Books, Movies and Everything Else

Quote of the Day

2013-06-29T01:36:00.000+05:30

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end."

- by Gilda Radner

Quote of the Day

2013-05-13T12:11:00.004+05:30

"Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are."

- by Niccolò Machiavelli

Quote of the Day

2013-04-30T10:32:00.003+05:30

"There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them."

- by John Boyne

Quote of the Day

2013-04-23T17:34:00.004+05:30

"The minute you become conscious that you are doing good, that's the minute you have to stop because from then on it's wrong."

- by Paula Fox

Quote of the Day

2013-04-23T17:02:00.002+05:30

"And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."

- by George Gordon Byron

Quote of the Day

2013-03-25T10:31:00.001+05:30

You can't lose what you never had, you can't keep what's not yours and you can't hold on to something that doesn't want to stay.

Quote of the Day

2013-03-15T22:03:00.002+05:30

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

- by William Shakespeare

Quote of the Day

2013-03-14T20:24:00.003+05:30

"I’ve known people that the world has thrown everything at to discourage them...to break their spirit. And yet something about them retains a dignity. They face life and don’t ask quarters."

- by Horton Foote

Quote of the Day

2013-01-25T11:38:00.000+05:30

"The best love is the kind that awakens the soul, that makes us reach for more."

- by Nicholas Sparks

Serendipity, Destiny and Eternity : My entry for the Get Published contest

2013-01-23T16:02:00.002+05:30

"Serendipity, Destiny and Eternity....the three words I have always loved and have impacted my life the most!! Life has a very crude way of being ironic. It is true that the Universe comes together to make the heart's deepest desire come true but as they say "There are no free lunches in the world". And, Life always takes something in bargain. Sometimes that bargain costs you much more than your actual wish coming true. And, the results can change the course of your destiny entirely, so much that sometimes, you do not even recognize your own self."

Every girl dreams of a perfect man. But, what happens when that man comes in your life? It was Serendipity when she met him. It was like two souls have found each other. They thought they had found their eternal loves. There was passion and urgency in their love. But, they were young. And, I am here to tell you her story.

Love was her only ambition
she lived for it and she rejoiced in it
for she had given it her all

She was a girl who was passionate, brave and her only desire was to find her true love. She was incredulous when her dream came true. Every morning brought more glow to her face and more color to her dreams. She fell in love but it was slow and sudden and gradual and forceful and serene, all at the same time, she did not even know. It was not the man of her dreams, she fell in love with but it was the man who came into her life, she fell in love with. She was not a fool. She had a keen perspicacity and she wasn't blind to his faults but that was the beauty of her dreams. She knew him and she knew him well. She wasn't blind to his faults or generous with his gifts. She had loved him for all he was. Never did she wish him to be better. There were bitter fights, there was impatience, there was anger but never was there regret or disappointment. He was her world. Her morning started with him and night ended with him. And, suddenly, the world she knew changed in front of her eyes and she never knew herself thereafter.

"This story is an incident close to my heart, an incident which has taught me a lot of things about life, love and relationships and never again did I see any relationship in my life through the same eyes. It is not only a story of struggle but its a story of struggle with oneself, story of conflicting emotions, a story of darkness which I bring out to you. - Author's Note"

This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs from Yashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India.

Quote of the Day

2013-01-17T17:35:00.000+05:30

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."

- by Haruki Murakami

Quote of the Day

2013-01-10T10:41:00.000+05:30

"She was ready to deny the existence of space and time rather than admit that love might not be eternal."

- by Simone de Beauvoir

Quote of the Day

2012-12-10T15:38:00.004+05:30

"The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire."

- by Willa Cather

Quote of the Day

2012-12-05T15:08:00.002+05:30

"Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up."

- by Wyndham Lewis

"The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil."

"Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds."

- by Rita Mae Brown

Quote of the Day

2012-12-05T14:20:00.002+05:30

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

- by Rainer Maria Rilke

Quote of the Day

2012-11-26T16:15:00.001+05:30

"Remember, it’s always darkest just before the dawn. Never underestimate the strength of your will to live after a loss, to love after heartache, or to rise after a fall. For although your troubles may be too dense and dark right now for you to see the light, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a strong spirit within them, or a beautiful sunrise just beyond the horizon."

Quote of the Day

2012-11-26T16:02:00.000+05:30

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."

- by Arundhati Roy

Quote of the Day

2012-11-26T10:49:00.002+05:30

"Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace."

- by Howard Thurman

Quote of the Day

2012-11-13T10:41:00.003+05:30

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe."

- by Neil Gaiman

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

- by Kurt Vonnegut

The Bankster by Ravi Subramanian {Books}

2012-11-04T19:47:00.000+05:30

Plot of the Book

Karan Panjabi is an ex-GB2 employee and a current in-training crime reporter for TOI (yup, Times of India). Because of the soft corner for his career launching company, Greater Boston Global Bank (GB2), he asks the CEO, Indrani, to let him investigate the series of murders happening to the key employees of GB2.

Tanuja, the HR head, and Vikram, the branch banking head, are the key show movers in the bank. Nothing gets done without their consent and everything gets done with their backing. Vikram is a strategic and ruthless manager who likes to keep his people everywhere in the bank so as to keep a hold on all the going ons.

Tanuja is his close friend and always keeps on consulting him on her every move. Vikram gets incriminated when all the murders have happened in his designated branches. The other side of the story includes a nuclear plant in Devikulum district of Kerala.

Krishna Menon is protesting against the government's secrecy regarding the nuclear project. He wanted transparency in the procedure and security of the people around the plant owing to the promise he made to his dying son twenty five years earlier when he had died due to the nuclear plant leakage in Russia.

The third part of the story is exchange of blood diamonds in Africa for the weapons. These blood diamonds become the reason for the murder of one of the GB2 employees, Harshita. She conveys this information to another of the employee, Raymond, who also gets murdered, the plot unveiled by Karan.

My Review

Ravi Subramanian is apparently the John Grisham of banking. Honestly, I am sick of Indian authors being touted the equivalent of the foreign authors. The main issue which I found with the book is the absence of punctuations at the appropriate places.

For example, "I am Indrani" and "I am, Indrani" are two different sentences. The book is full of such mistakes and I did get confused at many places. To unravel the above sentence only took me 3-4 reads. The editor should have looked into that. Another issue is the use of Indian slangs.

Nah, I don't mean they should try to Americanize it but honestly, when reading a book, I like the language to be pure. I hardly like slangs even if they are just curse words and in any book for that matter. Sidney Sheldon is another glaring example of poor language.

As for the plot, it really seems interesting but when I look at the book overall, the plot didn't really hook me up. What actually hooked me to the book was the ruthless politics in the banking corporate. I would have rather have that as compared to an international conspiracy involving a bank.

As for a person sitting in a boardroom unravelling the entire thing, it was a lot like Hercule Poirot's use of gray cells. That should be a domain left to Agatha Christie only I feel. The book didn't really give me a great pleasure in the later part but yes, the first half is racy.

Its a decent read. I have not read any other book from the author so can't really compare this book to his others but I do believe that the author has a good command on the banking domain all across the world, I suppose. I did find it refreshing to read about banks and their processes.

If interested, get your copy right now!!

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Quote of the Day

2012-10-16T20:17:00.002+05:30

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

- by Oscar Wilde

Quote of the Day

2012-10-15T10:32:00.002+05:30

"I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness"

- by E.E. Cummings

Quote of the Day

2012-09-28T16:44:00.001+05:30

"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire."

- by François de La Rochefoucauld

"The Krishna Key" by Ashwin Sanghi {Books}

2012-09-26T20:23:00.001+05:30

Price: Rs 175 (get your copy from flipkart)

My Review of the Book
I thought this genre of books is called "Mythological Thrillers" but the apt name is Anthropological Thriller. You must be definitely familiar with the Dan Brown novels. Expect this book to be providing the same kind of flavor. The lesser known book which it closely resembles is The Vault of Shiva by Andy McDermott.

I shall start with the bad of the book so that I can end on a good note. So, yes, the plot is bad or even lame. There are a couple of editing mistakes (three which I could spot where the characters names were jumbled up) and probably some typos as well but I am not really sure. There is a reference to Abhimanyu's wife - Uttara. But, I am not sure if her name is Uttara or Uttari because initially it was spelled as Uttara but consistently, it has been Uttari in the book. And, some of its story lines have been just left hanging in between. For mentioning one of them, there is probable reference to DNA extraction and preservation of Krishna. Yes, I know I have piqued your interest. But, stay, more is yet to come and lets move to the positives of the book.

Interestingly, there is another girl in my PG who is reading the same book so on one of our weekend lunches we feel into the conversation over the book. By that time, I had finished 140 pages and she was on 126th. I wasn't really happy with the book and in no hurry to lift it up again. I complained to her that it has a boring and aimless story line. And, she pointed me in the right direction - do not bother about the story line but look at the amount of research that has gone into the book. And, yes, that's absolutely true. Are you a student or lover of Indian mythology? If yes, you would love this and if no, you should get the book to brush up your mythology.

Do you know that Somnath was destroyed and rebuilt 8 times? Have you heard of the myth that Taj Mahal is built over a Shiv temple? Do you even remember the passing reference to Syamantak mani in Mahabharata or Krishna? Did you know that our Upanishads had explained the mystery of universe expansion and contraction in thoroughness even before Edward Hubble coined and proposed The Big Bang Theory and it stood in perfect harmony with Einsteins's theory that matter can neither be created nor destroyed? And, that's not all. Answer this - How would you react of someone told you that Mount Kailash, the holy abode of Shiva, is not an actual mountain but a man-made pyramid? And, many many more things!!!

Ok, I need to warn you beforehand that history and mythology gets intermingled to develop the fiction so do not get confused between the facts and myths. But, the book provides a good background into the Hindu mythology and Indian history of the mughal attacks. One more thing I should probably mention is that though the author gives a very good account of this history, he fails desperately when he gets the task of putting Mount Kailash's terrain in detail. I have a suspicion that the author did not for himself go to the place (well, do any of the author's really visit all paces they mention in their books is debatable question?).

Anyways, moving on, I have already told you that the plot is lame. So, why should you read the book? Because, it gives an amazing account of 5000 years of history or mythology in some 450 pages. Now, let me also introduce you to the protagonists of the story. Mataji is the evil and the hero is very similar to the Robert Langdon of Dan Brown - Ravi Saini, a historian who excels in the field of anthropology especially pertaining to the mythical Krishna (or is it historical Krishna?). He unravels the puzzles on the run and with seemingly no effort coz he has everything on his tips(very like Nicolas Cage in National Treasure).

And, the final climax has a bit of Paulo Coelho thrown in. All the characters of the story are after a very sacred thing left behind by Krishna. And, at last, you come to know that its no more than a metaphor. Whether it exists in reality or not, it ceases to matter once you know the essence. Its all about higher level of understanding dawning on man in the search for the treasure. Not very new, is it? Aaah..let me quote the very sentence - The philosopher is more important than the stone.

My final word would be yes, read the book. Not for the plot or the philosophy it inculcates but for the amazing research put into the book, the amazing facts and mythology the book delves into and to know the richness of Hinduism. Yes, it gives you all. And, I totally forgot to mention that the book runs parallely in two eras - present and the Mahabharata or the Dwapar yuga so you can refresh your knowledge on the Mahabharata treatise as well :) But, yes, the Mahabharata snippets break the flow of the story and can be annoying at times.

Availability

This review is a part of the Book Reviews Program at BlogAdda.com. Participate now to get free books!

Quote of the Day

2012-09-23T00:55:00.000+05:30

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

- by George R.R. Martin