Silly Infants or Petty Adults?!

Whenever I used to present toys or games to my tiny tot niece, she used to show more interest in the colorful cardboard boxes that carried those toys, instead of the pricey contents. I used to laugh it off as the silly nature of infants.

As I am learning these days, we are all akin to my little niece in our silly fantasies and fetishes. The marvellous blessing of Life has been bestowed on us. Instead of making the most of it, we are clinging to the shiny but cheap wrappers and boxes - religious identities, political affiliations, border affinities, stupid gossips, ego clashes, shiny gadgets, career identities, silly pursuits, along with all the resultant debates, disputes, bickering and senseless hatred!

 

What a world ours will be, if only we could all learn up, discard the cartons and embrace their contents - Life and the Love for it?! ❤️🙏

Book Review – Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times, Rajmohan Gandhi

Writing a book on history is no easy task. Any aspiring writer of history needs to read wide and research deep. If the author presents unverified information, s/he runs the risk of losing credibility. If s/he simply lines up facts in chronological order, with no flair, s/he will end up losing the readers’ attention. It takes some skill to write an interesting book on history and Mr. Rajmohan Gandhi has proved his mettle here.

History books are of two kinds. Either you speak about the history of a nation, an era, a political movement or other noteworthy events. Or you extol the virtues of a king, an artist, a reformer or an inventor. Between presenting the details of forest (overall history) and picking up trees for special treatment (biographies, for example), few people have the knack of speaking about the forest, while allowing a clear view of the individual trees as well. Mr. Rajmohan Gandhi does a splendid job here too.

This book on South Indian history begins after the fall of famed Vijayanaraga empire, defeated by the combined armies of Deccan Sultanates. Arguably the greatest empire in South that spread across all five modern Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra, Telangana and Tamilnadu, would its fall have been the harbinger of things to come for the country as a whole? We may not know. But seven decades before the fall of this empire, a man arrived at the west coast of the country, travelling all the way from Europe. The arrival of this man set off a series of quests to set up trade routes with a country whose riches were said to be beyond measures. Seven decades after the fall of Vijayanagara, the Dutch and Danish too arrived, but on the eastern shores. The scourge of India, the British, too arrived at about the same time. Of all the European powers, the French were the last to arrive.

The book feels like a treasure trove for history lovers, with its vast coverage of events that unfolded during those centuries. The typical infighting amongst the Indian royals, gullibility and greed of native Indians that let these alien powers ease into place, the treachery and traitors that gave up honour and their leaders for the proverbial ‘thirty pieces of silver’, this book recounts every tale in such detail that you will feel your pulse racing.

Covering vast ground, trying to do justice to each of the major linguistic provinces by describing their past history, the book feels like a breeze. The Zamorins and Rajas of Malabar, detailed tale of the Tiger of Mysore, the fiery social reformers of Telugu land, colourful warriors of Tamizh kingdom, communist revolutions to freedom movements, the book has almost all that you can think of, depicting the forest as well as detailing the trees.

But all that flow hits a serious brake midway through. Now, let me remind you that Mr. Rajmohan Gandhi is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, offspring of Devadas Gandhi and Lakshmi, daughter of Rajagopalachari (or Rajaji, as he is better remembered). The fondness for his grandfathers takes over the writer and the reader is made to suffer for the same. For almost one third of a book, you are presented with the history of the entire south only from the perspective of Mr. Rajmohan Gandhi’s maternal grandfather, Rajaji.

While the writing about Mr. Rajaji is mostly unbiased, it is done at the cost of some glaring omissions. For example, anyone from the Tamizh country will remember Tirupur Kumaran and Velu Natchiyar for their heroics in the fight for freedom. But there is not even a passing mention of their names in this book, while Mr. Rajaji’s whole life is recounted here, making me wonder whether I am reading a work of history or the biography of Shri Rajaji. Since the author writes mostly from the corner of Rajaji, there is a hint of bias while writing against his political opponents. Though the author makes amends by covering the rest of the history, till our modern days, as clearly and as exhaustively as possible, the damage to the reading flow is already done.

Having said that, this is an interesting book overall that I finished it within two days, a feat that I achieved after quite a while. Interesting and as exhaustive as humanly possible, considering the nature of the project, this is a must-read for every history aficionado, provided you can withstand the author’s love for his maternal grandfather!

A.

Book Review - Mahavamsa, (as translated by Wilhelm Geiger)

 

Well, imagine waiting to read a book for more than 25 years, only to find it being a dud. I got to know about the book ‘Mahavamsa’ during my high-school summer holidays, while reading ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, the semi-fictional magnum opus of legendary Kalki Krishnamurthy. With the Sinhalese history being an indispensable part of that novel, and the mention of Mahavamsa therein, I was intrigued to learn more about the history of that beautiful island nation.

After almost a decade and more of searching for this book, mostly during the pre-e-commerce period, I gave up the search but not the desire. Then, fortunately, when a good friend of mine was on a visit to Sri Lanka, she thankfully fetched this book for me from there and gifted what I imagined to be a read of a lifetime. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be.

As I think of what I should write in my review, I see more cons than pros. First and foremost, the language. Mahavamsa was originally translated from Pali language to German by Wilhelm Geiger in the second decade of the 20th century, and then translated into English a little while later. While the translators have been true to the original, they haven’t been true to the readers, the result being archaic language that causes confusion often times. ‘He did this to him who said to him who was a good king’ was the kind of reading that puts of the serious readers and makes them resort to skimming.

This was a compilation of the chronicles maintained by the Buddhist monks at the Anuradhapura Maha Vihara and the resultant politico-religious tone of the book is hard to miss. The book begins with the beginning of Buddhism in India, the arrival of missionaries tasked by Ashoka with the spreading of Buddhist message to the farther shores, the arrival of the first person of royal lineage in the island and the tales of his descendants. The book ends with the reign of Mahasena, recounting the religious merits gained by the kings leading up to him, by way of building Buddhist monasteries and reliquaries. No matter what you think of Buddhism, the contempt of the Buddhist monks for people from other religions and the deprecating mentions in the book are hard to miss. So are the religious schisms that had the monks use their political clout to settle scores with their opponents (from other factions). But the book covers next to nothing about the prevailing social customs or lifestyle of the people at that time, things that one normally wants to learn through such books.

The history of every dynasty is rife with infighting, patricidal / regicidal / fratricidal outcomes, incestuous relationships, queens that changed their paramours like they changed their upper clothes, conspiracies and cruel rulers. This ancient Sri Lankan history is no exception. In this long tale, only two characters stand out for me. Duttugamanu, a rebellious Sinhalese prince that was bent on freeing the northern part of his island from the Tamil kings and Elara – or Ellalan – his sans pareil arch rival, who is better known to the people of Tamilnadu by the name Manu Neethi Chozha. The rest all feel like names that came and went at the end credits of a movie.

May be, I am missing the true pleasure of the book due to the poor or outdated translation. Someday I would love to lay my hands upon a better translation. Till then, it is only 2.5 stars!

Book Review – Tableau for Dummies, Molly Monsey & Paul Sochan

I am giving this book only 3 stars. Of course, I have only myself to blame. Having already had a fair bit of exposure to Tableau, I was looking for some good books to improve my skills. Going by the recommendations on a blog, I chose this book to begin with. Well, who am I kidding?! Everybody knows that ‘For Dummies’ series is just that, for dummies (absolute beginners). Having already dealt with Tableau, I found most of the content here to be too basic to be of any use to me.

Having said that, this is a good book, if you are an absolute beginner, having no idea about data visualization or Tableau. It will guide the learner step by step, starting from the menu options and toolbars. It also gives a fair bit of introduction into some of the advanced ways of Tableau. But it all stops only at the introductory level. Don’t expect yourself to become well-versed in Tableau by reading this book.

Another shortcoming is that this book has no practical exercises. It feels like a picture book for children, sharing screengrabs for every option. It tries to teach everything by mere theory, which, as we all know, isn’t the right way to learn anything, especially computer technology. Overall, this is good for those taking baby steps into Tableau. Nothing more than that.

A.

Book Review - The Intelligence Trap, David Robson

A couple of months ago, I came across a post on LinkedIn, where a senior professional with an IIM degree had shared a post about an Indian student. This student, in his late teens, was said to have secured two patents in his name already and he was also said to have rejected the invitation from  the then US President Donald Trump to join NASA. Under the message and the said student’s photograph was a nationalist slogan. The fact is, this message was proven to be a fake information more than a year ago, but our senior professional had no clue about it. Neither did he bother to check the truth before posting it on a professional forum like LinkedIn. There was this stinging comment under that post – ‘Can’t you differentiate fake news from the real ones? How the h*** did you pass from IIM?’

Well, we all have that one friend (or many, as in my case) that shares fake news or unverified information on their social media posts or through WhatsApp. While I have been able to change a few of them and make them verify anything before they share it with others – or at least with me – I have also lost friends due to what they consider to be my ‘pedantic’ approach. I have always wondered about what makes these people, most of them well-educated and in respectable professions, share fake information without ever checking its veracity. This book is an apt answer to that question.

Well, this book isn’t purely about debunking fake information, but about why supposedly smart, well-educated people do stupid things and end up with egg on their faces. Starting with how we mistake IQ as a measure of intelligence, though people with much lower IQ scores often outperform such ‘geniuses’, the book lays down its arguments for how often intelligence is nothing but thin ice – cool and shiny but fragile and pointless.

Starting from a Nobel prize winning scientist that denied climate change and HIV to detailing the whims of Steve Jobs, the man who made Apple what it is today, the book delves into the logical fallacies that plagues every intelligent mind. Becoming myopic due to their acknowledged genius, having their ideas and opinions crystallized despite proven facts to the contrary, inability to listen to the opinions and learn from others are some of the mental malaises that victimized many of the most brilliant minds in human history. This book speaks about such weaknesses and elicits lessons from their mistakes. Speaking about organizations, it states the reasons for why even the most successful organizations like Nokia went into a tailspin and why NASA had to have more than one disaster to strengthen its engineering processes.

There are still people that believe that the world is flat and, at present, that COVID is a hoax, despite glaring evidences staring at their faces. The tragedy is that most, if not all, of these people are well-educated and supposedly of sane minds. The logical fallacies that dominate their thinking is all laid bare in this book. The cure to such malaises? Curiosity and intellectual humility.

In an age when ultra-nationalists and bigots are taking over every public forum to spew venom by spreading lies and misinformation, books like these can boost rational thinking and logical abilities. It gets a tad slow at times, but is a worthy read nevertheless!

A.

Lokāh samastāh sukhino bhavantu!

 

लोकाः समस्ताः सुखिनो भवन्तु

Lokāh samastāh sukhino bhavantu!

 

"May all beings everywhere be happy and free!"

 

In the last 48 hours, I have heard about the demise of at least 4 people due to COVID. The most tragic of them being a family friend's mother and father passing away on the same day, within 5 hours, due to COVID related complications. Never in my living memory did the whole world around me need as much healing and peace as it does now.

 

Ignore all the petty differences like religion and politics and stand united. Care for one another and help those in need. If we don't learn the lessons and let go of our ego, COVID might prove to be very much the reckoning that the arrogant mankind so deserved!

 

Take care and stay safe. Mask up and stay alert. Take care of the elders at home. Remembering you all in my prayers today!

Book Review – Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons, Ben S. Bernanke, Timothy F. Geithner, Henry M. Paulson Jr.

It was the year 2008. I was happily settled in an MNC NBFC, having been promoted recently and destined for more growth. Just as I was thinking that things could only get better from here, the scales tilted and everything went on a downward spiral. Within a span of 6 months, I was left searching for jobs - twice. What was looking like one of the most memorable periods of my life for all reasons good, turned out to be an unforgettably forgettable period. Reason? The conflagration that was threatening to burn down the Wild West of American economy – the Wall Street.

While wild fires are normally limited to the geographies where they started, this financial inferno was spreading far and wide, threatening to bring down the global economy, thanks to its interconnected nature and growing ambitions. Though I had an inkling of what caused the Financial Crisis of 2008, resulting in the not-so-memorable changes in my life, I was curious to learn more about it. The aptly titled ‘Firefighting’ is the first of the shortlisted books and it turned out to be a worthy prelude.

Subprime Mortgages – these two words caused all that chaos. To tell you the background in simple terms, just like me the world was highly optimistic in the years leading to 2008. Investors were willing to bet on high-risk investments that promised high returns. Banks and financial institutions were flooding the market with liquidity. People were starting to chase the dream of owning a house. As a result, there was a boom in real estate in the US and elsewhere, with real-estate prices increasing every day. Financial institutions that were lending to fuel this boom wanted to raise more funds to lend more. One of their ideas was to repackage these loans into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and sell if off to return-craving investors, on promises of regular returns.

With the demand for MBS growing more and more, the financial institutions started giving home loans to even uncreditworthy people – people with no solid income, no credit history and no assets to guarantee the repayment. On one end, investors were pouring in money, driven by greed, and on the other, banks were throwing it all away by lending it to all and sundry, based on overconfidence bordering on arrogance. It was all based on the assumption that the real-estate demand will keep up and the prices will go on increasing.

Then came the slump in demand for housing and suddenly there were more houses than takers. Also, the subprime mortgages were starting to go sour. With defaults piling up and the investors starting to pull out their investments fearing losses, the financial institutions that were indulging in this perilous business were starting to fall like dominoes. Their collapse resulted in serious recession and unpleasant fallouts elsewhere too – in the form of job losses, negative spends, resultant decrease in demand and in turn, more job losses – including that of people like me.

This book is written by the people who were in the forefront fighting that financial hellfire – Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Timothy F. Geithner, Treasury Secretary (Obama) and Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Treasury Secretary (Bush). Advantages of reading a book written by people who fought the fire is that you expect to get a front-row view of the crisis as it unfolded. The book lives up to that expectation. With their experience and wisdom, they have well explained the causes of the crisis, events during the crisis, the casualties and the cure administered. Comprehensive and unbiased, they have pointed out the pros and cons of the corrective measures taken by both administrations – by George W. Bush and his successor, Barack Obama. Having written the book by 2019, they have also shared their thoughts on how America is well and ill-equipped to handle a similar crisis at present, especially as it stood polarized under an uncouth president like Donald Trump.

One of the negatives is that they have written the book in a diplomatic manner and from too high a view to recount the pains of people at the bottom of the financial pyramid. Neither is there a recounting of greedy arrogance of the CEOs that dragged American economy to its nadir (but who received safe exits – ‘golden parachutes’ – sans compunction). Nor is the resulting global financial pandemonium spoken about in detail. But considering the authors’ positions and the fact that this book is mainly about the financial crisis in America, we understand that those topics are simply out of the scope of this book.

Clear and comprehensive, this will be one of my favorite books on the financial crisis 2008!

A.