Currently reading

I am currently reading Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography, "Playing it my way". Sachin retired from cricket about a year ago and at that time I wrote a post on how closely I had followed his matches and career. The man, whom I respect immensely for his humility and commitment to the game, has been an inspiration to millions of cricket lovers across the globe.

PS : (3rd January, 2014) Finished reading the book. Hats off to the man who went on to achieve greatness in spite of repeated injuries and breakdowns. Here is an excerpt from the book that left me speechless:

"It was on the eve of that West Indies match that I tried to introduce an element of fun into my batting practice. I was practicing some throw-downs from Gary Kirsten and was just about to wrap up the session when the idea came to me.I decided to close my eyes for six deliveries, just after the bowler released the ball, then I asked Gary if he had noticed anything different. Gary said he hadn't, except that my head was staying up when I was driving. I had to keep my head steady, because with your eyes shut you can easily lose the path of the ball with a very slight movement of the head. When I told him I'd had my eyes closed, he was shocked. I explained that I had watched his wrist position when he released the ball to see if it was, say, an outswinger, and then closed my eyes and visualized the path the ball would travel. After that I went a step further by keeping my eyes shut and telling the fielders where I had hit the ball, based on how and where I felt the ball on the bat. It was just for fun and I only did it once, but it did help me focus on the release of the ball, which is so important for a batsman."

That is unbelievable ! That is genius !!

Recently read

I just finished reading Civilian Warriors by Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of Blackwater Inc. Mr. Prince presents the "other side" of the story of the infamous company that according to him was made a scapegoat for doing what it was contractually obliged to do. Blackwater, whose employees served in some of the toughest theaters of war, Afghanistan and Iraq had been the very ugly face war profiteering over the last decade. Critics of the company have always pointed to the military-industrial complex that seeks out wars that throw up huge opportunities for companies including "mercenaries" such as Blackwater to profit from the outsourcing of war activities (training, supply, search and rescue, security, intelligence, and mundane administration etc.) The author presents Blackwater's side of the story, the history of "civilian warriors" in not just famous battles but the exploration and settlement of the new world, the constantly changing and ever evolving nature of warfare, the founding of Blackwater to address particular training needs of security forces, the nature of the contracts that the company had with the State Dept and Department of Defense, the company's track record in never failing to protect anyone under their cover, the explosive growth of the company, the tragedies in Iraq that led to civilian deaths, the incessant attacks from the left and the media, the gradual erosion of public faith and the end of the company as we know it.  Although Blackwater was not the only company in the business of "battle" (there are other famous names such as DynCorp, Executive outcomes, Blue Mountain etc.), it earned the ire of the public, the Iraqi govt, and the democratic regime in Washington for reasons not just confined to their battlefield actions but also from partisan politics that needed a whipping boy. 

Good reads

Read these two books over the last month or so. Excellent ones, strongly recommended.

Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan by M.J. Akbar, one of India's prominent journalists.

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies, by Jared Diamond

In the past, I have enjoyed reading Jared Diamond's other works - "Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel : the fates of human societies".

Hort Park - Singapore

I love the days when I walk back home from work via the Hort Park. Random snaps here have captured the flora on my phone camera, while I soaked in the sun and absorbed the sounds of many different birds, the rustle of the leaves, and the wind in the trees.

A Suitable boy - Vikram Seth

This was the first time I read a book by Vikram Seth. "A suitable boy", set in 1951-1952, is a good read, certainly for someone who is able to understand and appreciate the historical and cultural realities of the early post-independence Indian society. In more than 1400 pages, this novel depicts the happenings in the lives of a few families over a period of one year, while painting a portrait of a newly free India, beset by challenges and attempting to rise to a new dawn.

Conversations with Arjun

Me : Arjun, Did you hear what your teacher told me today ? She said that you are very talkative, that once you open your mouth you never close it.

Arjun:  (with a wide smile) Yes, I know... I just can't stop talking.

Latest read

"Don't sleep, There are snakes", by Daniell Everett is a very interesting book that portrays the life of a missionary linguist among the Piraha tribe of the Amazonian rainforests. Mr. Everett,  a missionary, sponsored by the evangelical churches in the United States to "change the pirahas' hearts", to persuade them to worship the Christian god, and to accept the morality and culture that goes along with that worship, ended up losing his faith in the process and realized the atheist in him. I arrived at this book after listening to a radio documentary on the same topic. 

 

According to Everett, Pirahas showed him that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell. Pirahas seem to value direct experience and observation. Everett observes that "If you want to tell the Pirahas something, they are going to want to know how you came by your knowledge. And especially they will want to know if you have direct evidence for your assertion. He calls it the "Immediacy of Experience" principle. This means that if you haven't experienced something directly, your stories about it are largely irrelevant. This renders Pirahas relatively impermeable to missionaries, who are purveyors of incredible stories of the distant past that no one alive has witnessed. Creation myths are no match for the Pirahas' demand for evidence. According to Everett, there was no sense of sin among the Pirahas, no need to save mankind or themselves. There was acceptance for things the way they are, by and large. Their faith was in themselves and had no fear of death.  He concludes by saying that the Pirahas are an unusually happy and contended people, who are fitter and better adjusted to their environment than any religious person he has ever known.

 

The book also delves deep into his attempt to learn the Piraha language over several decades and gets into details of linguistic research and literature, which can be a little boring to someone not interested in the topic. But he ties it all together by finally focusing on the need to invest time, money and effort in studying languages by invoking the close relationship between language, grammar, culture, and cognition.  He quotes the "Rausing Endangered Language Project's" website  and states that "Today, there are about 6500 languages and half of those are under the threat of extinction within 50 to 100 years. This is a social, cultural, and scientific disaster because languages express the unique knowledge, history, and world view of their communities; and each language is a specially evolved variation of the human capacity for communication."

 

There may not be immediate practical benefits in studying and recording all the endangered languages. But treating languages as repositories of specialized cultural experiences will enable us to realize that they are vital in teaching us different ways of thinking about life and of approaching our day to day life.

Latest read

Excerpts from Ruskin's journal, spread over years and grouped by seasons of the year, "Landour days" compiles several random notes from the writer's diary. They capture Ruskin's musings, experiences, wishful thinking, and angst at certain contemporary events in Mussoorie such as the transformation of the scenic hill  station into a seedy town and the rapid rise of a concrete jungle. A pleasant week end reading, Landour days, is a must read for all Ruskin Bond fans.

Latest read

 

Ruskin Bond's memoir, Scenes from a writer's life focuses on the first twenty one years of his life. Ruskin writes about his family, friends, schools, books read during formative years, the loss of his father and the loneliness that followed, great bonds of friendships developed, life in England, and finally his return to Dehra. For fans of Ruskin Bond's writings, this autobiography lays out the experiences and thoughts that form the well spring of his creative abilities and his inimitable style.

Latest Read

I just went back to an old favorite, whose story had almost faded from my memory. But I found Ruskin Bond's magic irremovable from the words of "The room on the roof." The story starts with the usual Bond style of expressing a scene so beautifully that the reader can visualize every detail, hear every sound, and be pulled into the act with the protagonist. I always find the simplicity with which Bond writes extremely refreshing.

The "Room on the roof" begins thus :
"The light spring rain rode on the wind, into the trees, down the road; it brought an exhilarating freshness to the air, a smell of earth, a scent of flowers; it brought a smile to the eyes of the boy on the road.

The long road wound round the hills, rose and fell and twisted down to Dehra; the road came from the mountains and passed through the jungle and valley and after passing through Dehra, ended somewhere in the bazaar. But just where it ended no one knew, for the bazaar was a baffling place, where roads were easily lost."