Eclipse

Title: Eclipse
Author: Stephenie Meyer
My rating: ***

I picked it up in a hurry not realizing that this was the third and final book of the Twilight saga. But it's so beautifully written that one doesn't necessarily need to read it in order. With the help of the flashbacks and very little help from the internet, it wasn't too tough to follow this intriguing and yet bizarre love tale or should I say triangle between a vampire, human and a werewolf. After all how often do you come across anything with all three thrown into the party!
The story builds on to the already brewing love between Bella and Edward Cullen from the vampire clan. During his long absence, Bella grows closer to Jacob, the werewolf never realizing that what she believed to be close friendship was after all more than that. The story unfolds into this emotional upheaval where Bella is torn in between her love for Ed and liking for Jacob. The historical animosity between the vampires and werewolf - their co-existence made possible only because of a conditional truce - doesn't help either. She is also preparing to give up her human form and be eternally together with Ed. If that was not enough there's threat from another vampire called Victoria who wants to avenge her lover's death at the hands of Edward by killing Bella. As Alice sees the danger coming, and realizing that the Cullens can't alone take the Victoria army, the vampires and werewolf forge into an alliance. As the climax prepares for the fierce war, the two non-humans develop mutual understanding and respect. Together they eliminate the vampire army. While Jacob manages to convince Bella of their mutual love and the "more complete" life they would have together, gives up in the end as she sticks with her "bloodsucker" as he calls him.
The story is nicely woven together with the history of the two clans and their coming along. Waiting to read the first two parts now.

~Ashish

The White Tiger

Title: The White Tiger
Author: Aravind Adiga
My Rating: 3.5*

"I threw the potato from the masala dosa on the tracks as it makes my master fart. A driver knows everything about his master right from mouth to anus". The novel is full of rib tickling lines like these. It's a story about this smart boy who moves from his village to city as a driver and then goes on to become an entrepreneur. Smartness amongst the darkness of Indian villages is rare just like white tiger in a jungle. Hence the title. While narrating the journey of the protagonist's life, the author exposes the (literal and figurative) dirt, graft, cast-ism that India still is under the patina of "Rising India". The villages are in so much
"darkness". And it's just impossible for anyone to get out of that "darkness" and move to the "light". The author argues that Indians are caught in a "Rooster coop" from which there is no escape. And even if a rooster does try to escape, there are enough number of others who will not let him do that. They stay put in the coop well aware of the fact that they will be pulled out one day and butchered.

Darkly humorous and blatantly true. Rising India is just a farce. Under the covers it's still the caste ridden, corrupt and dirty India where a majority line along the rail tracks to relieve themselves in the open in morning. The narration addressed to the Chinese premier is also well thought. The striking comparison of a democracy to a developed communist regime is apparent in the narration.

Where it fails I think is when it doesn't talk anything in favor of the developed India. In that sense Aravind portrays a partisan view of the present India. As a reader therefore am left unconvinced. While I empathize with most of the things mentioned, I can't help pondering "Is it really so bad"?

A must read though and worthy of the Booker that it won!

~Ashish.

The Odessa file

Title: The Odessa file
Author: Frederick Forsyth
My rating: ****

Well it's not often that you come across a thriller that you take to the loo that makes you forget the main purpose of your visit until your legs go numb and your wife's madly banging on the door. Little does she know that you were in the middle of a plot so intriguing and involving that you think little of the job long done.

Set on the aftermath of the nazi war crimes, an ordinary reporter lays his hands on a dossier left by a dead jew relating the atrocities dealt by the SS and one Eduard Roschmann in particular. Acting under the facade of having found the story of a lifetime, he ups himself against the clandestine yet highly brutal organization of ex-SS that goes by the name ODESSA. In spite of hitting multiple dead-ends his truculence leads him to a point of no return. Was it emotional fervor against the inhumanity, was it for professional success or was there an ulterior motive?

Research so thorough that will leave you agape and the plot so tense that will want you to keep reading. A lot of it has been picked up straight from the history but it blends so well with the fiction. Roschmann was actually the commandant of Riga ghetto and the fact that the book brought him out in the public that led to his arrest is just "wow"!

~Ashish.

The Pelican Brief

Title: The Pelican Brief
Author: John Grisham
My rating: ***

This was the first time I read John Grisham and was thoroughly impressed by his 360 degree coverage. Well almost. The murder mystery was paced fast enough to keep me hooked and detailed enough to be believable. The plot revolves around the murder of two high profile supreme court judges. A law student based on her investigation writes up a case that later gets the 'Pelican brief' moniker. The revelations in the document seemingly a long-shot turn out be accurate. The document moves along and passes under the wrong eyeballs. What follows is a cat and mouse chase and more cold blood killings. The build up of the characters is admirable and the attention to details perfect. This is with the exception of the antagonist though who surprisingly gets only a couple of chapters worth. The legal jargon was a bit over-the-head in the initial few chapters and almost put me off. Keep reading though and it soon transforms into a thriller that it truly is.

~Ashish.

Go Kiss the World

Title: Go Kiss the World
Author: Subroto Bagchi
Number of pages: 240
My rating: 3*

The founder of MindTree shares his experiences in life exhorting his readers to pick up the lessons. The book is full of short stories from his life that gives it an allegorical setting. The messages are profound yet his simplistic and laconic writing style makes it a single-sitting book. It's not the first book I have read about ordinary people achieving extraordinary but the story like narration and his calling out of the learning from simple incidents in his life just made me continue reading it from cover to cover. That's not to undermine the learning themselves. They are extremely thought provoking, inspiring at the same time things that stare into our face every now and then. All it takes to grasp them is to keep our senses open.

Here are some excerpts from the book:

When you are continuously displaced, you make friends easily, You have low expectations from the unfamiliar; hence you are more pleasantly surprised than frustrated when faced with life's many ups and downs. You learn to survive on the strength of who you are, just for this day, today. You trust strangers and thence strangers trust you.

The world is not divided between the living and the dead, there is no difference between what is animate and what is inanimate. Shabda is brahma. She knocked on the surface of the dining table. There is brahma in everything. As long as you are willing to knock, even inanimate will respond. Our vision is not always a function of our capability to see, it is our willingness to open up our inner eye to the limitless universe that lights up the path of our existence.

There are the inevitable times in every life when we all must step on a thorn. It is never a pleasurable feeling, it is not meant to be. In that moment of pain, more often than not, we are focused not just on the pain itself but on the anguish of being singled out, asking the inevitable "Why me?" question. That question is as irrelevant as the pain itself. All of us realize that sooner or later. What we do not comprehend is the futility of carrying the baggage of that pain into our future. In life we cannot avoid pain. What we can do is learn from the pain and move on.

In many ways, we are all surrounded by such people all the time - sometimes they are siblings, sometimes friends, teachers, and co-workers. As we get on with the busyness of life, we lose our capacity to receive from people. The capacity to receive asks for humility. Humility makes the mind an empty vessel that then can receive. The capacity to receive expands when there is the willingness to give back - only when we return what we receive, are we blessed to receive even more.

Most people we meet do not have a special reason to remember us, nor are they interested in what we have to say or what we actually do. We live in a world of information overload and attention deficiency. People we meet are often looking at us but thinking about something else. Given that, it is important that in every situation one has to be not only well prepared but razor-sharp to create instant engagement. Be it a job interview, a presentation, or a meeting, we all have a very short window to make the right impression, and unfortunately most of us miss it.

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them.
Our lives are like rivers - the source seldom reveals the confluence. Does a river fret over the long journey and about its end just as it is about to spurt? It simply does not do that, caring instead to flow, to begin its journey, and on its way builds a beneficial relationship with anyone who comes in contact with her.
We all have some talent in us - be it singing, writing, painting or sculpting. It we nurture and cherish it, it makes our life fuller. Yet so many of us choose the uni-dimensionality of a work life, always citing lack of time to pursue a hobby. If we make a small commitment towards keeping our talent alive, one day it becomes a beautiful gift, which nourishes us, makes our lives complete.

All battles should be based on principles. And in a battle based on principles, it is not the size of the adversary that matters. It is the size of the principle.

When we look to hire people, we invariably look for sameness. It is so much more comfortable. But progress requires intelligent friction, push back, points and healthy counterpoints. The job of leaders is to build high personal comfort with contrarians who think differently, create alternative points of view and have the power to question the state of things.

Faced with a crisis, the job of a leader is to take charge and broadcast his of her intent. It is not a time for self-pity, not a time to ask, 'Why me?' In the middle of adversity, a leader must see what can be saved and what must be given up.
Leaders need to view infrastructure at three levels: the physical, the intellectual, and the emotional. What makes a corporation truly memorable and provides it with not just differentiation but defense is its emotional infrastructure. It is a collection of all the emotional assets of an organization; it is the shared consciousness and the soul of the enterprise. It goes beyond just culture.

The Kathopanishad tells us:
You are your deep driving desire
As is your desire, so is your will
As is your will, so is your act
As is your act, so is your destiny.

Sometimes, we hurt people's feelings. In most instances, the hurt caused is unintended. But, nonetheless, for the person who feels the pain, it is real. Once we realize we have hurt someone, we spend an enormous amount of time explaining rationally why the other person should not have felt that way. This is unnecessary; the only reason we get into all that explanation is our ego. The moment calls for just three words: 'I am sorry.' Great leaders are people who can quickly and genuinely say that they are sorry. By saying sorry, you do not become weak. You shorten the path from the head to the heart.

2 States

Book trivia
Title: 2 States
Author: Chetan Bhagat
My rating: ****

Having had an interstate marriage myself and having witnessed a few around, I couldn't appreciate this book better. A topic like this has serious connotation. Yet Chetan weaves a story around it without making it too grave and boring. On the contrary, the story maintains a humorous tinge without deviating from the issue at hand. The humor though cheesy at times, is extremely hilarious especially as it nears the happy ending. Sitting alone in the house, I was laughing my guts out.

The story is set in the IIMA campus. A punjabi munda meets tam-brahm girl and instantly falls for her. The "just friends" agreement doesn't last long as they soon realize that they are spending literally all the time together except when they are sleeping or bathing. They bridge that divide too as they commit to each other and the girl moves in with him. What follows is two years of courtship and merrymaking (baby-making wouldn't have been an exaggeration at all!) as their bond only gets stronger. Reality strikes when they get placed and have to finally move out of campus. A slight confusion on how to proceed follows and is only heightened as their plan to make their parents meet at the convocation doesn't unfold well. Driven by the desire to have their parents smile during their wedding, the couple takes on the herculean task of pleasing them both rather than choosing the easy way out of eloping and getting married. Fighting the cold shoulder treatment, disapproval, and constant communal stings, the couple not only manages to bowl their parents over but does much more than that to the readers. The story has a philosophical touch to it as it tells you how it is important to forgive and forget rather than massage your ego. That how it's challenging but rewarding to face the problems in life rather than run away from them. It's also an excellent portrayal of family values, and relationship building. Above all it's a fabulous tale of two young people finding love for each other that's beyond their communal divide and as the guy would say make love to each other for the sake of uniting India!

~Ashish.

Nothing Lasts for Ever

Book trivia
Title: Nothing lasts for ever
Author: Sydney Sheldon
My rating: **

This was the first Sydney Sheldon book that I read. I must have either picked up one of his worst books or he's not my kind of author. I was disappointed by his lack of attention to details and casual writing. An author has the task of describing in visual details the characters of the story, the scene and the incidents. Sydney fails in all these areas.

The story revolves around the lives of three lady doctors coming from different backgrounds. Fate brings them together and they go on to become the best friends. The story does have elements of romance and murder mystery that keep you marginally hooked. The romance is not romantic enough and the mystery is not mysterious enough. The story lacks enough meat and the author has filled it up with the on-call and operations rut that gets repetitive and stinking over time.