The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Mahabharata is probably the most complete text in the sense that it contains all possible human emotions, all possible complex situations and dilemmas that human beings face। No matter where you are in life, you can find a parallel in some story somewhere in this epic. This book is also an attempt to re-tell the story from the point of view of one character, Draupadi, who in my opinion is one of the most interesting character in the story. Many authors have attempted writing this story from many perspectives. My favorite being ‘Mrityunjaya’ by Shivaji Sawant, which is Mahabharat written from Karan’s eye view. Even Pratibha Rai’s Draupadi was a superb book to read. Incidentally I read both the books in Hindi and could relate to the characters with a lot of depth. Compared to these two books, Chitra’s book is not so great. Depth is missing and there seems to be a bias that she carries against Draupadi, painting her too strong even in her week moments. Though reading this book did make me think and reflect on the character of Draupadi.

Draupadi is someone divine by birth, born unwanted and yet had an objective, kept yearning for the parental love, being controlled by Krishna throughout her life, loved Karna but married his five brothers, torn apart between her husbands and others who wanted her, lived the best and worst of lives possible in a single life and that too many times over, got humiliated like no queen could imagine, ruled a palace no other could own, had sons she could never mother, had husbands who she could never depend on and who were bound more to their duties and their goals, worked on getting what she wanted whether it was wealth or revenge। A twist, a turn and a story was waiting for her at every step in life.

Read this book if you like the story of Mahabharata, I can read that story any no of times and every time get some insights for life. There is nothing new that you would get out of it, though it has been written in first person as if narrated by Draupadi. Author could have gone into more depth of character and her relationships with other key characters, she focused more on the sequence of events than the emotions of it.

Haryana Honking - Mewat

Mewat is a new and not so developed district of otherwise prosperous state of Haryana, on the outskirts of Gurgaon. It has relatively low literacy and unemployment rates. I got to visit a couple of villages in this district with Mehmood Khan, whom I have the good fortune to know for last few years. He and his wife Sanobar run Rasuli Kanwar Khan Trust which is doing a lot of innovative work on rural Mewat in the fields of education, healthcare, sanitation and water management।

We started our journey to the village on a Monday morning in chilled January from Gurgaon। On the way we could see lot of scenes that one would typically associate with villages depicted in Hindi movies like women carrying the water pots on their heads, washing clothes on the edges of a well or a pond, children playing all over the place.

Apart from the developmental work that is being like free eye camps, learn to read classes, promotion of women entrepreneurs, providing vocational skills to young women, providing English speaking classes to students to make them more employable, arranging easy finance for farmers, there are lot innovative experiments being done here। They are experimenting along with a few private banks to bring the banking system to rural areas and also engaging the same banks to hire persons from local villages which is a win win situation for both the villages and the banks.

One interesting initiative is to distribute specially designed spectacles to all the kids and elders who are suffering from bad eyesight. These spectacles have been designed by Prof Josh Silver of Oxford University. The glasses can be used without an optician's advice by anyone no matter how defective his eyesight is. These adaptive eyeglasses’ "power" (refractive power) could be adjusted by the user himself. The lenses of Silver's "adaptive" spectacles are not made of glass; they are, in fact, small liquid-filled sacs covered by tough but transparent plastic. Their users can fine-tune the power of these lenses by using syringes that come attached to the frame. The syringes can be used to increase or decrease the amount of liquid in the sacs to change their thickness and, thereby, their refractive power. Trust aims to distribute 10 lakh adaptive glasses to eradicate the problem of bad eyesight. This is my mind is the real innovation, bringing light to millions at almost no cost.

I look forward to contributing to this initiative in some way soon and hope to nurture many more such initiatives।

Invincible Mind by Arati Katre

Arati Katre happens to be a friend’s friend and this is how I got to read this privately circulated book. The book is a compilation of thoughts by various thinkers that have impressed the author over the years. She has gathered thoughts from thinkers like Vivekanand, practitioners like A P J Abdul Kalam and people in her own world like her mother.

Each thought has been briefly explained by the author based on how she would have related or would have like to relate to the thought. There is nothing much you gather from her explanations as thoughts are very scattered, lost in the brevity and diversity. There is an absence of practicality in explanation, so the reader feels that anyone can write these 5-7 sentence view on popular words. There are too many things covered: self, community, country, virtues, action, hard work etc. Author could have as well connected all these somewhere in the book, which would have taken away the randomness of the quotes. I could not understand the categorization also that is done, some more effort was probably required here too. One thing that I could see across the book was the focus on action and importance of action, and most of what the author says can be tracked back to Bhagwat Gita.

As someone who has never been able to sit down and write the intended books, I can not undermine the effort put by Arati in compiling the book, but I feel she should have explored lesser thoughts for one volume and should have gone a few levels deeper into what she wants to say. She needs to get her messages across to her audience, and also identify and define her audience very clearly. The intentions are good, need a bit of more work from author.

Congratulation Arati on your first book, and all the best for the future ones…

Cooking solo for 500 people

My good friend Ramki is all set to attempt a record setting feat of cooking Solo for 500 people and there is an open invitation for you to join the event.

Here are the details of the event as narrated by Ramki himself:

What: You are invited to a record breaking event, where I'm attempting to cook a full fledged, 10 course South Indian marriage feast for 500 people. Everything right from washing & cutting vegetables to getting the food on the table would be done single handedly, in less than 3 hours. The feast will have dishes from all four south Indian states.

When: Saturday, Jan 17, 2009, 3.00 PM to 8.00 PM

Where: GG Mahal, Behind Arumbakkam, MMDA colony bus terminus, Chennai

How: South Indian cuisine is built from four major building blocks - Tamarind, Tuvar dal, Yogurt and coconut. All the innumerable curries cooked across South India are just various combinations of these basic building blocks. By understanding these combinations, it is easy to cook up a wide variety of South Indian curries.

Why: To demonstrate the unity of South Indian cuisine, at a time when unity is sorely needed. There is nothing better than food to bring people together!

Who: I'm Ramki, a software engineer & a management graduate but prouder to be known as a passionate cook.

As a big fan of Ramki’s cooking, here is wishing him all the best for this mega event and his famous One Page Cookbooks that makes cooking look such a simple act.

Khata Transfer at BBMP

Khata transfer is an activity that in the land records of the local government transfers the property in your name. This is a follow-up activity after you have registered your property and the property belongs to you. Technically this is just a formality that needs to be completed, but it is a must do activity in case you need to sell your property. Most builders will help you do this transfer done on your name, but would ask for a hefty service charge which is anywhere around 8-10 times the actual cost prescribed by the government.

Sometime in August 2008, I and my neighbors decided to get the Khata transfer done for our apartments. Everyone we spoke to quoted a big price to get it done. We did a little bit of research on the internet and figured out the process and the documents required for getting the Khata done. We collected all documents and went to the BBMP office, which fortunately is not too far from where we stay.

We met a person, who told us that he can get the Khata done in 20 days, and the cost is this per unit and since it was two of us, we might get some discount. We told him that we do not have any money and hence can not pay anything, we will submit the documents and we will wait for the process to take its time. We were anyway not in any hurry. He said, you can try but it will not happen. We had no clue what to do, but we decided we will give it a sincere try. So began our series of trips to BBMP office. Every other day we would go and they would tell us some document that is missing. Once they lost all the documents that I had given them, but we kept showing resilience and kept giving them the documents again and again. In the process, I almost made friends with the photocopier guy next to the BBMP office.

Then one fine day, we got the much awaited notice from BBMP to deposit the Khata generation fees, which we promptly deposited. There were few more steps that we had to do like depositing some taxes and filling in some applications forms, but within next 2 weeks, with some additional 5-6 trips to BBMP office, we managed to get our Khata documents done. We had to be absolutely strong and say, ‘I do not have money to pay you and I want this done. Here are all the documents that you need.’ According to the BBMP website, once you submit all the documents you should get the Khata document within 30 days, but it took us four times the stipulated time.

It was a test of our patience and resilience, but finally it feels great to have done something just the right way. Looks like one of my biggest achievement in 2008…:-)

A hopeful beginning to 2009

2008 has been a year that most people would like to forget at least at the macro level। Macro levels impacted lot of people at micro levels as well, and the follow-ups are what we all may be looking forward to in 2009. For me, by design 2008 had to be a different year, but it turned out to be absolutely different from both default and design.

The macro economic factors impacted all my plans, and by the second half of the year I had to re-plan myself completely। On a positive note, I discovered something that I always had, but probably did not realize the value of. I found that I may not have been a financial success but when it comes to friends and my support systems, I am really the blessed one.

I feel 2008 on the face of it may not be a memorable year, but I believe it was the year where lot of foundations for the future may have been laid, and hopefully we would be able to build a strong future on these foundations.

Wishing all my readers a fun filled 2009. No matter what the world outside throws on you, go out and do what the world inside you enjoys.