New Delhi, Sep 10 (IANS) 'Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence' by expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh retained the No.1 position among bestselling books in the non-fiction section this week. J.M. Coetzee's 'Summertime' topped the fiction category.

The top 10 in each section are:

Non-fiction

1. 'Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence'

Author: Jaswant Singh

Publisher: Rupa

Price: Rs.695.00

2. 'The Difficulty of Being Good: On The Subtle Art of Dharma'

Author: Gurcharan Das

Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane

Price: Rs.699.00

3. 'Making Sense of Pakistan'

Author: Farzana Shaikh

Publisher: Foundation Books

Price: Rs.695.00

4. 'Imagining India: Ideas for The New Century'

Author: Nandan Nilekani

Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane

Price: Rs.699.00

5. 'Delhi Adventures in a Megacity'

Author: Sam Miller

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Price: Rs.499.00

6. 'The Idea of Justice'

Author: Amartya Sen

Publisher: Penguin Allen Lane

Price: Rs.699.00

7. '80 Questions To Understand India: History, Mythology and Religion'

Author: Murad Ali Baig

Publisher: Tara Press

Price: Rs.395.00

8. 'Making India Work'

Author: William Nanda Bissell

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Price: Rs.499.00

9. 'Seeds of Terror: The Taliban, The ISI and The New Opium Wars'

Author: Gretchen Peters

Publisher: Hachette

Price: Rs.495.00

10. 'New Delhi Making of a Capital'

Author: M. Singh and R. Mukherjee

Publisher: Roli Books

Price: Rs.1,975.00

Fiction

1. 'Summertime'

Author: J.M. Coetzee

Publisher: Harvill Secker

Price: 8.75 pounds (Rs.698)

2. 'Empire of the Moghul: Raiders From The North'

Author: Alex Rutherford

Publisher: Headline Review

Price: Rs.495.00

3. 'In Other Rooms, Other Wonders'

Author: Daniyal Mueenuddin

Publisher: Random House

Price: Rs.395.00

4. 'The Wish Maker: A Novel'

Author: Ali Sethi

Publisher: Penguin Books

Price: Rs.499.00

5. 'Like a Diamond in The Sky'

Author: Shazia Omar

Publisher: Faber and Faber

Price: Rs.250.00

6. 'Love And Summer'

Author: William Trevor

Publisher: Penguin Viking

Price: Rs.450.00

7. 'The Children's Book'

Author: A.S. Byatt

Publisher: Chatto and Windows

Price: 6.25 pounds (Rs.498)

8. 'Alex Cross's Trial'

Author: James Patterson & Richard Dilallo

Publisher: Century

Price: 5.99 pounds (Rs.478)

9. 'Twenties Girl: She's Having the Time of her Life'

Author: Sophie Kinsella

Publisher: Bantam Press

Price: 5.99 pounds (Rs.478)

10. 'Medusa'

Author: Clive Cussler with Paul Kemprecos

Publisher: Penguin Michael Joseph

Price: Rs.399.00

(Source: Bahri Sons, New Delhi, www.booksatbahri.com. All the books listed above are available online).

indianachu -12

Read More...

New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS) Mahatma Gandhi's legacy of Hind Swaraj can be best understood while trying to find solutions to problems that confront the Indian market, says veteran columnist and Mumbai-based activist-author Rajni Bakshi.

Bakshi's book 'Bapu Kuti', which explores the lives of 12 people rooted in Gandhian principles who gave up lucrative jobs to discover practical ways of political and social transformation, inspired film director Ashutosh Gowariker to make the hit Shah Rukh Khan starrer, 'Swades'.

'In trying to find new solutions, you suddenly take recourse to the same Gandhian solutions that the Father of the Nation recommended in the early decades of the last century - self-sufficiency, freedom and swaraj - almost unconsciously,' Bakshi told IANS in a free-wheeling interview in the capital.

'It is more powerful than reading Gandhi.'

Bakshi's new book, 'Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear', which she says 'is a tribute to the spirit of Hind Swaraj', was released at the India Habitat Centre in the capital last week.

It is a narrative about people forging solutions to the problems of unbridled markets and demonstrating that a more mindful market culture is possible.

The narrative takes the reader from the ancient Greek Agora, the Indian choupal and the native American gift culture to the present day Wall Street - to show that a free market can serve society rather than govern it.

'My book encourages people to rethink their assumption that the market is an overarching institution and goes back to the drawing board in trying to redefine how the market should work in the society we live in,' Bakshi said.

What is a market?

'The most obvious answer that comes to mind is the Sensex. But it is just a part of a larger mindset called the free market. So, what the stories in my book do is to distinguish the ancient bazaars from the modern markets that operate on the freedom to exchange, freedom of opportunities and the freedom to define purpose in ways to link commerce with the rest of life.'

According to Bakshi, the free market concept emerged in the 18th century on the idea that 'social and political dimensions should be kept separate from the economic dimension'.

'But what I have tried to do is to re-embed the market mechanism in the social, ethical and environmental consciousness. I have tried to probe what is it about the market that is free and free for whom?'

The writer said she recently visited Mahila Seva Bazaar, a Sunday market for women near Ajmere Gate in the capital.

'This market is under pressure from the government to relocate despite the fact that we work in a market economy. But the freedom of opportunities is not readily available, it's an ongoing tussle,' she averred.

Bakshi feels that in a free market, 'we need freedom of conversation between the buyer and seller through which prices can be determined to free it from controls like government whips'.

'Bazaars are all about haggling. Unless we begin the conversation, we cannot learn about services that the market has to offer.'

Arbitrary controls are steering the market in a particular way, Bakshi says.

'In a lot of situations, the government acts in an arbitrary manner while setting in motion a project and it results in displacement. The price for development is always paid by the poorest section of society,' she said.

Bakshi said she was 'on the fringes' of the Narmada movement, and added: 'Survival and displacement were for the people at the bottom of the ladder. We are living in an economic market system that's not paying the bill.'

The writer feels the 'market is a human construct'.

'We can make it and shape it in any way. It is a photosynthesis of opportunities, possibilities, freedom and responsibility,' she said.

The writer, a Homi Bhabha Fellow, is planning to write on 'what it will take to have more economic democracy in the country'.

Bakshi's earlier books include the 'The Long Haul: The Bombay Textile Workers Strike'; 'The Dispute over Swami Vivekananda's Legacy', 'Bapu Kuti: Journeys in Rediscovery of Gandhi' and 'An Economics for Well-Being'.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)

indianachu - 06

Read More...

LONDON - Veteran Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi and Britain-based Indian-origin author Sir Vidya Naipaul were Wednesday named in the long list of the 60,000 pound third Man Booker International prize.They were among 14 authors from 12 countries - seven them writers in translation - who have been named in the judge’s list of contenders.Mahasweta Devi, who is based in Santiniketan in West Bengal, is among India’s foremost writers and a well-known activist for the rights of indigenous peoples. She writes in Bengali.The 14 authors on the list are: Peter Carey (Australia), Evan S. Connell (USA), Mahasweta Devi (India), E.L. Doctorow (USA), James Kelman (UK), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), Arnost Lustig (Czechoslovakia), Alice Munro (Canada), V.S. Naipaul (Trinidad/India), Joyce Carol Oates (USA), Antonio Tabucchi (Italy), Ngugi Wa Thiong’O (Kenya), and Dubravka Ugresic (Croatia), Ludmila Ulitskaya (Russia).The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2009 is: Jane Smiley, writer; Amit Chaudhuri, writer, academic and musician; and writer, film script writer and essayist, Andrey Kurkov.Smiley said, ‘We’ve all read books by authors we had never heard of before and they have turned out to be some of the best books we’ve ever read. I am thrilled with the list we have come up with. It makes me wonder who else is out there untranslated into English.’Source http://blog.taragana.com/n/mahasweta-devi-naipaul-named-as-booker-contenders-19241/

Read More...

It is a very bulky book 900+ pages. I am in the middle of it and what is amazing is the sprinkling of quotations throughout the book by characters. Besides these great quotes there are many reasons why I like this book.

1. The number one reason as mention above is th wonderful collection of quotations which are present throughout.
2. Gregory David Roberts (GDR) is a nice human being and it is felt strongly everywhere.
3. He likes Mumbai and India-anything and everything Indian, which is very strange coming from a westerner.
4. I never knew such an underworld exists in Mumbai with their own rules and players and lives of thousand slum dwellers.
5. His love for Karla is really amazing- so strong yet so fresh.
6. This is a real life story of a bank robber and the positive transformation that took place inspite of so much violence.

The photo below was taken during his visit to Leopold cafe, one of the places where terrorists attacked on that dreadful night of 26.11.08. GDR visited this cafe on December 10th.


Gregory David Roberts (GDR) with his wife at Leopold cafe Mumbai after the terror attack.

56 great quotes from Shantaram.
I am presently reading Shantaram by .


Gregory David Roberts (GDR)

Here are a few quotes from Shantaram . Enjoy reading them.

1.

Whenever I was alone I wrote…, writing was one thing that saved me the discipline, and abstraction of putting my life into words, every day, helped me to cope with shame and its first cousin despair.

2
There is a truth that is deeper than experience. It is beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It is an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We are helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It does not always help to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know the truth is to share it, from heart to heart.

3
Suffering of every kind is always a matter of what we have lost. When we were young, we think that suffering is something that is done to us. When we get older – when the steel doors slam shut, in one way or other- we know that real suffering is measured by what is taken away from us.

4
Every act of suffering, no matter how small or how agonizingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, the suffering is also a test of our love for God.

5

Khaderbhai once said every virtuous act is inspired by a dark secret. It was true enough about me. The little good I have done in the world has always dragged behind a shadow of dark inspiration. I know in the long run motive matters more with the good deeds than it does with the bad.

6
When all the guilt and shame for the bad we have done have run their course, it is the good we did that can save us. But then , when salvation speaks, the secrets we kept , and the motives we concealed , creep from their shadows. They cling to us, those dark motives for our good deeds. Redemption’s climb is steepest if the good we did is soiled with secret shame.

7.
We can deny the past, but we cannot escape its torment because the past is a speaking shadow that keeps pace with the truth of what we are, step for step , until we die.

8
That fighting to save a life is better and more enduring reason than fighting to end one.

9
I have developed a style in dealing with them that won their trust quickly. The style was – Two parts showman, two parts flatterer and one part philanderer, combined with a hint of mischief, a sniff of condescension and a pinch of contempt.

10

She said I was interested in everything and committed to nothing.

11

The Red queen contest---I learnt it in the slums. The hosts – our bodies – and the viruses – any bug that makes us sick- are locked in a contest with each other. When the parasite attacks, the host develops a defense. Then the virus changesto beat that defense, so the host gets a new defense. And that keeps on going. They call it a Red Queen Contest. It is from the story Alice in the wonderland.

12
Alice never meets the Red Queen who runs incredibly fast but never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice , in her country it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.

13

The word Mafia comes from the Sicilian word for bragging. If you ask any serious man who commits serious crimes for a living, he will tell you it is just that—the boasting, the pride—that gets most of the criminals in the end. But they never learn. May be it is not possible to break law without boasting about it to someone. May be it is not possible to be an outlaw without being proud in someway.

14

It is funny; the heroes come in only three kinds—dead, damaged or dubious.

15

This is what we do. Put one-step forward then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequences to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave heart into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.


16


When you judge the power that a person has, you must judge his capacities as both friend and as enemy

17

It is good to know what is wrong with the world. But it is just as important to know that sometimes, no matter how wrong it is, you cannot change it. And a lot of the bad stuff in the world was not really that bad until some one tried to change it.

18
One of the reasons why we crave love and seek it so desperately is that love is the only thing cure for loneliness, shame and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about you are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.

19

If fate does not make you laugh then you just do not get the joke.

20
People always hurt us with their trust. The surest way to hurt someone you like is to put all your trust in him or her.

21
Mistakes are like bad loves, the more you learn from them the more you wish they had never happened.

22
Depression always happens to people who do not know how to be sad.

23
Men reveal what they think when they look away and what they feel when they hesitate. With women, it is the other way around.

24
I do not know what frightens me more,
The power that crushes us
Or our endless ability to endure it.

25
To make sure none followed us where you led
I used my hair to cover our tracks.
Sun set on my island of our bed
Night rose
Eating echoes
And we were beached here, in tangles of flicker,
Candles whispering at our driftwood backs.
Your eyes above me
Afraid of the promises I might keep
Regretting the truth we did say
Less than the lie we didn’t,
I went in deep, I went in deep,
To fight the past for you.
Now we both know
Sorrows are the seeds of loving.
Now we both know I will live and
I will die for this love.

26

Indians are the Italians of Asia . It can also be said Italians are Indians of Europe .

There is so much Italian in Indians, and so much Indian in Italians. They are both people of the Madonna – they demand a Goddess, even if the religion does not provide one. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy; and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop corner .For them food is music inside the body and music is food inside the heart. The language of India and the language Italy , they make every man a poet and make something beautiful from every banalite. These are nations where love –amore, pyaar- makes a cavalier of a Borsalino on a street corner, and makes a princess of a peasant girl , if only for the second that her eyes meet yours .

27
For many the duplication of their own images in two or more mirrors at the same time was not the least among of the past time.

28
They say in Marseilles , a man in no hurry gets nowhere fast. I have been in no hurry for the past eight years.

29
Civilization, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than by what we permit

30

The worst thing about corruption as a system of governance is that it works so well.

31
Friendship is something that gets harder to understand as the years pass. Friendship is like a kind of algebra test that nobody passes.

32

The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.

33
Do you know the story of the scorpion and the frog? The frog agrees to to carry the scorpion across the river, because the scorpion promises not to sting him.

Then the scorpion stings the frog, half way across the river. The drowning frog asks him why he did it, when they both drown, and the scorpion says that he is a scorpion , and it is his nature to sting.

The test of a real Borsalino hat is to roll it into a very tight tube and pass it through a wedding ring. If it emerges from this test without permanent creases, and if it springs back to its original shape, and if it is not damaged in the experience, then it is a genuine Borsalino

34
French culture is so pervasive and influential that almost every one in the whole world is at least a little French. This is specially so for women. Almost every woman in the world is French, in some way.

35
Every city in the world has a village in its heart. You will never understand the city unless you first understand the village

36

Dream is a place where wish and fear meet. When the wish and fear are the same then we call that dream a nightmare.

37

There are many animals that can express their happiness; but only the human animal has the genius to express a magnificent sadness. And for me it is some thing special, a daily meditation. Sadness is my one and only art.

38

No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as Anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled and ordered around and governed. Only Anarchism trusts the human being enough to let him work it out for himself.

39

Love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested, and loyalty too. There is no test for Love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because Love is born in the part of us that does not die.

40

Assassin grief, the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks from ambush, with no warning and no mercy.

41
Justice is judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not done until everyone is satisfied, even those who offend us. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong but is also the way we try to save them.

42

The truth is there are no good men or bad men. The deeds have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deeds. Men are just men- it is what they do or refuse to do that link them to good or evil.

The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of any one- the noblest man alive or the most wicked –has the whole purpose, process, and meaning of life within the lotus folds of its passion. Thee truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy and every particle of matter in the universe is moving.

45
Wherever you go in the world , in any society , it is always the same when it comes to the question of justice; we concentrate our laws , investigations , prosecutions and punishments on how much crime is in sin , rather than how much sin is in the crime.

46
Suffering is the way we test our love, especially the love for God.

47
Every act of suffering, no matter how small or how agonizingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, the suffering is also a test of our love for God.

48
Pain and suffering are connected but they are not the same. Pain can exist without suffering. It is also possible to suffer without pain.

49
Suffering is exactly like happiness, but perhaps backwards. One is like the mirror image of the other. Each has no meaning or does not exist without the other.

50
We human beings are the most complex arrangement of matter that we know of , but we are not the last achievement of the universe . We, too, will develop and change with the rest of the universe. But if we kill indiscriminately, we will not get there. We will wipe out our species, and all the development that has led to us across millions of years- billions of years-will be lost. The same can be said for stealing. What would happen if every one stole every other one? Would that help?

51
Bertrand Russell once said that, “Anything that can be put in a nut shell should remain there.” I do agree with him.

52

The word “Characteristic” in English has an amazing sound- like the rapping on the drum or breaking kindling wood for fire.

Every atom in the universe has the characteristic of life. The more complex way the atoms are put together, the more complex is the expression of characteristic of life. A rock is a very simple arrangement of atoms, so the life in a rock is so simple that we cannot see it. A cat is a more complex arrangement of atoms, so the life in a cat is more obvious. But life is there in everything even in a rock and even when we cannot see it.

53

This is a test. Every Guru, every wise man you meet must answer these two questions for you:

What is an objective, universally acceptable definition of good and evil?
What is the relationship between consciousness and matter?

54
Sometimes it is necessary to do a wrong thing for a right reason. The important thing is to be sure that our reasons are right, and we admit the wrong-- that we do not lie to ourselves, and convince ourselves that we did was right.

55



Universe is a process of struggle between opposites- light and darkness , hot and cold , suffering pleasure , good and evil – and that nothing can exist without the existence of its opposite.

Suffering is a condition of the unenlightened soul, locked within the wheel of karma.

56

The world is run by one million evil men, ten million stupid ones and a hundred million cowards.

=======
Visit again, I will post more quotes here.

Read More...

Jhumpa Lahiri is my favourite author.

Recently I heard her speaking.

During this week of Thanksgiving — the most American of holidays — NPR is spending time thinking about what it means to become an American. The answers come from three noted authors — Junot Diaz, Jhumpa Lahiri and Joseph O'Neill — who've written about newcomers to the United States.

Nationality, tradition and belonging: The themes of Jhumpa Lahiri's fiction spring from the complexities of the author's own life. Born to Indian parents in London and raised in Rhode Island, the author of Unaccustomed Earth and The Interpreter of Maladies says she's struggled for four decades to feel like she belonged in America.
"For me," Lahiri tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, "there is sort of a half-way feeling [of being American]."
But, she says, her parents never thought of themselves as American, despite the fact that they applied for and received citizenship.
"They've lived here now for more than half of their lives, and they raised a family here and now have grandchildren here. ... It has become their home," says Lahiri. "But at the same time, for my parents, I don't think either of them will ever consciously think, 'I am an American.' "
Lahiri says her parents were always isolated from mainstream American culture. Despite the fact that they spoke English, they were "betrayed by their accents." If the family went to buy a washing machine, the sales clerk would talk to Lahiri, assuming her parents couldn't understand.
"The accent, the fact that my mother wore traditional clothing — that marked them immediately as soon as we went out in the public sphere," says Lahiri.
Growing up, Lahiri's loyalty to her parents conflicted with her desire to fit in: "It didn't matter that I wore clothes from Sears; I was still different. I looked different. My name was different," she says. "I wanted to pull away from the things that marked my parents as being different."
Lahiri says her parents didn't mix with her friends' parents in an easy, comfortable way — not because they didn't want to, but because there was a barrier that they couldn't overcome.
"I think this was a two-way street," she says. "It wasn't just that they were afraid or unwilling — there was a fear, an unwillingness on both sides."
Lahiri says creating characters who also struggle with the immigrant experience has helped her confront the truth of her life.
"A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading," she says. But through fiction, Lahiri says she's learned to accept that her parents will always be tied to two different parts of the Earth.
"It has been liberating and brought me some peace to just confront that truth, if not to be able to solve it or answer it," she says.

Read the full story and hear JhumpaLahiri's voice.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97418330&sc=emaf

Also Jhumpa Lahiri reading from her book 'Unaccustomed Earth'
----------

More for you

Get results of all the important exams conducted in India and also current Information on various hot topics of the day, e.g Petrol and diesel price hike, Energy scenario in India and many other issues.

Anything Indian has a special importance for us, be it Indian Languages , Culture, Indian Cusine , Society , Indian Railway , Science , Stocks and Industry . India's religions- Cricket Sports and films are also fully covered.

An ever growing collection of web resources like Toll Free Helpline Telephone numbers, Health Tips, free downloads are there for you to use. If you are a government employee you might be interested in 6th pay commission.

Get inspired by collection of great inspirational Quotes by great people. Read Book reviews and write-ups on Personalities. Musings adequately cover the world as well.Know about countries and events from countries as diverse as Eritrea, Lenin's Russia, or even Pakistan and much more…..

More over throughout the blog I have collected an wonderful collection of photos from creative commons and some of them are shot be me.

So Cheers, enjoy reading and dont forget to comment on the post. I always answer to all the comments.

-----------------


Make Indmusing Your reading habit.

Visit Indianscripts, India's Leading Translation Service Provider

Visit Tips for Translators for insider tips to succeed in Freelance Translation. Hundreds of great posts. Free for you!

Read More...

I am now reading a booke named 'Snow' by Orhan Pamuk, winner of nobel prize winner 2006.

I brought the book about 3 weeks back but did not have courage to really start reading it. One thing which was deterring me was the very fine print. It is very hard to read it while lying down. The next deterent was - I was sceptical about the theme and writer. But when I started it, I started liking it. I felt some similarities for the characters with me. The author, a journalist is arriving to his home town Kars in Turkey afyer 15 years. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism, story of Kars linked to Russia, Armenia, Azeri characters, all these striked a chord in me. I stayed in Russia for 12 long years, visited Armenia in one winter in a student group, I am aware of the long standing problems between Armenia and Turkey, the genocide of Armenians in 1915. All these are known to me. So when I started reluctantly reading the book, I was slowly dragged into it. I liked the begining of the story how the journalist Ka was travelling in a bus from Istambul to faraway city named Kars. He reaches there, stays in a hotel, meets journalists and starts his search for all the things he left when he left this place 15 years back. Suddenly he meets this girl whom he loved......(Cond.....)

___________________________________
Make Indmusings your reading habit

Read More...

Malcolm gladwell Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink has a new book called Outliers.

This is a book about outliers, the people who do things above the ordinary. The book focuses on the qualities of high achievers.

Read His interview here

If you'd like to read an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers you'll find it here

Visit Gladwell’s website for more information.



Malcolm Gladwell
Official site. Includes information about The Tipping Point and Blink, an archive of New Yorker articles, and collected talk pieces….

Malcolm Gladwell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Malcolm Gladwell (born September 3, 1963) is a United Kingdom-born, Canadian … “Interview with Malcolm Gladwell” - Failure Magazine, April 2001. ……

gladwell dot com - blink
… outliers blink the tipping point the new yorker archive etc.blog. BLINK. q&a with malcolm. Excerpts from the book. 1. the second mind. 2. why do we love. tall men ……

Malcolm Gladwell Profile on TED.com
Malcolm Gladwell - Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of … Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the ……

Malcolm Gladwell - Bio
Malcolm Gladwell. Author of Blink and The Tipping Point. Provocative ideas that … Malcolm Gladwell has an incomparable gift for interpreting new ideas in the ……

Why Malcolm Gladwell Thinks We Have Little Control Over Our Own Success …
Malcolm Gladwell’s elegant and wildly popular theoriesabout modern life have … He looks, in short, like a caricature of Malcolm Gladwell. ……

The 2005 TIME 100: Malcolm Gladwell
TIME 100: TIME Magazine’s list of the 100 people who shape our lives. Profiled here: Malcolm Gladwell … But to Malcolm Gladwell, life’s minor mysteries ……

gladwell.com
gladwell.com. Late-Bloomers. My latest article, on the work of the economist David … The Moth is a wierd and wonderful club in New York City founded a few years ago ……

ESPN.com: Page 2 : Interview: Malcolm Gladwell
The best-selling writer of ‘The Tipping Point’ talks about how his new book … Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for the New Yorker, a sports fan, and, most ……

The Tipping Point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
… 31696-2) is a book by Malcolm Gladwell, first published by Little Brown in 2000. … The Tipping Point on Malcolm Gladwell’s webpage ……

Research: malcolm gladwell

Read More...

I started reading the book “The white Tiger” by Arvind Adiga, this year’s man booker prize winner with lots of expectation.

The more I read the more I was disillusioned.

This was a story of a man from the underprivileged society, he is from Bihar though the author has never mentioned it. In one place it is said that the town laxmangarh, the birth place of the hero of this novel was a few kilometers from Gaya. And Gaya happens to be in Bihar.

The story is about that man whose father was a rickshaw puller and who died of TB without any treatment.

A fact known to all that in villages of India there are no medical facilities, the patients are carried by people to nearby towns or cities where there could be a health centre, so called primary health care unit, where generally no doctors are available. This is true. But the narration in the book fails to describe it in appropriate way.

This was one incident which was detailed but it was not artistically written.


The boy was removed from the school and put in a tea shop from where he goes to Dhanbad (a part of Bihar till recently!) and takes the job of a driver. He then comes with his master to Delhi.

Throughout the book he was very satisfied with his master. Both he and his master were dissatisfied with the corruption of his family(politicians).

He becomes angry with the system and one day kills his master. The motive was not clear. Why he, of all the people, killed his master? I do not understand.

Then he goes to Bangalore starts a transport business and becomes successful.


The book begins and ends with the hero writing a long letter to the prime minister of China on the threshold of his visit to India.

What can I say about this book?

I am very dissatisfied with this book.

I will doubt about any man booker prize from now on.

The book seems written in a hurry. The author tried to create funny situations while describing four great poets of the world-every time telling that he has forgotten the name of the fourth one while forgetting that in between once he has mentioned the name of this fourth poet. I doubt whether the author has read the manuscripts twice.

The book promised to be of a different kind but it fell flat.

The white tiger failed to create any impact.

Related searches: Aravind Adiga, Man Booker Prize, White Tiger

Read More...

Photo Credit

I booked the White Tiger by Arvind Adiga, this years Man Brookers winner the day it was announced.

I was very anxious to read it. More so, as the last book I read which was a Booker prize winner was the life of Pi by Yan Martel. It had the strongest impression on me. For long I have not read such a book on the strength of human will to survive against all odds. It was a thriller but not the typical thriller we know. I was amazed.

So I wanted to read the white tiger by Adiga.

I booked it on net the day the award was announced and paid by credit card. I did some quick search in Internet to find out which online book company in India has the lowest price. I searched in indiaplaza, rediff, indiatimes etc . I found one company called NBC India has a price of Rs276/- So I booked it.

No reply from NBC for 4 days. Then I tried to contact them on phone (digged from Internet), I spent the whole day but no body was lifting the phone.

I sent an email enquiring my order. In reply they said the book is out of print and not available. They will send me the book when a new print comes. They also mentioned that this book is not available anywhere in India.

I replied them with a stern mail telling that the book is indeed available in India, I have seen it on bookshops and I want my refund. Immediate refund.

The book became all of a sudden available with NBC and I received it at my residence after 2 days!
You can make your conclusion!

Yesterday I have finished reading the book.
I plan to write my review soon.
I will not read any other review before I write my review. I do not want to be influenced by others. I want to give my true feelings on the book.

So keep an watch on this blog for review on “The White Tiger” by Arvind Adiga.

Related Searches: Man booker, prize, 2008, Arvind Adiga, white tiger, India

Read More...

I lile to read books, specially non-fictions, travelogues, memoirs etc.
Here is a list of 9 Top non-fiction books you should read now

1.SHANTARAM by Gregory David Roberts
2. MAXIMUM CITY-BOMBAY LOST AND FOULD- by Suketu Mehta
3.The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple
4. India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha.
5. In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce.
6. Pankaj Mishra’s Tempations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and beyond.
7. Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, culture, Identity-Amartya Sen
8.Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
9. The Elephant, the tiger and the cellphone by Shashi Tharoor
Happy reading
=Ostom

Read More...