Kite runner

Finished reading the kite runner by Khaled Hosseini. The story is set in Afghanistan. The time spans before the war, during the invasion and during the Taliban. One of my friends who had read the book had described the book as 'interesting'.

Before I started reading, i had read the reviews that were printed at the back cover. One of the newspapers had called the book 'painfully honest'. I wondered what that meant, but found out soon.

Its one thing to tell a story as a third person, by naming the protagonists as A, B and C and say A hurt B, so A was such a kind of a person, whereas its an age apart to tell a story as "I did this, I could not stand up for what i loved, I was a coward".

Since I had never read anything so honest, the book impressed me. More than the story, it was the narration that i liked. The language had been kept very simple.

The book also gives you a quick account of Afghan life during the Russian invasion and the Taliban rule, of the kabab loving-community and their values, their short-comings and misgivings, their life and death.

The one line that lingered in my mind long after i read the book came when the first gun shots were heard in Afghanistan- that was the time when Afghanistan was like any other peaceful country (i swear it was difficult for me to imagine a peaceful Afghanistan).

The children were terrified when they heard the gunshots and they huddled together and their care-taker tells them that the sound is because 'they are hunting ducks'.

The author says 'they were foreign sounds to us. the generation of Afghan children whose ears would know nothing but the sounds of bombs and gunfire was not yet born'

Yes, an interesting book, but also deep, dark and disturbing. but i believe you wil grow a little wiser after you read it

Her pets, her life

Few images linger in your mind long after you see them. Few moisten your eyes atleast for a moment.
 

This is one such photo, published in 'The Hindu' on 25 January 2008. The picture shows a woman hugging her pets for the last time, just before she hands them over to the health workers, who would eventually kill them.

The killing or 'culling' as they call it is going on across the country wherever there has been signs of the bird flu.

the photo was taken by Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury. it brought tears to my eyes, just thought i would share it with you.

Foodie alert

There probably isn’t anything I enjoy more than talking about food! Imagine my joy when I found this website that has the food joints, cafes, bars all listed down with address and phone numbers and a few reviews :)

burrp.com is a total foodie website, though very few Chennai joints have been reviewed, they do give you a fair idea of what to expect regarding cuisine and prices.

And of course, spreading the love, I am gonna do what I think I can do for the site- talking abt food. In fact, I have already written reviews for few food places in Chennai :)

It is classified on the basis of cities. The cities listed are Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkota, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune. I noticed that cities like Mumbai and Bangalore had more active people on the site.

I saw many reviews and also more joints listed there. In any case, the Chennai space is not bad at all!! I have not found any other website that’s exclusive for restaurants and cafes and burrp.com is gonna do just great for me :)

So next time you are looking for some place to have coffee/lunch/dinner have a peek at this site. And if you did visit any interesting restaurants, share your experience on the site by writing a review.

I just noticed the number of smileys i used in this post, my maximum so far in a single post i guess. Well, it happens. 'Food' is one of the only two topics that deserves so many smileys. the other one is, of course 'guys' ;)

Expert opinions. On resolutions and the city weather conditions

This morning when I went for a walk, I started sweating within about few paces. I loved that fact! My heavy duty (walking!) exercise was making me sweat!

But as I was listening to the news on my headset radio, I slowly I realized that the humidity today is 88% and that’s why I was sweating, not because of my "work out".

'Oh yeah', I thought, 'I live in Chennai'. And my beloved city is just turning to be its tropical worst; we are at the end of January and that’s just the end of the hot weather and the beginning of the hotter one. Come March and…no, I don’t want to talk about it, not yet atleast.

With a sudden rush of urgency, I realised that I had been planning a day trip to Pondy, then a trip to Thalavoi and more places that aren’t really at their best during the summer. Oh! I thought, I have to rush, those place will be unbearable by next month. I had started planning these trips ages ago.

I remember postponing these trips last year because of the summer and now here I am, again doing the same thing.

I should have taken a resolution this new year. Something like ‘I will do what I plan to do and will never postpone it’. But now January has almost ended and which idiot takes resolutions well into the year anyway??

Just 11 more months for the next new year, I will take my resolutions then. Hey, I am not postponing, its just that, this is just the logical thing to do, don’t you think? Resolutions aren’t exactly effective if they aren’t taken at ‘new year’. this aint an excuse, this is.. "Logic"! you get my point, right?? ;)

And the worst book I ever read is…

If God was a banker. Author: Ravi Subramanian. Publishers: Rupa & Co. Shelf price: Rs.195 (Rupa style)
**Disclaimer: This is only my personal opinion. this is not meant to offend anyone**
First things first. Mr. Ravi Subramanian cant write a book. Its truly unfortunate that he decided to. Rupa & co surprises me! They are the same people who have brought out great books time and again and I definitely did not expect such a bad publishing from them.

I guess the author is a banker and an MBA grad. For the only saving grace of the whole work is the tid-bits of information that he has written on banking and the few strategies employed during the emergence of retail banking in the country.

The book is so bad that it has put ideas into my head. I have been thinking…why don’t I write a book? If Rupa can publish this book, they will sure consider my scribbling, wont they? and if the book does get published, it is definitely bad news for you all, because you HAVE to read it! Dont worry about paying, i will send you free copies. and then i will call you up to discuss what you think about charecter X or the situation Y. If you say you have not read it through, I will be deeply hurt, and will call you again after few hours to see how many pages you finished reading! (evil grin)

I remember the time I started blogging, I used to worry my close friends to read the trash I used to write. My blog entries never take more than a few minutes to read, but a book? Hee hee hee

On second thoughts, since this is just the start of the year, I have decided it is not good to have such evil thoughts. This is the happy new year and such malevolent actions right at the beginning of the year may bring me bad luck, so I am shelfing my book ideas. This is a temporary arrangement and I will let you know when i cease to be good. Till then, have a happy new year!

Whose money is it anyway!?

When it was found out that petroleum gas could be used as a motor fuel, the world was thrilled. When it was found that the cylindered liquified petroleum gas (LPG) -the domestic cooking gas can drive cars, the middle class was thrilled.

Their petrol bills could be cut to as much as 40%-50%. with the upper class anyway using the fuel guzzler limos, they never had too much of worry of their fuel bills anyway.

Now, this was another technological revolution, soon enough, the bootspace in the cars were cleared to make room for bright red LPG cylinders that would save a bunch of money replacing petrol and diesel.

A bunch of smart business minds sprang to action. Connecting the cars engines with the cylinder adaptor was a flourishing business for the next few weeks.

But the LPG that government sells in a subsidised price cannot be used for driving, it is meant for cooking food and is rationalised for every family.

So the government was quick to proclaim the usage of the cylindered gas for driving as illegal. there were frequent raids on the roads and cars which had cylinders were fined heavily.

Commercial gas was introduced. It was definitely more expensive than the domestic cooking gas, but still a lot cheaper that liquid petrol. Smart entrprising entrepreneurs took up the business of converting petrol cars to LPG operating cars.

It was done at a cost of 10,000 - 20,000 INR. Though thats a lot of money, people still got their cars converted with the long term benefit in mind.

So, now we had commercial gas pumps, cars with special internal tanks for the gas. So you think all is good and legal. But, in addition to all this, we also have few more enterprising and entrepreneurial people and we also have few more red cylinderful of subsidized LPG which costs cheaper than the commercial LPG. So what happens?

One good motor, fitted onto a pump. Two pipes - one for suction and one for release. all this in one garage. you have a well earning business. A gas-converted car pulls up into the garage and the driver unloads a cooking gas cylinder from the dickey, which he had probably picked up from his kitchen.

The garage boy fits one pipe to the cylinder and the other to the gas tank in the car and starts the pump. the gas is transfered from the cylinder to the car tank in few minutes. It costs 20-30 INR. the garage fills over 50 cars a day, thats good money and less overhead for a business. The car owner saves about 40% on his car fuel. All sounds well.

Though win-win, though enterprising, it is definitely illegal, because all said and done, its the gas thats supposed to be used for cooking that is used for driving and that is definitely not fair. All parties involved know it, thats why these garages are never on the main road, but always in shady corners!

and of course, the police who come raiding are bribed by the garage owners. The way it looks, you would think India must have the best Intelligence force, but the truth is, this is the story of the world. We like to make money, out of anything and everything.

But it looks to me that we Indians are definitely better at it! and we will stay better at it as long as we know that getting away after getting caught is never too difficult!

'I quit'

Few posts ago, I was writing about the most difficult thing to do, this post is about the easiest thing to do. I did not get enough time to do my usual informal survey for this topic, so I will just put in my thoughts. As far as I am concerned, the easiest thing that I have ever felt I could do was, to quit. Just that, simply quitting. Thats one action that gives you immediate relief and that has so far been the easiest thing to do. I am not talking about just me, I have noticed this with lots of people around also.

Im sure you already got my point, but to reinforce it, I will give you an example. Jogging is a great way to exercise, when you start your run, you feel good (because you almost hear your fat cells going 'pop' :) !!).

But after you have run a long time, at a point when you are gasping and panting, all you want to do - is to stop running. Nothing else matters. Its as simple as that, You JUST want to quit running! and catch your breath.

If you have ever jogged, Im sure you will agree with me. When you are gasping for air, you think you are going to die or choke, though you know very well that not too many people fall and die on jogging tracks.

Still, the facts and the statistics cannot reason with your brain at that time, because you want to stop. that is definitely the easiest thing to do.

It takes people with extra-ordinary will to keep going and not succumb to the temptation of doing the easiest thing. This simple example is very similar to many things that we face everyday.

Anything difficult always comes with a loophole - and that hole will be the 'easiest thing to do'. in most cases, its just plain old escape. and everytime we turn our back and flee, we are making a voluntary choice. We know what we are doing, we know the consequences.

In short, we know that we are quitting, but we do it all the time, because sometimes in life, you are just exhausted and to quit is the easiest thing to do.

You just want to get over with it, quit it and get on with whatever is left. Easy temptation I would say, desparation - you would say, but you know we have all done that sometimes. Some other times, thats the last thing we do. But we do.

Not to mention, in few cases, quitting would be the best thing to do. Thats the situation I would love to be in. Picture this, its the easiest, its the best..now, how cool is that??