Household Air Pollution (HAP) is emerging as a major health risk and is responsible for more  than 4.3 million premature deaths globally every year. The biggest and most common contributor to HAP is the use of biomass fuels for cooking in our traditional cookstoves. Availability of free biomass, free traditional cookstoves, and our age-old and ingrained cooking practices, which revolve around these traditional cookstoves make these polluting and health threatening cookstoves quite attractive and ‘comforting’ to majority of rural households.

Making these household move from cooking on traditional cookstoves to LPG or other clean cooking solutions such as induction stove, advanced biomass cookstoves can result in substantial economic, health and environmental benefits. Yet, households have been very stubborn in their use of traditional cookstoves and fuels. The transition from traditional cookstoves to new generation cooking devices is excruciatingly slow and frustrating.

While there are many factors such as product performance, cleaner fuel availability and pricing that can be attributed to this continued use of inefficient traditional cookstove and slow adoption of dvanced biomass cookstove, the need for behaviour change has been identified as of the most significant factors. In fact, some studies suggest that it might be even more critical than the economical factors.

"Empirical work demonstrates that people do not make decisions by taking into account all costs and benefits. People want to conform to social expectations. People do not have unchanging or arbitrarily changing tastes. Preferences depend on the context in which they are elicited and on the social institutions that have formed the interpretive framework which individuals see the world."- (Mind Society and Behaviour, World Bank, 2015).

The transition is complex for a common user. The complexity of transition often decides against the health and economic benefits of the clean cooking devices. It requires them to adopt to a new device, a new way of cooking and probably some compromise on the taste.

“It overcooked my rice.”

“The chapatis were not as good as my regular chapatis.”

“My family did not like the taste of food prepared on this.”

“I cannot cook my regular dishes on this.”

The above are the most common remarks one gets to hear in the early transition efforts. The transition becomes a drab and often there are negative memories that get associated with the new devices.

These problem forced us to take a different route for promoting transition to clean cooking devices. Something that was not dull, something that was exciting and resulted in associating positive memories with the transition. Something that excited and motivated users enough to make them find a way to overcome the early adoption challenges.  We launched a cooking competition for rural households: “Dharma Chef”.

A multi-stage state level competition in which participants cook traditional and fusion dishes on clean cooking devices (such as induction stove, or advance biomass cookstove). While on surface it was just like any other cooking competition, it was designed to achieve the following:

• Motivation:  motivate users to adopt, improvise and develop new ways to cook traditional dishes on these new devices.
• Education: Create awareness about the challenge of household air pollution and need for clean cooking devices.
• Celebration: Celebrate cooking skills of rural cooks and associate positive memories with these devices.

The campaign is doing very well on all these counts. We have got people to make “Roti” on induction.. Something that many consider quite a challenge.. The event not only gathered the women (who take the responsibility of cooking in rural India) but their whole family participated. They cheered them up while she cooked. The campaign is also making all the winning recipes compiled into a cookbook and the next steps is to make the videos available on dedicated youtube channel.

Dharma Chef campaign is being run by Dharma Life and supported by Tata Trusts. At present the campaign is running in Gujarat but soon it is going to be launched in other states as well.

Non-fiction

• Essentialism by Greg Mckeown
• Move Up by Clotaire Rapaille and Andres Roemer
• How to Be Alone by Sara Maitland
• Looking Away by Harsh Mander

Fiction

• I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
• The Farm by Tom Rob Smith
• Einstein’s Dream by Alan Lightman
• The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
• The Girl On the Train by Paula Hawkins
• One False Move by Harlan Coben
• The Sympathiser by Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Descent by Tim Johnston
• The Gir in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz
• Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
• Villain by Shuichi Yoshida
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
• The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada

One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood.
-Agatha Christie

Indeed, a happy childhood is something that every kid deserves. On this literacy day, we started something that was our contribution to add happiness to some childhoods. We (know more about what we do) started a campaign titled “Lighting Up Young Minds”. The objective of this campaign is to inculcate the habit of reading in rural children and make it a fun activity.

Personally, I vouch for the magical effect that reading has on growing up children. It can transform and transfigure childhoods. Unfortunately, our rural kids often do not have either access to quality reading material; or the boring academic books have made reading a drab and dull activity. We want to make reading a fun activity and inculcate the habit of reading.

So, we partnered with Pratham Books for getting some quality reading content and conducted reading sessions at more than 250 locations to start the campaign. We reached more than 17000 children in a single day.

Each reading session was followed by a painting competition and some fun activities for children. From ‘Chhota Bheem’ to ‘Indian national flag’... their imagination captured it all.

This is just a start for us. We are looking to reach more than 100,000 children on by this Children’s Day. We want to make this a regular event and get more people, partners to engage in this. Drop us a line in the comments if you want to contribute in our this goal.

As I walked past a small hut the chorus of ‘ek duni do.. do duni char.. caught my attention. The sound was coming from the hut on my left. I took  this route many times, but never stopped to have a second look on the hut. It was so commonplace in a village full of huts. I stopped and so did a couple of people who were with me. One of them was a visitor from Japan.

There were around 20 kids in the hut, swaying back and forth and reciting  do ka pahada (table of two). Some of the kids seemed too young to be learning tables.  The teacher was nowhere to be seen.  Yes, this hut was one of the several centres under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The kids spotted us, some kids stopped their recital and took stock of us. Soon, they realized that we are some random visitors making them victim of our stupid  curiosity. Soon a young lady, barefoot, hastily covering her head with pallu walked in to the hut. She was the teacher. Suddenly, there was more enthusiasm and participation in the recital.

There was a sudden onrush of mixed emotions. Nostalgia, pride, frustration, helplessness, happiness and hope were all mingled together. The kids were oblivious of the odds against them. Uncertain of what lies ahead of the hut. Many of them may were there because their parents sent them to get free food there. And, many of them will dropout after this school. But some of them will surely defy many odds to achieve what their parents never dreamt of.

It was very ironic. We were in Vaishali: birthplace of Lord Mahavir, workplace of Budhha and the capital of the glorious Licchavi clan. The hut was on our way to Ashokan piller and Abhishek Pushkarni : two reminders of our glorious past. Every person that you will meet from this area will not forget to highlight our past glory. I too, do it without fail when I meet someone who wants to know more about my home state. Often, this helps when I am not keen to discuss the embarrassing present and uncertain future.

A few meters away from that hut, one can find the world peace pagoda and several other palatial Buddhist stupa and temples. These stupas and temples are constructed by several Buddhist countries such as Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan etc. Every year a horde of tourist visit this place to experience and appreciate the work of Budhha and Mahavira.

I look at these temples and stupas which are meant for celebrating the teachings of our enlightened souls and several questions pop up. Would  kids there in the hut be able to enjoy and celebrate the teachings of Buddha and Mahavira? What if there were a few schools also built along with the stupas? What if there were enough schools here? What if teachers were inspired by  selfless services of Budhha and Mahavira?

Several news articles highlighted the deteriorating air quality in Delhi and its impact on health. Many of my friends and colleagues started contemplating options that can save them from air-pollution. They discussed options ranging from buying masks and air-purifiers to shifting to a city with better air quality. These frequent news and articles about air-pollution made them really concerned.

Mainstream media has an unparalleled capacity of influencing our priorities. However, mainstream media is very stubbornly selective in what it chooses to highlight and what it chooses to ignore.
One such issue that never got duly highlighted by the mainstream media is the impact of household air pollution (HAP) on health.

Annually more than 4.3 million deaths occur due to HAP. The deaths are caused by HAP from household cooking. HAP is a silent killer in many households. The majority of victims are women and children from economically backward rural population. These households use solid fuels such as wood, crop-residue, dung, charcoal etc in their traditional cookstoves, often made of three stones put together. There are more than 3 billion still dependent on solid fuel for their cooking energy needs (see here for more info).
These lives can be saved if these households shift to cleaner cooking fuel such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG), electricity; or improved biomass cookstoves which can be used with solid fuels but emissions are within the permissible safe limit. In fact, improved biomass cookstoves make a very good case for replacing traditional cookstoves. These can be used with locally available fuel and are considerable cheaper (cost USD 10–70) than LPG. Sadly, moving from traditional cookstoves to clean cooking devices is not an easy transition.
LPG is expensive and access to reliable and affordable electricity is limited. Furthermore, households have limited budget for cooking fuel and stoves. Many households build their own cookstoves and collect fuels at nominal or no cost. This makes them reluctant to spend a significant sum of money from their limited resources. Households are also not aware of the extent of health risk. Most believe that smoke is just an irritating inconvenience associated with cooking. In some areas, LPG distribution network disappoints many of the households that aspire to get LPG.
There are behavioural challenges as well. Households have been using traditional cookstoves since generations. The traditional cookstove is central in many of rituals and festivals. Switching to a new cooking devices often requires changing the way a person cooks or compromising the convenience of their age-old cooking methods. Improved cookstoves are also not seen as aspirational as LPGs or induction cooker. Several households also do not feel comfortable paying the upfront cost of improved cookstoves despite its economic and health benefits.
All of the above challenges are surmountable. But the issue itself has not got its due attention from policy makers and most importantly from the users of traditional cookstoves. Households do not feel the need to move from life threatening inefficient traditional cookstoves. They have limited awareness on its ill-effects and fail to see the benefits of clean cooking devices in context of its cost.
Creating mass awareness about the ill-effects of emission from traditional cookstoves, and need for switching to a clean cooking device is essential in solving this problem. Our media can play a monumental role. I hope more main-stream media houses start highlighting this issue so that it goes up in the priority list of policy makers and households.

In theory, there are said to be eighty-four thousand approaches, or entrance doors, in Buddhism. The large number is to indicate that, in fact, anyone can start wherever they are. To climb Mount Everest, you could set out from the traffic jams of a Parisian suburb or from the lush greenery of a Nepalese valley. The goal is the same, but the ways you might travel are different. In the same way, on the spiritual path we all have to start at the point where we find ourselves, each with a different character, set of dispositions, intellectual and belief structure. Everyone can find the particular means tailored to their needs allowing them to work on their thoughts, gradually set themselves free from the yoke of the negative emotions, and finally perceive the ultimate nature of the mind. 

 - from “The Monk and The Philosopher”

Non-fiction

• Capital by Thomas Piketty
• The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
• The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
• Think Like a Freak by Levitt and Dubner

Fiction

• Decoded by Mai Jia
• Night Film by Marisha Pessl
• The Colorado Kid by Stephan Kind
• Deception by Jonathan Kellerman
• Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
• Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
• The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo
• The Goldfinch by Donna Tart
• Personal by Lee Child
• Yatrik by Arnab Ray
• Malice by Keigo Higashino

I just finished "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tart. A really bulky book (784 pages) and on top of it this is a very slow book. I read some glowing reviews of this book and since I was planning to read something other than a murder mystery or thriller I chose to read this book. This was anyway the first book from this author so I had no clue about what kind of experience I am going to have.

This is a story of a son who lost his mother in a bomb blast in a museum and gained multi-million dollar painting "The Goldfinch". The whole book is about a dead mother, a lost painting and growing up years of a grieving son. However, the supremely detailed narration is drab and dreary. I kept on going through this book, searching for things that made this novel the most talked about bestseller fiction of this year. The Independent and many others summarized this as a gripping page turner that describes modern day life. Surely my reading taste is different than many of these reviewers. Although, there are still some readers who will agree with me.

Some places might not be very exotic, scenic or on people’s list of must see-must visit but often they offer something that many places do not: nostalgia and comfort arising out of familiarity. The neighbourhood park where one spent many of the childhood evenings playing with friends is one such place. If we take this analogy to stories, Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hours Bookstore is one such story. This is a story of 24 hour bookstore which employs a recession-hit, out-of-the-job website designer Clay Jannon.

A simple story which takes you through some of the familiar world of books and technology. There is an undercurrent debate on traditional books/bookstore vs the modern technology; and a fistful of elements taken from mystery and suspense thrillers thrown in there. The story forces one to move from one page to another, but for me reading the book was akin to visiting the neighbourhood park of my young days. There were a lot of things to make me feel nostalgic or relate to the story. Clay was a web-designer, loves technology (is a MacBook/iPhone/Kindle guy) and loves book…

Mr. Penumbra’s quaint bookstore is not a normal bookstore, it has mainly arcane and cryptic books for a devoted clientele. Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore has a higher purpose and Clay Jannon, the bookstore clerk, is not supposed to know that. But the curiosity gets better of him. With the help of his friend ( a lady who works at Google ) and Google’s tech-tools, Jannon tries to figure out the true story behind this unusual bookstore full of books containing gibberish.

Robin Sloan provides interesting glimpses of a modern metropolitan life, and pervasiveness and potential of technology. However, the story takes a formulaic path in the end and is only salvaged by the characterisation and the narrative.

Non-fiction

• Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
• Eat by Globe by Simon Majumdar
• Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnman
• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
• Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan and Elder Shafir
• David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
• Focus by Daniel Goleman
• The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stieglitz
• Why Does the World Exist by Jim Holt

Fiction

• The salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino
• The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura
• Phantom by Jo Nesbo
• Woman with Birthmark by Hakan Nesser
• Immoral by Brian Freeman
• The White Lioness by Henning Mankell
• The Footprints of God by Greg Iles
• A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
• Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
• Inferno by Dan Brown
• The Killings of Badger’s Drift by Caroline Graham
• Blowback by Brad Thor
• My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
• A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin
• The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg
• Deception Point by Dan Brown
• Policy by Jo Nesbo
• The Crucifix Killer by Chris Carter
• The Luminaries by Eleanor Cotton
• The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall

Non-fiction

• The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Fiction

• A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin
• Before I Go to Sleep by S J Watson
• The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino
• Shibumi by Trevanian
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Things Fall Apart by China Achebe
• Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
• Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? Agatha Christie
• The Green Mile by Stephen King
• The Poet by Michael Connelly
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
• The Day of Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth
• The Stalker by Bill Pronzini
• Gone Gir by Gillian Flynn

The iPad 3rd generation (with retina display) is a fantastic piece of technology but it is surely not for those who want to use it for prolonged period as a book reader. It is too big and too heavy to be a great ebook reader. So when the rumours started about the possibility of miniature version of iPad, I had this inkling that it would a good device for those who want to use iPad for their primary ebook reading device. And, yesterday’s Apple event confirmed that. iPad mini is great for those who want to buy a light portable ebook reader or for those who think the iPad is too big and bulky.

I would have surely gone for iPad mini had it been priced under USD 250. At sub USD 250 price, it would have killed the competition. But it does not deserve the USD 329 price. First, the display is quite a disappointment. Anyone who has used retina display iPad or iPhone would be disappointed by the low resolution display. Google Nexus and even Amazon Fire HD have better displays than this iPad. The processor and RAM are also not upto the current standards; it has A5 processor and RAM is only 512 MB.

On the technological innovation front, it offers nothing. It is just watered down miniature version of the iPad. Probably, I will be better buying Kindle Paperwhite if I need a great ebook reader. It comes much cheaper at USD 119 and Amazon does sell ebooks globally. For us living in India, iBook store is still not available for buying ebooks.

For someone who works on ‘understanding markets’ and is familiar with previous works of Michael Shermer, picking “The Mind of the Market” from the bookshelf was an impulsive decision. And, the blurb made it clear that I have an interesting read for my weekend.

Shermer, drawing extensively from behavioral economics, neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, offers his explanation of our seemingly irrational and often unpredictable economic behavior. Shermer, en route to his explanations, builds an excellent repository of cutting edge research in several disciplines and provides his readers a plethora of interesting examples and theories which have been part of great debate among academics; this itself makes his book immensely valuable and enriching. He starts with drawing parallels between Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Adam Smith’s invisible hand makes a cogent argument about interconnectedness of these two seminal works and how they affect behavior. His rebuttal of ‘Homo Economicus’ might not be very convincing to some but it does provide some good insights nonetheless. 

“Morality of the market” and “morality and market” are the two themes you will come across in many chapters. While Shermer confesses the limitation of research findings when applied to real life settings, yet he does resort often to the same for his arguments. Shermer cherry-picks cases and examples to establish the creativity and efficacy of markets and its self correcting mechanism; and this has invited a fair amount of criticism to this book. This was almost expected if you consider that Shermer is also known as skeptic and wrote a scathing criticism for Ayn Rand’s philosophy in his essay “The unlikeliest cult in history” , in this book Shermer the skeptics takes the back seat and Shermer the libertarian emerges very strongly.

Fiction 1. Never Let Me Go by Ishiguro Kazuo Highly recommended if you are looking for a good thought provoking science fiction.  A mushy story about the lives of clones who were raised to be ‘donors’ for human beings. Was shortlisted for Booker in 2005.

2. 1984 by George Orwell I read a couple of dystopian novels recently. This was surely one genre defining novel. Does not need any recommendation.

3. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Probably the most widely read novel by an African author. Loved this book, reading this book was a pleasure. Simple story, simple writing, great impact.

4. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevesky One of the greatest Russian novels. You will love the struggle of ‘the original’ protogonist  with the materialistic society. The tragic love story of Prince and Nastasya adds a number of new dimensions to relationship and love.

5. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The second dystopian novel that I read this year.

6. The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain A very highly rated crime novel. Some people put this novel in top 100 novels of last century. Did not impress me that much, story seems too familiar.. probably I read too many adaptation or saw different versions of the story in some movies.

7. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King Somehow finished it. I am not a big fan of horror stories, Stephan King’s writing and story telling skills made me tolerate this one.

8. Along came a Spider by James Patterson Wanted to read some light fiction and picked the Alex Cross series for time pass. Nothing much to write about here. A time pass.

9. Max: Maximum Ride by James Patterson Juvenile fiction. Well just picked it out of curiosity and lack of other options.

1. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse I read this 15 years ago, could not get much of this book at that time. Re-read it.

11. 2666 by Roberta Bolano A slow and very lengthy novel. Over 1000 pages. It was an ordeal in patience and test of my passion for reading as the story did not move much in first few hundred pages.

Non-Fiction 12.I hope they Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max Curiosity. Yes, that’s why I picked the book.

13. May I hebb Your Attention Pliss by Arnab Ray By One of my favorite bloggers who turned author. A great satire on our life in eighties and nineties.

http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js

No this is not the John Lennon’s famous song.. this is the title of the report which kept me busy for almost two years and the main reason why there were no updates on this blog. Finally the study is complete and the report is done, and the feedback and comments about the report made me feel that it was worth the effort.

If you are wondering what this report is all about… this report estimates the market potential for clean technology products and services for low income households in India and provides an overview of the sector to potential investors and other stakeholders. Yes, clean technology for low income households has been on theme I have been working for almost three years now. While the sector is still in very early stage I am happy to see the way it is growing. If you are interested in clean energy or base of the pyramid (BoP) market, I would suggest you to go through the report and comment.

Now, since I am relatively free I am going to read some books, visit a few places or just simply stay put at my home and watch some movies. Meanwhile, I already started working on my list of 100 most popular/recommended books of modern times. Will update about the list and my recent reads in my next post.

Some stories gradually grow on you and some characters seem that they have been made from ingredients picked from your own life. And when this happens in a book, which is written lyrically and full of erudition, for readers like me, it is a something mesmerizing. A few weeks back I finished Pascal Mercier’s “Night Train to Lisbon”, a book originally written in German and later translated in several languages. The theme of book is delightful mix of philosophy and suspense. This concoction is very much expected as Pascal Mercier is pseudonym of philosophy professor Peter Bieri. The philosophy does not seem to take precedence, often case with most of the philosopher cum writers, it unfurls itself subtly with the story.

When I saw the blurb of the book, I was immediately tempted to grab a copy and I did just that. A middle aged teacher of Classics walks out of a class to explore life of an enigmatic Portugese doctor, a few pages from a book written by the doctor pushed him on an uncertain journey. The teacher, Gregorius middle aged, relatively well ensconced in his life, walking out on sheer impulse and on pull of an enigma, is in itself awe inspiring considering the way we cling to nugatory inane stuffs. Though the book intrigues you when Gregorius walks out but soon relegates Gregorius to a secondary role, he just becomes a prop in emergence of a larger than life character of Portugese doctor Prado. Prado is our typical larger than life hero who resides in almost everyone , struggling to come out but succumbs to cruelties of rational mind and selfish emotions. A hero, whose personality is carved with a mute conflict between a father and a son, a conflict which stemmed from deep love and unexpressed expectations, Prado is gifted in many ways. The life of Prado is portrayed in the book in many stories told by Prado’s friends and his sister to Gregorius. Marcier’s virtuoso story telling makes each of phase of Prado’s life and his struggle come alive in front of your eyes with exquisite stories told by different characters in the book. Gregorius goes on to discover Prado and his extraordinary life, punctuated by many events depicting superlative emotions, and this discovery for him becomes a self-discovery. This is surely one of the better books I have read in recent times, would recommend to anyone who savors intelligent well written fiction.

Last week we launched our Economic Environment Index (earlier it was called Economic Governance Index) and like any other index it got its fair (okey more than fair share of criticism and controversy). You can check the ranking and details on www.economicgovernance.com.

Economic Environment Index, being first of its kind ranking of districts, got a lot of media coverage and the pre launch coverage in TOI created a lot of unwarranted controversy, though it got us on the front page of Times of India. This index was primarily aimed at capturing variation within the state and focus attention on the gaps and it incorporates data from both the households and the business units.

Here are some of the links to get more on the Index.

Www.economicgovernance.com http://www.moneycontrol.com Times of India The Economic Times

A blog post after almost two months does not indicate my diminishing passion for blogging but highlights the hectic professional life I had in last 2-3 months. A marathon writing session, boring sessions of number crunching and perusing some serious statistical concepts.. These things took so much control of my free time that I did not even manage a 'happy birthday post' on my birthday. Yes, I celebrated my birthday last month and this was supposed to be 'a very simple birthday celebration' and guess what.. I had to treat my friends in a five star hotel :( In between I had an eventful trip to my home state Bihar.  Spent almost 48 hours in car and travelled more than 900 kms.  I was accompanied by an intern, a british girl of Indian origin who was having her first trip to Bihar.  Bihar was facing a drought like situation when I started for Bihar but the rain welcomed us as soon as we moved out of Patna and it poured heavily for next two days. The result:  we were driving on water clogged Bihar roads, and it was a tough task for the driver to negotiate the  water filled potholes  suddenly appearing under the wheels. Fortunately  the new Bihar government has made tremendous change to road conditions in Bihar and we could still manage to reach our destination. Though it was itneresting the see expression on my co-traveller's face while the driver negotiated the rough weather and bumpy roads. The highlight of the trip was our car breaking down around 11 pm on a deserted road and rain pouring down heavily. Imagine someone having the first trip to the 'notorious' Bihar and being in this situation. I must say that my co-traveller was really a courageous girl to take that trip considering the image she construed from the different books and media clips.

Meanwhile I finished the second book in Millenium trilogy ( a best-selling series translated from Swedish), The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.  I must say Lisbeth Salander rocks. She is the most intriguing, sensuous and engrossing charachter I have came across in recent times. :)

Finally after all the madness in las few weeks I am relaxed and completely free from any professional commitment for a week. It really feels good to be free to decide what you want to do next .. read books, listen to music or just gaze at the random things in front of my eyes and get lost in thoughts.

Though the primary reason to take a week off and to be at home, is to take some rest and  read some of the many unfinished books I have on my desk. Yes, I just want to read and read. There are many books which are half read, some I just started and did not get time to go back after the first couple of hours.

I have seen just one movie  in last 3-4 months and the one I saw was ‘The Public Enemy’. I could not manage to get time for day or evening shows so I went for late night show. After all it was Johnny Depp and Christian Bale movie, unfortunately the movie turned out to be a disappointment. I had a lot of expectations from a Johnny Depp movie and it never reached to that level. So with diminishing interest in movies and not much time available at my hand, I am back to my first love reading books.

3-4 months back I had decided to read some of the best Hindi works and I picked up Raag Darbaari by Sri Lal Shukla, an amazing thought-provoking book filled with chuckle inducing humor. I wan to finish this first and then go on to finish The Rebel by Camus. Recently I have been reading some hindi poems thanks to online hindi websites which are doing a great job in promoting great hindi works. I remember just 2-3 years back, while I had a lot of resources to read English Classics, there were absolute no websites which provided similar content for lovers of Hindi Literature. For poems, now we have quite a number of websites which one can access, if you have not been to them and are interested in hindi literature you can check the following:

http://manaskriti.com/kaavyaalaya/ http://www.hindinest.com/ http://hindipoetry.wordpress.com/

Just explore the bloglinks given on these sites, there are some great blogs and sites listed there.

Last month, I visited  Ranchi for a couple of days almost after 23 years. I was so excited to visit that place, to see my school and go to those places which were slowly getting eroded from my memory. But the menace of ‘Naxalism’ completely ruined my enthusiasm. We could not go to remote villages and surely not in a 'car or jeep' as they garnered extra attention, and one local naxalite expert told me that in election time Naxals do not think before bashing up any outside face. Their policy.. first bash them up.. we will see the other issues later.

Though Ranchi city seemed quite peaceful, I ventured out on bike to find my childhood school and all I knew about that school was that there used to be a small hillock near the school and at top of that hillock there was a water tank. I called my mother to get more info.  She told that the school was near a Hanuman temple in Harmu. We drove in and around Harmu and were able to locate almost 4-5 temples but the hillock was nowhere. That means there was no way to get to my school. New constructions and other developments made this place completely unrecognisable from the image of this place I had in mind.
So I came back to the guesthouse, disappointed. I was ruminating on a number of things ..Naxalism, Development, Urbanization etc.. My plan to take a road trip to Daltonganj, Garhwa and Ranka stood canceled. I wanted to use this weekend for that. It would have been an experience to visit these places but the fear of Naxalites and poor connectivity to these places left me with no options. Probably I will dare again, after the elections when the Naxal activities subside.

Next day I was busy in my official chores and I had given up on finding my old school in the concrete jungle, but a local resident and employee of the host organization here in Ranchi, blessed me with his local knowledge. He knew the location of the hillock which has a water tank on top. I realized I can still see my school and I ventured out. He took me near the hillock, in front of a very big nice looking school, St. Francis High School. He was sure that this was my school, but I knew I was not that lucky to have studied in schools like these. But I could still see the hillock and the water tank on top, our favorite place for having lunch around 23 years ago.
I wanted to go there again on the hilltop and somehow I found a way to go there and on the way, I found  what I was looking for. That’s my school, I shouted. Rajkiya Krit Madhya Vidyalaya, Harmu – 12. Suddenly those faint memories became vivid. I could remember the place I used to stand for morning prayers and the school gate and numerous related incidents. School gate was a common factor in most of the incidents. I jumped the wall to go inside the campus (once inside I realized there were numerous ways, and surely not intended ones, to get inside the campus, the surrounding wall was broken at many places) and saw the menu of the food served under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan painted on the wall.
I pulled out my camera, wanted to capture these moments of relived, realised nostalgia. Great feeling to be there. If I look back on my school days, the biggest complaint (apart from not being able to study in any ‘decent’ schools) is my father's job forcing frequent school changes for me, that means I have no trace of those childhood friends. All gone. 

Last few weeks gave me a snapshot of a wanderer’s life. Moving one town to another, meeting all kind of people, doing all kind of stuff right from proving my self dumb to get some bits of information to handling drunken villagers.. it has really been an experience, and more or less a pleasant one. After all, I was doing the things I enjoy doing, I got a chance to visit my home state, read books while waiting for the next plane/train, and to see some exciting aspects of rural India. I do not want to mention the list of unpleasant things (the list is damn long..) as they form the integral part of this package (think about reading some utterly boring documents, writing some long reports, answering some ‘intelligent’ questions.

The abovementioned has surely had some serious impact on the time available for activities like blogging and other online commitments and as I am writing this post I am looking at the heap of clothes that need to be cleaned and packed for the next part of the field trip and wondering whether I should finish writing this or start doing something about the clothes. The other thought (though in stark contrast to my recent resolution ..) is coming to my mind that do not waste time on cleaning these clothes for travel, give them to dry cleaners here and buy some new clothes as and when needed on the tour itself. It is very difficult to be a minimalist.. :((, you have to negate the impact of countless beauties inviting you to be worthy of their attention by acquiring item x..y…or z. Never worked for me. Though a decision to do some shopping might have been good in recession..yup it can trigger multiplier effect. But the decision to not indulge in this immediate shopping is more rooted in my recent drooling over the three things… Fiat Linea , MacBook and iPhone/Sony Ericsson Experia. I want to save money.

Yes. I saw Fiat Linea at Bangalore airport and as advertised (Admiration Guaranteed); this is a mind blowing beauty. We were stuck in front of it, ogling at its curvaceous body (yeah.. this beauty on four wheels made us oblivious of Vijay Malaya’s handpicked beauties roving around.). There was only one thought in my mind ‘ I want to ride this beauty.' You know the first thing I did after reaching the hotel was to google Fiat Linea. And the features and gizmos made me go  more crazy about this car. :)

The other two drool items have always been on my list. But now my Sony Ericsson P1i is giving me some trouble and I need another laptop. So they became too prominent in my things to acquire list. The new MacBook with multi-touch track-pad is really cool. And iPhone is iPhone. Period. Though one of my friend (seem to be diehard Nokia phones) enlightened me that iPhone is for iDiots. Hmm. No comments. Lets see when I am able to get these drool maals.

Meanwhile, I finished a few books and am halfway through another 2-3. Here is a summary of my readings this year so far.

• Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Brafman
• Outliers by Gladwell
• Gang Leader For A Day by S. Venkatesh
• Games Indian Play by V Reghunathan

Fiction

• Sacred Games By Viikram Chandra
• Bandicoots in moonlight by Avijit Ghosh
• The Girl with Dragon Tatoo by Steig Larsson
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Non-Fiction

• Egonomics by David Marcum and Steven Smith
• The Cult of Amateurs  by Andrew Keen
• A Perfect Mess by David Freedman
• Super Crunchers by  Ian Ayres
• Wikinomics by Tapscott and Wiliams
• How to change the world by David Bornstein
• Stick to drawing comics, monkey brain! by Scot Adams
• Getting things done by David Allen
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch
• The Stuff of Thoughts by Steven Pinker
• Madness and Civilization by Foucault

Half Read / Unfinished Books

• Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani
• The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner
• Hot Flat and Crowded by T. Friedman
• Dreaming of Jupiter by Ted Simon (Thanks Srey for the gift.)
• India: The Emerging Giant by Arvind Panagariya
• Phantoms in the brain by Blakeslee and Ramachandran
• Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Tribe by Bruce Parry

Surely I could not read a lot of fiction this year and spent a lot of time on  non-fiction/ pop-economics. Though I wanted to read some good fiction titles. I bought many books last year and I think I need to speed up my reading to consume them this year.

There were so many things happening around me or with me that nothing was happening on my blog. No time to blog. Finally things seem to get normalized and I am back on my blog.

Last quarter of the gone year was a really chaotic one, both on personal as well on professional front. I tried my best to grab attention on professional front and more than my best to avoid 'unwanted' attention on personal front. I seem to be successful to some extent on both fronts. :).

A few months (and around 15 kgs) back, I used to wonder how people gain weight so fast.. why these people are not doing anything about the visible paunch...  I got the answer. At the beginning of 2008, I started to get conscious when I was getting clicked. The reason, visibility of my incipient paunch from certain angles and in certain type of attires. By the end of 2008, the incipient paunch was no longer 'incipient' and now it was proudly registering it presence in all camera angles and in almost all kind of attires.

Book reading continues to take back seat with every passing months though every now and then a typical bibliophilic guilt results in some intense (but often transient) activity on this front. The frequent visit to different shopping malls and unabated desire to possess books is causing my anti-library to grow. I am yet to count the number of books I have read this year (many books are still unfinished with colorful bookmarks stuck in ...waiting for their turn..); I am sure the number is nowhere near the usual number. Most of the reading this year happened either on airports waiting for the connecting flights or on the upper birth of railway bogie coping with intruding requests ranging from 'Garam Chai/Coffee' to 'hero /chikne jaldi nikaal....' from ilk of Bobby Darlings. Since  I am traveling for entire first quarter of this year, I hope to utilize these train/air travel time to the max. I would love to read some good Hindi modern classics this year. (I already started Raag Darbaari by Sri Laal Shukla).

There were no new year celebrations, I had promised my friends to join them but somehow I could not do it and decided to enter into new year sleeping peacefully. No visits to temple on the first day of the year. No new year resolutions. No big plans for this year. Just go with the flow.

Though I could not read as much as I did last year and left many books half finished, or just untouched on the shelf. These are books I did manage to finish, apart from the compulsory reading required by my job.

Fiction

• Alchemy of Desire by Tarun Tejpal
• Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille
• The Righteous Men by Sam Bourne
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• The Innocent Men by John Grisham
• The Broker by John Grisham
• The Last Song of Dusk by Sidhart D. Sanghvi

Non-Fiction

• Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner
• The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
• The Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid by C K Prahalad
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
• The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
• The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
• The way of the Sufi by Idries Shah

I bought several books last year and many of them are still waiting to be finished. I read a few pages and somehow could not finish them. Hope to finish them soon this year.

Half Read / Unfinished Books

• Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy
• The Cuckold by K Nagarkar
• The Moral Mind by Marc Hauser
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Let see how much time I get this year to satiate my desire to read. Getting Thinds Done by David Allen and The Perfect Mess by E Abrahamson and D Freedman are the two books which I am finishing this month. Two books advocating completely contrasting approach to manage your work-life.