Bangalore 10K - Edition 6

The trend that I noted last year - speed inflation- continues. I finished at 53:16, 2 seconds faster than last year, and yet at 634, I still ended up around 200 ranks down. I have to run a full 78 seconds faster to stay in the top 500. Sigh!

I'll never be a pundit!

I hate to admit it but my political judgment is depressingly flawed. Out of the four times I've voted in the Karnataka assembly elections I've either voted for the losing party but ended up approving the winner or picked the winning party but regretted it sorely. Let me explain. In 1999, I thought it would be a good idea if the center and the state had the same parties in power, and so I picked BJP for the state, but congress won that year. S M Krishna turned out to be, in my opinion, the best chief minister we've had in the recent past. I voted Congress in 2004, fairly confident that Krishna would come back to a second term with a full majority but instead we were stuck with a listless Dharam Singh for the next two years. In 2006, I voted Congress again, but this time Kumaraswamy was elected CM. I was sure things would go awfully wrong, but he turned out to be a surprisingly efficient leader.

In the next election I was wrong on two fronts. Firstly, I was swayed by the popular sympathy-towards-the-victim sentiment that brought BJP so many seats. More embarrassingly, I forecast Yeddyurappa to be the statesman-like leader that we longed for. Over 5 long years he made us all regret our judgment every single day.

This time I voted for Congress again and they won. I'm actually hopeful about Mr. Siddaramaiah. I'm not sure how he'll deal with the mining lobbies, and I'm certain he won't have the leeway to reverse any of the badly thought-out populist policies, but there's one thing I'm hoping he will do. Yeddy had the audacity to allocate tax-payer funds to religious institutions of his choice and he had let right wingnuts feel protected when they went about imposing their warped moral codes. Siddaramaiah, on the other hand, is vocally atheist - the second one we've had in our state. I hope he will bring back some sanity to the religious discourse around here. On every other front, given how wrong I've been in the past, I'm already prepared to be disillusioned.

Coursera

My college housed classes in a dilapidated building, exposed us to practical education in impoverished labs, and inflicted on us teachers who would rather be doing something else. I always knew that my schooling was sub-standard, but having ended my education early, I had no real benchmark to compare it with. Until Coursera came along!

What’s not to like about Coursera. As a phenomenon, I find it uplifting to know that there are scholars willing to expend considerable energy in making courses for no easily quantifiable benefits. There’s a certain kick in doing courses with 60000 other people, a majority of them studying them not because they are investing in themselves, but because they were mildly curious about the topic. You don’t have entrance tests or heartbreaking rejections. There’s no opportunity cost to pay or penalty for deciding you don’t want to continue. Best of all, it has given me a reason not to hate my commute anymore. 

Students in my college, now, must be better off knowing they can use resources other than the ones we relied on, low-cost photocopies of notes from a marginally better-run university in our neighbourhood.

Civilization isn't nigh

The water fountains in our office dispense at a stingy trickle and in the time needed to fill an entire bottle you usually find another person waiting to get a drink; some wait to fill a cup, others to top their bottle up. In my mind the social contract dictates that cups trump bottles so I usually yield access to the tap even if I’m in the middle of filling my bottle. Most often people nod, smile, say thanks, or on the rare occasion insist on waiting. However, many others, in numbers larger than I would have guessed, don’t even acknowledge the gesture and reach for the tap with a sense of entitlement. I had promised myself to wait till I encounter at least 5 people who lack the courtesy to thank before I made this post. I hit my target in the first week.

Denizens of a crowded country are probably habituated to seizing an opportunity and moving on. You see disregard for fellow humans in traffic or at any ticket counter. Maybe I am unfairly wearing the firang goggles that people of my generation pick up on their travels abroad, but I feel disheartened. If you don’t mind being a jerk at office where you’ll meet your colleagues repeatedly, why would you be civil to strangers?

Backyard Bat

I've tried a few tricks to attract birds into the little backyard garden we have at our home. I put up this bird nest on one of the trees but all that managed was just one inspection by an unimpressed squirrel.

I also put up this bird feeder to a neighboring tree but that went unused as well.

My next strategy had long-term focus. I planted a Muntingia tree, commonly called the Singapore Cherry in these parts. Although this is not an endemic species (and makes me feel guilty) it's a favorite of the sunbirds and the flowerpeckers that already visit us. The sapling has taken a liking to its home and is thriving. Yet I haven't been able to coax any of these birds to make this garden a permanent home.

A couple of weeks ago we had a surprise resident; this lone bat that has been regularly roosting on a branch of the gooseberry tree.

I'm not sure what species he is or why he seems to be alone (I always thought bats live only in colonies), but he's been coming back regularly. He had a difficult settling-in period because our gardener believes he will bring us bad luck and was bent on chasing him out. After explaining that the bat might be helping him by eating the bugs here he reluctantly dropped his animosity. Although he wasn't the kind of wings I was hoping to attract this guy has made the garden a little more interesting.

You know you are in Japan...

...when a toilet seat puts a gaming console to shame.

Third evening in Beijing

Nobody told me that Google maps is unreliable in China. On this blustery cold evening in Beijing I decided to ditch the cab and walk back home, guided by Google maps. Three times after the map had insisted that the fountain in front of a mall was my hotel I decided to give up and ask for help. I steeled up for all the translation issues that I was sure would ensue. The very first person I stopped on the street surprised me when he spoke fairly good English. He had no idea where Marriott was, though. This is when he surprised me again. Instead of just walking away he fished out his cellphone from his coat pocket, looked up the number for that hotel and was in conversation with the front desk person, asking for directions. "Come with me, he said" already walking purposefully while still orienting himself to the landmarks that he must have just learned about. While I followed him I apologized if this was taking him away from his destination. He decided that that didn't merit a response and instead asked me where I was from. When I told him he mentioned that there are not too many Indians who come to Beijing during winter. I explained why I was there and he heard me out passively.

Meanwhile we probably approached the last landmark that he was familiar with so he picked up the phone and was on the call with the hotel personnel again. He again gestured me to follow him and went on his way, seemingly more eager to get there than I was. I trundled along still looking for the best way to express my gratitude. He finally stopped when we spotted the Marriott logo and he nodded as if to say "my job here is done". I told him how much I appreciated his help and then added "Xièxiè". By now, I had said that greeting enough times to know that my pronunciation was horrible. He still didn't break into a smile. He nodded again turned around and left. I said thanks one more time, in English this time to make up for the botched mandarin one but he was busy running away.

There should be a name for this moment during a travel to a new city when, after receiving kindness from a random stranger, you abruptly stop judging said place.

Class Apartheid

If you keep your eyes open you'll see instances of class apartheid in India at every other step. Take my neighbor for example, who never bothered to learn the name of her gardener of 15 yrs because it is so much easier to just call him "Mali". Brochures of real estate companies sell you the dream house where the service lift is so well concealed that the cleaning staff will be virtually invisible. The houses are "3.5 bhk", the half-bedroom referring, of course, to the servant quarters. 

The other day our team drove to a resort called Bluemoon retreat (Sue me guys, I'm about to defame you) just outside Bangalore. After the usual shebang- paintball, cricket, volleyball etc- we settled down for lunch and called our driver, Shiva, to join us. Five minutes later we got a call back from Shiva telling us that he was denied entry into the lunch area. We confronted the manager about this, and he seemed surprised that we were even bringing it up. He even had the Colonel Jessup scowl that said "I don't have the inclination to explain myself to a group that enjoys its manufactured experiences in the sanity that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it". His actual words, though, were, "Drivers are not allowed here, sir. It doesn't look nice".  We eventually sorted it out but not before the conversation had reached newer levels of absurdity. 

If there is a nice thing about class apartheid it is that you can never take your status for granted (except if you are, say, Siddharth Mallya). There's always a level above you and the tables can turn in very little time. 24hrs in my case! The very next day, it was my turn to be denied lunch. I attended a christening at The Bangalore Club dressed in a Kurta and, horror of horrors, sandals. They ignored me initially because they thought I was the cameraman. When they realized I was a guest, they came over to warn me. But when they came close they caught sight of the chappals. That was the deal breaker. In fact, they hate chappals so much there that they won't even deign to say its name, referring to it instead by a euphemism, "open footwear". They promptly threw me out. Luckily there were two other schoolmates of mine that were in similar outfits. We left without protest, and plotted our revenge over fish-curry-rice at Koshy's. Watch this space for an announcement about a club that will have a zero-tolerance approach towards any formal attire

Reading in 2012

Here's my reading list from 2012. While I probably didn't match the volumes of previous years, I feel a greater percentage of the books I read this year made it to my tier recommendations.

• Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman: Do you know those books that affect you in a way that you can never look at the world the same way again? This book was in that category.
• Foundation - Isaac Asimov: Now I know what the fuss about Asimov is all about.
• Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut: I've not had a list in the last three years that didn't feature Vonnegut.
• The Meadow - Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark: I already blogged about this one.
• The Longest Day - Cornelius Ryan: I'm not sure if it's the quality of the work or the momentousness of its subject - Normandy Landings - that elevates this book. We were driving through the Normandy coast visiting the beaches, coincidentally during the anniversary of the landings, while I was reading this book and that probably left a strong impression.
• The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach: I went from being an obsessive sports fan in my teens to one who came to view it as a big waste. This novel about a prodigal baseball player reminded me once again why sports viewing, in its chasing of the fleeting moments of magic and beauty, is so compelling. I almost forgave myself for all the wasted hours in front of the TV.
• Born to Run- Christopher McDougall: This one's a witty read even if you are not addicted to running.    Reading about ultra runners made my pursuits of middle distances and half marathons look trivial. Meanwhile it also articulated why it's ok to surrender to the highs of long distance running. I shaved 4 minutes off my 10km timing just days after finishing the book. 
• The Shining - Stephen King.

The second tier of recommendations

• Nudge - Richard Thaler
• Poor Economics - Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo
• American Pastoral - Philip Roth
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
• Magic of Reality - Richard Dawkins
• My Man Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse

There was only one book this year that I started but didn't finish: 'Change by Design' by Tim Brown. Another blog post on why I gave up on it.  

The Secularization of Festivals

Back in the day, different festivals meant different things. Sankranti was about sharing the bounties of your harvest. Ugadi was about reminding yourself to have the equanimity to accept both the sweet and bitter of life. Diwali was about driving to Hosur to buy cheap crackers put together by child labourers in Sivakasi so that you could indulge in a large-scale assault on my right to clean air. Ganesha Habba was about introducing toxic lead paints into all our local water bodies.

Now all festivals mean the same thing. "This XXX, head to your nearest mall to buy things you don't really need for a discount that's not really there". Replace XXX with the festival of your choice - Christmas, Diwali, Eid or Navroz- and you know that that announcement works. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, the secularization of our festivals is complete.

Notes (to self, and others) on conservation

Just because you do the following don't mean you are a conservationist
* Watching BBC nature documentaries
* Recycling your waste
* Recognizing and photographing wild birds
* Sporting "Coorg Wildlife Society" bumper stickers (Who is behind that proliferation, anyway!?)
* Going on treks with Bangalore Mountaineering Club

Book Recommendation: The Meadow

One of the joys of reading a work of fiction is when you finish the book, you experience a sensation of leaving a world behind. Especially in the case of a tragedy when you feel attached enough with the imaginary world that you feel a cloud of gloom hanging over your head but detached enough that you feel gratified from experiencing that world and at the same time have no problem getting on with real life. When the work is non-fiction, however, and it concerns a land that you've visited and an incident that you were old enough to remember vividly, the sadness won't be compartmentalized anymore.

The Meadow describes the events around the kidnapping of six foreign tourists from the Kashmir valley in 1995. Too many of us are taught to believe that Kashmir is a simplistic case of a neighbour trying to snatch what is rightfully ours. Somehow the whole place is filled with single dimensional innocent cutouts that are caught in a game played by politicians. And perhaps, the blacks and whites of that portrait just have to be inverted to see Pakistan's version. With its thorough research, this account digs deep into many of the characters, and perhaps, that's why left me feeling defeatist about whether it's possible to extricate ourselves out of the mess. Both the people of the valley and the officials who govern them are victims for the most part, but also can be perpetrators in measures that vary with circumstance. The role of the neighbour does not come as a surprise but what's most disappointing is the duplicity of my own country. Everything seems to be set up, on all sides, to win the tactical day-to-day battles even at the risk of dehumanizing everyone in the process. So forget about the border getting decided amicably any time soon. Forget about not worrying about bombs going off in our parliaments and in our trains. Forget about repatriating people who were chased out of their ancestral homes. This mess is here to stay for a while.

I wanted to also add that you should read the book for its extensive research and its effective prose, but, like I said, stepping back and appreciating the aesthetics of a narrative of something so upsetting is hard to do just yet.

The Caste Trap

I believe that there is such a thing as a poverty trap and that a good portion of the people born in poor families will die poor too. I also believe that any decent civilized state has a responsibility in creating enough opportunities for poor people to escape their predicament. My country's response to that was caste-based reservation (ok! ok! reservation targets other aspects of social justice than poverty alone, but let's keep it simple here). I'm not as singularly oppposed to reservation as most urban educated middle class folks from my generation are but here's my beef with it. It ends up creating a "self-reinforcing mechanism which causes casteism to persist" (and here i'm borrowing from Costas Azariadis and John Stachurski, "Poverty Traps," Handbook of Economic Growth, 2005) as this little table shows. This is from a public school in a remote village in the Pandavapura Taluka of Mysore district. They proudly show off the number of kids from the lower castes who are enrolled in their schools. They probably have targets to meet too. I'm not grudging the kids their rightful place in that school, but I cringed when I saw this kind of reporting in school after school. While attempting to dismantle the poverty trap, I believe we are creating a robust caste trap.

Whale watching at San Juan Islands

I wonder what it would be like to get inside the head of an orca. Maybe I'll find that their undulations at the surface are nothing but a part of their regular breathing. Maybe I'll discover that their enthusiastic jumps and splashy landings are nothing but a mundane response to a mundane stimulus that we don't know about. Maybe they are sticking to their groups just because there is safety in numbers. Maybe it's not really as much fun as it appears to be.

I don't know why they do things they do, but on this bright, clear, un-Seattle-like, warm evening near San Juan Islands, these whales gamboled, splattered and played and infected us with their apparent joy. For two hours they convinced us that we were in paradise too.

Ankegowda's library

Back in high school our curriculum included an essay about a craftsman from rural Karnataka who earned his living carving hand-made combs from wood. The focus of the essay was on how modernization was flooding the market with cheap plastic combs and in the process taking away our protagonist's livelihood.The pathos in the essay was persuasive and we were convinced that the government had to step in and help this artisan. Decades of Nehru-Gandhi had also ensured that we were sold on the idea of a nanny-state. Just to trigger a debate, our teacher, without letting us in on her own beliefs, had asked us to explain why we think the government had a role to play in this. Didn't the craftsman have the responsibility to adapt?

I had been unable to decide back then. I was in a similar dilemma last weekend when, while traveling around Mysore, we stumbled on one Mr.Ankegowda. The protagonist here used to be an employee with the sugar factory in Pandavapura. During his tenure there Mr.Ankegowda dedicated nearly 80% of his salary to buying books and in the course of time built a personal library of nearly 10,000 books. He lost his full time job at the factory and turned to his library as a full time occupation. Mr Khoday, of Old Monk fame, was so impressed with the collection that he had a library built. After moving in to its new home the library grew to its current size, boasting about 30k volumes. It has taken enormous resourcefulness on the part of the collection's owner. Even on the day I was there, Mr. Ankegowda was excited about Mysore university auctioning off some of the books from its library that didn't see too much circulation.

Now the beast is big enough that it can't sustain itself and Mr. Ankegowda has been persuading the government to step in and do its bit. Personally, I'm not convinced if state revenue should be used to sustain one man's obsession, but I must say that the place has enough charm that I'd be disappointed to see it neglected. When you are near Mysore, be sure to visit and spend some time at this place. The library lends itself better to serendipitous discovery rather than planned browsing so hop from one stack to the other. You are likely to get served tea by Mr. Ankegowda's wife and if you are friendly enough you might even get invited for lunch. Meanwhile, get the shy Mr. Ankegowda to warm up to you and let you into his secret cache- coins, first editions of various magazines, rare gazettes. On your way out be sure to drop a little something into a box labelled 'Hundi'. There are some obsessions worth preserving.

The 10k run - edition 5

Two years ago, I ran the Bengaluru 10k in 55:07 and finished 447th. This time I timed 53:18 and yet finished 459th. One of three things is happening:

• Semi-serious amateur runners from other cities are starting to participate in this event (I did see a lot of Chennai and Hyderabad tees). 
• Bangaloreans are training harder. 
• More and more people are taking up running. 

 Whatever the reason, these stats clearly indicate a speed inflation and are actually quite motivating. Not all stats are that encouraging though. Take this one for its sheer unattainability; a guy from our football gang finished the circuit in 37:12.

Corbett

Safaris are designed to be frantic so that you increase your exposure to the marquee species of the place. You run from one place to the other alarming some animals and annoying others. They are fun but they are also disingenious in that they misrepresent the forest by turning it into a spectacle it usually is not. For me the truest sense of the rhythms of the Corbett National park came when we were motionless.

The first was on the top of a watch tower where we spent a little over four hours. This was at a distance of less than half a kilometer from where we had earlier spotted a tiger. There were a few dozen deer lazing in the sun and our knowledge of the tiger filled the air with such a sense of anticipation that none of the 20-odd people on the tower dared speak above a whisper for nearly 3 hours. And in that time what happened was what usually happens in a forest, nothing! Some deer moved their ears occassionally and some birds dropped by at the water hole for a drink or two. A couple of bee-eaters would leave their perch excitedly only to return within the same second. Apart from that everything else moved reluctantly. Even time.

The previous night had had a different cadence to it. We were woken up by thunder and lightning threatening to raze our guesthouse down. The winds had slammed our windows so hard that their glass had shattered and the violence had gone on for very long. I can't tell you how long because the experience was just as time-distorting as our stay on the machan but in the other direction.

The most memorable moment was when our guide heard a noise and quickly parked his car, killed the engine and started communicating in sign language. A few seconds later we heard the grunt of a tiger from not more than 300m. Our guide was confident that this was a tigress calling out to her newly independent offsprings and that one or more of them would respond. For an eternity nothing happened. Only the jungle fowl and langur seemed extra chipper. Suddenly, about 50m behind us, a handsome young male crossed our path in the direction of the call. There's nothing quite like seeing a tiger in the wild.

The Great Living Chola Temples

I've written enough about the Big Temple at Thanjavur, but on my last visit there I got to visit the two lesser known cousins of the great Chola monument. The three temples in the image above are, from left to right, Brihadeeshwara Temple at Thanjavur, Gangaikondacholapuram temple and the Airavateshwara temple at Darasuram, all built within 2 centuries of each other by rulers of the Chola dynasty. I've tried to represent them in the actual proportion of their sizes. Clearly the Thanjavaur monument dwarfs the rest, but the two smaller ones more than make up in terms of their sculptural brilliance. The one at Darasuram, especially, is a treat. Even on a Sunday, my wife and I were the only two people inside the fortification that encloses the main temple. Some pictures here.

The perfect insurance against divorce

It took 42 signatures, 6 photographs, 2.5 hrs, 3 witnesses, 14 sheets of paper and lots of overall bureaucratic ill will to get our marriage registered. I didn't think I would say this, but even the cameraman-choreographed reception ceremony at a hindu wedding, where you have to stand on a stage, face harsh flashlights, and farcically smile through an evening, pales in comparison with the pointlessness of all the hoops that you have to jump through at the registrar office. The experience was as nerve-wracking as walking around the fire seven times while my dhoti was slipping away bit by bit. And what's with the denial of courtesy? The officers either had neem leaves for breakfast or they were spiritually offended by the idea of marriage itself because they frowned through the whole rigmarole and refused to even make eye contact. In the end we did celebrate the legal sanction, but on a day like this it's hard not to be libertarian.

Long flights

I'm as guilty as the next guy when it comes to taking the good stuff in life for granted and focusing too much on what's not going well. However, if there's one thing that never stops piquing my sense of wonder it is a take-off. Even in my most ragged states - deprived of sleep and with the circadian rhythm anything but rhythmic- I perk up for just the minute that it takes for liftoff and never fail to feel that momentary "I can't believe that that happened" feeling.

My second favorite thing about flying, and this applies only to long flights and the inevitable waiting in transit lounges, is the time I get to catch up on reading and watching the latest movies. Here's the list from last week's flights

• Books

1. Foundation - Isaac Asimov
2. Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

• Movies
1. Adventures of Tintin
2. 50/50
3. Ides of March
4. Madagascar
5. One day
6. Moneyball

The consequence, of course, is to be a zombie for at least a couple of days after the journey. 

Auroville Marathon - 2012

The tropical cyclone Thane that hit the east coast in Dec-2011 has taken a toll on the vegetation in Auroville, and the thousands of trees that lay flattened all along the Marathon trail wasn't a pretty sight. That little detail aside, personally for me, everything else was better in this edition compared to the last one. I knocked off more than a minute and a half from my time from last year to finish in 2:07:55. I even recovered quickly enough to take a 16hr flight to the US the very next day without major discomfort.

Thanks to my fancy GPS phone, I could even pace myself well, resisting the temptation to go faster when the legs were fresh.This is how I did in each of the 21 odd kms

The standout memory from this trip was the initiation of several of my ex-colleagues into running, thanks to my friend, Rosie. I will never forgot how Arunski running his first half marathon, cantered across the finish, assumed the Usain 'lightning' Bolt pose, and asked "When's the next Marathon?".

The Art of Fielding

There are a gazillion movies based on the theme of an underdog sports team overcoming odds to make it big. Invariably tucked in that narrative is usually an errant protagonist who finds redemption at the very end. I'm a sucker for those plots when it comes to movies, but I never thought I'd fall for it in a book too until I read Chad Harbach's Art of Fielding.

The novel was gripping from start to finish, all along making me reflect on my own sports obsessions. Here's my background; I went from being a sports fanatic who followed Cricket, NBA, Formula 1, EPL and everything in between to one who almost watched no sport in a very short time. I remember I had already tipped over to this conclusion even before I read this bit in Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent " sports -- that's another crucial example of the indoctrination system, in my view... it offers people something to pay attention to that's of no importance... keeps them from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about." Anyway, I was cured of all sports addiction except the one called Test Cricket. I've wondered often why that one has been so hard to shake off and this little text from Art of Fielding sums up why sports-viewing can be so compelling "The Human Condition being basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty,can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not." While I know nothing of baseball, I could relate several pieces of the book to my own joy of watching cricket. In some oblique way I could also relate it to the travails of three fading stars in our own cricket team; Dravid who seems to have lost his sense of timing, as much in his shot-making as in his retirement planning, Laxman, whose insistence on sticking to his place has finally made it legal to use "unaesthetic" and "Laxman" in the same sentence, and that genius called Tendulkar, who seems to be selling his soul in the pursuit of some arbitrary numbers. I'm not sure if these protagonists will find their redemption and finish on a high, but right now they are effectively de-addicting me from test cricket.

Turtles of Sri Lanka

So in the short time between my last post and now I went and got married, and made a trip to Sri Lanka with my new bride. I don't think I'll get the time to blog about all the places we went to, but I couldn't resist talking about our most wonderful encounter with Green Sea Turtles at the Hikkaduwa beach.

This photo is of one of two turtles we saw at the beach. Both of them are apparently so regular that the locals have given them names, Rosie and Monica. The two seemed so comfortable with humans that they almost behaved like dogs, accepting sea-weed from swimmers, approaching humans and swimming around them. This one swam so close to me that at one point she propelled herself by pushing me with her flipper.

While swimming with the big turtles was beautifully life-affirming, learning about these turtles at a nearby hatchery was sobering. They are still hunted both for their flesh and because there are curious superstitions around them. People believe that eating turtle meat extends their lifespans and makes their skins stronger. However, there are a couple of hatcheries that conserve by competing in this market. They buy out the eggs from the locals and release the hatchlings into the sea. This one is a day-old Olive Ridley Turtle.

Reading in 2011

Here's the roundup of books I read in 2011. First the books that I would strongly recommend. "Brief Interviews..." has the most number of laugh-out-loud moments of any book I've read in recent memory. Cat's Cradle, even making allowance for the fact that I'm a Vonnegut groupie, is a must-read. Sirens of Titan, I thought, is among his most under-rated works. If you are a fan of Douglas Adams you'll enjoy the obvious inspirations for HHGG. If you are remotely interested in healthcare or medicine, you'll enjoy both the non-fiction recommendations at the bottom of this list.

• Brief Interviews With Hideous Men - David Foster Wallace
• The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
• Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut
• Bad Science - Ben Goldacre
• The Emperor of All Maladies - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Here are the second tier of recommendations 

• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• The Price of Civilization - Jeffrey Sachs
• The Great Stagnation - Tyler Cowen
• A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
• The Woman who Walked into Doors - Roddy Doyle
• How Much Should a Person Consume? - Ramachandra Guha
• Gandhi the Man - Eknath Easwaran

While last year I deliberately went out of my normal picks to try some science fiction, this year I read my first graphic novel.

• Batman - The Long Halloween

Then there were books that make too much of an impression

• The Bad Girl - Mario Vargas Llosa
• From Yeravda Mandir - M.K. Gandhi

And finally, the books that I, for various reasons, just couldn't finish

• The Innovator's Prescription - Clayton M. Christensen
• The Language Instinct - Steven Pinker
• The First and Last Freedom - J.Krishnamurti
• The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century - Tom Bower

Hate for the middleman

There's a debate going on about whether to allow foreign retail chains to operate in India. There are libertarian voices who, by principle, are aghast at the thought of imposing needless restrictions. Urban Indians view retail FDI favorably mostly because they like the idea of having more joints to shop in. Yet the majority of the folks I have come across seem to embrace a protectionist view that invokes dire consequences for everybody if these retail chains come in. I have been more intrigued by how people have been taking sides of some perceived victims while inexplicably abandoning others.

People talk about the three separate characters that have a role to play in the FDI drama; the farmer, the middleman and the retailer. As expected, folks view the farmer most sympathetically. He's the innocent, hard-working soul barely making ends meet. Of course, for this argument, nobody is thinking of the rich areca growers that populate my village or the spoilt coffee planters in my neighbouring town because that would completely spoil the narrative. The retailer too has earned his share of the pity. FDI will take away his livelihood and that would be sad. The stereotype here is the neighbourhood kirana store guy your mom loves to haggle with, who despite his thrifty ways is invested in the community for the long term. The third player, the middleman, for some strange reason gets no backers at all. He is always caricaturized as the scheming opportunist who needlessly drives up costs of your provisions and screws the farmer all at once. People are definitely not thinking about the mandi owner in Tarikere who is taking enormous risks in keeping his unpredictable, erratic income flowing in, while vitally providing a conduit for the farmers' produce to make it to the markets. Despite doing exactly what the retailer does - buying at a cost and selling with a margin - nobody spares a thought for how the Walmarts and Tescos will definitely drive him out of work. There's something about our innate sense of ethics that makes us hate the speculator who makes his money without putting a regular amount of work every day.

Death of a really good salesman

Apple did a lot of things right, most important of them, I admit, was to build exquisitely designed products. But a lot of their success owes to a brilliant marketing effort too. It convinced people that they could, at a starting fee of USD 199, join an exclusive club. Even today my twitter feed has a steady stream of smug comments from Mac users subtly indicating that they know something that others don't. The company also perfected perceived obsolescence; you would feel the greatest gratification when you bought their latest device but feel equally unsatisfied when they released the next version, in the process keeping you panting on that hedonic treadmill. In Jeffrey Sachs's words they qualified as a great company because "they manufactured wants".

In typical cult-like response Apple consumers went overboard with their tributes to Jobs when he died. I lost track of the number of people who compared him to Edison. Vaclav Smil does a better job than I could hope to do in putting that claim in perspective, but the best counter came from Prem Panicker "Edison changed lives, Jobs changed lifestyles".

What Occupy Wall Street tells me - early days, of course - is that civilization may finally be reaching that inflection point when people stop identifying themselves primarily as "consumers". In that new order Jobs's legacy might not really age all that well. I think that will be a good thing.

Political Debates

My favorite political debates of all time were those that preceded the confidence motion before the Vajpayee government was ousted from its second term in 1999. Watching the likes of Pramod Mahajan, Somnath Chatterjee and George Fernandes take the floor was such a joy, but nobody could put you in a trance like Vajpayee could. Even his seemingly unending pauses were filled with such a sense of anticipation. I'm glad that he lived in a time when TV coverage was merely incidental and not the primary objective. A perfect example of the latter is the republican debates happening here in the US right now. Candidates are asked to sum up their thoughts on healthcare in 30 seconds. 30 seconds!! That's one half of a Vajpayee pause. Anyway, TV stations want to make the debates as exciting as possible for even an audience that is not interested in politics. I must say it makes for interesting viewing. Since it's not really an arena to discuss policy and ideology, you might as well enjoy the soundbytes, canned talking points and a lot of veiled personal cheapshots. Some comedian said that when people watch an airshow they are really wishing for an air-crash. Well, that might be sadistic when applied to airshows, but in debates such wrecks make compelling viewing. Yesterday, the audience must have prayed really to make this happen.

Things I'll miss in Thanjavur: Big Temple

It could be the knowledge that it has served its function for a full thousand years. It could be that it brutally dwarfs everything around it. It could be that it reminds us of an empire that was far ahead of its time. You don't have to be a theist to appreciate that there's something magical about the big temple at Thanjavur.

Things I'll miss in Thanjavur: Basketball Courts

For a town of this size Thanjavur has a surprisingly high density of basketball courts. My favorite, though, is the one in the Medical College campus. In what other court would you find cheerleading peacocks?

Pulicat

View Larger Map On a cue that we might get to spot flamingoes, we planned a snap trip to a place called Pulicat lake from Chennai. Pulicat lake is a massive lagoon on the border between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. On the shore of the lake is a village called Annamalai Cheri that also, we were told, the name of the bird sanctuary. We missed prime birding time by not getting there early enough not just because our taxi driver was in no particular hurry to get there. The real problem was that there are no clear directions available. Most people even in the vicinity had no idea that there was a bird sanctuary around. We compounded the problem by asking in English; one guy thought we were asking for "parota" which in Tamil is also identified by "baroda", and another guy showed us where the "boats" were. The breakthrough came when I finally consulted a friend on phone to learn the tamil word for "bird" and we started asking "Paravai enge irkke?". For any one looking for information to get there, take the NH5 from Chennai, turn right at Panchetty towards Ponneri. At Ponneri, ask for directions to get to Annamalacheri. The last stetch of the road is treacherous. Getting there is hard but totally worth it. In our case we got to see the species we came looking for, the flamingoes