep you away from the pain. A scenario like in the story, The girl is terminally ill and she leaves the boy without telling anything to save him from a lifetime of sadness.

Anyway, Everybody has their own way of handling the pain. With some people, Pain is possessed in the mind which can heal with time and overcome with determination. With some people this pain possesses the mind itself and they would need some professional help. I am coming in terms with my pain in my own way. Trying to believe that everything happens for a reason,  Maybe it’s because I look at everything as a lesson, or I don’t want to walk around angry. Or maybe it’s because I finally understand.There are things we don’t want to happen, but have to accept;things we don’t want to know, but have to learn, and people we can’t live without, but have to let go.

Dead end!

”No poison can kill a positive thinker” 
”No medicine can cure a negative thinker”

Negative thinking is one of the most harmful thing one can do to yourself and to the people who love you. The trigger might come from any external person or anything you see around you. Once you have a seed of negative thought in your mind it will spell doom.It seems that with most people positive thinking requires some effort, whereas negative thinking comes easily and uninvited. This has much to do with education and the environment one has been living in. Too much obsessive negative thinking on one single thought will only lead to confirmation bias.

Ideally, a human with free will could change his or her mind whenever new information warrants it. In practice, humans see new information as supporting whatever dumbass thing they already believe is right. And when we make decisions based on emotion, which is most of the time, we rationalize our actions after the fact.  People gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. It might be sounding too abstract , so let me paint a picture and give a real life scenario on how both negative thinking and confirmation bias work in tandem. And let me add that these conversations actually happened down to single word  and not figments of my imagination. At the end of this read you will realize that regardless of what the guy responds, the gal is biased to believe that she doesn’t love him and he doesn’t love her.

A boy and girl are happy together from few months. A new boy enters the scenario who proposes the girl and the girl is doubting herself if she did the right thing by committing to our old boy. All of a sudden something triggers the girl’s mind to think that they are too different. This seed of negative thought with lot of sleepless nights led to the confirmation bias that first boy doesn’t love her anymore and she never loved him either. A series of unfortunate events follow and their relation hits a dead end.

Response 1 is an immediate impulsive response from the boy and response 2 is also an actual response but after a couple of days in a calm state of mind while being on the same topic.

— I wanna Smoke! — 

Gal- I think I wanna smoke again. Why should I change for you

Guy Response 1 :  I wanted you to stop smoking because you wanted to stop it yourself. You told that you took up smoking to punish yourself and you don’t wanna do that.

Gal Response 1 : This is what I am now and I wanna smoke. The girl whom you fell in love with is not me. You don’t love me!

Guy Response 2 : I didn’t not know that smoking meant that much to you. Now I am ok with smoking but only when you are having very bad days.

Gal Response 2: How could you be ok with me smoking! I know you hate smoking. You don’t love me!

— One hour relation — 

Gal : I might get a promotion. I might leave early in morning and will be coming home late. I might not even get weekends off but a rotating off.

Guy Response 1 : Are you really so serious about continuing your job. From what I hear you and me can only have max 1 hour per day overlap. Do you wanna screw your personal life for your career. You were thinking of resigning anyway and taking up that NGO stuff.

Gal Response 1 : Why should a girl give up everything. I have spent so much of time making this career and you want me to give this up? You don’t love me anymore.

Guy Response 2:  I always wanted you to have a career. I support you in every way, I am fine with one hour relation too. I can easily spend 23 hours knowing that I get you see you for at least one hour and that’s enough for me.

Gal Response 2 : How can you be ok with just one hour per day. You don’t care about me! You don’t love me at all but it’s just your ego that you want to let me go with another guy.

— I cheated! — 

Gal : I cheated on you.

Guy response 1 : How could you do this to me! I trusted you!

Gal response 1 : You are putting words into my mouth! I wanted some time to think all this  but you over reacted and made me tell all this. You don’t love me anymore.

Guy response 2: I think you are just confused right now, don’t jump the gun, take sometime and think before you take a big decision.

Gal response 2 : I am telling you on your face that I cheated on you and you are fine with that? You don’t love me, it’s just your ego that you don’t want to let go of me.

— ! — 

That is how things ended between me and her. I know the drill and my ears are open for the ‘it was not meant to be’ and the ‘something better is in store for you’.  I had given a lot to make this work but this was not meant to be. This brings us to the recurring theme of my life that many things in our life are beyond our control.We are just playing our roles for on a predefined script. It unfortunate but SHIT happens.

The change!

I quote these lines from a friends post, “Sometimes in life we come and stand where a line is drawn before u, I guess we draw it ourselves. This line emphasizes to us that we have to cross  it, with a little courage, and when we cross it, we would have overcome something, moved ahead and by then begun to see things a little differently than we saw them before. These can be very big ones or small.”

We sometimes are so comfortable inside our self-imposed boundaries that we don’t wanna cross this line. This sometimes might not even matter but on few occasions this can be a life changing experience. We need to understand that the only constant thing in life its the change. No matter how comfortable we are in our current state, nothing stays the same forever. There will always come a time when we will need to move on. Its better to move on and change rather than pushed to move on involuntarily.  As we grow older, it’s not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn’t do. The fear of the unknown or the fear of uncertainty and doubting our ability to cope up with the change are the main things that adds resistance towards change. Sometimes we need to understand that in the fear of unknown in the future might be unknowingly hurting our present. A bit of faith in our friends and loved ones can do wonders and then comes the Leap of Faith. We need to understand that we cannot and need not be totally in control of our life all the time. Give up the need to be in control, take a leap in faith and fear will vanish as the mists in the morning sun.

Lets save the World!

“‘Lets save the world” is the most frequently repeated phrase in the TV series ‘Heros’. I had seen this few years back while it was aired on TV, I had liked it but since the second season was being aired, I couldn’t follow it. I got it recently from one of my friend and I got hooked to it. My first impression was this series being a fusion of ‘Lost’ and ‘Harry potter’. These two raw materials being my favorite things, I was hoping the fusion would be something AWESOME! Many of my friends are Lost fanatics, so before I even start to write anything, Heros should not be compared to Lost. Lost is in a league of its own and Heros comes nowhere close to that.  Heros is more wanna-be.  Its like lost cause it is a multi-cast story with all the characters having some common thread to tie them up. the similarities with Harry potter is that common ppl can do extraordinary things and they do that without wearing any special costumes or any capes. The extraordinary ppl living a normal life among normal ppl. The similarity with both Lost and Happy Potter ends there!

The first season of Lost was very gripping as it was capable of generating huge curiosity and excitement. The build up to the finale was amazing! I literally was on the edge of the seat waiting to see if they could ‘save the world’. The finale couldn’t live up to my expectation and was kinda lame that just one simple scene puts an end to some huge hype. The second season still was watchable but by third season the series became very predictable. Every season did have something like ‘save the cheerleader, save the world’ and in every season finale , Hiro Nakamura would just go back in time and save the world.  The predictability is what killed this show i think and I heard that they took this off the air after it lost most of its viewership. It’s hard to create a Lost or a Harry Potter and even Lost couldn’t provide a fitting end itself.

The below parody is the very predictable generic template which the makers used to make each episode I feel. The parody could not be more true than this.

A pointless existence?

There is a person in Kurukshetra(Haryana) who reads thumbprint. Before I go into details, Let me clarify that this is not something I have read somewhere, One of my friend has got this done. Now, Let me explain how this works. You just get your thumb impression on a piece of paper and send it to an address. You can accompany that piece of paper with a specific question or you can just send it as it is. You receive an audio tape in return with your life story. The tape my friend got had her name, very specific details on her parentage, what direction her study will be, what age she will get a job and what age she will get married. For my friend, all these facts were the things of her past and they matched perfectly. This doesn’t stop here, He goes on to tell at what age she will be having her first kid, what time she will be having her second, what age she will buy a property, at what age her hubby will start business. This goes on and on till the prediction of exact age she is gonna die. I found a website which does something very close to what I have mentioned  http://thumbprediction.com/

Her family members too had got this prediction thing done and so far it has matched perfectly down to the last word. What stumped me was how can a person’s name which is decided so randomly can be predicted based on his thumbprint! It got me thinking if everything about our existence  already predetermined? The thing that we call ‘Destiny’ is already pre-decided? Am I just doing something just because its my destiny to do that? Am I not doing many things just because it’s not my destiny to do that? Do we have a choice or even we choose based on whats destined for us.  Destiny is one of the biggest paradox I feel. It can’t be used in a future tense, Whatever happens in future can only be predicted which might or might not happen. Destiny is the term for something which has happened. The things in future cannot be termed as destiny as there is still a scope/possibility to change it,  or the biggest paradoxical argument, May be sometimes we are destined to change our destiny. Destiny , Luck or Nature whatever it is, We do have to understand that there are many things beyond our control in our life.

On a different note, Had somehow stumbled on Bhagawath Gita, The “manual for mankind”. Have just started reading but something that is struck in my mind and resonating since the time I read this. I love the metaphor used here and love the perspective in which the whole scripture is being seen.

“The whole world is a big battle-field. The real Kurukshetra is within you. The battle of Mahabharata is still raging within you. Ignorance (Avidya) is Dhritarashtra. The individual soul is Arjuna. The Indweller Who dwells in your heart is Lord Krishna, the charioteer. The body is your chariot. The senses (Indriyas) are the horses. The mind, egoism, senses, Samskaras (mental impressions), Vasanas (latent tendencies), cravings, Raga-Dvesha (likes and dislikes), lust, jealousy, greed, pride and hypocrisy are your dire enemies.”