Thursday, July 20, 2006

The Kite Runner

It has been a very very long time since I cried reading a book. Even though a book might have a huge impact on you, it takes something really intense to make you cry. "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini is one such book. It is Khaled's first book and has got rave reviews and I think it deserves all the attention. Most of the book focuses on relationships and a part of it has some really gory details of the atrocities by Taliban in Afghanistan. I can't bear to watch these things in a movie, so all I do is close my eyes and sometimes my ears and just nudge at my friend to ask 'can I look at the screen now? Is it over?'. Since that is not possible in a book, I read through it and have some vivid images in my head now..and shiver everytime I see it in my mind's eye.

The images should fade in sometime, but what will stay with me for a long time is the intensity of relationships as described by the author. I think the author has done a great job of describing the thoughts and emotions that the central character goes through...one needs to be able to understand these complex, subjective things so well to be able to put it so vividly. Many of us might have had great friends and can relate to the feelings that the author goes through, but I doubt if most of us can comprehend our own feelings so well. There are scores of books written about undying love between couples and the bond of best friends. The genuineness of the author makes me want to rate this as the best I have read on this subject. Till I was half way into the book, I actually thought it was the authors own real life story...somewhere in the middle, I doubted the authenticy of ths story and looked up some details to confirm that the story wasn't from his real life. I think the author missed reducing the intensity of thoughts over time, and that is what made me think that this wasn't real life. Time is the healer for most things. The author forgot to factor that in!

It's raining dead....

It's raining dead....for the last week or so
250 in mumbai...
60 in Lebanon...
550 in Indonesia post Tsunami...

Death due to natural disasters and God's wrath is something no one on earth can thwart yet. All we have learnt till now is some techniques of predicting it, and we are fine tuning this knowledge. God's plans are something we don't have access to, and it is something we have to accept and submit to. The battle we need to pick is the one against terrorism.

I find it tough to believe that the blue print of my head (until it is blown off my shoulders by some bomb) and a terrorists is very similar...cranium, gray matter et al. At least the HLD (High level Design) is the same. . How is it possible that a mentally sane person wakes up in the morning and can feel motivated about the fact that his profession is 'terrorism' and his to-do list for the day says 1) kill x people at A 2) kill y people at B and so on. This is not a very original thought...it has intrigued a whole lot of us and a bunch of movies have been made on this. Even if it is at the expense of sounding cliched, I want to ask again and again 'when you are planting a bomb which would take the life of an innocent person who is a mother/father etc to someone don't you think of the agony it causes, the havoc it wreaks in their lives? Don't you have an innocent mother, father,sibling, spouse back home?' None of the answers that came out in any of the movies or books are even close to convincing me that these actions are justified.

In humans very emotion/thought can be attributed to a bunch of chemicals doing some random permutations and combinations. I wish bio-technology was so advanced as to allow an xray of the head and generate out a report of the logic of the most unreasonable, inexplicable and destructive thoughts that gets generated in a terrorists head. Someday, medical research will lead us to that evil chemical and we will know its composition. Someday a great scientist will find a way impede this deadly chemical. And just as small pox has been eradicated, terrorism will be eradicated. Among the vaccinations that all of us have to get as babies, one of them will be a vaccination for terrorism!

Now, that is what I call being unreasonably imaginative. For some odd reason, I feel comforted that these thoughts are all just chemicals somewhere in my head!

Monday, July 10, 2006

How Kaavya Vishwanathan Got a Life and Lost it*

*Though it is obvious, let me still mention (lest I get sued for plagiarism!) that the title of my post is inspired by the title of the controversial book by Kaavya Vishwanathan 'How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life'

I am really impressed by what this Harvard sophomore has packed in 300 pages. I must admit that I found the book witty, amusing and expressive in a novel way. Though I say I found it novel, I might be proven wrong. Maybe all she did was ^c and ^v! In spite of all the negative publicity in the press, I can't stop myself from thinking in favor of this smart 18 year old Indian girl who almost made it big. I feel sorry for this ambitious girl who definitely seems to have a lot of talent. Assuming the story is a reflection of her own family and life, it wouldn't have been easy for her and her family to cope with all the unwanted sudden attention from the media.

Maybe in her naivety she did not follow all the rules in book writing and publishing. Maybe she deserves just one more chance to prove that she, all by herself, could write a piece that would be in the New York bestseller list for months. Who will stop and think and give her that chance...give her that life? We are so ready to stereotype, that it won't occur to most of us that she might be a different person from what is portrayed by the pitiless media. Unless proven otherwise, we tend to just accept that she is someone who is not capable of change.

The other day I came across a piece Pooja Bedi wrote in one of the editorials in TOI. She spoke about how every action of a celebrity is in the limelight and how people tend to forget that celebrities are humans too! Isn't it true that when we heard about Rahul Mahajan's involvement with drugs most of us just brushed it aside saying 'what else can you expect from someone like him...brought up in a rich family...his parents won't have the time to care..they have all the money and they spend it on all kinds of vices'...? 'CRASH', the best picture Oscar is also about the stereotyping that each one of us tends to do...in varying degrees. Does it really require a big crash, an earth shattering incident, for us to realize that we might be costing someone a life because of the stereotyping that we so conveniently do?

People are capable of change. The good could turn bad and ugly and vice versa. As an individual I have learnt that and I keep that in mind when I make key decisions in my life. Is it possible to do that as a society? Or will bubbling full of talent Kaavya Vishwanathans just lose the lives they almost got because as a society we haven't learnt to be humane?

Monday, July 03, 2006

And the winner is...

Inspite of the FIFA fever, this post is not about the winners in football...it is about another kind of victory. Victory in the court of the Indian consumer!

And the winner is...Vanita Singh! :)
My friend, Vanita, set out against her car insurance providers (Royal Sundaram) in July 2005. When she sent a check last year to renew her insurance, the money was promptly debited from her account. Sometime later, they sent her a notification saying that she needed to pay some additional amount. She was out of country and did not read the notification for a month or so. Royal sundaram's way of dealing with the problem was slapping a 'compulsory excess' amount of about 5 times the additional amount she was to pay! All this amount was adding up to quite a lot more than what competition was offering insurance at. She decided it wasn't worth renewing her insurance with royal sundaram and asked them to cancel the insurance and refund her money. After a couple of months of follow up and long distance calls (the local office refused to entertain her calls or give her any information) they sent her a check for about 3/4 the money she had paid. When she asked for clarification all she was told was 'this is the amount the underwriters decided. We don't have any more information'.

How unnerving is that! That is when she decided to go to consumer court.

It did take a lot of time and appearance at the court over the last year. It also meant taking time off from work for this! But she persisted and finally won the case. She will be getting back her money with interest!

I am just happy to note that some systems are still working around here! :)