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Eyesores, Desire and Renunciation @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 6)

A couple of gems sparkled: Chokher Bali by Tagore (Tagore adorns the posters of The Takshashila Institution), Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup and Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

Lakshmi spoke about the unputdownable Chokher Bali (translated as eyesore), a powerfully written emotional narrative. This fast-paced love triangle captures the protagonist Mahendra’s quandary as he is besotted with his wife Ashalata but Binodini, a young widow, also captivates him. Tagore is a master of depicting human emotion and the complicated structures of human relationships. There’s a version on the Epic channel in Netflix too though Lakshmi emphasizes that nothing can beat the book as Tagore’s writing is subtle and more focused on undercurrents than any melodrama or stereotype. Farewell my friend is another book by Tagore that was rated highly during this BYOB party.

Indira Vijaysimha was enamored by Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup. This series of lyrical love stories brings together geologists, clairvoyants, turtles and a yeti and spans across the emotional and geographical faultlines of the Andamans, Myanmar and the Himalayas. “The book feels like a response to Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement and it reminds me of Dorris Lessing’s trilogy in terms of the scale of things. Life is so fragile, one moment a mountain stands tall and the next moment, it falls into the sea,” she said.

Click on this link to read a very interesting interview with the author.

You can read an excerpt of the story here.

Sajal Raj Gautam talked about the classic quest novel Siddhartha. The book talks about how Siddhartha leaves a life of privilege to discover himself – the classic enlightenment story. More about Herman Hesse, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1946 here: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1946/hesse/auto-biography/

More books in Part 7.

Short Book Review: Pyre by Perumal Murugan

SBR: My feelings for Pyre by Perumal Murugan fall somewhere in between those for One Part Woman and Poonachi by the same author. One Part Woman was a revelation, Poonachi was a bit of disappointment. Pyre was a pleasure to read, but the story doesn’t tell you anything new. It reveals the characters and the society beautifully and conveys the pathos of the situation young lovers across the caste boundaries find themselves in very well. You can feel a small, but bustling, town and an isolated village with equal ease around you. And you can identify with the couple’s optimism and despair both.

The translation is well-done and even the translator’s note is worth reading.

To read or not to read: Yes, although no need to move it to the top of your To-be-read pile.

Confessions, Feminists and Talking Points @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 5)

Samarth talked about some high philosophy when he got the book The Confessions of Saint Augustine by Augustine, Edward B Pusey (Translator), a spiritual self-examination originally written in Latin and traces Augustine’s restless youth and his spiritual voyage. Augustine was one of the most important exponents of Christianity. The School of Life showcases his work here, good if you are looking for an overview. Samarth talked about the time-space continuum and the principle of singularity that Augustine espoused. Unlike the Greeks who believed in nothingness, Augustine believed that God existed out of time and space and therefore there is no ‘before’ God. He is believed to have sown the seeds of the autobiography genre.

The book is available on Gutenberg as well. If you want an Existential Comics approach to Augustine, check this out.

Image result for why we should all be feminists amazon Smitha came upon a podcast by Chimamanda Adichie on Why We Should All be Feminists. She was impressed by Adichie’s words:

I would like to ask that we begin to dream about and plan for a different world. A fairer world. A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: we must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently…

The book adapted from this TEDx talk is a twenty-first take on feminism and contemporary sexual politics. Here’s an excerpt from the book: https://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/adichie.html

When the dangerous waters of feminism led to the inevitable gender debate, Abhaya recommended reading Nivedita Menon’s Seeing Like a Feminist, a history of feminism in an Indian context.

Image result for sapiens amazon Sowmya, our host at Takshashila, talked about the inescapable Sapiens by Yuval Harari, such a favorite non-fiction. “For me, there is life Before Sapiens and life After Sapiens,” she said. Harari has covered civilization fairly accurately, she says. Some readers did not see eye-to-eye on some of Harari’s claims, particularly the idyllic life of the hunter-gatherer. This is a myth as survival was not a question of luxury; it was hard work and painful and often a losing battle. Almost every reader in the group had an interesting takeaway from this book. It’s become the talking point of 2018.

More books in Part 6.

Short Book Review: Justice by Michael J. Sandel

SBR: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? is a book for our times. It isn’t a self-improvement text about what an individual should be doing, as people sometimes tend to infer from its subtitle. It is about what a just society should look like. In addressing that question, the author draws on ancient to current (western) philosophical thoughts, current and recent (mostly American) political discourses and many legal battles that bring some difficult questions about right and wrong to the fore. If you identify yourself as a liberal in political and social thoughts (like me), it is easy to start believing that in espousing freedom, individual dignity and correction of systemic biases, you have covered all the issues of morality, justice, and social cohesion. But it isn’t so easy. And this book does a good job of making you realize that and to help you question more. If you find liberalism to be just gibberish and think that some good, old values you have learned from tradition are what makes a good society, then you definitely need some of these questions in your life. The limitation of the book for an Indian audience is that it focuses on Western philosophy and American society. But that affects relatability, not the relevance of the book. The book is also immensely readable.

To read or not to read: Yes.

Bastar and Holocausts @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 4)

Image result for the burning forest amazon Krishna had intended to talk about My World and Welcome to it by good old James Thurber, humorous writer and illustrator extraordinaire but he decided that a discussion on The Burning Forest by Nandini Sundar was more important instead. The book talks about the loss of lives of security forces, Maoists, human rights activists, lawyers and ordinary people in Bastar. The story of Bastar is unknown to most people and this book is an eye-opener if you want to know more about the history of the Salwa Judum. Newton, a movie that has delved into this subject, was mentioned. There was disagreement about state property and double standards when it came to tribals. Another book about Bastar that was discussed was Woodsmoke and Leafcups: Autobiographical Footnotes to the Anthropology of the Durwa People by Madhu Ramnath. Here the author focuses on the communal narrative of the Durwa people. Sometimes you need to step out of the world you know to understand that there are many worlds outside the narrative that don’t need to go extinct.

Image result for the boy in the striped pajamas amazon Ada talked about a well-known YA Holocaust fiction called The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne. The story revolves around Bruno and his newfound friendship in devastating times. “We don’t have YA books that explore complex subjects this way in India,” Ada said. The mention of the Holocaust sparked off an intense debate on the many pogroms that have affected so many parts of the world. Be it Auschwitz where even the bravest soldier feel the shivers or the mass graves at Cambodia, be it the slaughter of the Native Americans or the Armenians or the eradication of aborigines across the world, human atrocities are common fare. “It’s just a question of who markets their stories better,” a reader said wryly.

This is a link I stumbled on while writing this post. It’s an interview with Lang Leav, who was born to Cambodian parents who were on the run from the Khmer Rouge. Worth a listen.

More books in Part 5.

Reader Traits and 4 Red Cars @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 3)

Image result for the uncommon reader amazon Anuradha, a voracious reader, enjoyed reading The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett. The premise of the book is adorable- what happens when a monarch becomes a book addict? There will be consequences, of course. With unmistakable British humor, Bennett traces the lifecycle of the reader. A reader is consumed by a book and utterly changed by the time the book is digested. “Consciously and unconsciously, books shape the voice in your head. It changes the way you perceive reality. In this case, the Queen ignores her royal duties and I am sure many of us have ignored our duties as well, especially when we are caught up in a book!” Anuradha said.

The readers in the room sighed in collective agreement.

Image result for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time amazon Manya spoke about the bestselling book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. The story revolves around Christopher John Francis Boone, a boy who knows his facts and has a photographic memory but can not comprehend emotion. “The plot changes every 50 pages and is readable in one sitting,” Manya said. She also read out a delightful passage from the book:

“The psychologist at school once asked me why 4 red cars in a row made it a Good Day, and 4 red cars in a row made it a Quite Good Day, and 5 red cars in a row made it a Super Good Day, and why 4 yellow cars in a row made it a Black Day, which is a day I don’t speak to anyone and sit on my own reading books and don’t eat my lunch and Take No Risks. He said that I was clearly a very logical person, so he was surprised that I should think like this because it wasn’t very logical. I said that I liked things to be in a nice order. And one way of things being in a nice order was to be logical. Especially if those things were numbers or an argument. But there were other ways of putting things in a nice order.”

Check out 20 questions with Mark Haddon and watch him speak on YouTube here.

More books in Part 4.

Short Book Review: The Myth of the Holy Cow by D. N. Jha

SBR: The Myth of the Holy Cow is a book that should not surprise anyone who has made any sincere attempts to understand the history of our country a little bit. But if you encounter those who think that “cow has been sacrosanct since Vedas/forever” or if you are one of those, this book will come in handy. Tracing the literary sources starting from Rigveda, the author clearly and firmly establishes that our ancestors, for a long time, were clearly beef eaters (not just meat eaters) and there was no inherent sacredness to a cow over other animals. The book is particularly relevant in the current times when the efforts to ossify a Hindu, even Indian, identity in terms of narrow dietary and moral preferences are at an all-time high and which tend to stop at nothing in silencing any hints of a complicated and nuanced cultural past.

To read or not to read: Yes, please. In today’s times, you either need to read it for yourself or be armed with arguments presented here to ward off nonsensical claims of others.

Investment and Inequality @ BYOB Party at the Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 2)

Ralph spoke economics at the BYOB Party this time. The book he focused on this time was Investment Philosophies by Aswath Damodaran, a well-known academic and practitioner in finance.

It’s a very interesting book, a reference textbook for management students too. There are some very descriptive exercises which I didn’t do as I was intimidated by the prospect. It’s the perfect guide for investors who want a better understanding of investment strategies including indexing, passive and activist value investing, growth investing, chart/technical analysis, market timing, arbitrage, etc. It’s no book for a novice and is based entirely on empirical studies. No gut feel or magic wand here.

You can follow Damodaran’s YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLvnJL8htRR1T9cbSccaoVw

The economics trend continued with Devanshu who talked about The Price of Inequality by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Turns out inequality doesn’t help the privileged either in the long run. Stiglitz does an in-depth study of what leads to inequality- unpredictable markets and faulty political systems. Adam Smith was discussed as is the case when economics is brought up. Indira mentioned an insightful book called The Growth Delusion by David Pilling, a revelatory and entertaining book about the pitfalls of how we measure our economy and how to correct them. If you are looking for the equivalent of Strunk and White of Economics, look no further than the book Economics in one Lesson by Henry Hazlitt- another good book to understand the economy. To understand the story of runaway capitalism, watch The Lorax.

More books in Part 3.

The Jewel in the Crown and the India Unknown @ BYOB Party at The Takshashila Institution in Nov 2018 (Part 1)

This November, we hosted the BYOB Party along with The Takshashila Institution at Church Street in Bangalore. The ambience of the Institution was perfect for heated book discussions.

Apurba kicked off the BYOB Party with a book by Charles Allen called Plain Tales From The Raj: Images of British India in the 20th Century. Apurba identified with Allen’s book as the book spoke about British cantonments, the kind where she had grown up with clubs where seating arrangements were hierarchical. This oral history of the British Raj threw light on the Anglo-Indian community inIndia and the prejudices they faced.

Another book, Apurba picked up was Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling. It’s available on gutenberg.org as well. Apurba enjoyed Kipling’s observations on life in colonial times. These musings were of a time gone by with rulers who have shed their crown. One must read it keeping this in mind, says Apurba. She added as an aside that there is a park called the Kanha National Park where everything is named after Kipling. You can read more about this park where Jungle Book comes to life here.

M.N Rajeev continued with the theme of the India that remains unknown to Indians when he spoke about a book called Zorami- A Redemption Song by Malasawmi Jacob. This is the first novel ever written by a Mizo (a tribal community in North East India) writer in English. The book tells the story of Zorami the protagonist in the unfolding context of Mizo history, particularly the Mizo Uprising. So little is known about the roots of the Mizo tribe and its history (including that of the uprising in the famine) and strangely there is very little curiosity about this part of the world. The book opened up a region in Indian geography that most Indian readers confine to a single phrase in a textbook. The book is an interesting piece of what could be called faction, an intricate mixture of facts and fiction, the most ideal way to understand history. M.N. Rajeev read out an intriguing excerpt from the book.

Chapter 29: A burned-out stub

“Dinpui, Dinpui, min lo nghak rawh! Min kalsan suh! Wait for me. Don’t leave me!” Sanga mumbles.

A startled Zorami puts down the book she has been reading and gazes at her sleeping husband.

She sits up and shakes him awake. “U Sang, what is it? Who are you calling?”

He sits up and rubs his eyes. She puts a hand on his shoulder and asks, “What is troubling you?”

“A sad dream.”

“Who is Dinpuii?”

After a long silence he tells her.

Dinpuii is the girl he loved. He can’t forget her, though he has tried.

Zorami feels like she’s hurling down into a black abyss.

And then she feels nothing. No anger, no grief, no emotion at all. Only a heavy deadness. “No wonder there’s no spark of romance in our life together. He’s only a burned out stub, poor guy!” she thinks.

At last, in a flat, lifeless voice she manages to ask, “Where is she now?”

“Dead.”

More books in Part 2.

Short Book Review: The Amazon Way by John Rossman

SBR: The Amazon Way is a book about fourteen leadership principles that the author learned from Jeff Bezos during his time at Amazon. Principles are fine, but at its core, it’s a fanboi book, perhaps one of many, which seeks to justify the abusive behavior of a successful man.

Leaving that aside, it is a simply written book, almost mediocre, but that mediocrity makes it accessible. It can be used to challenge something that is totally broken in your organization. For example, if it lacks focus on the customers, or if it’s callous about data and what it tells.

Funnily enough, I can’t find the book on Amazon India right now. Except for the audio version.

To read or not to read: Not for improving your IQ or general knowledge, but it can be a good tool to facilitate a discussion about leadership principles in an organization, which is the context in which it had landed in my lap too.

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